Like a Phoenix Rising...

Loss is an inevitable part of life. In fact, the more you have the more you stand to lose. This spans the gamut of relationships, jobs, houses, etc. It's natural to experience loss. It's how you deal with loss that can be a true measure of who you are.

Even if you experience loss, you will have more again later. I've had some remarkable relationships that I was sad to see end. However, every time I was able to meet someone even better afterwards. It might not be a week or a month later but it will happen.

You need to learn from your losses. They teach us valuable lessons about what is important to us. Maybe we can do with less. Maybe we will be motived to regain what we lost. The key is to not give up and to continue striving to be the best we can be.

It is often quoted that the overall divorce rate in the US is around 50% (althouth it's probably somewhere between 40 and 50%). Those are dismal odds if you want a marriage that will last. The thing that is not mentioned is that the rate of remarriage is around 60%. People like to couple up. It's human nature. Most people find someone to share their lives with. That should be encouraging.

So, out of any loss comes opportunity. There's opportunity to learn more about yourself and what you want in life. You can learn from your losses but you shouldn't ruminate over them. Make your losses into positives and you will find that the things you had may not have been what was best for you in the first place.

Live in the Moment

We spend most of our time thinking about things that happened and thinking about the future. But to really experience life, we need to be present to the moment. Living in the moment doesn't mean being hedonistic or doing things that will hurt other people and then justifying those actions by saying you are living in the moment. It means taking in what is happening at any given time and appreciating the time you have with people.

When it comes down to it, everything in life is temporary. This makes it even more important to give the present your full attention. We don't have to stop planning for the future or learning from the past. Those things are essential for us to be high-functioning people. But when we ruminate about the past or worry excessively about the future then we really aren't living life to the fullest. It's like being stuck in neutral.

You need to become aware of where your thoughts are to change your focus. If you take care of this day, then the rest will fall into place. You can't live life more than one day at a time. If you don't like what is happening in your life on any given day, then do something about it that day. Waiting to do something will not help. Before you know it, some time will have passed and you will no longer be so concerned about the things you have no control over in your life.

Enjoy everything you do. Enjoy every person you talk to even if they are the clerk at the store. Take time to pet your dog. Live in the moment and all your worries will fade away.

Be True to Yourself

The "self" is an interesting thing. It's hard to define what it is. It seems to be the sum of our beliefs, thoughts, and feelings. It's the part of us that makes us feel like individuals separate from other people. There are different aspects of the self. There's the self that is who we are, the self that we project to other people, and the self that we want to be. Each self would be the same if you are a truly congruous person. However, it's not always that way.

Sometimes we project different things to people so they will view us a certain way. We have our family self, work self, etc. It's probably a good thing to separate those things. You might not want to divulge too much about yourself to your co-workers. The thing is that a wide disparity between these different selves can create problems.

Perhaps the real issue isn't what we project but being aware of who you are. Many people become fixated with who they want to be instead of embracing who they are. Wanting to be different or try new things is okay but you need to start with who you are. Sometimes we change and we are slow to accept that change has happened. That can create stumbling blocks as well.

Here is an example. I was a shy kid but I'm not anymore. I'm still surprised when people tell me that they think I'm outgoing. What I need to do is embrace who I am. Things could be worse. I could still be shy. All I need to do is get my view of my self to match who I really am. I'm just about there with that. It's actually refreshing.

Things are different if you are currently trying to change who you are. You need to look within yourself and examine who you really are first. Then any change in your self will be a positive one. We get into trouble when we try to be someone we aren't. We might be able to sustain those changes for awhile but they won't be a reflection of who we really are. Life is too short. Be true to yourself and you will enjoy life more.

Slow Cooking and Sudden Change

One thing I've learned from dating is that you need to take people as they are. You can't expect them to change. But does that mean that people can't change? Psychologists say that personality becomes relatively stable after the age of 30. Yet, we all experience life changes after that age (birth of a child, divorce, job changes, etc.). We need to be cognitively flexible to deal with these changes. Still, does that mean that we are changing our personalities?

It makes sense that personality should become stable. We'd be erratic and irrational if our personalities changed all the time. Being able to deal with situational things is different from creating lasting changes within ourselves. Or is it? This is the tricky part. We may only be able to change our thoughts about things. Changing our thoughts and perceptions will produce changes in our behavior. Maybe that is the only inner change we can really count on in life.

Perhaps the creative process can shed some light on this issue. Creativity consists of four stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Preparation is the stage where we learn about what we are doing. Incubation is an unconscious process where our thoughts about the subject slosh around in our minds even if we aren't aware of them. Illumination is when we have the "aha" moment that seems like insight came out of nowhere. And lastly, verification is the stage where we decide if our illumination reflects what we originally wanted to do.

Creativity is considered a form of problem solving. As such, this framework can be generalized to other problems in life besides writing a song or a poem. When we are faced with challenges in life, we can prepare for them by talking to people, doing research, etc. Then there is a stage where it seems like nothing is happening. Then suddenly, we have the realization of how we can move on. Change takes time but if we go through these stages we can get there.

For years I wanted to learn to cook. I told myself I didn't have time or that cooking was for other people who learned how to do it when they were younger. Then, one day when I was separated from my ex-wife, I suddenly had the compulsion to stop at the store on the way home from work and get some groceries to cook dinner. And that was the beginning of my learning to cook. In a moment's flash, a lasting life change took place that made me more independent, more self-sufficient, and more confident. It might sound cheesy but that's the way I perceive what happened.

And so the same thing can happen with other issues in your life. Problems might pile up. Unresolved issues might resurface. But when the illumination stage strikes, you are ready for the change in your life. Then it's up to you to run with it. Just remember that your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are all integrally related.

Changing your thoughts will change how you feel about something and how you behave. Changing how you feel about something will change how your think about it and what you do in the future. Changing your behavior will change your thoughts and feelings, but maybe only temporarily. Lasting personality change needs be start with your thoughts and feelings - then your behavior will follow suit.

So, if life has gotten you down and it seems like things aren't changing for you, it may be that you are in the incubation stage with what has happened to you. Give yourself a break. People are adaptive and change happens even if it takes time.

To Act or Not to Act

There are two possible routes decision making can take. We can choose to act or not to act. Sometimes inhibiting behavior is more difficult than initiating it. However, we are continually bombarded by social messages that we should act and not hold back. There is a difference between inhibiting behavior and holding back. This is similar to the common misunderstanding that people have between being assertive and aggressive.

Everything has a time and a place. There are times when we should act and there are times when we should inhibit behavior. It all depends on appropriateness. Determining what is appropriate takes a certain level of maturity.

So, inhibiting behavior is not the same as holding back. You need to consider the situation, the possible consequences, and what is appropriate given all the information you have. Then, if you decide not to act, it isn't holding back. The same approach should be used when we do decide to act. The net result is that our actions (and inactions) will get better results. Our actions will reflect a more responsible thought process.

The Power of Nine

The date 9/9/09 was a special day. It will be the last time we have a symmetrical date for a very long time (at least a century). We've had a string of these symmetrical dates since the turn of the century (1/1/01, 2/2/02, etc.). The number nine holds special significance to some people. Three is often regarded as a significant number (the trinity, the three wise men, the three pigs, etc.) and nine is three times three. Nine is also the largest single digit number (Why that is supposed to be important I don't really know).

Numerologists say that the number nine is associated with forgiveness, compassion, and success, but also arrogance and self-righteousness (Again, I have no idea why). Mathematically, nine times any number gives you a number that added together gives you nine. September 9 is the 252nd day of the year which if you add together is 9. (Some of what I just mentioned was discussed in an article on Yahoo news called "Why 09/09/09 Is So Special.")

If you take your birthdate and add it together you get your special number according to numerologists. Say your birthdate is May 29, 1983 (5/29/83). You take the 5, then add the 2 and 9 from 29, and the 8 and 3 from 83. So, you get 5 + 11 + 11. That's 27. Then you add the 2 and 7 together and you get 9. So, a person who's birthdate is 5/29/83 has 9 as their special number. (I randomly thought of this birthdate if you were wondering.)

So, what's my number? I was born September 3, 1969 (9/3/69). You add the 9 and the 3, and then the 6 and 9 together from 69. You get 9 + 3 + 15. That's 12 + 15 which is 27. Then you add the 2 and 7 together and you get 9. So, my "special" number is 9. Additionally, September 3 fell during the 36th month of 1969 and 3 + 6 from 36 is 9. Is this all a coincidence or evidence that my life is being guided by some supernatural force?

It sure would be cool if there was some special significance to the day I was born. However, it is estimated that somewhere between 300,000 to 500,000 people are born each day. That means that nearly a half million people share my birthdate. Now my birthdate doesn't seem that unique. Numerology can be fun to play around with but it has no bearing on the outcome of events in your life. Funny, I suddenly feel the urge to play SuDoku and arrange the numbers 1 through 9 in rows and columns...

Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight

Successful people don’t always win. They face setbacks just like everyone else. The key to success is not to give up. Life isn’t always friendly to us. We all face adversity. The measure of character is how we deal with trials and tribulations. It takes persistence and determination to follow your dreams. It’s easy to give up and take the easy way out. If you set the bar low enough, you will never be disappointed. But if you shoot for the moon you might hit a star and that ain’t bad.

