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Tell people about the critically endangered pygmy raccoon (Procyon pygmaeus) that is found only on the island of Cozumel, Mexico.

It is fun and free to do so. To tell people about the pygmy raccoon. There are less than 120 left in the world. They are a completely separate species from the raccoons found elsewhere.

You should tell people this so they will know (because right now the do not know.) It is fun andfree

thenearsightedmonkey

How does the human brain keep track of time? Short interview with Luke Jones from the University of Manchester. University of Manchester School of Psychological Sciences: http://www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/ Videos by Brady Haran http://www.bradyharan.com/

Extra credit question for Unthinkable Mind students: What is Luke Jones doing with his hands (starting at about 2:45) while he explains how we experience duration of time? Why might he be doing this? If you turned the sound off, and all you could see here his hands, what would you think he was talking about? What would you think he was feeling right then?

thenearsightedmonkey

Dear Unthinkable Mind Class,

If the song we used in class last week is stuck in your head and you are ready to be released from it, all you need to do is listen to this and watch the kid in red dance. If there is further back-of-the-mind intrusion of the song from classes #2 and #3, defend yourself with a class # 4 power: this kid and this song.

Professor Lynda

thenearsightedmonkey

Dear Unthinkable Mind class,

Here is the timing video for today’s seven and a half minute writing session that is part of the the homework I’ve assigned you this week.

Our writing exercise for Thursday, February 7, 2013:

I’d like you to go back to last weeks list of ten images that came from word ‘school yard’ and use the image that is directly below the one you wrote about. So if you wrote about image #3 now you’ll write about image #4. If the image you wrote about was #10, then write using the first image on your list.

Tomorrow I’ll post the next image we’ll be writing from.

Don’t forget to keep your four minute diary. (Diary timing video is right here )

Special note to Basal Ganglia and Cerebral Cortex: we missed you on Wednesday!

thenearsightedmonkey

Dear Unthinkable Mind Class,

In blizzard conditions remember Emily Dickinson’s Poem # 530.

What would that poem mean if I told you it was Jackson Jackson’s favorite poem?

What would it mean if I told you it was Jo Ann Beard’s favorite poem? She’s the person who wrote the story I read to you yesterday, “The Fourth State of Matter”

What would it mean if I told you it was the shooter’s favorite poem?

What if I told you all of them had it memorized and turned to it often?

Professor Old Skull turns to that poem often and wonders how so few lines can hold so many different views. Is it a prism?

Above, your homework pages for the Unthinkable Mind Class #8 which includes a quote from an Alice Monroe story called “Child’s Play”.

Poem #530 seems to contain it as well. How?

Where ever you are, I hope you are warm. (If you need it, the link to our fireplace video is here.)

I’m looking forward to seeing you all again on Wednesday.

Prof. O.S.

thenearsightedmonkey

Can You Learn to Control Your Mind?

by Richard Davidson, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison

February 19, 2013

“The ability to control the mind differs across development and varies among individuals. The developmental differences provide us with clues about the necessary neural machinery that is required to come “on-line” that is a prerequisite for controlling the mind.

Sectors of the prefrontal cortex appear critical to this process and are not fully mature until the mid 20’s. Adult individuals also vary considerably in their ability to control the mind. Such differences likely are due to a myriad of factors including genetic and experiential influences.

Mind wandering is the flip side of mind control and appears to occur involuntarily. It is associated with the default mode of brain function and is frequently accompanied by reports of dysphoric affect, perhaps a consequence of not paying attention to the task at hand.

This state of affairs, while typical of the average adult in our society, is not obligatory and this essay invites the view that we all can indeed learn to control our minds. Humans are endowed with the capacity to learn to control their minds and such learning should be accompanied by a decrease in mind wandering and by corresponding changes in brain function in the default mode.

The ability to attend to the present moment in the absence of distraction appears to be intrinsically rewarding and people report increases in positive affect when this occurs. Many humans seem to have a propensity to place themselves in difficult and/or dangerous situations in order to fully capture their attention, which effectively, though transiently, eliminates mind wandering. Often referred to as “flow”, people report that such experiences are highly positive.

An important implication of the perspective advanced in this essay is that we do not need to place ourselves in such difficult and dangerous situations to experience flow. The quality of awareness characterized by being fully present in the moment is a skill that can be learned and does not require a specific context or challenge to be expressed.

