A Neuroscientist Reveals 5 Things You Need to Know About Your Brain

A Neuroscientist Reveals 5 Things You Need to Know About Your Brain | Inc.com

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flameater

February 4, 2016

From decision-making to dream-hacking, here’s what you should know about the way you think.

4. Your Brain Can Be Bought

Moran is no stranger to working with brands. Product manufacturers spend a poop-load of money to know all the neurological nuances that go into purchasing decisions. Their often lavishly funded brain-hacking studies are the reasons prices end in .99, the reason movie theater seats are red (it’s perceived as more dramatic), the reason grocery stores are lit and arranged a certain way, the reason you can’t find a clock in a casino, and even why I bought that Slap Chop a few years ago. Particularly in the case of infomercials, the science of it all is that your brain releases dopamine in response to the idea of a reward. That’s why they offer you not one, not two, not three, but 20 add-ons for the same price if you call now. The reason you need to call now? Dopamine wears off in 10 minutes.

Source: A Neuroscientist Reveals 5 Things You Need to Know About Your Brain | Inc.com

4 responses to “A Neuroscientist Reveals 5 Things You Need to Know About Your Brain | Inc.com”

flameater

May 15, 2018

Well put, Kathleen. It is my great pleasure to correspond with you. Here is a long, but perhaps not too boring discussion amongst pretty learned scientists that echoes what you wrote about. At the end of the video, mankind’s learning process is likened to kicking a can down the street, ie we know a bit more but there is still unknown at the end of the what we can see. In that sense, learning is really about knowing what we do not know, and I think that learning that humble lesson is an important part of life itself.

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Kathleen Maher

March 24, 2016

Many of these things make sense, such as how rest and nourishment affects us. But I’ve always been contrary. I instinctively consider, and may reject, the contrary view if the question has to do with what’s reasonable or possible. I reject hatred and vindictiveness and believe both the victim and the perpetrator ultimately suffer from any bad behavior. That in itself makes me an oddity, although I’m not sure it’s a neurological thing. And yet–if each person would behave (and we all know what that means!), we’d need no power-mad judges to pontificate this or that. Control yourself.

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1. flameater
  
  March 25, 2016
  
  Thank you, Kathleen. I believe that the brain may only be serving as an anchor in our physical realm for the mind which actually exists on a “larger” plane. In other words, the mind may be existing beyond our brains in a realm beyond. I do not see it according to the “our souls exist in the microtobules of our brains” as Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose speculate. The reversal may instead be true.
  
  However, we are more familiar with the workings of the brain end of our minds than the other fuzzier, more spacious and perhaps ineffable side. And that allows us to be manipulated and to manipulate. Attachment to material things, space and time provide hooks for manipulation and detach us from our real, intuitive feelings.
  
  The Eightfold Path in Buddhism, in my mind, does not stress on being in control. It stresses on dealing with our natural instincts. Thus the rightful journey begins with having the Right Perspectives. Not even to begin with thinking with the Right Thoughts! But to begin with the Right Perspectives. Then instincts takes over and there is less reliance on maintaining control, and what is instinctively right takes over.
  
  Let me give you an example. Without mathematics, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking would not be able to make or support any of their fabulous postulations about the real nature of the universe. But here is one contradiction, my dear contrarian. The maths is not the universe, it is only a palette of paints with which one paints a painting and shows it to others and say, hey this is what the universe looks like. The universe is beyond symbols, thus all our theories break down at the infinite and at handling zeroes. Why do we have Planck Time? Because that’s the utmost earliest we can express.
  
  In our world of logical songs, you are a contrarian who contradicts the contrarian view at times. Which makes you a more contrarian contrarian than another contrarian who doesn’t contradict her contrarian principles at times, and at the same time less of a contrarian too.
  
  The real thing is ineffable. That’s why you may be contrarian but not a contrarian, and extreme so at both ends. Beyond the language of logic and maths, speaks the language of our instincts. You’re an oddity because you’re listening to it. Not many do.
  
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  1. Kathleen Maher
    
    March 30, 2016
    
    In recent years, to the minimal extent I’m able to follow higher maths, I’ve noticed that “conclusive theories” demonstrated by algebraic geometry, for instance, change. They’re tempered if not erased, because while the maths are correct, the conclusion remains “unobservable.” Superstring theory has the approval people readily give to science but is in fact faith-based. I believe Hawking has admitted this. That doesn’t mean it’s not correct. But it’s no more provable than God. A smart logician can prove opposites are equally true and false. One of Einstein’s long dismissed theories was recently “observed” with new technology measuring vibrations at polar ends of the universe people have observed. Taking the contrary perspective, as I often do, may be apparent with an MRI. Most of the human brain has now been “mapped,” yet the result has not led to any understanding of how the human brain functions. We have little if any answers to the brain/mind questions than the ancients did. The way people think and feel is probably considerably more complicated and unique from one individual to another than marketing success stories indicate. Anyone up at night, watching infomercials is suffering insomnia, if not heartbreak. Those who “call right now” (my theory is) are desperate to avoid pain. Any blow to a secure sense of self and/or reality can reduce a desperate or overstimulated person to grasp at momentary distraction.
    Often when I’m with someone, I imagine I know how they’re feeling or even thinking. Sometimes another’s pain appears very clear and extreme. And then, I find myself offering to listen. Sometimes that offer is taken as kindness. Just as often, however, it angers the person, meaning I’ve achieved the opposite of my intention. I’ve noticed a person’s turmoil before he or she has. Or, I’ve seen what I wasn’t supposed to see. The person, who really is struggling, feels spied upon. I then apologize and run away.
    Always fun to correspond with you, flameater.
    
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