We can all be emotionally and mentally strong. Inner strength takes resolve. It’s a matter of being grounded and figuring out what really matters in your life. Some things are worth pursuing and some things aren’t. You might want to chase dollar signs but there's no guarantee that will make you happy. The things that make you happy don’t have a price tag. That’s what makes life precious.

Every day is an opportunity to be a better person and to make a difference in other people’s lives. Zach Braff said something in the movie The Last Kiss that stuck with me – “You can’t fail if you don’t give up.” This might sound like sentimental wishful dribble but it’s true to a point. If you don’t chase your dreams long enough, you won’t give them a chance to come true. I’m also enough of a realist to admit that you might not always get what you want in life, but you might find that what makes you feel fulfilled is a lot different from what you think you want right now. Our dreams and aspirations change over time. Still, the quote is motivational and we all need encouragement to keep going from time to time.

So, like the Chinese proverb says, “Fall down seven times, get up eight” – if you get knocked down an eighth time then you need to find the inner strength to pull yourself up a ninth time and keep on going. Life is a participation sport. The people who keep on going are the ones who make a difference in the long run.

Automatic for the People

Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all interact. This is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy. Basically, if you change your thoughts about something, then you will feel differently about it and you will behave differently as well. The same will happen if you change the way you feel about something or if you change your behavior. The three all interact. Changing your thoughts may be the best place to start. It isn’t that easy though. Why is it so hard to change the way we think about things? There are a number of reasons, but one that stands out is our tendency to invoke automatic thinking.

Automatic thinking is what we do when we don’t want to expend much mental effort. We rely on automatic thinking when we are stressed. Since our mental system is taxed when we feel stress, we take the path of least resistance. This means falling back on ingrained behavioral patterns and habits. Conditioned responses become our first line of defense when we are stressed. These responses may be positive or negative. Slowing down and taking a moment to react would probably be considered a positive response, while flying off the handle and losing control might would be considered a negative response. Our behavior comes as a result of our thoughts. When we change our thoughts, we change the way we act.

Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTS) are the most damaging automatic thoughts. ANTS result when we say things like “You ALWAYS do such and such…” or “You NEVER remember to …” You need to be careful with these absolute statements. While it might be true that a person does something most of the time, it is highly unlikely that they ALWAYS or NEVER do something. Telling someone that they ALWAYS or NEVER do something can escalate an argument. People will often take ANTS directed at them personally, become defensive, and then communication breaks down.

This brings us to feelings. If you stop and think about why you feel the way you do about something that upsets you, you will find that fear is usually behind your feelings. If someone upsets you, you feel slighted by them. You might feel like you don’t count. That makes you scared. So, it’s natural to lash out with ALWAYS and NEVER statements. However, invoking ANTS won’t solve your problems. If you stop and consider the thoughts behind your feelings, and you eliminate those nasty ANTS, you will find that you can keep your emotions in check better and start responding to people differently. ANTS can create a lot of problems. You will become a more positive person and have better interpersonal relationships if you get rid of them.

Light's On, Nobody's Home

Are you conscious right now? What about a second ago? Consciousness is a weird thing. It’s something that most people probably don’t pay attention to much. It enables us to do all the things we do. We use consciousness when we see, feel, talk, think, wish, and wonder but a lot of the time we aren’t even aware of it. If you stop and ask yourself if you are conscious you will inevitably say you are. But what about the moment before you asked? Were you conscious then?

This all brings into question how aware we are of our lives. We can drive to the store and think about other things while we are driving. Then, instead of driving to the store, we automatically take the road that leads us home. How does this happens? Aren’t we in control of our actions? Clearly, consciousness can be divided and altered but there’s still somebody at home inside, right? Right???

Well, let’s see… Say you open your refrigerator door. The light turns on when you open the door. Then you close the door. What happens to the light after the door is closed? Does the light turn off or does it stay on? So you try opening the door real quick. Maybe you can catch the light off. You do it real fast. The light is on. Now you close the door again. Is the light still on? Quick! Open the door! The light is on. You could do this all day. One of these times you will catch the light off. Or will you?

Now, a clever person might say that you could check to see whether the light goes off by installing a video camera inside the refrigerator, but that’s not the intent of what I’m talking about here. Opening the door to check if the light is on is the same as asking yourself if you are conscious. You ask yourself, “Am I conscious?” You tell yourself, “Yes I am.” Every time you ask and answer you confirm that you are conscious. This is all good but what about when you aren’t asking the question? Are you conscious then?

It is in this way that consciousness is an illusion. We don’t often pay much attention to what we are doing. We go on automatic pilot. We go through the motions of our lives. This might lead you to ask who is calling the shots if you can do things with such little awareness. Are you in control of what you do? (for more on this, see my previous blog called "Who’s Calling the Shots?"). To alleviate this situation, we can take a cue from Zen Buddhism.

Zen Buddhism suggests that living optimally means being present to the moment. This means taking in what you are doing at a particular time without thinking about something you did in the past or something you want to do in the future. Just being in the moment. Let go of the past and don’t fret about the future. By living in the moment, you will be aware that “your light is on,” that you are conscious. The problem is that this kind of awareness doesn’t come naturally.

We can become more aware just by reminding ourselves during the day to be more aware. We can slow down and notice the little things. We can even become more aware through meditation. Consciousness is amazing, but it has a cost. The cost is that we don't like to expend much mental effort. So, we “turn the light off” when the door is closed. The only way to counter this is to be present to the moment. Are you conscious now?

Based on a True Story

From time to time you will see a movie that is supposed to be based on true stories. Some horror movies that claim to be based on true events include The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, The Entity, An American Haunting, and The Haunting in Connecticut. However, the validity of these stories is disputed. Most of them are based on anecdotal evidence. There’s a big difference between a movie being based on a “true story” and one that is based on something that really happened. Huh? Doesn’t "true" mean it actually happened? Not necessarily.

Any story can be considered a “true” story because it’s a story. It's a story someone read or heard about. Whether the events in the story actually happened is another matter entirely. Hollywood doesn’t say “Based on a True, Verifiable, Documented, Undisputable Story” because they could get in legal trouble.

There have been a number of horror movies loosely based on the lives of serial killers. That’s one thing. Those movies take actual people and fashion stories about them. Movies based on supposed demon possessions or hauntings are another matter. Wes Craven reportedly based A Nightmare on Elm Street on a story he read about Samoan kids who had bad nightmares and supposedly died from heart failure as a result of sleep deprivation. Even if that story is true, it sure doesn’t make Feddy Krueger real. It doesn’t mean that evil spirits can taunt you and torture you in your dreams.

Movies that are “inspired” by actual events are just that, they are only inspired by them. Anyone can put the tag “Based on a True Story” or “Inspired by Actual Events” at the beginning of a movie. These tags in no way mean that the movie you see is a detail by detail re-telling of an actual event. It’s Hollywood people. Hollywood isn’t interested in making documentaries that show both sides of an issue (and neither is Michael Moore for that matter). Hollywood is peddling entertainment. The producers, directors, writers, etc. want people to see these movies so they can all get rich and have expensive beach houses in Malibu.

While I was writing this blog, I read some forum postings on a few movie review sites about horror movies “based on a true story.” The people who challenged the idea that exorcisms, hauntings, and paranormal activities really happen were told they were too skeptical. One guy kept saying that he saw a ghost so that proves that the hauntings in these movies were factual. First, you can never be too skeptical when it comes to the verifying whether some supernatural thing happened or not. If we are seeking the truth, then skepticism should be encouraged, not disparaged. Secondly, even if someone saw an actual ghost, that in no way proves that all the hauntings shown in movies are based on fact. You can’t generalize from one instance.

The real problem with saying that since you saw a ghost means that ghosts exist is that it’s anecdotal. I could say I saw there’s a three-headed monster in my closet but you don’t know if I’m telling the truth or not. If you insist on seeing the three-headed monster, I could say that it’s invisible and only I can see it. Even if the three-headed monster really did exist, it isn’t proof for the existence of four-headed monsters, ghosts, demon possession, foretelling the future, or any other wild paranormal claim. Be smart people. The next time you see a horror movie that has the tag “Based on a True Story” at the beginning, just know that it may have been based on a story someone read or heard about, but that’s where truth and fact end for the next 90 minutes.

What Comes Around

Awhile ago I wrote a blog called the Karma Connection. This is a sequel to that one.

Sometimes when somebody does something bad to us we say that they are going to get theirs. We like to think that what comes around goes around. That makes us feel better. There really is no guarantee that someone will get their comeuppance. It’s like gambling. If you cheat someone and get away with it, that doesn’t mean you will get away with it a second time. Sure, if someone keeps cheating, it seems like they will eventually get caught, but the fact remains that each event is statistically mutually exclusive. This means that the probability of getting caught each time is independent of the last time they cheated someone. The things that normally bring somebody down are sloppy behavior and a big mouth.

You can’t control other people’s behavior. If someone blabs, another person may decide they want to even the score. That’s something a scammer can’t control. The bottom line is that most people who habitually lie, cheat, and steal eventually get sloppy and that’s what brings them down. It’s not that intelligent people don’t lie, cheat, and steal. Some of them do these things very well. It’s the hubris, pride, and arrogance of scammers that leads to their demise. A lot of these folks are proud of their behavior and they let other people know about it. Professional cheats and grift artists know that they need to keep a low profile. That means keeping their mouth shut.

