intro psy toronto

The human brain is a network of approximately 100 billion neurons different experiences create different neural connections which bring about different emotions and depending on
which neurons get stimulated certain connections become stronger and more
efficient while others may become weaker this is what's called neuroplasticity
someone who trains to be a musician will create stronger neural connections that
link the two hemispheres of the brain in order to be musically creative virtually
any sort of talent or skill can be created through training
Ruettiger gam who was a self-admitted hopeless student used to fail at basic
math and went on to trade his abilities and became a famous human calculator
capable of performing extremely complex mathematics rationality and emotional
resilience work the same way these are neural connections that can be
strengthened whatever you are doing at any time you are physically modifying
your brain to become better Abbot since this is such a foundational mechanism of
the brain being self-aware in greatly enrich our life experience
specific neurons and neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine trigger a
defensive state when we feel that our thoughts have to be protected from the
influence of others if we are then confronted with differences in opinion
the chemicals are released in the brain are as same ones that try to ensure our
survival in dangerous situations in this defensive state the more primitive part
of the brain interferes with rational thinking and the limbic system can knock
out most of our working memory physically causing narrow-mindedness
we see this in the politics of fear in the strategy of poker players or simply
when someone is stubborn in a discussion no matter how valuable 90 is the brain
has turtle processing it when it is in such a state on a neural level it reacts
as if we're being threatened even if this threat comes from harmless opinions
or facts that we may otherwise find helpful and could rationally agree with
but when we express ourselves and our views are appreciated these different
chemicals decrease in the brain and dopamine neurotransmission
activates the reward neurons making us feel empowered and increasing our
self-esteem our beliefs have a profound impact on our body chemistry this is why
placebos can be so effective self esteem or self belief is closely linked to the
new transmitter serotonin when the lack of it takes on severe proportions it
often leads to depression self-destructive behavior or even
suicide social validation increases the levels of dopamine and serotonin in the
brain and allows us to let go of emotional fixations and become
self-aware more easily social psychology often looks at the
basic human need to fit in and calls this the normative social influence when
we grew up our moral and ethical compass is almost entirely forged by our
environment so our actions are often a result of the validation we get from
society but new developments in neuroscience are giving us a better
understanding of culture and identity recent neurological research has
confirmed the existence of empathetic mirror neurons when we experience an
emotion or perform an action specific neurons fire but when we observe someone
else performing this action or when we imagine it many of the same neurons will
fire again as if we were performing the action ourselves these empathy neurons
connect us to other people allowing us to feel what others feel and since these
neurons respond to our imagination we can experience the emotional feedback
from them as if it came from someone else this system is what allows us to
self reflect the mirror neuron does not know the difference between it and others and is
the reason why we are so dependent of social validation and why we want to fit
in we are in a constant uality between how we see ourselves and how
others see us this can result in confusion in terms of identity and
self-esteem and brain scans show that we experience these negative emotions even
before we are aware of them but when we are self-aware we can alter misplaced
emotions because we control the thoughts that cause them this is a neurochemical
consequence of how memories become label and retrieved and how they are restored
through protein synthesis self observing profoundly changes the way our brain
works it activates the self regulating new cortical regions which give us an
incredible amount of control over our feelings every time we do this our
rationality and emotional resilience are strengthened when we are not being
self-aware most of our thoughts and actions are impulsive and the idea that
we are randomly reacting and not making conscious choices is instinctively
frustrating the brain resolves this by creating explanations for our behavior
and physically rewriting it into our memories through memory reconsolidation
make us believe that we were in control of our actions this is also called
backward rationalization and it can leave most of our negative emotions
unresolved and ready to be triggered at any time they become constant fuel to
our confusion as our brain will keep trying to justify why we behaved
irrationally all this complex and almost schizophrenic subconscious behavior is
the result of a vastly parallel distributed system in our brain there is
no specific center of consciousness the appearance of a unity is in fact each of
these separate circuits being enabled and being expressed at one particular
moment in time our experiences are constantly changing our neural
connections physically altering the parallel system that is our
consciousness direct modifications to this can have some real consequences
that bring into question what and where consciousness really is if your left
cerebral hemisphere were to be disconnected from the right as is the
case in split brain patients you would normally still be able to talk and think
from the left hemisphere while your right hemisphere would have very limited
cognitive capacities your left brain will not miss the right part even though
this profoundly changes your perception one consequence of this is that you can
no longer describe to write half of someone's face but you will never
mention it you will never see it as a problem or even realize that something
has changed since dis effects more than just your perception of the real world
and also applies to your mental images it is not just a sensory problem but a
fundamental change in your consciousness each neuron has a voltage which can
change when ions flow in or out of the cell once the neurons voltage has
reached a certain level it will fire an electrical signal to other cells which
will repeat the process when many neurons fire at the same time we can
measure these changes in the form of a wave brain waves underpin almost
everything going on in our minds including memory attention and even
intelligence as they oscillate at different frequencies they get
classified in bands such as alpha theta and gamma each are associated with
different tasks brain waves allow brain cells to tune into the frequency
corresponding to their particular task while ignoring irrelevant signals
similar to how a radio homes in on different waves to pick up radio
stations the transfer of information between neurons becomes optimal when
their activity is synchronized this is the same reason why we experience
cognitive dissonance the frustration caused by simultaneously holding two
contradictory ideas will is merely the drive to reduce dissonance between each
