Pascale Soleil: humanAnimalthe kind of being we areSelf-segregating- November 7, 2002 Ask yourself how many of the weblogs you read regularly voiced attitudes different from your own about the outcome of the US elections Tuesday. Several of the sites I visit that rarely comment on politics nevertheless had something to say about the elections. And in 98% of the cases, it was something I agreed with. Birds of a feather flock together. And when they don't, they often flame the heck out of each other, which is most unpleasant. Still, I'm trying to get out and about a bit more,..http://radio.weblogs.com/0100595/categories/humananimal/2002/11/07.html#a421 Why are they happy- November 6, 2002 Dave Rogers of Time's Shadow calls our attention to this NY Times article about irrationality and choice. Dr. Daniel Kahneman, psychologist who won the Nobel prize in economics for understanding that people fear loss much more than they value gain, is trying to establish a true measurement of quality of life. We're attempting to measure it not by asking people, but by actually trying to measure the quality of their daily lives. For example, we are studying one day in the lives of 1,000 working.http://radio.weblogs.com/0100595/categories/humananimal/2002/11/05.html#a418 Nature AND Nurture- November 5, 2002 Ignore the stupid title on this New York Times article. Humans are born with temperaments arising from genetic variations in brain chemicals called neuromodulators, Dr. Quartz said. These differences may lead one baby to avoid novelty and another to seek it. But the experiences that result help construct the growing brain. Humans are also born with a very large prefrontal cortex, a higher brain region involved in planning that taps into an ancient system for predicting what is rewarding and..http://radio.weblogs.com/0100595/categories/humananimal/2002/11/04.html#a411 Freud Revisited- November 4, 2002 One of the most creative thinkers of all time is getting another look in the light of recent neuroscience research: The work of the past half-century in psychology and neuroscience has been to downplay the role of unconscious universal drives, focusing instead on rational processes in conscious life. Meanwhile, dreams were downgraded to a kind of mental static, random scraps of memory flickering through the sleeping brain. But researchers have found evidence that Freud's drives really do...http://radio.weblogs.com/0100595/categories/humananimal/2002/11/04.html#a409 |