In light of the known sensitive periods for neuroplasticity early in life, this perspective invites the suggestion of implementing training for mental control in the early years of life, as the prefrontal cortex is developing. Such early training may take advantage of the increased neuroplasticity evident at this time and lead to more enduring changes in our ability to control our minds.

Research focused on this question is critically needed and if the outcome is as implied here, the findings would provide an important foundation for a call to include within the regular preschool and elementary school curriculum, methods to train the mind in such ways.

The modest investment in the mental capacity of our children will likely pay off in a multiplicative way later in life as a consequence of improved adult outcomes based upon this early life training. The possibility of such an outcome demands that we marshal the resources to subject it to serious scientific test.

[Full Text: Can You Learn to Control Your Mind?]

Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, Founder and Chair and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

thenearsightedmonkey

Dear Unthinkable Mind Students,

Here’s the handout from Wednesday’s class. There is a storm coming. Draw and watercolor some fire if you get cold.

We didn’t get to all of the things on the agenda on Wednesday’s class so there is no four panel drawing. Instead I handed back the drawings you’ve done since January 24th and asked you to cut them up and paste them into your composition notebooks using white school glue and your bone folder to flatten the image you glue.

Please disregard the part of the handout that that says “Cut and paste 4 pages” — we’ll get to this next week.

Links to things we watched and heard during Wednesday’s class

The Mystery of Memory - at Nobelprize.org

The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction - NYTimes.com

Remembering the past to imagine the future: Nature.com Neuroscience

Brain Scans Of The Future – Psychologists Use fMRI To Understand ties between memories and the imagination

See you Monday,

Professor Old Skull

thenearsightedmonkey

Hand-out for the first “The Unthinkable Mind” class taught by Lynda Barry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Links to video and audio mentioned in the hand-out

1) Four-Minute Diary timing video

2) Carl Sagan talking about the brain and strolling down the corpus callosum in his Hush Puppies.

3) A very young Michael Gazzaniga talking about early split-brain research in the late 1950s. Note: The first part of the video (monkeys) might be disturbing to some people. The second part (humans) may be mind blowing to some people.

4) Interview with Iain McGilchrist on the brain’s hemispheric differences conducted by Wisconsin Public Radio’s Steve Paulson

Question: Why are you coloring pictures in a class that is supposed to be about the brain?

Answer: Read this: Doodling and the default network of the brain (Lancet)

and also this: “Doodling may help memory recall” (BBC)

Question: About how long does it take to completely cover an 8.5 x11 inch piece of paper with a solid coat of crayon wax?

Answer: About two hours —or two episodes of American Horror Story

Question: Is there a trick to it?

Answer: Layering. And also knowing that the process can be frustrating at first but then, somehow, you get into it and something like a relationship with the image itself develops. But it’s frustrating. The paper tears or wrinkles, the wax won’t lay down. But this is exactly how you get to know the materials, by seeing how they act together and how they act with your hands, the one that colors and the one you barely notice that adjusts the paper in minute ways and holds it steady. What is that hand doing while the other one colors?

Don’t be frustrated by the frustrating parts. Keep figuring out the crayon and the paper, what they are, how they act. Look closely at the wax track the crayon is leaving on the paper. What’s making the wax come away? What colors do you seem to keep picking?

“Some sense of the action lies in the queer kind of sympathy that the artist is able to call up for the thing he is [coloring]. The true amount of mental sympathy that the student can give to a subject he wants to [color] creates a sense of life in the picture. From this sense of life, the picture begins to have value all its own…”

Jan Gordon, “A Step-Ladder to Painting”

Question: What kind of pictures are you coloring?

Answer: It almost doesn’t matter. In The Unthinkable Mind Class we’re using images from dollar-store coloring books, Sesame Street characters, Batman, Rappers, Hello Kitty, screaming teddy bears holding knives, The Creature, Astro Boy, My Little Pony, Gorillaz, very bad mermaid drawings, Pokemon, and many other images you’ll easily find if you search for ‘coloring pages’. Pick four pictures and print them out on different kinds of paper. Rougher paper is better but even copier paper will work. Buy a box of 24 crayons. Color those crayons down and peel the paper down in order to color some more. Cover the whole page and notice what happens as you color– move from satisfaction to frustration to satisfaction to confusion to worry to satisfaction again, but keep going until the page is fully covered. Put them up on the refrigerator and stare at them. What just happened?