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Which best exemlifies the concept of neuroplasticity
evolution of human society
effect of media on human behavior and thinking
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There are many theories that scientists, in-due circumstances, try to extrapolate as to why the brain goes through the ever-changing neuronal alterations that it goes through because of focused attention. One of these theories is one that many neuroscientists aptly call neuroplasticity. This theory, as some philosophers would have us to believe, goes against the current dogma of the materialistic viewpoints that many neuroscientists hold about the mind-body interaction. The way we focus our attention has a big effect on how our brain changes—whether it is through the internet or through other technological devices—the way we use our brains’ neurocircuitry to focus our attention has created a multifaceted effect on how our brain functions. This shift in informational retrieval has transformed our society and even our cognition. Therefore, to narrow this paradigm even further, our society is looking at some major changes to come about because of the emergent cutting-edge research by neuroscientists as to how we can improve our brains’ neuronal development through neuroplasticity.
Knowledge and information is one way that our society has advanced as much as it has. We are a more driven and competitive society than we were decades ago because of how technology and neuroscience have both advanced to keep up with our ever-growing appetite to explore the untapped potential of our increasingly plastic cognition. The more we use our brains’ cognitive reserves, the more we strengthen the connections between the white matter components of our brains’ neurons, therefore strengthening the various connections of the cerebral frontal cortex. In accordance to this, the evolution of our society has grown profusely throughout the years.
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Author Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google making us Stupid,” discusses how the use of the computer affects our thought process. Carr starts out talking about his own experience as a writer and how he felt like “something had been tinkering with his brain, remapping his neural circuitry and reprogramming his memory”(313). Basically, he is acknowledging that since he started using the Internet his research techniques have changed. Carr believes that before he would immerse himself in books, lengthy articles and long stretches of prose allowing his mind to get caught up in the narrative or the
What if someone told you the devices you were using everyday were rewiring your brain? Would you believe them? In the article Is Google Making Us Stupid? author Nicholas Carr brought up the topic of Google, and the internet, affecting the way we read and think. Carr opened up the article by relating his topic to a scene from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The scene is one where a man is disconnecting a robot from its artificial “brain”. The robot says that he can feel his mind going. Carr then relates to the robot’s statement, saying that he can feel it, too. He states that the internet has been remapping his, and everyone 's, brain. Such a bold statement about something that almost everyone uses on a daily basis. For someone to state that
Carr mentions the affect that technology has on the neurological processes of the brain. Plasticity is described as the brains response through neurological pathways through experiences. The brain regions “change with experience, circumstance, and need” (29). Brain plasticity also responds to experiences that cause damage to the nervous system. Carr explains that injuries in accidents “reveal how extensively the brain can reorganize itself” (29).I have heard stories in which amputees are said to have a reaction to their amputated limb; it is known as a phantom limb. These types of studies are instrumental in supporting the claim that the brain can be restructured. Carr asserts that the internet is restructuring our brains while citing the brain plasticity experiments and studies done by other scientists. I have experienced this because I feel like by brain has become accustomed to activities that I do on a regular basis. For example, I rarely realize that I am driving when coming to school because I am used to driving on a specific route.
Without research, the understanding of human development would be the same as it was back in the times of Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC). Since that time the research has continued to develop, additional understandings of how the brain develops and processes the information it is receiving. During Aristotle’s time, the lack of technology only allowed him to theorize based on the behavior he witnessed. The evolution of ways to explore the brain has changed over the past 2500 y...
Atlantic journalist Nicholas Carr confesses that he feels something has been “tinkering with his brain.” The internet, he fears, may be messing with our minds. We have lost the ability to focus on a simple task, and memory retention is steadily declining. He is worried about the effect the internet has on the human brain, and where it may take us in the future. In response to this article, Jamais Cascio, also a journalist for the Atlantic, provides his stance on the issue. He argues that this different way of thinking is an adaptation derived from our environment. Ultimately, he thinks that this staccato way of thinking is simply a natural evolution, one that will help to advance the human race.
The brain receives input and somehow transforms it into output. How does it do it? In part because of the extraordinary technological feats achieved using digital processing computers, the brain has often been interpreted as a symbol manipulator and its cognitive activities as the transformation of symbols according to rules. By contrast, recent successes with parallel distributed processing computers have encouraged a connectionist theory of mind which regards the brain as a pattern recognizer and its cognitive activities as the transformation of neuronal activation patterns; however, these pattern transformations are not rule-governed processes, but straightforwardly causal processes in which networked units (neurons) excite and inhibit each other's activation level.
