Category Archives: mind

BOOK REVIEW: Supernormal by Dean Radin

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Supernormal: Science, Yoga and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic AbilitiesSupernormal: Science, Yoga and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities by Dean Radin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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With this controversial book, Dean Radin presents the scientific evidence for an array of psychic powers, but he frames the discussion in terms of yogic siddhis. “Siddhi” is a Sanskrit term for an ability that isn’t seen among the general population–at least not reliably so– and for the most part these “accomplishments” correspond to the categories discussed in parapsychology (i.e. telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, and clairvoyance.) [Note: As mentioned, this is a controversial book. I will attempt to provide as unbiased a review as possible. I am generally skeptical, but don’t believe in poo-pooing the study of subjects because they offend my skeptical sensibilities. Furthermore, I try to keep an open mind because: 1.) there is no scientific consensus about what consciousness is or how it works, 2.) quantum biology is a subject in its infancy and we may yet learn there is more quantum “spookiness” going on in the brain than we think. 3.) for all I know we are in an simulation and then it’s all a matter of programming.]

The yogic emphasis doesn’t change the book much from the pop psych literature review of parapsychology studies it would otherwise be, except to necessitate background information on yoga and siddhis. However, this emphasis may or may not have opened up a huge additional readership. Outside of a fringe, siddhis aren’t much in vogue among yoga practitioners these days. Among modern day yogis and yoginis, there are some who believe in them and some who think they’re throwbacks to an era of superstition, malnutrition, and wishful thinking. However, even among the former, siddhis are generally considered a distraction. The advice of most of the great yogis has been to not get lost in the pursuit of such powers because chasing siddhis can derail one from one’s ultimate objective (e.g. liberation.) Still, if even a small fraction of yoga practitioners take an interest, that’s a fairly large readership.

So what exactly is the controversy? Obviously, there are many divergent demographics with differing views on the topic. For hardcore skeptics, parapsychology is right up there with alien abduction, bigfoot /yeti sightings, and the anatomy of the Loch Ness monster with respect to being a legitimate topic for scientific study. On the other hand, there are believers who are offended by the mere notion of studying such phenomena with science, and who say such investigations are an assault on their beliefs.

But that’s not a very interesting controversy—i.e. there are some people who won’t believe in such abilities no matter what the evidence, and others who will believe in them no matter what science has to say. So let’s chop off the hardcore skeptics and hardcore believers and ask what the controversy is as it pertains to those of us who consider evidence when drawing conclusions.

The root of the controversy can be stated rather quickly and clearly. Here it is: the effect size is small but statistically significant. What does that mean? Say this study asks a subject to determine which of five randomly selected shapes has been chosen using nothing but his / her mind. Using pure guessing, one would expect to be right 20% (i.e. 1/5th) of the time. If a person happened to get 32% right in a given trial, that means nothing because small samples don’t give one a convergence towards a mean value. (i.e. Intuitively, you know that if you flip a coin 10 times and get 7 heads, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. If you repeat that 10-flip set 10,000 times, and still get 70% heads, then you probably have a trick coin or something else odd is going on.) So the issue is that even when experimenters repeat the experiment over and over again such that the average value should converge on 20%, it doesn’t. It stays at, say, 30% (exact effects vary but it’s on this order.)

At this point the reader might be thinking of all the factors that could result in this effect (i.e. cheating [insider or outsider], subconscious observation of facial expressions, random selection that is biased, etc.) Well, so have the scientists. In any study, one wants to account for alternative explanations to the utmost. Over the years, researchers like Radin have put all manner of protections in place from quantum random number generators to booths with extreme sound-proofing and Faraday cages (prevents radio signals from transiting.) Still they get this small positive effect that can’t be explained by alternative explanations.

There is also the issue of the filing drawer problem, which Radin devotes considerable space to discussing. It’s the idea that when drawing conclusions from many similar studies, one must accept that there may be many unpublished studies that sit in file drawers because they didn’t produced negative results. These filed / unpublished studies could negate the outcome of the body of studies of that nature. While this remains an open criticism, there is mathematics for determining how many negative studies would have to be turned up to make the results insignificant. Radin argues that the numbers calculated strain credulity.

