Status Updates From The Mind & The Brain: Neuro...

Some things only have a certain state because we’re looking at it

It is attention that makes neuroplasticity possible

Paying attention allows your brain to physically enlarge portions of your brain to dedicate to what you're focusing on, and shutting off other areas you're not focusing on

The idea that there is a signal from the brain very shortly before you “decide” to do something or take an action is blowing my mind. The idea of free will versus predetermined action is very hard to grasp. Is our brain truly hardwired? Or is there truth in us having a choice in our actions or in the way we think or in the way our brain behaves?

Do we have free will? Are we not a sum of our conditioned responses? This book is asking great questions and I am thinking so much! Great read or listen.

Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy (CIMT) enabled stroke patients to regain function in their affected limbs in as little as two weeks, yielding a remarkable 97% improvement in functional recovery.

Vocab words, look these up:
- somatosensory system
- Cortical representation
- erogenous
- The Brain Map (Cortical Homunculus)

The brain can use areas of the brain and different synapses to re-wire them for different tasks. Even when a portion of the brain is removed, the tasks that portion of the brain is responsible for can be transferred to different areas to share the load. Wow!

It’s so common these days to recognize that your OCD is not your “ true self”. But rather something else that hasn’t effect on you. Even with other disorders/disabilities. It’s very common to consider yourself separate from “ whatever is wrong with you”

The orbital frontal cortex is responsible for generating the feeling of “ something is wrong here”

They compared a normal functioning rate to an automatic transmission and an OCD brain to a sticky manual transmission - at times having difficulty shifting gears. The orbital frontal cortex is either hyperactive or prevented from being adequately active.

Consciousness - why did nature bother to produce beings with subjective inner consciousness and inner experience ?

Mental does not change with physical change to accompany.

Does the brain produce mind?

Matter alone does not make up the mind entirely, there is a component of mentalness that does not have a physical component but it's definitely exists

The mind is a machine and the body is subject to mechanistic rules

An interesting point in western thought, There exist in unbridgeable divide between the world of the mind and the world of matter

Julien Offray de La Mettrie described the brain as the “organ of thinking” and maintained that brain size determines mental capacity.

This book is very cool and there are many interesting points to think on.