Anyway, the intent of this blog isn’t to instruct you how to cheat people – it’s to get across the idea that some people will get caught and some people won’t. The mental state of scammers is also something to consider. A lot of them are extremely narcissistic. They don’t take responsibility for their actions. It’s not their fault that they take advantage of other people. They are victims themselves. You’ve probably run across people like this. The belief that guilt will get to them is unfounded. These folks have such intricate defense mechanisms that years of therapy might not even break down their web of rationalizations.

So, the idea that what goes around comes around may not hold for all people. Some people may not get caught. Wishing that these people will wake up one day with remorse in their hearts is also unfounded. These folks are so mentally convoluted that guilt and shame may never pentrate their psyches. We would be better off learning how to avoid predatory people. We should learn from our experiences, forget these crummy people, move on, and not look back. Sure, it feels good to see scammers “get theirs” but they aren’t even worth the time of day. They may get theirs but by that time you will be on with your life, being a better and stronger person. That’s something worth putting thought and effort into instead of wishing bad karma on lowlife people.

Tips of the Slung

Sometimes when we talk the letters or syllables of our words get swapped. We might say something like “tips of the slung” instead of “slips of the tongue.” This kind of spoken slip up is called a spoonerism. It was named after Reverand William Spooner who reportedly made many of these speech errors during his sermons. People who speak languages other than English also make spoonerisms. What causes us to make spoonerisms?

Human speech production occurs at a rate of about 150 words per minute. Speech errors, such as spoonerisms, occur about once in one-thousand words uttered. Given the speed of speech, it is remarkable that we don’t make more speech errors. Linguists think that spoonerisms are caused by a breakdown in two linguistic sequencing processors, a phoneme processor and a word processor. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in language, typically single vowels or consonants. The phoneme processor’s job is to assign the correct letters to words. Sometimes the phoneme processor transposes the first letters of a string of words which results in a spoonerism.

We aren’t exactly sure why spoonerisms happen yet. They might happen from speech processing fatigue or lapses in attention. Future research will hopefully shed light on what causes the phoneme processor to make mistakes. Although spoonerisms occur naturally, people sometimes use them intentionally for comic effect. You might say “I'm going to shake a tower” instead of "I'm going to take a shower" or “My sips are lealed” instead of "My lips are sealed." On that note, pass me the valted minegar for my chish and fips…

Making Brown Eyes Blue

I’ve noticed in my discussions with people that simple concepts of heredity and genetics are poorly understood. Here are some basics. Any given trait can be dominant or recessive. Dominant genes will physically manifest any time they are present, including when they are paired with a recessive gene. A recessive gene will only be physically manifested if it is paired with another recessive gene. Additionally, there are three basic scenarios. Each parent can contribute a dominant gene, each can contribute a recessive gene, or one can contribute a dominant gene and the other can contribute a recessive gene. Let’s look at eye color as a simple example. In this case, the brown eye gene is dominant and the blue eye gene is recessive.

Each person gets an eye color gene from their mother and one from their father. If mom has two brown eye genes (one from her mom and dad) and dad has two brown eye genes (one from his mom and dad), then all their kids will have brown eyes. If mom has two brown genes and dad has two blue eye genes, then all their kids will have brown eyes since the dominant gene will always be present. If mom has a brown eye gene and a blue eye gene and dad has two brown eye genes, all their kids will again have brown eyes. If mom has a brown eye gene and a blue eye gene, and dad has a brown eye gene and a blue eye gene, their kids will have a 25% chance of having blue eyes. If mom has two blue eye genes and dad has a brown and a blue eye gene, their kids now have a 50% chance of having blue eyes. Lastly, if mom has two blue eye genes and dad has two blue eye genes, all their kids will have blues eyes.

This is how simple genetics work. However, it is actually possible that two blue eyed parents can have a brown eyed kid because eye color is polygenic meaning that several genes interact to determine eye color. Still, the likelihood of two blue eyed parents having a brown eyed child is very small and so in most cases the basic model still applies.

Hopefully this clears up some misunderstandings about basic genetics. When you hear people say something like “How did two right handed parents have a left handed kid?” (or whatever trait they are talking about), you will know that each of the kid’s parents had both the dominant and recessive genes for the trait and they each contributed the recessive gene. Now, that’s an idea worth passing on.

Fear Not

Fear is one of those things that can really hamper people. Fear of not knowing how things are going to turn out can keep you from taking action. Fear of the “unknown” can be difficult to handle. Fear of failure can prevent you from taking chances. In some ways, conquering fear may be the real key to success in life. But what would it be like if you didn’t have any fear at all? Some recent studies shed light on this question.

A structure in the mammalian brain called the amygdala is active when you are afraid. The amygdala is also active when you are angry. So, fear and anger are pretty much physiologically identical. If the medial amygdala (middle of it) is destroyed, an animal will be put in a hyper vigilant fear state. The animal would be scared of its own shadow. However, if the lateral amygdala (side of it) is destroyed, an animal will basically lose its ability to be afraid. This has been shown in numerous experiments with rats. For obvious reasons, this kind of research is unethical to perform on humans.

What happens when an animal loses its ability to be afraid? Rats that were afraid of heights ran elevated mazes that they would normally avoid. Some of them fell and injured themselves. Small rats that would normally cower to larger rats would pick fights with them. Many of these rats got hurt. You have to be careful generalizing from animal studies to humans, but the results suggest that the absence of fear can lead to taking unnecessarily dangerous risks.

A little fear is a good thing if the object of our fear is a realistic danger. This is similar to the idea that a little stress can be good for you because it can be a motivator. It’s when fear and stress interfere and cause us to limit our actions that we have a problem. If you have such a fear of heights that being in a two or three story building gives you a panic attack, that can be a big problem. But fear of heights can be a good thing at other times. If you get too far off the ground, you can fall and hurt yourself (or worse!). Jumping out of an airplane might be a rush but we need to give ourselves a break if we are too afraid to do that. We need to keep things in perspective. Some fear is okay. In some cases, it might end up prolonging our lives.

The Rainbow Ruse

If you look up the word “ruse” in the dictionary you get definitions such as “a crafty strategem or subterfuge.” You will also see definitions like “an action or plan intended to deceive someone.” So, basically you have a strategy that you can use to mislead someone. An example would be for an adversary to purposely leak out false information during times of war. Another example would be spreading false rumors about somebody to further yourself. People who claim to be psychics use a method called cold reading to get information from people to make their readings seem accurate. The rainbow ruse is a commonly used cold reading technique used to extract information from people.

Here is how it goes. You start off by saying something very general about a personality trait that probably applies to a lot of people (one side of the rainbow). Then you say the opposite thing (the other side of the rainbow). One part of the rainbow will most likely apply to you. Curiously, people tend to overlook the part that doesn’t apply to them because they are taken by the seeming accuracy of the other part. It’s a kind of selective bias we have. Cold readers are aware of this bias and exploit your feedback to continue their reading.

Here are some examples:You are a talented and creative person, however most people don’t appreciate your talents. You like quiet evenings at home but sometimes you like to cut loose and be the life of the party. You are good at what you do and put yourself into your work but sometimes you like to get away and play like a kid. You are pleasant and easy going, but you sometimes get angry when somebody wrongs you.

You get the idea. The rainbow ruse opens the door for so-called psychics and fortune tellers. The feedback you provide gives them ideas for how to continue the reading. The best way to derail a so-called psychic is to not give them feedback. If they ask you questions, tell them you thought the idea was that you were supposed to ask the questions. If they use the rainbow ruse, say something to the effect that what they just said contradicts itself. The best way not to get hoodwinked by a so-called psychic is to just avoid them. But you never know, one of those psychics might really have the gift. At times you are very discerning and evaluate things before you make a decision, but at other times you are very impulsive and throw caution to the wind…

Driven to Distraction

Attention deficit disorder (ADD) is reaching epidemic proportions these days. It’s common to see kids diagnosed with it at early ages. Medications are routinely prescribed to treat it. Every semester students approach me and tell me that if they have trouble in my class it’s because they have ADD. It isn’t just the younger students who tell me this either. Older students tell me about their struggles with ADD, too. So, what’s going on here? Why is ADD showing up so much now?

There are two factors we need to look at when considering why ADD is so common now. The first factor is how the problem is diagnosed. Currently, there are no blood tests to diagnose the problem. Brain scans do show notable differences in the frontal cortex but they are not used very often to diagnose ADD because they cost too much. Instead, clinicians rely on the observations of parents and teachers. This has created a situation where the disorder might be diagnosed too often. So what can parents do?

Parents need to have an open dialogue with their child’s physician and/or therapist. Seek a second opinion if you aren't sure your kid has ADD. Medication might not always be the best option either. Try to keep your kid on a routine sleep schedule and a decent diet. It's also a good idea to keep them active instead of letting them play video games and watch television all the time. That said, try not to over-schedule their daily activities. Kids need down time where they can relax and just be kids. Too many obligations early on may overwhelm a child who is prone to ADD, which brings up the second factor I wanted to mention – culture.

Modern culture is getting faster and faster. We can chat, text, tweet, and get instant gratification. We are told that we need to multi-task. We need to be doing things constantly. We put a high value on these things. The fast pace of modern society and the pressure to constantly multi-task has created a situation ripe for the spread of a cultural type of ADD. I'm not alone in these convictions either. Other social scientists and educators have warned that modern culture promotes ADD.

