Psychology/neurobiology Thread

[angel4hope]

okay here it is.... The perception of phantom limbs. The D. O. Hebb lecture

VS Ramachandran and W Hirstein

Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093, USA. vramacha@ucsd.edu

 

Almost everyone who has a limb amputated will experience a phantom limb- -the vivid impression that the limb is not only still present, but in some cases, painful. There is now a wealth of empirical evidence demonstrating changes in cortical topography in primates following deafferentation or amputation, and this review will attempt to relate these in a systematic way to the clinical phenomenology of phantom limbs. With the advent of non-invasive imaging techniques such as MEG (magnetoencephalogram) and functional MRI, topographical reorganization can also be demonstrated in humans, so that it is now possible to track perceptual changes and changes in cortical topography in individual patients. We suggest, therefore, that these patients provide a valuable opportunity not only for exploring neural plasticity in the adult human brain but also for understanding the relationship between the activity of sensory neurons and conscious experience. We conclude with a theory of phantom limbs, some striking demonstrations of phantoms induced in normal subjects, and some remarks about the relevance of these phenomena to the question of how the brain constructs a 'body image.'

[angel4hope]

NOW THATS WHAT I WANNA PARTICIPATE IN...research in areas such as the phantom limb--ohh so cool!!

[DominO123]

could it be that our universe is a brain of some creature?

I see more like, the Universe being a reflection of our brain. Or better, our brain is the reflection of our Universe.

 

 

Thanks Edward for the links.

 

 

 

Gevo, as I said, in science, "prove" in its real sense of the term does not exist, this is why for some time now I place that word in a quotation mark, I just hope that a Turk don't find out me telling this as he'll use it against me.

 

Now, we could ask this the other way around, I dare any physicist to "prove" me the existance of matter by excluding the observer in the system, and let see if they can. In order to prove, an observer must be the prover... and the fact that the observer is doing the proving, we are facing the selectivity effect of the observer... therefore any "proves" of the existance of matter could be just an illusion from the observation of the observer. There is a physicist that wrote a work regarding conscienceness and its creation of the illusion of matter.

[hyebruin]

drugs and alcohol can permanently damage neurons (brain cells) not to mention destroy the liver (more with alcohol) and once the liver is gone, the kidneys are also in trouble and slowely the whole body starts to suffer and life becomes one living hell with endless visits to the clinic!!! the medical team will become your new circle of friends whether you like it or not!!

 

love your body and treat it with the kindness and respect it deserves:

 

drink responsibly and moderately and stay away from drugs

[gevo27]

love your body and treat it with the kindness and respect it deserves:

drugs and alcohol isnt the only thing you can do to your body for not respecting it... there is something much worse...

[angel4hope]

Standard Social Science Model:

- language is a cultural invention.

- language is a brilliant invention that has spread across the planet and people get language because we are generally "smart"

Dominant view of cognitive science: language is a cognitive organ- as specific genetically endowed capacity- independent of general intelligence-

 

"we have language for the same reason we have legs"

 

Evidence:

in New Guinea- 1930's during search for gold, Michael Leahy found 1 million stone age people with no outside contact for about 40, 000 years.

 

through expereimentation and investigation of this isolated civilization- it was discovered that these people spoke 800 different languages and that these languages were not stone age languages- they were as sophisticated as any european language--

 

they used their language as abstract reasoning- invisible entities.

 

this provides evidence to concure that: language is a prewired organ regardless to cultural sophistications.

 

also to add that this civilization that was found- was encircled by mountains, and the land that they lived in themselves was a plain- lowland- and the outskirts - following the mountain ranges were also lowlands- it has been said that this was a perfect circumstance created by nature- that this civilization was so isolated and allowed for scientists to concure such about the acquisition of language....if anyone is further interested- pm me for details- i have notes on this and some eidence from the net...

[angel4hope]

Heres some general info about the discovery:

 

 

New Guinea's Highlanders Encounter the Outside World.

"Beginning in 1930, a series of expeditions led by the Australian Michael Leahy went looking for gold in the unexplored highlands of New Guinea and found instead an intact civilization of nearly one million people who had had no previous contact with the outside world. During four years of "first contact" exploration, Leahy took thousands of photographs of these tribal people and shot many reels of film footage, documenting an event that can never again take place on earth: the confrontation on a large scale -- and ultimately the collision -0- of Western and pretechnological cultures."