Joe Dispenza suggests, in his book ‘Evolve the Brain’, that if we choose to solely rely on our genetics, we are struck with our traits: the good, bad, or indifferent. However, if we choose to alter our neuroplasticity and experiences, we can thereby alter our genetics as well. It is possible to make new synaptic connections in the brain by two methods: learning new things and having new experiences. A new suggested theory is that the brain can be altered by attuning to our conscious mind and refining it.
Current research shows that mental events cause physical events, and scientists believe examining single nerves is the key to understanding how the brain works as a complete unit. Understanding the brain at the nerve cell level will allow scientists to understand how human consciousness works (Blakeslee, 1992). Furthermore, the brain's thalamus is identified as the possible sensory connector because it fires 40 impulses per second that sweep through the entire brain (Blakeslee, 1995a). These findings are a serious implication to Dualism because it states the mind is not physical. If the mind is not physical, it cannot affect the physical body, so the Dualist theory of two-sided interactions between the body and mind are false. The aforementioned argument is supported by many other scientific facts and objections against Dualism.
The mind-body problem has astounded philosophers since the beginning of time, but many researchers actively searching for solutions to the problem are nearing their final conclusion. Many have based their theories on the mind being a nonphysical thing that simply interacts with the body, known as interactionism, and many others have used physicalism as their brand of choice, where theories claim the mind and body are both physical entities and interact with one another. Even though both theories have received high remarks from top-notch philosophers and scientists, physicalism is my preference due to modern technological advances which exhibit neurological processes occurring in the brain, the physical interaction that must occur between humans’
“When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances --- literary types, most of them --- many say they are having similar experiences” (Carr 315). Clive Thompson also elates some words that Nicholas Carr wrote in, The Shallows, “The quality of our thought, as a species, rose in tandem with the ascendance of slow-moving, linear print, and began declining with the arrival of the zingy, flighty Internet. ‘I’m not thinking the way I used to think,’ he worried” (Thompson 354-355). Though Thompson agrees with neuroscientists that we don’t even know how our brains our wired, so how can we think that our brains are being effected by such things like technology and the
The Extended Mind Hypothesis does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a theory suggesting that the human mind is not necessarily limited to a mental capacity. According to Clark and Chalmers the mind can extend to include information storage devices (such as computers, diaries, or even other peoples minds) to which we can have ready access, can rely on and trust as we would our own minds. These devices would be in a similar mode or state as the subconscious mind, that is; they would embody dispositional beliefs. This is known as active externalism.
These two articles are similar in the sense that they agree that the internet and computational objects are reshaping our brain’s structure by changing our neural circuit. By using examples from their personal experiences to identify a trend in technology use, the authors illustrate that the more we bury ourselves in technology the more we are unable to understand material which leads to loss of concentration and the ability to think for ourselves. As an author, Carr finds the internet a beneficial tool, but it’s having a bad effect on his concentration span. Carr points this out by stating “Immersing myself in a book or lengthy article used to be easy, now I get fidgety, lose the thread and begin looking for something else to do” (39). He is no
The study of neurobiology has long involved the actions and interactions among neurons and their synapses. Changes in concentrations of various ions carry impulses to and from the central nervous system and are responsible for all the information processed by the nervous system as a whole. This has been the prominent theory for many years, but, now, there is a new one to be reckoned with; the Quantum Brain Theory (QBT). Like many new theories, the QBT has merits and flaws. Many people are wholeheartedly sold on it; however, this vigor might be uncalled for. Nevertheless, this could prove to be a valid and surprisingly accurate theory of brain function.
Wilson, R. A. (1990). Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World. Tempe: New Falcon.
The documentary, “Amazing Secrets About the Human Brain” presented by the History Channel, explains how the brain works to people with little to no academic knowledge on the subject. The brain is “the most complicated device” humans have found, so it is certainly a topic of interest to many. In the past few years, knowledge of the brain has grown significantly. The documentary’s goal is to describe the complexity of the brain and how it influences various human behaviors, such as fear, sexual arousal, sports performance, and psychic mediums. With a minor shortcoming, the documentary does a sufficient job of introducing the complexity and workings of the brain to people with little knowledge of the topic.