So, what can we do as a society? Well, first there are no mental free lunches. Every time we multi-task we split our attentional resources between two or more things. Sometimes this is not a problem. At other times, one of the tasks will suffer dramatically. We should allow ourselves to do one thing at a time more often. Along these lines, we should encourage activities like reading or playing a musical instrument that keep our attention and mental resources focused for an extended amount of time. If we slow down, do less multi-tasking, and learn how and when to focus our mental resources, we might find that fewer people are being diagnosed as having ADD.

Why Is the Sky Blue?

Someone I knew used to say that the sky is blue because that is the color of light reflected off the oceans. That’s an interesting explanation but the actual reason is something called “Raleigh scattering.” The visible spectrum of light includes long wavelengths (seen as orange and red), medium wavelengths (seen as green) and short wavelengths (seen as blue). Light moves in a straight line as long as nothing disturbs it. When light passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, it keeps moving in a straight line until it bumps into a dust particle or a gas molecule. The long and medium wavelengths of light can pass straight through the atmosphere unaffected. However, the shorter wavelengths collide with gas molecules in the air. These collisions scatter the short wavelengths in different directions. We end up seeing the sky as the same color of light that was scattered. Since we see short wavelength light as blue, we see the sky as blue.

You Must Remember This

Anyone who has ever seen the movie Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman has heard the song As Time Goes By. One of the best parts of the song is the stanza that goes “You must remember this. A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply as time goes by…” It sure sounds romantic. The song makes you think about that special love you once had. But what if you couldn’t forget things? I mean, what if the song went more like “You must remember this. Every detail of every day is etched in your mind. You can’t bear to remember more since you can’t forget a thing as time goes by…”

Okay, this was quite an introduction for what I want to talk about today. There’s something called hyperthymesia that some people experience where they can’t forget things. At first, this might not seem like a problem but imagine what life would be like if you couldn’t forget things – ever! So far, only a few people have been identified who have confirmed cases of hyperthymesia. They can tell you encyclopedic details about what happened on a single day that was years or even decades ago. Some people have called them “human Googles.”

We don’t know what causes hyperthymesia yet but it probably involves a brain structure called the hippocampus. The hippocampus functions like a memory indexer. When a memory is formed, the hippocampus sends it out to other parts of the brain where we access it later. Normally we only remember things that are meaningful or personally relevant to us. Hyperthymesia might turn out to be the result of overactive memory indexing that records details of everything a person experiences.

In any case, there will inevitably be a biological cause for hyperthymesia. Understanding the cause of hyperthymesia could lead to treatments that could help people improve their memories. This is an exciting prospect. However, think a minute about what it would be like not to forget anything. One woman who has hyperthymesia has suffered from phobias and depression all her life because she is afraid to do things for fear of overloading her mind. We might all want to have better memories but normal forgetting is okay. Forgetting helps us clear out the clutter in our minds and lets us focus on important things instead of what we had for breakfast on six weeks ago!

Pure Energy

What is energy? According to physicists, energy is the capacity for something to do work and work is the transfer of energy to move an object a certain distance. They describe two kinds of energy - potential and kinetic. Potential energy is stored energy. Kinetic energy is the release of potential energy to create motion. Energy has six different forms which are electrical, thermal, chemical, radiant, mechanical, and nuclear. Whew! That's a lot of stuff. So, where is the energy that new age spiritualists and healers claim to exist? That’s a good question. Let’s see if we can find it.

Energy, according to new age spiritualists, is a universal force that you can tap into. It creates energy fields and it can be balanced. It stems from auras that surround our bodies. These aura can be cleansed. This energy is believed to be the source of life, but it isn’t the kind of energy that physicists describe. Basically, new age practitioners have co-opted the word “energy” for their own use. And for some reason, this kind of energy isn’t measurable by an known scientific instrument. It’s everywhere but scientists can’t detect it. Think about this a minute. If we can’t detect this energy, how do we know that it’s there?

Energy is a key component in many pseudoscience practices such as aura therapy, reiki, rolfing, reflexology, and therapeutic touch. A pseudoscience is something that sounds scientific but isn’t. These practices draw on scientific terms to make them appear valid. Many concepts in science aren’t very well understood even by smart people. If a pseudoscience uses scientific jargon, it must be complicated and it must be real. Let’s go back to our example of energy. Energy is an important concept in physics. If a pseudoscience practitioner refers to a mystical vital energy then it must be real. However, as mentioned earlier, energy is the capacity to do work and it is neither positive nor negative.

After all this discussion, a new age advocate might concede that their practices aren’t meant to be scientific. Then they will say that there’s nothing wrong with believing in these things if they make a person feel good. I don’t agree with that statement. People will often turn to alternative medicines and new age techniques when they are in distress. If these techniques don’t work, then the person’s time would be better used pursuing other treatments. Not to mention, the new age practitioners are making money on their services, books, and videos.

I’d like to wrap this up by telling you about a student I had when I began teaching. She told me a story about what happened when she first discovered she had major depression. She told me how she was severely depressed and didn’t think her life had any direction. Because of her distrust in traditional medicine, she decided to visit a new age practitioner and have her “aura cleansed.” The aura cleansing didn’t do anything for her. Her depression worsened and she ended up attempting suicide. After that, her family got her into psychotherapy along with medication and she started to improve. I’m not sure how she’s doing now, but having her aura cleansed instead of seeking other treatment methods almost cost the young woman her life.

So, you can’t tell me there isn’t anything wrong with believing these things. New age practitioners should be held to the same standards as doctors in the traditional medical community. Alternative, homeopathic, or whatever, these techniques should stand up to the same scrutiny as other medical techniques. Otherwise, it’s a crime that these practitioners prey on emotionally vulnerable people, take their money, and give them false hope. That sounds like a lot of bad energy to me.

Lucky Numbers

Some people like to consult books that give importance to birthdates. The day of the week has special significance. So does the number of the month and the year. You can also assign a number to each letter in your name and then add them up to get a master number for your name. These are the basic premises of numerology. Numerology is a pseudoscience that claims to reveal things about our lives and to foretell events by assigning special significance to numbers. Different numbers or patterns of numbers are thought to influence physical events in different ways.

You can get numerological readings similar to astrological readings. Your birthdate and full name can supposedly tell you when to marry, when to invest, what profession you should choose, when to travel, etc. I often ask people who are into astrology and numerology how closely they monitor their lives with these things. I mean, if astrology and numerology profess to show us how we should live, then people should follow their readings as closely as possible. If you are an accountant but your reading tells you that you should be an artist, then you should change professions if numerology is correct. But it’s not that easy. That’s not reality. People don’t base major life decisions on patterns of numbers. It doesn’t make sense.

What is it about numerology that makes people want to believe in it? Well, it’s a combination of things. People want to make sense out of a seemingly chaotic universe. Randomness makes us uncomfortable. We want to believe that everything happens for a reason and that we have control over what happens to us. At the same time, we don’t want to be responsible for our actions and behaviors. If we follow numerology, then we don’t have to be accountable for the things that have gone wrong in our lives.

The problem is that people are selective in how they follow things like numerology and astrology. We can sometimes make readings “come true” through changing our actions. This is called the self-fulfilling prophecy. If the numbers predict a good outcome and it happens, then we can attribute our good fortune to numerology. On the other hand, if something bad happens, then we tell ourselves that we didn’t believe hard enough or that the cosmos are out to get us. This is the same as blaming the victim. Belief has nothing to do with whether an outcome is positive or negative. Belief can keep us motivated and give us comfort but it in no way determines how things will turn out. That’s just a fact of life.

A better course of action is for us to take ownership of our lives. This means owning our disappointments as well as our successes. When we live without the yoke of things like astrology and numerology, we truly become free. We can live for ourselves instead of based on how a book of numbers or star charts says we should. We can use our free will to make our choices instead of relinquishing it to people and books who profess to tell us how to live our lives. I’d rather do that then think everything good in my life was caused by patterns of numbers.

Ice Cream Sundaes

We often take things for granted that always give us satisfaction. Here are some examples - it always smells good after it rains, ice cream sundaes always taste good, and sex always feels good. What? Huh? I got your attention, didn’t I? Sex always feels good. Okay, maybe there are exceptions but it almost always feels good. Have you ever thought about why that is? You say you don’t want to analyze it. You just want to do it. Okay fine, but why do you want to do it? Because it feels good. And now we are back to where we started. So, why is it that sex feels good? What reason could there be?

Well, it ain’t rocket science. One of the primary objectives in nature is the continuation of the species. Having sex ensures that the species will continue. So now you might say that people can have sex for pleasure and not just to reproduce. Okay, that’s true but here we are again talking about why it feels good in the first place. If sex didn’t feel good, we might not bother with it and then we would be in danger of the human race going extinct. So, nature developed the orgasm as an incentive for people to engage in sexual behavior. That’s what a biologist would say anyway.

Human sexuality is more complex than just a way to fulfill the need to reproduce. People are social animals. We get positive reinforcement from other people for things like status, prestige, and money. We pursue these things to some extent because they can potentially give us access to more attractive sexual partners which, in turn, bolsters our self-esteem. So, even though nature has primed us to enjoy sex, it’s the social reinforcement and how it makes us feel about ourselves that keeps us doing it for reasons besides reproduction. Now, why am I suddenly craving an ice cream sundae? Hmm…

Hearing Colors

Imagine you are listening to your favorite song. You’re singing along and see different colors when you hear different notes. Later, you check the baseball box scores in the newspaper and each number is a different color – the ones are red, the twos are blue, the threes are green, etc. You aren't crazy and you aren't on drugs. This is just what happens when you listen to music or read numbers.

