Just Keeping Up With Things
Keeping up with what's relevant and useful to each of us can often seem like something out of that classic book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler.
In the book, Toffler talked about how more and more choices were providing an ever-changing landscape in our lives where the simple became the complex.
Consider the incredible array of cereals that confront you when you go to the market. If you're there with a small child, it can turn in to a tug of war as your child insists on one cereal and you select a different one.
When I go to the market I'm in the same situation no matter what I want to buy. If I want oatmeal, I now have at least 15 to 20 in one store and another, an organic market, makes me dizzy with the number of choices in oatmeal alone. Go without a specific list and you're a goner. Go when you're hungry and you are going to spend more than you wanted and you'll get things you may wonder, later, why on earth you bought that.
So, it is much the same as I try to keep up with what's going on in the world of neuroscience and psychology. One of my favorite blogs has to be Anxiety and Panic Gazette which gives me one-stop shopping in terms of food for thought on anxiety and panic disorder.
Recently, they referred me over to an MIT site (Technology Review) which talked about everything from getting high, urban myth there, on holiday food spices to peeking inside the brains of people with PTSD. I love it. Imagine being able to physically see what's happening to the brain after someone has been in therapy for awhile?
We know that the brain changes with experience and that it is constantly reshaping itself, but how? Can thinking positive thoughts actually cause important changes in some of the brain's wiring? I know it can. Some medications cause sprouting and help the brain do its work more efficiently while calming us and helping us to enjoy life. It brings back that old expression that people are always using, "It's all in your head." You bet it is and now we can see it with MRIs, PET or CAT scan and even more sophisticated methods on the way.
I remember being in a major research lab in California one year. They were doing CAT scans of people with dementias and anxiety of various types. I also saw colorful videos of how the brain lights up as it does its work while a patient did a simple math exercise.
So, as I read, I feel that glow that indicates we are on the brink of a new era of discovery in that vast universe located just between our ears. Spock and Kirk may have thought the final frontier was outer space. Me, I know it's inner space.
Related Topics:
Positive Thinking May Affect Pain Relief, 'Just Do It' Attitude Works With Exercise
Technorati Tags: positive thinking, lifestyle change
In the book, Toffler talked about how more and more choices were providing an ever-changing landscape in our lives where the simple became the complex.
Consider the incredible array of cereals that confront you when you go to the market. If you're there with a small child, it can turn in to a tug of war as your child insists on one cereal and you select a different one.
When I go to the market I'm in the same situation no matter what I want to buy. If I want oatmeal, I now have at least 15 to 20 in one store and another, an organic market, makes me dizzy with the number of choices in oatmeal alone. Go without a specific list and you're a goner. Go when you're hungry and you are going to spend more than you wanted and you'll get things you may wonder, later, why on earth you bought that.
So, it is much the same as I try to keep up with what's going on in the world of neuroscience and psychology. One of my favorite blogs has to be Anxiety and Panic Gazette which gives me one-stop shopping in terms of food for thought on anxiety and panic disorder.
Recently, they referred me over to an MIT site (Technology Review) which talked about everything from getting high, urban myth there, on holiday food spices to peeking inside the brains of people with PTSD. I love it. Imagine being able to physically see what's happening to the brain after someone has been in therapy for awhile?
We know that the brain changes with experience and that it is constantly reshaping itself, but how? Can thinking positive thoughts actually cause important changes in some of the brain's wiring? I know it can. Some medications cause sprouting and help the brain do its work more efficiently while calming us and helping us to enjoy life. It brings back that old expression that people are always using, "It's all in your head." You bet it is and now we can see it with MRIs, PET or CAT scan and even more sophisticated methods on the way.
I remember being in a major research lab in California one year. They were doing CAT scans of people with dementias and anxiety of various types. I also saw colorful videos of how the brain lights up as it does its work while a patient did a simple math exercise.
So, as I read, I feel that glow that indicates we are on the brink of a new era of discovery in that vast universe located just between our ears. Spock and Kirk may have thought the final frontier was outer space. Me, I know it's inner space.
Related Topics:
Positive Thinking May Affect Pain Relief, 'Just Do It' Attitude Works With Exercise
Technorati Tags: positive thinking, lifestyle change
2 Comments:
Interesting! Just imagining what the MRI, PET, or CAT would show as I am standing in the bread or salad dressing aisle swaying with dizzinees and trying to make a choice... There are times I don't even make a choice, I skip buying the product because it overwhelms me trying to compare, contrast, and make an intelligent choice! There are far too many choices out there; in the grocery store, and in the service industries such as cable, phone, internet providers.... I think the scans might show some kind of a strobe light effect... lol
I also think that when we learn more about the brain, it's electrical impulse activities and what affects them (foods, water or lack of, visual and aural stimulation) it will be very exciting.
Can you say more about how the brain changes by thinking positive thoughts? Or direct me to some good reading on that?
Thanks--another great blog!
~Tasker
I don't have a site right now for brain changes and positive thoughts, but I wonder if Martin Seligman might have something. He's the father of Positive Psychology and, surely, must have looked into this. If he didn't, tell him he has an obligation to do so. Yes, you can write to him and tell him what you think needs to be done.
He may have a website or a blog.
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