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The wonders of emotions have baffled scientists since the time of Aristotle.  During the scientific revolution, Robert Burton tried to understand why emotions have such a momentous effect on the human life.  Still today, the mystery of emotions plagues Joseph LeDoux in his quest to understand how and why the brain processes emotions.  In his book, The Emotional Brain, LeDoux unearths evolutionary secrets that explain certain emotions, and he ponders the role of genetics in cognition.  As a scientific reader, this book tackles many serious issues and makes them easy to understand for the layman.

Due to my upbringing on an island isolated in the middle of the South Pacific, I never really got into the mainstream trends of the US. When I came to Bryn Mawr for college, I was astounded by the importance of brand names, and how one’s status could be determined simply by the car they drove, the clothes they wore and even where they went to buy groceries. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell provides great insight into how social trends take off and what factors are the most likely to influence the public’s behavior. However, from a broader standpoint, the book is about change and understanding what events trigger social change.

          As biology major, I walked into Paul Grobstein’s Neurobiology and Behavior at the beginning of the semester expecting 3 hours a week of neurons, hormones, and lots of pictures of brains. Naturally, I became confused when Emily Dickinson was the topic of conversation of the first day. Well that’s odd, I thought, but surely next class we’ll begin the real neuroscience. Yet, here I am, at the end of the semester, and I feel as though my “real neuroscience” was all a distant fantasy. I never had to buy an expensive textbook, and I never had to memorize countless regions of the brain. Instead I chose my own homework and paper topics, and researched and discussed the neuroscience that interested me the most. Instead of remembering how bored I was sitting through a series of slides, I remember being engaged in lively arguments and heated discussions.

          Your professor has just asked you to present a research project in front of a lecture hall filled to the rafters with people. You completed the project weeks ago, and you know the information like the back of your hand. Yet, as soon as you stand in front of the podium, your hands start to shake. Your brow beads with sweat and your heart begins to race. As you attempt your first word, your voice quivers and your throat clenches. You fumble with your notes and you ask yourself ‘Why on earth did I agree to this?’ You wish that you were anywhere but behind that podium and in front of hundreds of eyes, and you blame the common phenomenon of stage fright (1).

As I sat down on Thursday night before dinner, I flipped on the TV, wanting to let my mind drift away while some mind numbing TV entertainment news informed me of the latest gossip.  E True Hollywood Stories never fails to let me down, so I turned it on and awaited the familiar theme music…

“Hello, I am Suzy Sanders and thank you for watching E True Hollywood Stories!  For you Hollywood viewers at home we have a very special story for you tonight, the true story of the three little pigs…”  Ugh, I sighed. Another over dramatized television special.  I almost turned the television off, but for some reason though better of it. 

Weight loss is always a popular topic of New Year’s resolutions, talk shows and self help guides. However, recently concern has turned toward a more severe form of weigh gain, obesity.  It seems one cannot open a newspaper without reading about it.  In fact, in 2000, Philadelphia was the fattest city in the United States and in 2005 the third fattest city. (1)  Clearly, obesity is a pervasive problem, a disease occurring with alarming frequency.  Being obese, having a body mass index of over 30, (2) is associated with risk factors such as high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, sleep apnea, cancer, diabetes, and death: 300,000 deaths a year in the United States are linked to obesity. (3)  In 1998, the Nation Institute of Health (NIH) found that 55% of the United States population is overweight, and estimated that in 2004 this had climbed to two-thirds of adults in the US.  These statistics have grabbed the attention of both the NIH and the World Health Organization (WHO), which composed a Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity, and Health in 2004. (4)  While many factors and causes are being investigated for this growing problem, the science behind addiction can help us understand this disease.

In Phantoms in the Brain, author V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., PH.D describes a number of case studies of neurological phenomena that demonstrate the human mind’s ability to reconstruct reality.  He explains, among many other phenomena, how amputees may develop phantom limbs so well-defined they can “reach out” and “grab” objects, and how the brain fills in images to compensate for blind spots.  Through explaining these unusual situations, Ramachandran also explains how the brains of most people work, filling in missing information and reconstructing reality.  Though he never uses the terms “I-function” or “story-teller,” these are the equivalent concepts discussed in class.

“Smart, funny, and attractive” are the standard trio of personal ads.  Having a good sense of humor is considered an admirable trait in human society.  But why is this trait so important to us?  It does not appear to have any real advantage, other than making someone “likeable,” so why would it ever evolve?  The most likely explanation is that humor was sexually selected for because it is an indicator of a creative and agile mind able to solve problems and to provide for a mate.

Humor is a form of creativity, because it requires a novel interpretation of information.  Creativity can be considered the ability to rearrange preexisting pieces of information to create a novel idea (1).  Creativity most likely evolved during a very short period of time known as the “creative explosion” of the Upper Paleolithic period due to the merging of several cognitive abilities.  Before this creative explosion, the stone tools used by Early Humans show very little change.  Then suddenly, many different types of tools developed, along with art and other aspects of culture.  This creative explosion most likely coincides with the development of modern language abilities (2).  Steven J. Mithen explains that language is necessary to express creative thoughts, because our minds are not meant to deal with unreality; creative ideas that break the laws of reality must be expressed and communicated in order to be understood.  One of the major differences between animal communication and human language is that language allows people to talk about what does not exist or is not present (3).  Humans can speculate, lie, and tell fantastical stories using creative language.  And they can also tell jokes.  But why do we tell jokes?  Did an Early Human with a witty sense of humor have an evolutionary advantage over a straight-man?  This may not seem likely, but a creative mind would have offered a survival advantage.

Introduction

Bernard Baars’ book “In the theater of consciousness: The workspace of the mind” was an overall excellent and stimulating read. Baars takes the reader on a scientific journey through consciousness starting with methods of studying consciousness, moving to exploring consciousness in great detail from many different perspectives devised from empirical data, and ending with the uses of consciousness. At few points throughout the book, it is difficult to remain focused such as when Baars continually analyzes many of William James’ writing. However, Baars methods of studying consciousness emphasize the involvement of subjective experience. He provides many different exercises which can be performed by the reader that validate his ideas, making the book highly interactive, and the didactic manner, fun. Learning about Baars' ideas through these interactive tasks was similar to sitting in on a Neurobiology class when Paul teaches vision and asks us to “close one eye”. There was substantial overlap in material between the book and the class and furthermore the book extended on ideas we went over in class as well as contributed new relevant material. This book added tremendous value to the Neurobiology and Behavior class experience.

        Blurred vision, impaired motor coordination and memory, and slurred speech are characteristics that clearly demonstrate that alcohol affects the brain. Adolescence is a time when people begin to use alcohol much more frequently. A survey of 70,000 people by the Center for Science in Public Interest has shown that 41.7% of people ages 12-17 have used alcohol in their lifetimes, and that the prevalence of binge drinking (five or more drinks in the same occasion) gradually increases from 3% at age 13, to 38% at age 20 (CSPI, 2000). Extreme intensities of alcohol consumption among adolescents is especially perturbing because a great deal of structural and function brain development occurs during this period. (Spears, 2002). Furthermore, evidence is increasingly suggesting that alcohol affects brain function and behavior of adolescents differently from adults, and that adolescents are extremely vulnerable to the long-term deleterious effects alcohol has on brain function and behavior.