in my recent study of neurobiology i learned that the prefrontal cortex is primarily what distinguishs humans from other animals. well, bipedalism helps cuz we can carry a child or food in our arms while running great distances, and the opposable thumb & manual dexterity helps cuz we can sew a thread, throw an spear or text on our blackberry. but i think the PFC is most important cuz with that we calculate and use logic & can therefore make superior decisions.
When a child sits & does his geometry homework he is using his PFC. but i learned from a wonderful book, "the Science of Fear" by Dan Gardner that we don't make most of our decisions that way - in fact i would say normally we rarely use it!
when you are walking down a path in the outback & you detect a "wiggle" in the path in front of you, you jump, fast! deep in your brain, memory recognized a snake & you moved long before your pfc deliberated 'what was that' same if while while on that path you detected the gleem of a preditors tooth in the bush, you acted! no pfc there. later at the campfire is time enough to reflect if it was a cat or a bear or a moose. we learned this a million years ago & we still do most of our thinking that way. when you're are driving a car on the freeway & the car in front of you has a blowout... you get the picture. but our pfc enables us to build a skyscraper or buy a stock.
well the before mentioned book discribes how we all make bad decisions by doing it the way we did 100,000 years ago instead of thinking rationally. example. we spent a trillion dollars on security cuz 3000 people died in 09/11 when 40000 Americans die each year in their cars.
we are all worried about the underwear bomber who might have killed 2 or 3 hundred people but we dont get our flu shot which also kills 50000people every season. in other words our decisions are not made rationally based on actual risks but emotionally base on fear.
which brings me to my satire of the day. you can tell Republicans from Democrats based on there brain mri alone. The Repubs are the ones whose MRI shows no activity in the pre-frontal cortex.
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Some would say that the "deep in your brain memory" about which you speak is actually a "race consciousness," which has been become part of our DNA because of experiences and thoughts of our ancestors.
ReplyDeleteI like that. That would elplain how it seems like so many people just don't get it.
ReplyDeleteI recently watched a show about DNA on one of the educational channels. The question was asked why chimps learn at about the same rate as humans until 3 or 4. I found the answer interesting... It has to do with their bite. In order to have the bite pressure they have, their skulls are fused at a very early age. If we tried to hang their bighting mussels on our skull, the skull would collapse under the pressure from the mussels. Most humans keep loose and flexible skull plates into the early 30s. This allows our brain to continue to grow. I find it interesting how our diet, what we eat, and how we prepare it is one of the building blocks to what makes of different from our fellow primates.
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