Charlotte VB > Recent Status Updates

I’m scawed…

so sad, yet so beautiful 🥲

Reading this is making Dr. Zatorre’s lab meetings so much easier to understand! Now I can nod along and go “hmmm… yes, yes. Quite right.”

Hemispheric specialization with language and music isn’t just because of a separation of these two categories, it’s largely due to hemispheric differences in processing capabilities of spectral/temporal domains!

This is a slow read for sure, but it’s good for me, like broccoli. I really like the small section on musical hallucinations and earworms!! New models have proposed that musical hallucinations are the result of damage propagating through the auditory circuit, removing the corrective input to descending predictions - higher order areas run awry with their predictions, resulting in auditory hallucinations!

K. is a rather unromantic character, it’s true… and every page drips with a constant feeling of frustration!

Bird culture is so cool!! Ackerman describes so many examples of birds passing down and communicating knowledge resulting in regional differences in language, tool use, and games (play). Birds truly are wondrous.

maybe the world would be a better place if we were more like the kea bird!! These curious little guys are unique in that they lack a structured social hierarchy, instead using play as a social facilitator and teasing as a way to increase tolerance, demonstrating superior intelligence. So… what I understand is that when I bully and tease people, I’m actually helping social bonds and also showing how smart I am.

Really enjoying the book!! Especially seeing Charlie’s increasing emotional struggles as he progresses. But… I wish there was more content about that mouse Algernon. For someone whose name is in the title, you’d think he’d be featured more…

Things are picking up!! The more Charlie’s intelligence grows, the more colourful his world becomes. The beginning was a bit dull, but that’s to be expected reading this type of “progriss riport”… it was a good background from which to build the rest of the book. But now!! Things are getting interesting… what is intelligence?? Does anguish increase the smarter you become?? I must read on!