of our active neural circuits evolution can be seen as the same
process where nature tries to adapt or resonate with its environment by doing
so it evolved to a point where it became self-aware and began to ponder its own
existence when a person faces the paradox of wanting purpose while
thinking that human existence is meaningless cognitive dissonance occurs
throughout history this has led many to reach for spiritual and religious
guidance challenging science as it failed to give answers to existential
questions such as why or what am I the left cerebral hemisphere is largely
responsible for creating a coherent belief system in order to maintain a
sense of continuity towards our lives new experiences get folded into the
pre-existing belief system when they don't fit they are simply denied counterbalancing
this is the right cerebral hemisphere which has the opposite tendency whereas
the left hemisphere tries to preserve the model the right hemisphere is
constantly challenging the status quo when the discrepant anomalies become too
large the right hemisphere forces a revision in our worldview however when
our beliefs are too strong the right hemisphere may not succeed in overriding
our denial this can create a profound confusion when mirroring others when the neural
connections that physically define our belief system are not strongly developed
or active then our consciousness the unity of all the separate active
circuits at that moment may consist mainly of activity related to our mirror
neurons just as when we experience hunger our consciousness consists mostly
of other neural interactions for consuming food this is not the result of
some core self giving commands to different cerebral areas all the
different parts of the brain become active and inactive and interact without
a core just as the pixels on a screen can express themselves as a recognizable
image when in unity the convergence of neural interaction expresses itself as
consciousness at every moment we are in fact a different image a different
entity when mirroring when hungry when watching this video every second we
become different persons as we go through different states when we use our
mirror neurons to look at ourselves we may construct the ID of identity but if
we do this with our scientific understandings we see something
completely different the neural synergies that produce our
oscillating consciousness go far beyond our own neurons we are equally the
results of cerebral hemispheres interacting electrochemically as we are
of the senses connecting our neurons to other neurons in our environment
nothing is external this is not a hypothetical philosophy it is the basic
property of neurons which allow us to understand ourselves through others
seeing this neural activity as your own while excluding the environment would be
a misconception our super original features are also reflected in evolution
where our survival as primates relied our collective abilities over time the
Neo cortical regions evolved to permit the modulation of primitive instincts
and the overriding of hedonistic impulses for the benefit of the group
our selfish genes have come to promote reciprocal social behaviors in
superorganism all structures effectively discarding the notion of survival of the
fittest the brains neural activity resonates most coherent lis when there
is no dissonance between these advanced new cerebral regions and the older more
primitive ones what we traditionally call selfish tendencies is only a narrow
interpretation of what's self-serving behavior entails wherein human
characteristics are perceived through the flawed paradigm of identity instead
of through a scientific view on what we are a momentary expression of an
ever-changing unity with no center there's psychological consequences serve
this as an objective belief system allow self-awareness without attachment to the
imagined self causing dramatic increases in mental clarity social conscience self
regulation and what's often described as being in the moment
the common cultural belief has mostly been that we need a narrative in
diachronic view in our life to establish moral values but with our current
understandings of the empathic and social nature of the brain we now know
that a purely scientific view with no attachment to our identity your story
yields a far more accurate meaningful and ethical paradigm than our
anecdotal values this is logical since our traditional tendency to define
ourselves as imaginary individualistic constants newly wires and designs the
brain towards dysfunctional cognitive processes such as compulsive labeling
and the psychological need to impose expectations practical labeling underpins all forms
of interactions in our daily lives but by psychologically labeling the self as
internal and the environment as external we constrain our own neural chemical
processes and experience a diluted disconnection growth and it's
evolutionary side effects such as happiness and fulfillment are stimulated
when we are not being labeled in our interactions we may have many different
views and disagree with one another in practical terms but interactions that
nevertheless accept us for who you are without judgment our new psychological
catalysts that wire the human brain to acknowledge others and accept rationally
verified belief systems without dissonance stimulating this type of
neural activity and interaction alleviates the need for distraction or
entertainment and creates cycles of constructive behavior in our environment
sociologists have established that phenomena such as obesity and smoking
emotions and ideas spread and ripple through society in much the same way
that electric signals of neurons are transferred when their activity is
synchronized we are a global network of neural chemical reactions and the self
amplifying cycle of acceptance and acknowledgement sustained by the daily
choices in our interactions is the chain reaction that will ultimately define our
collective ability to overcome imagined differences and look at life in the
grand scheme of things in quantum mechanics we have learned to
approach reality differently and see everything as probabilities instead of
certainties in a mathematical sense anything is possible as well as in
science as in our daily lives the extent to which we can calculate or figure out
our bodies is determined by our intellectual capability to recognize
patterns the less biased we are the clearer we can identify these patterns
and base our actions on reasonable probabilities since it's in the very
nature of our brains left hemisphere to deny IDs that do not fit into our
current paradigm the more attached we are to a belief system the less able we
are to make conscious choices for ourselves but by observing this process
we expand our awareness and enhance our free will it is said that wisdom comes
with age but with openness and skepticism the key principles of the
scientific method we don't need decades of trial and error
to sort out which of our convictions may be improbable the question is not
whether our beliefs are right to run but the whether or not being emotionally
attached to them is more or less likely going to benefit us there is no such
thing as a free choice while being emotionally attached to a belief system
the moment we are self-aware enough to realize this we can truly work together
to figure out the real odds of what will benefit us the most

intro psy toronto

21.1.18

Materiales (links)

L1-MX01 Galvani's first experiment

L1-MX03 god in the neurons