What was just described is called synesthesia. It occurs in about five people out of a thousand (around 1.5 million Americans). The most common type of synesthesia is number-color where you see numbers in different colors. Other people see colors when they hear sounds. Some even experience different tastes when they hear sounds. Synesthesia was once thought to be a made up problem. Reports of people seeing numbers as colors just weren’t believed. Controlled studies have shown that synesthesia really exists. So, what could cause this to occur?

Well, there happens to be a juncture in the brain where sound, color, and number information is processed. When this area develops normally, we experience these sensations separately. However, if a genetic mutation occurs while this region is developing, our senses can get crossed. The result is that we might see colors when we hear music or see numbers in different colors.

Synesthesia does not cause any adverse health problems. Many people with synesthesia are drawn to creative things like painting or playing music. They find that they can channel their unique perceptual experiences into their chosen art. Synesthesia is yet another example of how the brain creates our experience of the world. Depending on how your brain is wired, you can experience the world differently.

It's All You

The mind emerges from the brain. Contemporary neuroscientists and psychologists agree that the mind would not exist without a fully functioning brain. There’s plenty of evidence to support this idea from brain imaging studies and cases of people who have had various diseases and brain traumas. Yet, many people still believe that the mind exists outside of their bodies. One argument posed against the “mind is brain” idea from time to time is that the brain could not possibly store all of our memories. Let’s take a look at this idea and see if it has any merit.

First, let’s take a look at the facts. There are approximately 100 billion neurons in the brain. Each neuron connects with as many as 100,000 other neurons. This makes for one quadrillion total connections in an average brain. Each brain cell fires around 10 times per second so there are 10 quadrillion neural impulses per second! Currently, there are no computers that can process as much information as quickly as the human brain. IBM recently introduced a super computer that can perform 3 quadrillion calculations per second. At this rate, computers may surpass the computational power of the brain in the next decade. We might be able to produce artificial intelligence when that happens.

Maybe now you are getting the idea of how complex the brain is. These numbers are difficult to comprehend. How big is a billion? If you counted to one million at a normal pace, it would take you about 11 days. But, if you counted to one billion, it would take you 30 years! There are an enormous number of brain cells and an even larger number of connections between those cells. When you consider how much information can be stored on computer microchips, it's easy to see how the brain could store all its information in the vastness of its neural connections.

So, why do people resist the idea that the mind is what the brain does? I think it’s a fear people have that there may not be anything beyond ourselves if the mind is contained within the brain. They might also fear that it somehow lessens our place in the universe and diminishes our humanity. The thing is, if the mind is the brain, that in no way rules out anything beyond us. We shouldn’t feel any loss of humanity either. Nature has given us an amazing brain. That's what makes us human.

Brain Dominos

Here we are in the 21st century and we still have terrible diseases and mental disorders that do not have cures. In the United States alone, 4.5 million people have Alzheimer’s, 1.5 million people have Parkinson’s, and 2.4 million people have schizophrenia. These disorders have debilitating effects on people. Currently, the outlook for someone who has one of these disorders is not good. However, there is something that is linked to these particular diseases and mental disorders - neurotransmitters.

Neurotransmitters are the chemicals that neurons (brain cells) use to communicate with each other. There are around 100 known neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and neurohormones. Of these 100 or so, a handful have been identified that are essential for most of our cognitive functions. Two of them, acetylcholine and dopamine, are related to the disorders mentioned earlier: Alzheimer’s - not enough acetylcholine, Parkinson’s – not enough dopamine, and schizophrenia – too much dopamine. Other disorders such as depression, ADHD, anxiety, and autism have also been linked to neurotransmitter functioning.

The fact that we know these disorders are related to specific chemical activity in the brain is a step in the right direction. These disorders might topple like dominos after we understand how neurotransmitters work. When we figure out acetylcholine, we could find a cure for Alzheimer’s. When we figure out dopamine, we could cure schizophrenia and Parkinson’s. When we figure out the other neurotransmitters, we could cure depression, ADHD, and many others. This isn’t just blind optimism about the future. Vaccines are currently being tested for treating Alzheimer’s. It’s very possible that these brain dominos will start falling within the next ten years.

The Placebo Pill

You’ve seen the commercials for everything from Prilosec to Viagra – the announcer says something about how the pill worked and the side effects you could get compared to a sugar pill. The sugar pill they refer to is the placebo they used in clinical trials. A placebo is used to determine if any improvement is due to the active drug or to the placebo effect.

The placebo effect can be powerful. The expectation that we are going to get better can lead to neurochemical changes in the immune system. These immune system changes can make a person get better for days, weeks, and even months. Other causes of placebo effects are that the disease has run its course or gone into remission. Whatever the reason, this bolsters the case that you should maintain a positive attitude when you get sick.

People often turn to alternative medicines as a result of being frustrated with traditional medicine or as a last resort. Sometimes people get better from alternative medicine treatments, at least for awhile. It’s possible that the treatment worked, that the disease ran its course, went into remission, or that the placebo effect caused it. To really determine whether an alternative medicine treatment is effective or not, it needs to be tested as rigorously as other treatments.

This brings up the topic that we need better designed research studies. In addition to a control group that includes a placebo, researchers should include a control group that receives no treatment at all. Then if the placebo group outperforms the no treatment group we could determine whether a placebo effect was present or not.

Our thoughts and expectations can definitely influence our bodies. We need to continue finding out which treatments work, which don’t, and what parts of the brain cause the placebo effect. In the future, doctors might incorporate placebos as part of their treatment regimens. We may even get to the point where we can synthesize a pill that triggers the placebo effect without a person needing to believe anything is supposed to happen.

How Do Dolphins Sleep?

We all know that dolphins are marine mammals. Since they are mammals, they need to be conscious in order to surface and get air. So, how do they sleep? EEG studies of dolphins show that they sleep one side of their brain at a time with the opposite eye closed. This is their way of getting rest and still making sure that they get air. They either drift near the water’s surface and come up every so often to get air or they rest at the surface with their blowhole exposed. Dolphins usually sleep at night for about 8 hours, but they only sleep for a couple hours at a time. They have very little REM sleep and do not go into deep sleep. Some dolphins can dive up to 900 feet and hold their breath for up to 30 minutes. However, they usually average 8 to 12 breaths a minute while they are active and 3 to 7 breaths a minute while they are resting.

Squishy Science

Do you think psychology is a science? Did you answer “yes” or “no” to this question? This is one of the first things I discuss with my students in my classes. Most people have preconceptions about psychology when they enter their first psychology class. They are not accustomed to examining their assumptions about the world. As such, they do not usually think about psychology as a science in the same way as physics or chemistry.

Any area of study, including psychology, can be considered scientific if it uses the scientific method to acquire information. So, psychology is a science WHEN it uses the scientific method. Sometimes psychology is called a “squishy” or “soft” science because it doesn’t have the laws and certainty of physical sciences such as physics and chemistry. There are many different factors that affect human behavior. Psychologists need to adhere to the scientific method as rigorously as investigators in other fields in order to make cause and effect statements about behavior.

When we educate ourselves about how to discern science from non-science, there will be no debate about whether psychology is a science. Psychology is as scientific as the methods used for testing its hypotheses, collecting data, and analyzing its results. Real psychology is scientific. The stuff that looks like psychology but isn’t scientific is an imposter in disguise. It’s our responsibility as consumers of information to know the difference and throw out the imposters.

Seeing What You Can't See

Sometimes people do things that appear to be the result of psychic abilities. One example is the curious case of blindsight. Blindsight occurs when an otherwise blind person can tell you where objects are located. This sure sounds strange and incredible. In fact, the first time blindsight was reported, neurologists thought the reports were fraudulent. So, how could a blind person tell you where something was located that they could not see? The answer lies in how vision is processed in the brain.

Vision starts with light entering the eye through the pupil and then being reflected by the lens to the retina at the back of the eye. The rods and cones in the retina convert the physical light energy into electrochemical energy that the brain understands. The message is then sent by way of the optic nerve to the primary visual cortex at the back of the brain. From the primary visual cortex, the message is sent to other areas in the brain that tell us what an object is and where it is located. As a result, we actually “see” with the brain. It wouldn’t make any sense that a blind person could tell you where an object is located if their primary visual cortex was damaged. So, what other explanation could there be?

When one of our sense is damaged, the brain often compensates by heightening the remaining other senses. Maybe blind people are able to get in touch with the “psychic” part of their brain after their vision loss. Is that the answer? Well, as it turns out, blindsight isn’t the result of psychic ability. The reason is that, in addition to the primary visual cortex, visual information travels to a midbrain structure called the superior colliculus. The superior colliculus receives messages that tell us where an object is located and whether it is moving. Blind people who have damage to the primary visual cortex, but not the superior colliculus, exhibit blindsight.