So this “small but statistically significant effect” is generally agreed upon by all, excepting conspiracy theorists. Now we get to the controversy, which is how to explain this effect. Skeptics run the gamut from hot-blooded haters who claim that it’s all just a scam perpetrated by hoaxers with tenure, to more diplomatic challengers who provide thoughtful, plausible, and non-nefarious explanations for what they believe are false results. Said objections include file drawer problems, statistical “crud factor” (an observed effect in which large sample size studies can show a significant correlations between any two random variables—i.e. everything is correlated with everything else to some degree), and outlier effects.

The latter is a particularly revealing controversy. Say your study results in this 30% instead of 20% effect, and there’s one subject in the study who (over many trials) got the shape right 80% of the time. If you’re a skeptic, you call that an outlier and you want to cut it out of the study because it may be causing part, most, or all of the effect you see. Your assumption is that that this outlier could be anything from a data entry error to an outright cheater, but it’s obviously not a gifted psychic. If you’re a believer, not only do you want to keep that result, you want to find that person and study them to find out if the result was a one-time fluke, or if you have some rare, gifted person.

The book is arranged into three parts. The first part offers background on yoga and siddhis. The second part is the heart of the book and it presents an overview of results from studies of precognition, telepathy, psychokinesis (both of animate and inanimate objects), clairvoyance, and the effect of meditation on these abilities (which also shows a small positive effect, i.e. the general population outdoes probability by a little bit and experienced meditators outperform the general population by a little bit.) The last section is just a couple chapters about the future of parapsychology.

I found this book to be interesting and thought-provoking. Radin comes across as a reasonable investigator who is willing to accept that there is a lot of duplicity going on out in the world, but yet when one uses the methods of science one obtains results that would be generally accepted as successful across the social sciences. At times he does go on anti-skeptic rants. On the other hand, one can imagine his frustration in dealing with individuals unwilling to pin down how much higher the bar must be for parapsychology results over results in more mainstream topics. I think Radin’s greatest mistake was in discussing levitation. Besides at a quantum level, the effects of gravity are well-understood and non-negotiable. While our lack of understanding of consciousness leaves wiggle room to at least consider some unusual happenings, levitation seems a non-starter. Fortunately, as it hasn’t been studied, Radin just presents a couple historical anecdotes and moves on (while—to be fair–acknowledging the fundamental risk in relying on anecdotes.)

I’d recommend this book. I can’t say it swayed my belief on the topic, which tends skeptical, but it did inform my confusion. (It should be pointed out that not all these abilities are equally reviled by science. Precognition is the most fundamentally opposed because it seems to violate the fundamental cause and effect nature of the universe at our scale and larger [as opposed to the quantum level were all sorts of weird happenings transpire.]) I do agree with Radin that there shouldn’t be taboos in science in which scientists are afraid to study a subject of interest because the prevailing notion is that it probably doesn’t have merit. If there weren’t scientists with the cojones to study “crazy stuff” we’d no doubt be far behind our current understanding of the world.

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5 Bits of Wisdom from The Matrix Movies

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5.) Wisdom: Choice is not as it seems.

Quote: No, you’ve already made the choice. Now you have to understand it.
Said by the Oracle to Neo in “The Matrix Reloaded” as they discuss a dream in which he sees Trinity falling.

Interpretation: Studies in neuroscience have repeatedly validated the notion that by the time we think we’re making a decision at a conscious level, we’ve already made it on a subconscious level. While many suggest this means that the verdict is in and free will is completely illusory, another way of looking at it is that one must understand one’s decisions in order to begin to regain the rudder on one’s life.



4.) Wisdom: Courage elevates: or, if you don’t run, he won’t chase you.

Quote: He’s beginning to believe.
Said by Morpheus to Trinity in explanation of why Neo isn’t running from Agent Smith in the subway.

Interpretation: My mother used to say, “If you don’t run, he won’t chase you” with respect to being chased by my older brother. It seemed like insane advice at the time; the alternative to being chased being beaten down. However, now I can see that even taking a butt-whooping elevates one’s spirit over engaging in prey behavior.



