Neuroscience
A kind thanks to Mind Hacks for their post bringing attention to this narrative article:
Gray Area: Thinking With a Damaged Brain
by Floyd Skloot
Lost Magazine
Snippet:
-
Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain
- A Laughing Crowd Changes The Way Your Brain Processes Insults
We usually think of laughter as a sound of joy and mirth, but in certain contexts, such as when it accompanies an insult, it takes on a negative meaning, signaling contempt and derision, especially in a group situation. Most of us probably know from experience...
- Complainers Kill Neurons! How To Save Yourself From This Menace.
"That pain you feel listening to complainers? It's real enough to peel away neurons from your brain and render it pretty much useless, reports Inc." [That pain you feel reading ridiculous made-up articles about the brain? It's real enough to...
- Slinkster Time For The Brain!
If it's March, then it's time for Brain Awareness Week - a creation of the Dana Foundation a number of years ago. Brain Awareness Week website. If you work in neuroscience (broadly defined), do something this week to make the general public more...
- What Is Neuropsychology?
A number of years ago, I wrote a short piece about the profession of neuropsychology for one of those regional hospital and medical-center monthly newspapers (the kind you can find stacked up at entrances to various medical facilities). I revised it a...
- National Poetry Month
Coupla cool podcasts in honor of National Poetry Month: PoetCast, from the Academy of American Poets. So far, there are a few poetry readings, and some poets talk about poems by others. Knopf has expanded its Poem A Day project for this year's National...
Neuroscience
A Duel
A kind thanks to Mind Hacks for their post bringing attention to this narrative article:
Gray Area: Thinking With a Damaged Brain
by Floyd Skloot
Lost Magazine
Snippet:
"Poet Peter Davison has noticed the resonant irony of the phrase "an insult to the brain" and made use of it in his poem, "The Obituary Writer." Thinking about the suicide of John Berryman, the heavily-addicted poet whose long-expected death in 1972 followed years of public behavior symptomatic of brain damage, Davison writes that "his hullabaloos/of falling-down drunkenness were an insult to the brain." In this poem, toying with the meaning of the phrase, Davison suggests that Berryman's drinking may have been an insult to his brain, technically speaking, but that watching him was, for a friend, another kind of brain insult. He has grasped the fatuousness of the phrase as a medical term, its inherent judgment of contempt, and made use of it for its poetic ambiguity.
"But I have become enamored of the idea that my brain has been insulted by a virus. I used it as motivation. There is a long tradition of avenging insults through duels or counter-insults, through litigation, through the public humiliation of the original insult. So I write. I avenge myself on an insult that was meant, it feels, to silence me by compromising my word-finding capacity, my ability to concentrate and remember, to spell or conceptualize, to express myself, to think.
The duel is fought over and over. I have developed certain habits that enable me to work — a team of seconds, to elaborate this metaphor of a duel. I must be willing to write slowly, to skip or leave blank spaces where I cannot find words that I seek, compose in fragments and without an overall ordering principle or imposed form. I explore and make discoveries in my writing now, never quite sure where I am going but willing to let things ride and discover later how they all fit together. Every time I finish an essay or poem or piece of fiction, it feels as though I have faced down the insult."
-
Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain
- A Laughing Crowd Changes The Way Your Brain Processes Insults
We usually think of laughter as a sound of joy and mirth, but in certain contexts, such as when it accompanies an insult, it takes on a negative meaning, signaling contempt and derision, especially in a group situation. Most of us probably know from experience...
- Complainers Kill Neurons! How To Save Yourself From This Menace.
"That pain you feel listening to complainers? It's real enough to peel away neurons from your brain and render it pretty much useless, reports Inc." [That pain you feel reading ridiculous made-up articles about the brain? It's real enough to...
- Slinkster Time For The Brain!
If it's March, then it's time for Brain Awareness Week - a creation of the Dana Foundation a number of years ago. Brain Awareness Week website. If you work in neuroscience (broadly defined), do something this week to make the general public more...
- What Is Neuropsychology?
A number of years ago, I wrote a short piece about the profession of neuropsychology for one of those regional hospital and medical-center monthly newspapers (the kind you can find stacked up at entrances to various medical facilities). I revised it a...
- National Poetry Month
Coupla cool podcasts in honor of National Poetry Month: PoetCast, from the Academy of American Poets. So far, there are a few poetry readings, and some poets talk about poems by others. Knopf has expanded its Poem A Day project for this year's National...