So you see, blindsight has a totally natural explanation. This shows that unexplained things can have natural explanations if we continue searching for them. If we stop looking for answers because we accept paranormal explanations, then we will stop learning and progressing. Some things may continue to stump scientists but that is no reason to accept paranormal explanations. By continuing to find out more about ourselves and the world, we get closer to discovering the true nature of reality. We should never become complacent about what we think we know, whether scientific or not. Natural explanations do not make the world a less interesting place. The fact that the brain can produce blindsight with sight impaired people is amazing.

How to Make a Pinhole Camera

Did you know that the visual image you see is upside down and inverted left to right? This is because the opening that lets light into your eye (the pupil) is very small and light can only travel in a straight line. Because light travels in a straight line, the top of an image is reflected to the bottom of your retina in the back of your eye and the bottom of the image is reflected to the top of your retina. The result is that the image on your retina is upside down (and what is left is right and vice versa). You might ask why we don’t see the world upside down and the answer is that your brain makes the image right-side up. A pinhole camera works on the same principle as how light enters your eye. If you want to see for yourself what the image on your retina looks like it is easy to make a homemade pinhole camera.

Here is what you need: An empty Pringles can, a marker, a ruler, an X-Acto knife (or utility knife), masking tape, a thumbtack, a piece of aluminum foil, and a piece of wax paper. Most of these things can be found around your house. If you don’t have one or more of these things available, it won’t cost much to buy them. The cool thing with this project is that you get to eat potato chips and do a nifty science demonstration.

Step 1: Take the lid from the empty Pringles can and punch a hole in the middle of it with the thumbtack. Then punch a hole in the metal bottom of the can. Put the lid aside.

Step 2: Draw a line around the can about two inches from the bottom. Take your X-Acto knife and cut along the line so the tube is in two pieces.

Step 3: Take the wax paper and cover the small piece of the can (the wax paper acts like a screen). Fold the wax paper over the edge and tape it to the can with the masking tape.

Step 4: Put the big piece of the can next to the small piece and tape them together. Next, take your aluminum foil and wrap it around the entire can twice (to keep light out of the tube) and then tape it to the can. Put the plastic lid back on the can. You are done!

Step 5: Go outside, close one eye, and hold the can up to your other eye. Look through the lid. You will see the image in your backyard upside down. The top of your trees will be at the bottom of the wax paper and the bottom of the trees will be at the top of it! (Note: you can only look through the Pringles can. You can’t actually take pictures like a real camera.)

For a pictorial demonstration, check out the website at www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/pringles_pinhole.html. The steps I listed are slightly different but that’s what worked for me when I made the Pringles can pinhole camera I show my students.

Non Sequitur

There’s a comic strip called Non Sequitur which has a strange sense of humor sort of like The Far Side. Non sequitur is Latin for “it does not follow.” Non sequiturs are common ingredients in a lot of humor. We often laugh (or sometimes cringe) when we see connections that do not make sense. The humor is in the absurdity of the situation. Non sequiturs are also fallacies of logic. They occur when logic goes awry. When we make unfounded conclusions based on certain assumptions, the conclusion is a non sequitur.

Here is an example. Say we see more births during a full moon. You might be tempted to say that the births are caused by the full moon, but is that really the case? Maybe there are seasonal variation at work. What we would need to do is track the daily birth rate over several months or years and then compare whether the birth rate when there is a full moon statistically differs from other times. This would enable us to determine whether there was a true connection between full moons and birth rates. Other non sequiturs do not lend themselves as easily to statistical analysis.

Some people claim that if the theory of evolution is true, then God cannot exist. Denying the existence of God is in direct contradiction with many people’s core beliefs so they do not accept the theory of evolution. However, this is a non sequitur. Whether the theory of evolution is true or not has nothing to do with God’s existence. The conclusion that God does not exist if evolution is true is a non sequitur. The real concern here is that the theory of evolution contradicts a literal interpretation of specific religious texts. However, it could be possible that God in his or her infinite power kickstarted evolution. Similar arguments could be made about the big bang theory. God could have inititiated the big bang. Accepting the evidence of the big bang in no way negates the existence of God.

The real motivation for making these kinds of non sequiturs is that we are uncomfortable with things that contradict one or more of our core beliefs. Instead of making these unfounded conclusions we should examine our beliefs and the available evidence and decide whether our belief system should be modified to accept new information. If we evaluate our beliefs and change or maybe even discard some of them, then we are cognitively flexible. Unfortunately, this process causes too much anxiety for many people and they fall back on what is most comfortable to them.

Each of us needs to decide what to do with scientific information. If we choose to ignore what we learn from science then we are turning our back on ourselves. We are curious creatures with the ability to discover knowledge about the world. If we discount what we find through science at the expense of long held beliefs then we have to question the validity of those beliefs. Perhaps we should accept what we learn through science and modify our belief in a God that can only work according to a literal interpretation of ancient religious texts than make a non sequitur just to make ourselves feel better.

Dissociative Identity Disorder

You’ve probably heard stories about people who experienced such terrible traumas that they block out the experience and create alternate personalities to deal with the situation. This paradoxical disorder used to be called multiple personality disorder. It is now referred to as dissociative identity disorder (DID). Is this a real mental disorder? Can this happen to people?

Students often enter a psychology class with many preconceptions about psychology, behavior, and the mind. Much of what we know about psychology has been distilled to us through the popular press and the media. Many of my students assume that DID is real because they have heard about it in the media or other sources. The thing is that they do not have first hand experience with the disorder to know if it actually exists. The popular assumption is that when people experience trauma they either repress memories of that trauma or they dissociate from it. However, everything we know about memory indicates that we have trouble forgetting things with increased exposure. We also cannot differentiate between a real and a false memory unless we have corroborative evidence from another person. This makes the repression theory of trauma shaky.

The story of Sybil is cited often as evidence for DID. Many people are not aware that Sybil was highly prone to hypnotic suggestion. Her alternate personalities were suggested when she was under hypnosis. Sybil came up with sixteen personalities, or alters. Up until that time, most people who were diagnosed with DID showed two or three alters. A curious thing happened after Sybil’s case was reported – most people who were subsequently diagnosed with DID started manifesting ten, twelve, or more alters. Was this just a coincidence?

So, what causes DID? There are two major theories of DID. The first, called the posttraumatic model, has already been described. In this case, a person who experiences a terrible trauma dissociates, or compartmentalizes, the experience into alternate personalities as a means of coping with the intense emotional pain of the trauma. The second theory of DID is called the sociocognitive model. In this case, the diagnosis stems from decades of therapist-induced influences and increased media attention. DID then becomes a form of role playing in which the patient learns to assume different roles as a result of societal expectations and therapist encouragement. Subjective therapeutic practices such as hypnosis, guided imagery, and prompting of alters facilitate the development of DID.

We have to be careful here. Once we create a diagnosis, we begin to make it real. If a diagnosis is contained in the manual of mental disorders, then someone will be diagnosed with it. This is not to say that there are no cases of DID that were caused by posttraumatic stress. In some cases, this may certainly happen. However, we need to be aware of how social and culture factors influence our mental health. If we reduce the number of therapist-induced cases of DID, then we can begin to treat the real issues associated with traumatic experiences. DID masks the underlying problems people are struggling with that make them resort to anything to escape their pain, even fabricating false personalities as a way of escaping reality.

What is Humanism?

Some people have asked what I mean when I say I am an existentialist, humanist, and a free thinker. I feel that I need to describe what this means. First, existentialism is the viewpoint that we find meaning in life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. This is contrary to the idea that we live life for a supernatural entity that we cannot see or touch. Existentialism emphasizes the here and now.

Second, humanism is the viewpoint that we should rely on ourselves instead of making appeals to invisible supernatural entities. It is a philosophy that encourages rational thought, logic, and skepticism. Humanism, like existentialism, emphasizes the here and now. It is a philosophy of compassion which strives to find solutions to human problems such as poverty, hunger, and violence. Humanism looks for solutions to problems in the context of human life without worrying about the possibility of life after death.

Third, free thinking refers to looking at different sides to issues. Many people assume that being a free thinker means thinking that anything might exist (such as psychic ability, clairvoyance, etc.). However, being a true free thinker means entertaining the idea that things like god and the paranormal may not exist. This kind of thinking is difficult for many people to wrap their hands around because it goes contrary to core beliefs imparted to them when they were children.

You may not agree with my ideas but I hope you take the time to examine your own beliefs. I grew up Catholic, became a born again Christian, had no specific religion, became an atheist, and now am more or less agnostic. The conclusions I made about the world are based on my study of religion, philosophy, psychology, and science, along with discussions I had with family, friends, and students. I was reluctant to accept the conclusions I made about god and the paranormal at first but I have found that you can live more freely without the constraints of religion and the supernatural. You can be a moral person and have a good life without believing in weird things. That's more than I can say for a lot of religious people.

Your Gut Feeling

Our view of the world and who we are as people has changed over time. One example is that the ancient Egyptians thought the heart was the organ that created the intellect. They thought the only purpose of the brain was to cool the blood. They would preserve the heart and place it in an urn next to a mummy, while the brain got tossed out as a worthless organ. The Egyptian’s belief in the heart being the source of our thoughts is how we got the expression “learning by heart.” Now we know that the brain is the source of all our thoughts, emotions, and sensations and that it also has critical life sustaining functions. Scientists, however, are now suggesting that we might have a kind of second brain, that of the stomache.

