Most of us are familiar with how bats and dolphins use echolocation in order to navigate and identify objects in their environment. Echolocation is when an animal makes a clicking sound and then listens back to the echo; based on that echo an animal can figure out where an object is located (and, in some cases, what that object is).
What surprises me about this unique way of sensing the world is that some humans are capable of doing it too. There are several case studies that show how individuals who were essentially born blind (and have no visual memory) can use echolocation to navigate their environment. Take a look at Daniel here, seen riding a bike through a park using echolocation:
Additionally, a recent study published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE has shown that when blind people use echolocation it activates regions of their brain previously designed for visual processing. This is a very clear demonstration of neuroplasticity, the idea that our experiences can change the structure of our brains.
For example, when we lose a sense such as vision, our brain rewires itself so that unused “brain power” can be applied to a different sense. This is often referred to as “sensory substitution.” In other words, if our brain detects that neural connections aren’t being used, then it will often adjust itself to compensate for that loss by re-utilizing those resources through a different sense.
However, it’s not completely clear that if someone loses vision that they will become more auditory. In some cases, blind individuals gain a heightened sense of touch, which is another way humans can navigate throughout their environment. Imagine yourself getting up late at night to go to the bathroom. It’s dark, so you put your hands in front of yourself to help guide your way (and so you don’t bump into anything). Individuals who are blind experience that permanent sense of darkness, and over time they begin to get better and better at using these other senses to navigate through their surroundings. It may be tactile, it may be auditory – it may be a bit of both. It will probably depend on how the individual chooses to adapt to their surroundings which determines where the unused brain power will be allocated.
What fascinates me about all of this is just how powerful and adaptive our brains can be. And we don’t have to lose a sense to experience neuroplasticity; in fact, neuroplasticity is something that happens throughout our day-to-day experiences. Whenever we learn something new, our brain is making new connections. And with the right attention and practice, there is no doubt that individuals with sight can also develop a skill like echolocation (if they really wanted to). Whenever we apply focus (or “mindfulness”) to what we do, we can actively change the way our brains connect and learn. For more on this, you can check out my article about how mindfulness allows us to self-direct neuroplasticity. Of course, these changes aren’t always as drastic as someone learning how to sense the world in a whole new way, but the fact that these changes can occur can be very encouraging.
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I don’t care what you are, whether a Buddhist monk or a sociopath, we all have emotions, and emotions play a huge role in how we think and behave.
In truth, emotions seem to be a byproduct of consciousness itself, our ability to experience the world from our own unique vantage point of self-perception. As human beings, we experience our world through a multitude of different senses. According to most research on perception, humans sense the world in over 10 different modalities: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, balance and acceleration, temperature, proprioception (our 3d representation of how our body is positioned), pain, direction, among other internal receptors in our lungs, bladder, esophagus and more.
This raw sensory “data” conglomerates into what we call everyday experience. It is the building blocks of all our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and relationships.
Our brain is so complex in arranging this data that it becomes a kind of sensory organ all on it’s own. When we reflect on a past event, we can experience that memory in an entirely different way depending on other thoughts and feelings we experience in the moment. Similarly, we can create entirely new sensory experiences through our dreams, imagination, and creativity.
Our minds are designed to eat up information and organize it in significant and meaningful ways. How we digest this information will ultimately affect our thoughts, behaviors, and well-being in the future.
Some information gets deleted, it just isn’t worth remembering. For example, do you remember what you had for lunch a year from today?. Our minds aren’t infinite in memory, so much of what we sense and experience is eventually discarded and forgotten, especially if it’s not very important.
Presumably, it’s only what the mind finds important that we actually remember. Like that time you touched a hot stove when you were 3 years old. That’s something very useful to know for your survival, right? So your brain quickly makes the association “stove → hot → pain.”
In a healthy brain, the more we experience, the more we learn about our environment, and the more associations we build. In early development, we first learn the building blocks necessary for survival, then we slowly start building more complex associations and deeper relationships with our world. This is where our emotional world begins to come into play.
One of the deepest ways we experience our world is on the emotional level. Compared to our raw senses and perception, emotions are a particular form of “higher order processing” that goes on in our mind. They represent complex relationships between ourselves and our environment, concepts like morality, justice, and happiness. Emotions are often comprised of a web of different feelings, thoughts, memories, dreams, imaginations, and other experiences. They are highly contextual phenomenon.
Emotions are also crucial to a healthy functioning mind, because they guide us on how we should act in a particular situation. As Marvin Minsky points out in The Emotion Machine (which is, yes, where I got the name for this blog), emotions are not opposed to rational cognition, but are instead “different ways of thinking” about “different problem types” that exist in our world.
Therefore, instead of thinking of emotions as primitive or misguiding, we should learn how to use them in more effective ways. We should treat them as a necessary psychological function, just like breathing and digestion.
Many but not all people seem to hold the belief that emotions are something that gets in the way of reason and problem-solving. Perhaps they think emotions should somehow be avoided. However, the fact of the matter is emotions exist for a very functional purpose. And because they are so important when navigating throughout our lives, they can never be fully avoided or suppressed by a healthy brain.