3.) Wisdom: Rationality is a thin veneer.

Quotes: Beneath our poised appearance we are completely out of control. & It is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity.
Said by the Merovingian to Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo.

Interpretation: While one might like to dismiss the Merovingian’s comments as the cynicism of a hedonist, the undeniable fact is that we have animal biology and it influences us more than we pretend.



2.) Wisdom: The world contains more Cyphers than not.

Quote: Ignorance is bliss.
Said by Cypher to Agent Smith as he plots his subversion in order to be put back into the Matrix.

Interpretation: Most people are happy with their illusions, rely on them as coping mechanisms, and will respond unfavorably to attempts to strip them way. The illusion in question may not be so much that the world is completely fake as much as biases such as the self-serving bias (i.e. people attribute successes to their inherent awesomeness but blame failures on external sources.)




1.) Wisdom: There are limits to being cerebral.

Quotes: Don’t think you are, know you are. & There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
Both are said by Morpheus to Neo. The former quote is delivered in the sparring program when Neo isn’t performing up to his potential. The latter is said after Neo & Trinity rescue Morpheus and Neo tries to tell Morpheus what the Oracle revealed, but Morpheus quiets him with said words.

Interpretation: I hope I haven’t muddled this bit of wisdom by choosing quotes in which Morpheus uses the word “know” in two different ways. In the first quote, Morpheus contrasts knowing with thinking, and he means that Neo must not treat it as an intellectual exercise, but rather feel its inherent truth deep down. In the second quote, he contrasts knowing with doing, and in this case “knowing” is the cerebral / thinking activity in comparison to doing (i.e. “walking the path.”) However, the gist is the same, you must approach some things–to use the Oracle’s words–balls to bones.

BOOK REVIEW: Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman

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Challenger DeepChallenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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“Challenger Deep” is the story of a smart and artistically talented young man, Caden Bosch, who is afflicted with Schizophrenia. There are essentially two story lines being told in parallel. One is the real world, and in the chapters in this line we see Caden’s descent as it takes place. From references to past events, we gain insight into how Caden was before the disease. In the early part of the book, these chapters are set at school and at home, and then later at the mental hospital at which he’s admitted as a patient.

In the other story, Caden is on a sailing ship headed to the Challenger Deep—the deepest portion of the Marianas Trench at almost 7 miles down, and—symbolically—Caden’s rock-bottom . Shipboard life is Caden’s hallucinated experience of the mental hospital. Over time the reader begins to match up characters from the real world with those from the delusion—both patients and staff members. This is a mutinous vessel, and the tension reflects the pull between Caden’s desire to be well and the appeal of the world of delusion.

Over time the author shows key events in both lines and the reader can connect them up to interpret how delusional Caden experiences the world. The story isn’t strictly told in a chronological order, though the broad sweep of it is. The bits of disjoint create no confusion while helping to convey the nature of a fractured mind. This works, in part, because the book is told over 161 short chapters, and, because the chapters are so short, a diversion doesn’t take one far and it’s easy to show the match up of events. The book artfully conveys the bizarreness of a dreamlike world of delusion while remaining clear and readable. Any confusion in the early chapters becomes rectified as the author reveals how the delusional world and the real world zip together.

This book was imaginative, enjoyable to read, as well as allowing the reader insight into the nature of mental illness. Atypical of a work of fiction, there is a resources section that provides contact information for organizations that support mental health.

I’d highly recommend this book for fiction readers.

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BOOK REVIEW: How We Feel by Giovanni Frazzetto

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How We FeelHow We Feel by Giovanni Frazzetto
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Frazzetto’s book tells us what neuroscience can and can’t tell us about seven core emotions: anger, guilt, anxiety, grief, empathy, joy, and love. Doing so puts the neuroscience of emotion into a broader context of art, philosophy, the humanities, and the legal / political domains. Most often this serves to make the book more interesting by offering stories beyond the case files of neurologists and neuroscience researchers, but it does result in occasional editorializing.