So, why would the stomache be elevated to such an important status? Isn’t its role just to digest our food and disperse nutrients to other parts of the body? Well, it has to do with how we experience anxiety. The stomache has lots or nerve connections that become activated when we become aroused. This accounts for the feeling of butterflies in our stomaches when we are nervous. It also accounts for why we say we have a gut feeling about something when we are making a decision.

A decision in which you don’t have full information or are unsure about the outcome is by definition a risky decision. The element of risk can range from something very trivial to even a matter of life or death. The way we make a decision when we have incomplete information is to base the possible outcome on probabilities of success vs. failure (or cost vs. benefit). If we were totally rational beings we could make our decisions based strictly on weighing different outcomes. We often seek out information to help us make difficult decisions. The sources of information can be other people, books, the internet, etc. Another source many people rely on when making difficult decisions is their intuition or gut feeling.

The feelings we have when we make difficult decisions inform us as to whether we are taking the correct course of action. If we feel good about something, we will probably go ahead with the action. If we don’t feel good about it, then we will probably refrain from doing whatever we are contemplating. The feeling in our gut is why the stomache is now sometimes referred to as the “second brain.” The visceral feedback we get from the stomache is an extension of the mental state we are in at a given time.

So, this is all well and good but it should be pointed out that our intuitions are not always correct. We can be prone to something called the confirmation bias. This occurs if we only pay attention to the times our gut feeling was correct and ignore the times it wasn’t. Making decisions without complete information is something most of us would like to avoid. All we can do is to discuss the problem with people we trust and try to gather as much information as possible. After that, we have to take the plunge. Our gut might be telling us that we are taking the right course of action, or it just might be reflecting our uneasiness about making a risky decision.

Alien Hand Syndrome

Imagine you wake up and you find your hand clenched against your throat. Your hand has you in a death grip and you struggle to free it from you. You finally pry your hand from your throat. You have feeling in the hand but it doesn't seem like it belongs to you. You might even think it's possessed. This is an extreme example of something called Alien Hand Syndrome.

Alien hand syndrome is a rare and strange problem. Normally when you do something, like pick up a glass of water, your brain sends a signal from the motor area across a bundle of fibers, called the corpus collosum, down your spinal cord and peripheral nerves, to your hand. The corpus collosum enables the two sides of your brain to communicate with each other. You can think of it like an email server. If the corpus collosum is damaged then your email server is down. This is what happens with alien hand syndrome. A stroke or aneurysm causes damage to the corpus callosum so the messages that initiate movement don’t get to your hand.

Like I said, the example of your hand choking you is an extreme one. In most cases, the alien hand will reach or grab an object, touch your face, put food in your mouth, or do something like unbutton your shirt. It is such a weird problem that is has been portrayed in movies, the most famous being Dr. Strangelove. In the movie, Dr. Strangelove’s right hand continually does offensive things and he has to beat it down with his left hand.

Unfortunately, there is no treatment for alien hand syndrome. People will often try to keep the alien hand occupied by having it hold an object. Others will go as far as tying it behind their back. Gradual recovery may occur if the person's brain trauma was not too extensive. For the rest, all they can do is try to adapt to the feeling that their hand does not belong to them and that it has a mind of its own.

Who's Calling the Shots?

We all intuitively have a sense that we are the architects of our actions. If we raise our arm, then we can say that we willed it. This gives us the feeling that we have free will and that we do things by our own volition. However, there is evidence to suggest that we might not be in control as much as we would like to think. This comes in the form of a discovery by the neurosurgeon Wilfred Penfield and an experiment by the physiologist Benjamin Libet.

Penfield was a neurosurgeon who in the 1940s made a remarkable discovery. Patients undergoing brain surgery are often partly conscious during the surgery. This is because the brain, itself, does not sense pain and because it is important to identify where a person’s speech areas are located before you go tinkering around in someone’s brain. What Penfield found was that if an area of the brain called the primary motor cortex was electrically stimulated during the course of a surgery, the patient would move a particular body part without having willed it. For instance, if the motor cortex that controls arm movement was stimulated, the patient would raise their arm and say that they didn’t mean to do that. This shows that the brain initiates our actions.

Libet conducted his now famous experiment in 1983. Participants watched a clock hand that made a complete revolution in 2.5 seconds. They were instructed to voluntarily flex their hand at a time of their choosing and to note the position of the clock hand when they did this. At the same time, their brain activity was being monitored by an electroencephalograph. A spike in our brain waves, called the readiness potential, occurs when we make motor movements. The experimenters thought that the readiness potential would occur at the same time that people flexed their hands, but what they found was that it actually preceded participant’s actions by 200 to 500 milliseconds (a fifth to a half second). This was an unexpected finding.

Libet’s experiment caused quite a stir. The results show that the brain decides to initiate our actions before we become aware of them. It brings into question whether we actually have free will in our actions. Further research showed that we have about a quarter second to inhibit our actions after a readiness potential. Libet calls this our “conscious veto.” So, even though we might not have free will, we have free won’t.

The discovery that brain processes initiate our actions without our awareness is hard for people to accept. It means that the brain is calling the shots and we follow along. We do, however, have the ability to veto our actions so we aren’t hopeless automatons. It would also be difficult for us to live in a way that we didn’t think we initiated our actions. Free will is perhaps the mind’s best trick. It’s an illusion that makes us feel like we are in control.

Stuck in Neutral

If you’re like me, you know a few people who are constantly on the go doing different things and you know some people who are chronic couch potatoes. What makes people act so differently? Well, it could be a number of things but it is largely due to the three pound organ between your ears – your brain. The brain is a funny thing. It likes to do whatever it is doing. If we give it stimulation, then it will crave more variety. If we are lazy, then it is content not to do much. So, what causes this disparity?

We each have a kind of gear shift in our brains called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The ACC acts as a mediator between our emotional brain and the front of the brain. The front of the brain is the executive part of the brain. It directs our decisions and plans our actions. The ACC helps us change the focus of our attention. Lowered ACC function has been implicated in people who have ADD. When we dwell on things, we are in effect getting our ACC stuck in neutral. Once it gets stuck, it can be hard to change gears.

This is where cognitive-behavioral intervention is useful. If we find ourselves stuck in a rut, we should make ourselves do something else. If we ruminate and worry about things too much, we should change what we are thinking about and redirect our thoughts. This can be very hard to do since the brain gets used to doing whatever it is doing. With a little effort we can get ourselves going again. The first change of action is the hardest, but once we retrain our brains we can get out of neutral and kick ourselves into a higher gear!

Mental Time Travel

People can recall things that happened to them years ago. We can also contemplate what might happen to us in the future. This is what some psychologists refer to as mental time travel. The front of the brain gives us the ability to project ourselves into the future, while an area called the hippocampus in the temporal lobes helps us create memories. What would happen if we didn’t have a hippocampus?

To answer this question, we need to look at what happened to a man called H.M. in 1953 (people are not identifed by name in the medical literature). H.M. had severe epileptic seizures that originated in his temporal lobes. His doctors decided that the best course of treatment would be to give him a bilateral temporal lobectomy (they cut out the temporal lobes on both sides of his brain). At the time, the relationship of the hippocampus to memory formation was not know.

After the surgery, H.M. no longer had seizures but he had a unique memory problem. He could no longer remember things that happened to him. Here is an example – someone could come into the room and greet H.M., leave for a couple minutes and return, and H.M. would act as though it were the first time he saw the person. He was in an infinite present, so to speak. Yet, the surgery didn't destroy H.M’s memory completely. He was still able to learn simple procedural tasks. The procedure H.M. had isn’t performed much anymore since anti-convulsive medications have improved vastly since the 1950s.

The case of H.M. was important for furthering our understanding of how memories are formed. When we compare the brains of other mammalian species, we find that they have areas that are similar in cellular makeup to our hippocampus. These areas are referred to as “hippocampal formations” in other mammals.

So, what would it mean that other mammals have a hippocampal formation? It suggests that they might have memories of their past. Of course, we cannot prove this idea since we cannot ask an animal about what they remember. It’s an interesting thing to ponder, though. Your dog just might have memories of when she was a puppy.

There's Something Extra

There are two schools of thought regarding the nature of the mind and brain – materialism and dualism. Materialism contends that the mind is entirely physical (the result of brain activity) while dualism suggests that the mind and brain are separate entities. Dualism is sort of like the “ghost in the machine” point of view. Now, most contemporary philosophers and psychologists endorse the materialist viewpoint. All the neuroscience evidence points to the fact that you need a functioning brain to experience consciousness. Another way to put it is that the mind depends on the brain.

There is one major problem with materialism that has not been resolved -the problem of qualia. Qualia are attributes related to what it is like to have an experience. We describe things as how they look, smell, feel, etc. The problem of qualia can be illustrated by a thought experiment put forth by the philosopher Frank Jackson about a color scientist named Mary.

Mary, as I just said, is a color scientist. She has studied everything about seeing color. She knows about the various wavelengths of light, the different hues and saturations of color, etc. The thing is, Mary lives in a black and white world. Everything she sees is either black or white. So, one day she sees the color red. Is there something about seeing red that differs from her knowledge about that color? Of course there is. It’s the personal experience of seeing the color. All her knowledge about the color red would not equate to the first hand experience of what the color actually looks like. There’s something extra about the experience that Mary did not know.

So, why is this a problem for the materialists? If the mind is a purely physical thing then we should be able to describe it in purely physical terms. Yet, there is no way to quantify the experience that someone has when, say, they are seeing the color red. We can identify specific neurons that are activated when we see red but we still do not know how they produce the experience of red. A totally physical explanation of mind should be able to explain this experience.

