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FOLK NEUROSCIENCE Popular misconceptions
■ The “left-brain” is rational, the “right-brain” is creative
The hemispheres have different specialisations (the left usually has key language areas, for example) but there is no clear rational-creative split and you need both hemispheres to be successful at either. You can no more do right-brain thinking than you can do rear-brain thinking.
■ Dopamine is a pleasure chemical
Dopamine has many functions in the brain, from supporting concentration to regulating the production of breast milk. Even in its most closely associated functioning it is usually considered to be involved in motivation (wanting) rather than the feeling of pleasure itself.
■ Low serotonin causes depression
A concept almost entirely promoted by pharmaceutical companies in the 1980s and 90s to sell serotonin-enhancing drugs like Prozac. No consistent evidence for it.
■ Video games, TV violence, porn or any other social spectre of the moment “rewires the brain”
Everything “rewires the brain” as the brain works by making and remaking connections. This is often used in a contradictory fashion to suggest that the brain is both particularly susceptible to change but once changed, can’t change back.
■ We have no control over our brain but we can control our mind
The mind and the brain are the same thing described in different ways and they make us who we are. Trying to suggest one causes the other is like saying wetness causes water.
— Vaughan Bell debunks the myths of “folk neuroscience.” Also see how neuroscience became popular culture. (via explore-blog)
(Source: , via explore-blog)
The Showmanship of Lyndon B. JohnsonLBJ’s helicopter was a big hit on the 1948 Senate campaign trail. Especially after he devised a tactic to keep people from wandering off before he gave his speech. According to Robert Caro, before beginning his speech LBJ would say:
“My good pilot Joe tells me it’ll be too dangerous if I take off with him because we wouldn’t have enough power to clear those 30,000-volt high-tension wires over there. He’s going to have to take off alone. And it’s going to be mighty tight. I just hope and pray he’ll be able to make it.”
Most people stuck around.
—Caro, Robert. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent. New York: Vintage Books, 1990, p. 249.From the LBJ Library
This reminded me of the media studies classes I took in school, and of all the discussions we had about how violence is one of the oldest forms of entertainment. In that vein (pun intended, and I’m not sorry):
We’re more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can’t give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They’re all blood, you see.
-The Player, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” — Tom Stoppard
Do We Really Behave Badly on Social Media?
We recently studied the tone of life on social networking sites and found that 85% of social-network-using adults say their experience on the sites is that people are mostly kind. That compares with 69% of social-network-using teens who say their experience is that peers are mostly kind to each other in social network spaces.
We also found:
- 68% of SNS users (adults) said they had an experience that made them feel good about themselves.
- 61% had experiences that made them feel closer to another person. (Many said they had both experiences.)
- 39% of SNS-using adults say they frequently see acts of generosity by other SNS users and another 36% say they sometimes see others behaving generously and helpfully. By comparison, 18% of SNS-using adults say they see helpful behavior “only once in a while” and 5% say they never see generosity exhibited by others on social networking sites.
And
- 15% of adult SNS users said they had an experience on the site that ended their friendship with someone.
- 12% of adult SNS users had an experience that resulted in a face-to-face argument or confrontation with someone.
- 11% of adult SNS users had an experience on the site that caused a problem with their family.
- 3% of SNS-using adults said they had gotten into a physical fight with someone based on an experience they had on the site.
- 3% of adult SNS users said their use of the site had gotten them in trouble at work because of something that happened on the site.
For more on the social networking climate of adults and teens, see http://pewrsr.ch/zRQVuI and http://pewrsr.ch/rUmUXH
What do you all think of this?