We need to find ways for our emotions to be properly expressed and learned from. We can’t hold them in forever. That would be like always eating, but never allowing anything to be digested and excreted. Emotions are like poop, they will eventually come out whether we want them to or not.
Do you have an avenue to express your emotions? Or do they bubble to the surface unexpectedly? Anger, frustration, sadness – these are all experiences we typically don’t like, but they are sometimes necessary during different points in our lives. Are you prepared to face them? Or do you try to bury them in your subconscious?
There isn’t necessarily any right or wrong way to respond to emotions. But if we suppress them, some might erupt in the form of arguments, violence, drug abuse, or other harm. Luckily there are many healthier ways to express our feelings too.
Some healthy ways to release/express emotions:
- Conversation: talk to someone who is a good listener
- Art: try writing, painting, playing music, or some other creative endeavor
- Meditation: experience your emotions in a non-judgmental awareness.
- Exercise: release pent up energy you’ve built throughout the day.
- Empathy: caring about others helps redefine our narrow sense of self.
By engaging in activities such as these, we acknowledge our emotions, process them more deeply, learn from them, and apply them in more productive and meaningful ways. They don’t constipate our psychological system or spill out like diarrhea.
1. How much should we practice? by Jonah Lehrer
- ” We spend a lot of time trying to improve our perceptions on very particular tasks, whether it’s a jet fighter pilot learning how to fly or a baseball player learning to hit a fastball or child with dyslexia learning how to read. Although we currently assume that the only way to improve is to constantly practice – in technical speak, the act of practicing provides a “permissive signal” that allows the accompanying stimulation to “drive learning” – this research demonstrates that we can also improve through mere exposure. Furthermore, our obsession with practice comes with serious drawbacks, since the tedium of practice can prove discouraging for beginners. And so we quit the piano and give up on our reading lessons, because we can’t stand the training regimen.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that we can just play Yo Yo Ma in the background and expect to master the cello, or put the textbook underneath the pillow and expect to ace the algebra test. We still need to practice. We just might not need to practice as much as we think.”
2. Neural Exercises Boost The Aging Brain
- “Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry and aging at UCLA, says there are ways that we can reduce the effects of this kind of memory loss by exercising our brains—training our neurons the same way that we can exercise our muscles at the gym using relatively simple techniques. He distills the basics of these down to three concepts: ‘look, snap, connect.’
‘”Look stands for focusing attention. The biggest reason that people don’t remember things is they’re simply not paying attention,” he says. “You’re running outside the house and you can’t remember whether you did some minor task because you weren’t paying attention. Snap is a reminder to create a mental snapshot of information you want to recall later. Many of us find it easier to remember visual information than other types of information. And then the third step connect, is just a way of linking up those mental snapshots, so an example would be if I’m running out quickly and I have two errands, pick up eggs and go to the post office. I might visualize in my mind and egg with a stamp on it.’”
Personal note: I mention a very similar technique in my article, “Are You A List Maniac? How To Build A Better Memory“
3. Structure your world for success by thinking abstractly by Art Markman, cognitive scientist, University of Texas
- “When you work to create an environment that supports your long-term goals, you are engaging in prospective self-control. This kind of planning for the future helps you to achieve your goals by minimizing the number of temptations that cross your path and by helping you to prepare in advance for those that do emerge.
A paper by Kentaro Fujita and Joseph Roberts in the November, 2010 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology examines one factor that may make people more likely to engage in this advance planning.
These authors suggest that when people think about a situation more abstractly, they may be more willing to structure their world in ways that help them to satisfy long-term goals than when they think about a situation concretely.”
Personal note: Later in the article it mentions how researchers get participants to think more abstractly by asking them the “Why?” behind their actions rather than the “How?”
4. Study: Playing Violent Games Helps with Stress and Depression
- “Research concluded: ‘As with aggressive behavior, the evidence did not support that short-term randomized exposure to violent video games either increased or decreased hostile feelings or depression. By contrast long-term exposure to violent video games was associated with reduced hostile feelings and depression following a stressful task. Subjects who were exposed to violent video games were not less aggressive, but they were less hostile and depressed.’
It was also noted that violent videogames could possibly considered as “mood management tools,” which could help treat mood disorders and other health-related issues.”
5. For First Time, Monkeys Recognize Themselves in the Mirror, Indicating Self-Awareness
- “Typically, monkeys don’t know what to make of a mirror. They may ignore it or interpret their reflection as another, invading monkey, but they don’t recognize the reflection as their own image. Chimpanzees and people pass this “mark” test—they obviously recognize their own reflection and make funny faces, look at a temporary mark that the scientists have placed on their face or wonder how they got so old and grey.
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For 40 years, scientists have concluded from this type of behavior that a few species are self-aware—they recognize the boundaries between themselves and the physical world.
Because chimps, our closest relatives, pass the test, while almost all other primate species fail it, scientists began to discuss a “cognitive divide” between the highest primates and the rest.