The book consists of seven chapters, each of which is linked to one of the emotions listed in the preceding paragraph. These chapters always tell us the rudiments of what science has learned about the brain’s role in said emotion, but they often offer insights from other disciplines as well as providing more general information about the brain that the author found particularly relevant to the topic at hand.

The first chapter delves into anger. Besides the neuroscience of rage, we learn a bit about the expression of emotion (e.g. through facial appearance; a theme revisited in other chapters), and the degree to which genetics plays a role in proclivity towards anger. This chapter serves to set up general concepts, and so we also learn about what an absence of emotion looks like (e.g. indecisiveness.) And in compliance with the law that every pop science book on neuroscience tell the story of Phineas Gage (the foreman who got rebar shot through his brain and lived to tell the story—though in an uncharacteristically hostile way), Frazzetto knocks it out early.

Chapter two explores the topic of guilt. It should be noted that some of these chapters discuss more than one related emotion, and here we learn how shame and regret are differentiated from guilt. There’s an interesting story about Caravaggio and how his own guilt-ridden story influenced one of his most famous paintings.

Chapter three is about anxiety, and also takes on fear. In addition to the neuroscience, we get a discussion of relevant philosophy, specifically that of Heidegger. Here, the author also describes brain plasticity.

The next chapter investigates grief. As I suggested above, there are multiple points where emotional expression is discussed, and this chapter has one of the most extensive of such discussions. In terms of general concepts, Frazzetto introduces the reader to neurotransmitters. One also learns how grief is related to physical pain.

Chapter five elucidates empathy. A lot of this chapter discusses acting, and the need for actors and actresses to be able to acquire empathy from the audience. The reader learns the story of Stanislavski, and how he went about creating his self-named acting system which remains widely used. This chapter also explains mirror neurons that allow one to recognize expression and to mimic others.

The penultimate chapter is about joy, and here we learn more about expression of emotions and, specifically, the seeming universality of smiles. There is a discussion of poetry as it pertains to the emotion at hand. Having introduced neurotransmitters earlier, the reader learns about dopamine, its role in happiness, and how a number of drugs have been created that increase our natural dopamine’s effect or mimic it.

The last chapter is about love. Of course, we learn about oxytocin and vasopressin, two neurochemicals famously associated with loving behavior. There is also a fascinating discussion of Capgras Syndrome. In this condition, the patient feels that his loved ones have been replaced by impostors. That may not seem relevant until one realizes that the proposed mechanism for this illness is damage to parts of the brain that control emotional connection. Without an emotional connection, the person feels that said individuals can’t be his / her dearest friends and family—though his senses register that they are exact duplicates in every way. The brain builds a rationalization that they must be impostors. Of course, no emotion evokes more resentment towards materialist explanations rooted entirely in biology than that of love.

The book is extensively annotated and also has a bibliography. There are many graphics throughout the book from line drawn diagrams of brains to photos of brain scans to the artwork “David with the Head of Goliath” mentioned relative to the discussion of Caravaggio’s guilt.

There are a number of books in this domain (i.e. the neuroscience of emotion) and if you were only going to read one, I don’t think I’d recommend this one as it. However, if you are into this topic, it is definitely worth a read. It’s interesting and insightful, and has a unique approach.

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BOOK REVIEW: Sitting Still Like a Frog by Eline Snel

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Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and Their Parents)Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids by Eline Snel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Anyone who’s ever taught children mindfulness, concentration, or relaxation knows that one can’t use the same tried and tired approach one does with adults. One must recognize the strengths and weaknesses that children’s level of cognitive development brings. [That said, I’ve found myself in front of a room full of kids who sat with the unflinching stillness of bronze Buddha statues, but that’s because regular practice was part of their school experience.] This is the twin premise of Snel’s book: that one needs to tailor one’s approach to teaching children to be mindful, and that their practice needs to be integrated into their life on the whole.

It should be pointed out that the book isn’t just a collection of exercise for children. It’s also a book for parents to help them align their approach to parenting to the mindfulness that the child is developing. It’s also a book of application. That is, it’s not about practicing mindfulness meditation in the abstract; it’s about using the understanding that arises from that practice to improve behavior and emotional coping.

