After listening to the radio for awhile this morning on my desktop, I turned it off, because it was distracting me, and I realized that then “I could hear myself think, ” because I often think in words. Then I remembered that my dad used to occasionally say that he needed to be able to hear himself think. So my thoughts turned to him. I gained both a subject on which to reflect, and a better means to do it, after quieting the background noise.
Category Archives: Science
Over the Rainbow, A Smooth Ascent
We recently took off from IAH in Houston in the morning. 
I always wish I could identify landmarks on the ground below, but I rarely can.
High above Houston area.
As we are climbing to cruising altitude, we see the ground below the clouds.
We are flying next to some clouds above which we will fly.
We we treated to a rainbow from above!
Looking down on the clouds and small looking ground, perhaps from cruising altitude.
I had expected this flight to be a little rough, hearing some reports of “weather’, but it was smooth. The tops of the clouds are smooth, which I associate with smooth flights. Do you see how dark the sky above is here? There is less atmosphere to distribute the light, so it looks nearly black. We are close to the lower edge of the stratosphere above the troposphere.
Anger, The Amygdalae, Basal Ganglia, and Prefrontal Cortex
Amygdalae, the basal ganglia, and the brain diagram. The diagram is from this link.
There are two amygdalae, one on each side of the brain, each attached to a basal ganglion, one on each side of the brain.
The amygdala exists in the brain as two almond shaped organs, referred in their plural as amygdalae. They receive all kinds of internal and sensory inputs, on which they quickly perform pain-related pattern recognition, and assemble “combinatorial memories of pain-related patterns”.
This statement from Gerry Vassar’s online article, The Amygdala & Emotions , also tells us that the amygdala makes this pattern perception within 20 milliseconds (msec), whereas we are aware of the associated perception within 300 milliseconds. A psychiatric neuropharmacologist, (Personal communication, 2015) said that parts of the brain recognize inputs within 33 msec. The unchecked amygdala produces ” quick and dirty — knee jerk responses”, fight or flight, which can be quieted by the rest of the basal ganglion of which it is a part. My psychiatric neuropharmacologist source also said that
“we generally think of the prefrontal cortex as being the main modulator of the amygdala, although those signals may travel through the basal ganglia first… ”
( Anger is one of the responses of the brain. The speed with which the amygdala reacts to incoming information explains the speed with which we get angry.
The rest of Vassar’s article contains very interesting, rich and concise information about the brain, which is useful to anyone on a personal level.
The patterns representing the danger are already present in brain. I think of all patterns in the brain as sets of “mind points”, my own descriptive term. I am happy to have some anatomical and functional information to integrate with what I already know from my general experience.
One of my grandmothers said that the way to have a good, long, healthy, or positive life was to “Keep your feet warm, and your head cool.” I have to control my amygdala in order to do that.