Category Archives: Brain

The Brain On Anger

Brain, Experience, Thought, , ,

brain I borrowed this image on the brain from a post on imagination as an internal sense in the brain on copiosa.org.

We have all experienced anger.  We know what it is, and we know how we are when we are angry.   We have seen a lot of it among the public concerned about particular issues.  We have seen it in presidential candidates.   The blog post below suggests that we need to take a time out of perhaps 20 minutes before we engage activity that is consequential to ourselves or others.

As a hospital staff worker, one of the trainings we had to undergo was on how to de-escalate tensions when somebody threatens violence, perhaps in a hospital emergency room.  We were told that this is one of the most dangerous places in the hospital, and that to reduce tensions one should always face the person, and keep one’s hands in front of one, palms up.

What happens in the brain when we become angry?  Gerry Vassar, in 2011, explained that all senses feed into the amygdala which decides whether to send the information to the thinking part of the brain, the cortex, or to the reactive part of the brain, the limbic system.

The post on Maya Angelou’s book “Why the Caged Bird Sings“, describes an angry person, who recovered from his anger, and went on to make smart decisions about his life.   A person constantly motivated by anger would most pose a risk to our nation, should he become president.

Context, An Ever-changing Aspect of Experience

Brain, Experience, Life, Philosophy, Thought,

DSC06736 Here is a house in the sun, with clouds in the background sky.   There are palm and other tree in front of, and around, it.  There are also curbs and a sidewalk in front of it.  This is part of the context of this house.  Another part of the context of the house might be who lives in it.

For the person who lives in it, the house and everything outside it, is part of his context, and another part of that person’s context is his past in that house, and indeed the entirety of his past,  and everything he or she ever experienced, whether remembered or not.  They say that the brain bears traces of everything, even that which is seemingly forgotten.  These things in the past ,  and everything which we experience  in the present, are part of each individual’s context, and everybody on earth has a different one.

Not only do we have different sets of eyes, ears, taste buds, nose sensory organs, and skin sensations, we each have absolutely unique combinations of genes with which our bodies respond to our  environment, physically, and mentally, continually adding to our contexts, and our experience of it.  On top of that, our physical a and emotional experiences change over time from birth, through growth, maturity, decline, and death.

I have my unique, immediate, mental context, and you have yours

Our contexts are never the same as they were even an instant before.  This is why we “shall never pass this way again.”

Our Minds

Brain, Feeling, Thought

At some point I learned that the location of a word was the same across at least several people.  Now I am learning from a National Geographic article that every brain is as unique as each individuals face.   And how do we think? How is our mind related to our brain.  This is not known.  But I know that our minds are tied to our bodies and especially to our brains.

Brain Image, National Geographic dwnld AUG 24, 201432779  A normal human brain.  Picture by National Geographic in an article on the brain, which I found when I looked up Brain games and National Geographic.  But I cannot find it again.

I do not know how these apparent facts can be reconciled.  As a curious individual, I have wondered about many things.  Though I am in possession of all of my faculties, I have noticed that my own personal experience milieu has changed gradually over time, and that topics about which I tend to think shift in their immediacy.

A whole bunch of things probably go into my occipital lobes, and are processed by limbic system, other brain parts, and then by our frontal lobes.  And I get  thought.  The arena of my thoughts can shift quickly, as long as the set  of links is already in my brain.  In light of new information, this is my subjective feeling of myself, my brain at work.