Chapter 1 introduces the topic of mindfulness and sets up the book’s approach as well as explaining the use of the audio exercise that go along with the book. The second chapter explains a mindful approach to parenting by which parents can adopt a calmer and less emotionally charged approach to interacting with their child. Chapter 3 explains how and why breath is used as the basic anchor point to life in the here and now. Chapter 4 suggests how attention can be improved, and mindful eating is used as a tool to advance this objective. The next chapter explores how mindfulness can be practiced using the body as a means to anchor one’s awareness while simultaneously being more aware of what’s going on with one physically. There is discussion of mindful walking, but most of the chapter is about teaching children to be more cognizant of what they feel as a precursor to being more emotionally aware.

The next several chapters cover emotional awareness and how to improve response to emotional situations (both for the child and for the parent.) Chapter 6 uses the analogy of a weather report as a means for children to evaluate their emotional state. Chapter 7 expands on the topic by considering how one can manage one’s response to emotions. The crucial topic of witnessing the changing nature of emotional states is the subject of Chapter 8.

The last two chapters examine how to cultivated desirable character traits in children. The penultimate chapter describes how kindness can be fostered as a skill in children. The last chapter is entitled “Patience, Trust, and Letting Go” and that probably adequately describes the gist of the topics covered. The concept of an “inner movie theater” is discussed as a tool to facilitate building the desired characteristics.

There’s a single page bibliography and a table of audio exercises at the end. As far as graphics are concerned, they are mostly whimsical drawings of frogs.

I found this book to be concise, informative, and designed to appeal to the child’s need for concrete–as opposed to abstract—conceptualization of this, otherwise cerebral, topic.

I’d recommend this book for parents, teachers, and others who interact with children.

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5 Thought-Provoking Novels About Mental Illness

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5.) Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

Premise: A young woman who attempted suicide is told that in the process her heart was damaged and she now has only five days to live. While it might seem that this would be all the same to a suicidal patient, it turns out to matter.




4.) Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Premise: The lead character, Toru, doesn’t suffer from mental illness, but his life is shaped by those who have. He must decide between two women. One of whom, Naoko, has been institutionalized since her boyfriend, Kizuki, committed suicide. Kizuki had been Toru’s high school best friend, and this weighs heavily in Toru’s feelings of obligation. Add into this Naoko’s roommate–a sage influence in Toru’s life, despite being institutionalized herself.



 
3.) Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman

Premise: An adolescent boy, Caden Bosch, is transformed from a model student to a paranoid schizophrenic. The title refers to the deepest point on Earth, down in the Marianas Trench, and comes into play because the institutionalized Bosch believes he’s on a ship who’s Captain thinks all the treasure in the oceans got swept to the deepest point.




2.) Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Premise: The unnamed narrator meets the eccentric Tyler Durden and soon Fight Club is born. It’s fueled by a feeling that men have been tamed to be turned into consumers. However, the underground fights are only the beginning, and our lead character is dismayed to discover that from the Club has sprung Project Mayhem with a nefarious terrorist plot.




1.) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Premise: Randle McMurphy has convinced authorities that he’s insane for the purpose of getting out of hard labor in prison and into a “cushy” insane asylum. The ward is run by the iron hand of Nurse Ratched. McMurphy on the other hand is rebellious and unruly. The clash is inevitable. McMurphy increasingly disrupts Ratched’s sedate and harmonious ward (re: heavily drugged and cowed into submission.) The story is told from the perspective of a patient named Chief Bromden who has the staff convinced that he’s deaf and mute. Like McMurphy, he’s not what he appears. The book is a scathing indictment of how mental health care was conducted in Kesey’s day.

5 Minds You Meet in Meditation

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No matter what style of meditation you practice, you’ve probably heard the following refrain: “And if you find your mind wandering, non-judgmentally make a note of where your mind went, and let that thought drift away as you return your awareness to __________.”



I’ve certainly heard many takes on that teaching, and had plenty of opportunity to implement that advice. In the process, I’ve noted that the places my mind wanders can be classified into several categories.



