Your 3 Pound Coconut

See in your mind’s eye your computer functioning by your point-and-click
commands following the internal software programs controlling operations. If you
click Edit and then Select All, your hardware does not respond with a message
“I don’t feel like it today.” It’s all about computer code, right?

Your personal Point-And-click is an order from the boss – your mind. Computer functions are stored in read/write memory; your mental memories are located in
your neurons, especially the Dendritic Spines.

Your brain at its core is a super memory system laying down new long-term memories in the neurons located in your hippocampus (Limbic system) for later retrieval.

When life is good both mind and brain, left-hemisphere and right-hemisphere,
conscience and non-conscious mind, are working as a team – synchronistically.

Paul D. MacLean, age 94, Deceased December 26, 2008.

Dr. MacLean created the triune (three-part) theory of the brain. It is considered standard neuroscience. It is counter-intuitive because MacLean offered evidence
we have three (3) brains, an interconnected biological computer.

Worse yet, he posited each of the three had its own special intelligence, subjectivity, sense of time and space, and its own memory. The final stroke was when MacLean said the Limbic system (seat of emotion and instinct) decided our behaviors – not our reasoning brain (NeoCotex, the new-layer).

The Limbic system contains our Value Judgment (beliefs) and can and does override our logic and reason, planning and organizing. It is called high jacking
the NeoCortex. Your Limbic system decides if your feel positive or negative by
choosing your Mood and Attitude toward sex, feeding, flight and fighting.

The oldest brain is our Reptilian Complex, an evolutionary inheritance from reptiles and lizards. It consists of our brainstem and cerebellum. How important is this
antique? It controls our breathing, heartbeat, and balance. Call it our instinctual and autonomic nervous system.

Finally, MacLean concluded, survival is avoidance of pain and repetition of pleasure. He deserves a nice sendoff.

What Your Mind Believes – Rules

It aint the intrinsic qualities of objects, but how we feel about it. Our mind will
decide our sense of taste: knowing you are drinking a top brand like Coca Cola or vintage French Champaign makes it taste better.

Our sense of expectation of enjoying a movie or book is enhanced by learning your
friends or the critics loved it.

Finally, this weirdo, drinking the top-of-the-line Energy Drink, improves your ability to solve hard puzzles. What you feel overcomes both experience and reality.
Is this the basis of the Placebo Effect?

The secret: FMRIs (brain scans) of participants indicated more blood and oxygen activity in the MOFC (Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex) of the brain when we knew
the wine or beverage was the best brand, movie was four-star, and energy drink
recommended by the best nutritionists. We are influenced and the body responds.

The MOFC is the seat of how we experience feelings of pleasure. Knowledge (mental
information) causes physical changes. What we believe influences our mood and attitudes, which in turn changes how the body responds. Limbic System rules.

Google: researchers from Stanford Business School and California Institute of Tech
1.14.08 appears in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

Aggression is a Reward

Your brain considers a good fight (aggression) equal to a reward for food, territory, sex and drugs. Humans behave to avoid pain and get repeated pleasure. Seeing a football game or prizefight gives us a thrill by a secretion of dopamine, a nerurotransmitter.

Why do we act aggressively? The rewarding stimuli gives by our brain is a dose of dopamine. This powerful brain chemical is why drug addicts crave heroin. It is not the delicious flavor, but the feeling after the dopamine download.

“We learned from these experiments an individual would seek out aggression because they experience a rewarding feeling. Dopamine is a positive reinforcer and directly motivates aggressive behavior.”

Google: Dr. Craig Kennedy at Vanderbilt University 1.15.08 published in the journal, Psychopharmacology.

Science Can Produce A Living Heart

For the first time in the history of science, Dr. Doris Taylor at University of Minnesota, has created a beating heart. She did it first with a rat’s heart and
later with a pig’s because pig’s heart are the same size as human.

Dr. Taylor used the heart cells of baby rats, placed in the structure (scaffolding)
of a dead rat and succeed in producing life.

Will it work for humans instead of 50,000 deaths from lack of transplants?
She says five more years of research. Doubting Thomases counter with ten years
or maybe never. Her samples are only operating at 2% of the heart’s capacity,
but you have to start somewhere.

Dr. Taylor believes what works for hearts, creating new ones, applies to kidneys
and even nerves. It appeared as a front-page story in the NY Times January 14, 2008, and has neuroscientists in a feeding frenzy.

A thousand scientists internationally will now attempt to advance her discoveries
for the benefits of humanity. Hot stuff, right?

Endwords

What is science doing to improve health and prolong life? It appears we can live
to 150 by research in the next twenty years.

What can we do for ourselves?

Would it help your personal growth in school and career to be able to read and remember three (3) books, articles and reports in the time your peers can
hardly finish one? If you are capable of tripling your reading and doubling your long-term memory, should you start now? Ask us how.

We suggest lifelong learning can reduce up to 40% the risk of Alzheimer and
dementia, and with other lifestyle changes add up to 14 years to your life.
See University of Cambridge research, 2008 and Dr. Yaacov Stern, Columbia
University Medical School.

See ya,

copyright © 2008
H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
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