Tag Archives: emotion
15 Feb Perceptual Signatures
We will momentarily leave Yorrick in his warm, cozy waterbed, to consider perceptual signatures that take place in the world outside him. This world is characterized by patterns, visual, audio, aromatic, tactile and complex, that each have their own signature. The section of this blog on cognition, which deals with logic and reasoning, explores that […]
12 Feb Conscious Phenomena
Conscious Phenomena For the past few posts, I have been exploring consciousness. Extra-sensory perception is a part, or an extension of consciousness. Are you sometimes psychic? Some people have truly remarkable extra-sensory capabilities while others do not. I read a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, though I can’t for the life of me remember the […]
11 Feb Conscious Sensibility
Watergate Revisited More than one President of the United States has been asked this question: “What happened, and how soon did you know about it?” Many cognitive psychologists perform experiments in which they ask subjects (people) the same question, seeking to mark the boundaries between conscious and unconscious phenomena. I recently spoke of mindfulness. Wakefulness may be a […]
11 Jan The Pedantic Querulous Shrinking Violet
How much do you know about a person when you first meet them? What can you learn from speaking with them, even through an hour-long interview? Are first impressions valid in any way? Socially, we understand that it takes a variety of experiences in different contexts to really get to know a person, yet our ability […]
07 Feb Your Place in the Noosphere
René Descartes suggested that if you think, you exist: cogito ergo sum. To think, to know, to intuit, to be or not to be… these are questions that lead us to consider the noosphere. Taxonomies attempt to categorize things in the universe by placing them in buckets in which all the things in the same […]
11 Aug Emotion – The Perturbable Mr. Amygdala
Fear and the Amygdala Have you ever been asked not to be so emotional, or on the contrary, to show more emotion? Or have you been asked to suppress a specific emotion, such as fear? I recall a scene from an Indiana Jones movie in which, after a scene of amazing heroics, a pilot tells […]
09 Aug Emotional Intelligence
What Does it Take to Think In describing the role of the hippocampus, we discussed the correlation of various sensory inputs to form a cohesive picture of our physical surroundings. The direct links between the amygdala and the central gray matter demonstrate the importance of emotional feedback or emotional intelligence in cognitive processes. Dr. Travis […]
19 Jun Did You Change Your Mind?
Change is a Constant There is a beautiful song from the by the Rascals that asks: “In a world that’s constantly changing, how can I be sure?” When confronted with the dirty little uncertainties that swirl around everyday life and interpersonal relations, anyone’s mind may experience turmoil. How do we resolve it? What mental processes keep us from […]