Still, the problem of qualia is no reason to discard materialism. Science provides us with an objective third-person (observer) description of the world. It cannot account for our first-person experiences. Knowledge of neural activity does not provide a complete explantaion for what it is like for an individual to have a given experience. This has been referred to as the “explanatory gap” by the philosopher David Chalmers. However, just because our experiences cannot be explained fully in physical terms does not mean that materialism is incorrect. What this points to is the nature of our inner mental life. The experience of having a nervous system that processes information and perceives the world is entirely our own.

In You I Trust

It’s widely known that soon after child birth it is important to establish a strong emotional bond between the mother and their child by putting the infant on the mother's chest. Part of how this happens is due to a neurohormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin is released by the infant and the caregiver responds with a feeling of well-being. The same thing happens when you hold an infant which often makes a person feel sleepy. I can attest to this when I’ve held my nieces and nephews.

Oxytocin is a peptide that is released during child birth, breast feeding, and orgasm. It is something that helps bond people together. It helps us build trust with our significant others. Two important studies shed light on how this happens. The first is a study that investigated how likely people would give money to people they didn't know and the second involves a little rodent called the prairie vole.

The money lending study was cleverly designed. Participants were part of teams. As a reward for doing simple tasks they were given small monetary rewards. They were instructed that they could share part of their reward with their team members if they wanted to. People who were given a shot of oxytocin prior to the study distributed bigger rewards to their team mates than those who were not given the oxtytocin. This suggests that oxytocin influences whether we will trust someone.

Next is the prairie vole study. Prairie voles stay with their partners for life after they mate. They raise their pups together in seemingly marital bliss. This is quite rare among mammals. Only about 5% of mammals show monogomous biparental behavior. When researchers injected the prairie voles with chemicals that blocked their oxytocin receptors, the prairie voles no longer formed lasting pair bonds. A relative of the prairie vole, the meadow vole, does not form pair bonds with their mates. When researchers injected meadow voles with oxytocin, the meadow voles formed lasting attachments with female partners.

What is the difference between the two kinds of voles? Dopamine receptors, which are involved with pleasure and reward, overlap oxytocin receptors in the prairie vole. This suggests that the prairie vole finds it rewarding to form a pair bond after oxytocin is released. The meadow vole, on the other hand, does not have the same overlap between their dopamine and oxytocin receptors. So, the meadow vole does not experience the pleasant feelings associated with oxytocin and thus does not form pair bonds.

Humans, too, are hardwired to form pair bonds but we are more complex than voles. We learn how to interact with people by watching our parents, siblings, and friends. We can learn to suppress our emotions if we see other people ignore their feelings. Suppressing our emotions causes the oxytocin-dopamine system not to work as it was intended. Of course, we can't form a life lasting pair bond with each of our lovers, but disconnecting ourselves from our emotions continuously can have a detrimental effect on our ability to form lasting pair bonds later. This sort of thing can be unlearned over time if we make the effort. So you see, oxytocin not only bonds a mother to their child, it helps us build trust and lasting attachments with the people we care about the most.

The Beginning of Empathy

People like to ascribe causes to things. We do this so much that the psychologist James Alcock has postulated that one of the main functions of the human brain is to serve as a belief engine. If we find a cause for an action or event, we can go about out business thinking that some part of the world makes sense. But where does this penchant for finding causes come from? Do we always have it?

The answer is what has been called the theory of mind by developmental psychologists. Basically, the way this works is that the infant starts to make assumptions about how the world works. If I throw my sippee cup off my high chair it falls to the ground. By extension, if someone else does the same thing the sippee cup will also fall to the ground. This starts happening around 18 months of age.

Another thing happens around the same time. We start to develop a sense of self. A child around this age will recognize her reflection in a mirror. The child no longer thinks that the reflection is another child. This is contrasted with an animal such as a dog which spooks when it sees its reflection in a patio window. The dog makes the erroneous assumption that the reflection is another dog and starts barking.

So, it seems that our sense of self is intrinsically linked to our theory of mind. When we begin to see ourselves as individuals we can then start seeing other people as separate entities. This might seem simplistic but it’s something that we internalize without even realizing it. A person who does not develop a “normal” theory of mind would have trouble understanding the motives and actions of other people.

This brings us to autism. In recent years, it has been hypothesized that people with autism do not develop a theory of mind the same way other people do. There is actually physiological evidence to support this. Specific neurons were discovered that fired when a monkey picked up a cup. Interestingly, these same neurons would fire if the monkey watched another monkey pick up a cup. As a result these neurons were initially called “monkey see, monkey do” neurons. They are now usually referred to as mirror neurons.

Now the interesting thing about mirror neurons is that they don’t just respond to actions. They are also involved with empathy. If your friend is sad, you can feel the same thing they do, so to speak, because your mirror neurons become activated by their apparent sadness. In a way then, mirror neurons help make us human.

One of the main problems reported with people who have autism is that they appear to lack empathy and often have impaired social interaction with other people. This has bolstered the case that autism is partly due to a deficit in the mirror neuron system. I say partly because it’s assuredly due to a complex interaction between genetic and environmental factors as well.

So you see, when your child begins to acquire a sense of self it’s a sign that they are developmentally on the right track. Their mirror neurons are working full throttle as they learn to mimic the actions of other people and start to empathize with others as well. Without this happening, your child wouldn't understand you telling them that it's not a good idea to tease their friend because they wouldn’t like it if they did that to them. We couldn’t put ourselves in "someone else’s shoes” without mirror neurons and a normally developed theory of mind.

How to Forget Someone

So, you’ve been dating someone for awhile and you break up and then you find that the other person ignores you. This is pretty common. Have you ever wondered why they ignore you? There could be lots of different reasons (need for control, spite, etc.). However, I think the basic reason is related to how memory works. Let’s take a brief look at how we remember and forget things and then we’ll come back to why your ex is ignoring you.

We tend to remember things with increased exposure to them. The more you do something, the more you are going to remember doing whatever it is you are doing. Clearly, repetition or repeated exposure strengthens your memory for something. Attaching meaning or personal significance also increases the likelihood you will remember an event or situation. So that said, what causes forgetting? There are various explanations but the two that probably account for most forgetting are decay and interference.

Decay is basically the effect of time. If I open up my high school yearbook, I won’t remember all the names of classmates. I haven’t thought about them in a very long time. When you don’t access information for a long time, it makes it hard to retrieve from memory. Interference is the effect of intervening information. If I tell you to do something in the morning (and you don’t write it down), all the stuff that happens during the day makes it more likely that you will forget what I asked you in the morning (not always of course). This is a big reason that adults say their memories aren’t as good as when they were younger. It is true that some memory loss is due to aging, but adults usually have more going on than children. This makes the effect of interference much greater for adults.

Another thing is that when you are dating you actually build neural networks specific to the person you are dating. Everytime you see the person, these neural pathways become strengthened. This makes perfect sense. You want to feel a strong connection to the person you are dating. It is debatable whether humans are naturally monogomous or not but the brain is wired to establish solid pair bonds with potential mates. Additionally, the emotional centers that are connected to the memory area also respond every time you see the person. The result is that you have a good feeling when you see your partner.

In coming back to our original question, why is it that your ex is ignoring you? Simple. It’s because of decay and interference. If enough time elapses, the memory of being together fades. If they surround themselves with their friends and busy themselves, they can create enough interference to assist in forgetting about the relationship. So, even though some of our former partners might have malicious motives in how they elect to deal with us after a breakup, the basic reason people ignore each other is that we intuitively know that decay and interference are the best methods for forgetting someone.

Capgras Syndrome

Now here’s a real oddity. Imagine waking up in the hospital from an accident and seeing people you don’t know sitting around your bed. The thing is these people are actually people you know. You think they are imposters. It isn’t your mother sitting next to you; it’s an imposter pretending to be your mother. This strange problem is called the Capgras syndrome or delusion. It was named after the person who discovered it, the French psychiatrist Jean Marie Joseph Capgras.

So, what causes this problem? There is a small area in the brain called the fusiform gyrus that is responsible for us recognizing people’s faces. When a trauma such as a stroke effects this part of the brain, we can no longer recognize faces. Can you imagine what that would be like? Weird, huh. Once we recognize someone, the fusiform gyrus sends a signal to a structure called the amygdala which registers the emotional significance of the person you just saw. So, when you see your wife or girlfriend (or son, daughter, etc.) you experience feelings of happiness. Well, in the case of the Capgras delusion the fusiform gyrus is intact but the pathway to the amygdala is not working correctly. The result is that you when you see someone you should recognize you believe they are an imposter posing as someone else.

The interesting thing with this problem is that it only happens you see someone. If your mother calls you on the phone you would have no problem knowing it was her. Since the auditory pathways are not effected by the brain trauma, you do not experience the delusion. This shows that the Capgras delusion is specific to visual processing.

So, what is the prognosis for someone who has Capgras syndrome? The damage to the pathway from the fusiform gyrus to the amygdala is unfortunately irreversible. Treatment usually involves therapy where the person is taught to establish empathy with other people and how not to validate their delusions. Antipsychotics have also been used with variable results. Capgras syndrome is yet another example of how we need a normal functioning brain to experience even simple everyday things.