5.) The Planner: Our conscious mind is first and foremost about answering the question, “What’s the worst that can happen, and how can I make that worst case less bad?” The mind wants to anticipate undesirable events and either make an end run around them or figure out a way to make them less troubling. The Planner wants to rehearse everything from making dinner to being interviewed for a job to having a dreaded conversation.



4.) The Entertainer: This is the mind that sticks songs in your head and replays clips of movies.



3.) The Walter Mitty / The Bolsterer: This is the daydream mind which cooks up scenarios in which you are the hero.



2.) The Subconscious Image Generator: In a relaxed state in which the conscious mind is quieted, one may find oneself seeing images that probably don’t make a lick of sense. The pictures may come and go in a way that make them hard to maintain even a glimpse of. This is the same kind of imagery that one experiences in the hypnagogic state–as one is drifting towards sleep.



1.) The Critic: Saving the most despicable for last; this is your inner critic. The one who thinks that you won’t succeed at any given task.

5 Tools to Hulk Your Way Out of Your Comfort Zone

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5.) Take a class / Join a group: While I’m partial to yoga and the martial arts, the class could be in any area that presents a challenge.  However, there are a couple of advantages to the aforementioned two (to which I would add dance.)

 

First, these disciplines train one to be expressive with one’s body and to move more freely. This can do wonders for confidence. People store tension in their bodies without even realizing it. Many have postural problems that effect confidence and self-perception.  A 2014 New Zealand study found that posture can have a strong effect on emotional state.

 

Second, no matter who one is, one will be challenged by new approaches to movement.  The average person has great difficulty learning to use their body in new ways. One needs to drill in movements conscientiously to achieve competency. Our conscious mind, frequently gets in the way. Even the most athletic and coordinated people will need to work it, failing repeatedly until they succeed.

 

Why is the challenge so important? Many people go through life afraid to fail, but far too few fear never failing. Sounds idiotic. Nobody wants to fail. I have some hard news. If you’ve never failed, it’s not because you are unmitigatedly awesome in all things. It’s because you’re living in a box and cherry-picking life experiences that feel unthreatening.

 

If, like me, you’re an introvert, this approach offers the additional benefit of social interaction that is of a predictable / schedulable nature. One needs the interaction, but the problem comes when one has social interactions and / or sensory stimulation that go on too long and in an unpredictable fashion. Therefore, being able to schedule such time is a good way to go about being a more productive introvert.

 

 

4.) Writing  / Visualization:  These two approaches to mentally rehearsing allow one to keep one’s inner critic in check. The problem with simply day-dreaming it is that critic can chirp in without being that cognizant of it.

In visualization, one quiets the mind and can then non-judgmentally acknowledge and dismiss the negative thoughts. In writing–be it as a journal entry, poem, or a story–we may not notice the nagging voice of the inner critic on the first draft, but you can take note of it and undo it in rewrites.

 

 

3.) Travel / Living abroad: I should point out that not just any old travel will have the desired effect. Many people plan their travel with the objective of being comfortable at the fore.  They eat at places that serve the same kind of food as at home. They stay in hotels with virtually all of the comforts of home, and sometimes many more. This is understandable because the traveler might just be seeking rest.  However, if one is seeking the epiphany or enlightenment experiences talked of by backpackers and ashram-dwellers, that’s not something that comes from staying in resorts or eating at American fast food joint. Those kinds of brain changing experiences come when one is stripped from the familiar and has to surrender one’s attachments to the way one thinks the world should be. One’s perception of culture and worldview changes radically when immersed in a foreign environment.

 

 

2.) Game it / Roleplay: There’s a big movement to gamify all manner of everyday activities.  In her book, “Reality is Broken,” scholar of game design Jane McGonigal describes a game called “Chore Wars” that incentivizes the doing of mundane household chores.

 

What is it about games that help one move beyond one’s limits? First of all, it incentivizes actions. And if you’ve ever noticed people playing games on their phone or FB for hours on end, you’ll note that it doesn’t take much reward to keep people plugging away—as long as the game is structured well.