But a study published today (Sept. 29) by Luis Populin, a professor of anatomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shows that under specific conditions, a rhesus macaque monkey that normally would fail the mark test can still recognize itself in the mirror and perform actions that scientists would expect from animals that are self-aware.”
6. We should be music testing athletes!
- “Waterhouse, Hudson and Edwards (2009) took music and artificially sped it up and slowed it down (in 10% increments). They found that people’s performance (measured in cycles/minute) increased as the tempo increased. Sure, sure, we all knew music makes workouts more enjoyable – but it appears it can actually deliver benefits.”
7. Compassion and Civic Responsibility by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- “Neuroskeptic has excellent coverage of the recent headline-making study on the genetics of ADHD that was overly-hyped as the ‘first direct genetic link’ to the disorder and overly-slammed as a drug company ploy.
For example, BBC News has a report on the study where you can see researcher Anita Thapar making some unrealistic claims for the significance of the interesting-but-preliminary study while the science-retardant child psychologist Oliver James counters by cherry picking evidence (and not even very accurately).
Neuroskeptic does a great job of untangling the actual import of the research and discusses why the finding of copy-number variations or CNVs in about 16% of the ADHD kids compared to 7.5% of the controls is neither a ‘direct genetic link’ nor evidence against the idea that the condition is ‘socially constructed’.”
9. Rediscovering Your Motivational Innocence
- “Say, you and I happen to be on the same metro car. I have flip-flops on. You have stiletto shoes on. The train car sways, you lose balance and nail my foot down to the floor with your stiletto heel. Now I need reconstructive surgery, develop a limp and chronic pain, and get depressed. My wife leaves me. My life is ruined. We bump into each other again. I tell you the story. Should you feel guilty? Of course not. Regretful, but not guilty. It’s clear you had no motive to hurt me. But I got hurt.
Life’s chaotic like that: a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon and you have a tornado in Arkansas. Should we blame the butterfly for the devastation of a tornado? Of course, not. But, in a way, we do. We are sticklers for cause-and-effect.
If you happen to be involved in the causal chain of events, let alone if your behavior is an immediate antecedent of some kind of mishap, you blame yourself. So, if you are the one who stepped on my toes, you conclude that if you had been more balanced, you would not have injured me and my life would not have been ruined. If you are a self-loathing, CNN-watching butterfly in the Amazon, then you’d conclude that if you had only not flapped your wings, that trailer park would be still standing.
This is a very formal way of looking at causality. Everything is inter-related, inter-connected, and inter-twined. Any event is a collision of multiple variables. Each variable is a cause of some effect. The question is which one is the necessary and sufficient cause/reason behind the mistake you are beating yourself up for.”
10. Counter-Intuition by Daniel Simons, experimental psychologist, University of Illinois
- “Daniel Simons is the head of Visual Cognition Lab at the University of Illinois. His recent research explores the cognitive underpinnings of our experience of a stable and continuous visual world. For example, his studies reveal the surprising extent of inattentional blindness — the failure to notice unusual and salient events when attention is otherwise engaged and when the events are unexpected. More broadly, he tries to identify those aspects of our environment that automatically capture attention and those that go unnoticed.”
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The difference between a routine and a ritual is not the action, but the attitude behind the action.
To some, a routine is getting up every morning, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, getting dressed, and going to work. It is not a meaningful part of our day, but it needs to get done so we do it. It’s a chore.
Rituals, on the other hand, are viewed as more meaningful practices. Often, there is symbolism involved, and a real sense of purpose. A big part of it is your subjective experience of the activity. I define the key differences as follows:
| Routines | Rituals |
|---|---|
| Minimal engagement. | Full engagement. |
| Tedious and meaningless. | Symbolic and meaningful |
| Externally motivated. | Internally motivated. |
| Life as a duty. | Life as a celebration. |
| Dull awareness. | Bright awareness. |
| Disconnected series of events. | Tells a story. |
| Little sense of belonging. | Sense of belonging. |
| Focus only on completion of tasks. | Focus on performance of tasks. |
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“It’s the realm of mystical experience. And those who’ve been there describe the visit as the most significant event of their lives. Until recent times that was a world known only to holy men, to saints, or perhaps to the insane. Then a generation ago this drug, LSD, escaped from the laboratory. It was consumed by millions of young people. To some it’s a doorway to the mystical universe, chemical ecstasy, enlightenment in a bottle. To others it’s a dangerous and subversive poison.”
“LSD is one of the strangest and most controversial substances known to science. A dose smaller than a grain of salt precipitates a hazardous mental journey into a universe of hallucination, intense emotion and, some believe, mystical revelation. These remarkable effects were discovered by the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman in 1943. During the 50′s the LSD was used widely for research in psychiatric hospitals. Than in the early 1960′s LSD leaked out of the laboratory. With bizarre and unforeseen consequences the drug was consumed by a generation of young people seeking spiritual transcendence and an escape from the conventional world.”