Two things in life that always fascinated me every time in the most elemental way are brain and airplane. I wanted to think it out a little here. On brain, I always imagine that our feelings and emotions are not as fleeting as we thought or as used in literature and pop culture. Feelings and emotions are a type of material substance. Maybe they are like hormones. But for now, I want to believe they are different although they have some similarities. They are like liquids in stored in neuron jars in our brain. My unscientific proof of this is that when we sleep, the neuron jars that contain our feelings and emotions get poured out and mixed together. And like mixed paints, they create new combinations of feelings and emotions and as the result also creates these bizarre realities we know of as dreams.
Last week, I listened to Jonah Lehrer, a science journalist, on Fresh Air on his new book, How We Decide. The most interesting part was the second halves of the interview when Terry asked him questions about the role of dopamine, a type of neuron transmitter, in our decision making process. From that I gained additional insights into the working of this substance in our brain. Dopamine is not just responsible for creating sensation of joy in drugs or sex and a Parkinson’s drug. It is crucial in driving our emotion. When it’s excreted out, it activates our emotion, as opposed to our rational, to think and make decision quickly. It’s good at finding patterns that will maximize our reward. It’s also a switch that turns on and off our motivation. One example he brought up was the role of dopamine in gambling addiction. The gambling apparatus with it’s signals and random pattern of sequences has successfully hijacked our dopamine to keep coming in our neuron, to keep searching for a pattern, that will never exist, for a reward. Interesting, hah. Maybe dopamine is the guy I am looking for my theory on mental matter mentioned above.
Quite interestingly, Walter Benjamin also mentioned about this attempt we have to de-abstract the concept of mind and memory, although only passingly, in one of his writings, Berlin Chronicle. First he uses memory as an example. It should be thought about in a more active role in our daily biological operation. He said, “Language shows clearly that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater.” How so, one would ask. “It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.” Benjamin thinks that memory is matter and should be used likewise too. “This confers the tone and bearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.” He then further illustrates his thinking with the earth and dirt metaphor. “For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth; the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand – like precious fragments or torsos in a collector’s gallery – in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.”
Last week, I listened to Jonah Lehrer, a science journalist, on Fresh Air on his new book, How We Decide. The most interesting part was the second halves of the interview when Terry asked him questions about the role of dopamine, a type of neuron transmitter, in our decision making process. From that I gained additional insights into the working of this substance in our brain. Dopamine is not just responsible for creating sensation of joy in drugs or sex and a Parkinson’s drug. It is crucial in driving our emotion. When it’s excreted out, it activates our emotion, as opposed to our rational, to think and make decision quickly. It’s good at finding patterns that will maximize our reward. It’s also a switch that turns on and off our motivation. One example he brought up was the role of dopamine in gambling addiction. The gambling apparatus with it’s signals and random pattern of sequences has successfully hijacked our dopamine to keep coming in our neuron, to keep searching for a pattern, that will never exist, for a reward. Interesting, hah. Maybe dopamine is the guy I am looking for my theory on mental matter mentioned above.
Quite interestingly, Walter Benjamin also mentioned about this attempt we have to de-abstract the concept of mind and memory, although only passingly, in one of his writings, Berlin Chronicle. First he uses memory as an example. It should be thought about in a more active role in our daily biological operation. He said, “Language shows clearly that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater.” How so, one would ask. “It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.” Benjamin thinks that memory is matter and should be used likewise too. “This confers the tone and bearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.” He then further illustrates his thinking with the earth and dirt metaphor. “For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth; the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand – like precious fragments or torsos in a collector’s gallery – in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.”