 

Second, good games provide a built-in process of “leveling up.” This means that the challenge keeps being intensified as our skill level advances. Those familiar with Csikszentmihalyi’s conception of “Flow” will recognize that matching skill level to challenge level is one of the most crucial elements in facilitating flow-state.

 

Roleplaying is a bit like the previously mentioned tools of visualization and gaming in that it’s a way to have a low-cost rehearsal. If one has someone with whom one can engage in such a roleplay, than one also has someone to help make you aware of your inner critic and its deleterious effects. And that brings us to the final tool:

 

 

1.) Have a spouse, partner, and or confidant: In “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” Robert Sapolsky tells a story of being interviewed by a magazine. He was asked what the number one thing that they could tell their readers about reducing stress.  To which he replied that the most well-established factor in stress reduction is to have a spouse / life partner with whom to share one’s challenges.  Unfortunately, this was a magazine for women business leaders, a significant portion of whom had given up on permanent relationships and families. They, therefore, asked him what else he had.  Still it’s hard to overlook the anxiety-fighting effects of having someone around with whom to share one’s dread.

POEM: River to Sea

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The river twists through a barren landscape.

Filling with flotsam, detritus, and silt,

dragging death downstream,

it will pour into a bright, blue sea.

You should savor that scene,

but your view is from above,

and so you see a shit-colored plume

splaying into the clear, calm waters.

And you fear the shit stain

will spread across the sea.

But it doesn’t.

It seems to settle.

You never knew the clear and calm could

subdue those murky, mucky waters.

BOOK REVIEW: Wired to Grow by Britt Andreatta

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Wired to GrowWired to Grow by Britt Andreatta
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon page

 

This is one of those books that is hard to rate and review. It does a thing well, and if one is looking for a book of its strengths, it’ll serve one well. That thing it does well is to concisely and clearly summarize research in neuroscience relevant to learning new skills. If that is something one is interested in, and one hasn’t done much reading on the subject yet, this book will get one up to speed in just over 100 pages while offering insight into where to go to flesh out what one has learned.

That said, if one has read up on pop-sci neuroscience and /or self-help books applying said research, one is likely to find that this book offers little value-added while lacking the depth and narrative approach of competing works. The latter is particularly intriguing as this is a book about effective learning, and it seems clear that humans like learning through stories. However, Andreatta does little story telling beyond brief mentions of approaches she’s used in her seminars and occasional recaps of the stories of the researchers whose work she’s drawn upon. Some may find this isn’t so bad because it keeps the book compact. Story telling is page intensive. On the other hand, a lack of story-telling means that the material is a bit less prone to stick than it might otherwise be.

The author’s approach to making the material stick is to hang it on a three-phase model (learn-remember-do) and to keep it brief. Many of the chapters consist largely of bullet points, and in places the book feels like a PowerPoint handout. (I’ll let the reader decide whether that’s a good thing or not.)

The book is organized into twenty chapters arranged in five parts. (That tells one a lot about the brevity of chapters, given the book is 102 pp.) The five parts consist of: I.) an overview of neuroscientific fundamentals; II.) a description of research related to the “learn” phase of Andreatta’s model; III.) the same for the “remember” phase; IV.) coverage of the “do” phase; and V.) a section called “design” that helps the reader to apply what they’ve learned in the earlier parts to build approaches to teaching and learning.

There is some useful ancillary material. First, there are many graphics of a variety of types (pictures, line drawings, tables, and graphs) that are nicely drawn and effective. Second, there are “Your Learning Journey” sections interspersed throughout the book. These are one page or less exercises that are designed to help one put one’s learning to use. Thirdly, there is a bibliography that includes crucial reference materials divided by type: i.e. journal / scholarly research, books, journalistic / media accounts, and cited scholars. Finally, there are apparently additional resources accessible online, e.g. downloadable pdf files, but I didn’t investigate these features.

I would recommend this book for those looking for a concise summary of recent developments in neuroscience as they apply to education and learning. If you’re well-read on the subject, however, you might not find that this book delivers much extra. It should be noted that the author is speaking from an educator’s perspective (i.e. not a scientist or psychologist) and readers may find that a plus or not.

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