Right Brain, Left Brain
Right Brain, Left Brain
The right brain controls the left side of the body and the left brain controls the right side of the body. The right brain is the more creative or emotional hemisphere and the left brain is the analytical and judgmental hemisphere. Anything that is new or not familiar to an individual is right brain dominant. Anything that is familiar is left brain dominant.Along with right and left brain there are different parts of the brain. The frontal lobe controls your personality, the temporal lobe deals with short and long term memory, the parietal lobe is the lobe of the hand, and the occipital lobe, the very back part of the head, controls vision.There are specific activities that may stimulate the right or left brain.Activities that stimulate the left brain are solving crossword or word search puzzles, performance of learned tasks, language usage, both comprehensive and expressive, analytical information, problem solving, and recalling new information. Geometric or spatial memory, hand gestures, writing one's name, classifications of pictures or words into categories, recalling complex narratives, recognizing someone you have met, and name recognition are also all left brain activities.Activities that stimulate the right brain are emotional issues, the creative process, recalling memorized lists, any unfamiliar event or activity, and holding the attention span. Seeing or feeling different sizes, seeing different colors, attention exercises involving timing, seeing unfamiliar faces, and meeting someone new also stimulate the right brain..You are not dead until your brain is dead. Your brain needs two things to survive: fuel and activation. Fuel comes in the form of oxygen and glucose. Glucose comes from the food you eat, and oxygen comes from the air you breathe. The normal inspiration/expiration ratio should be exhalation twice as long as inhalation. That is to say - breathe out twice as long as you breathe in.There are also specific treatment modalities that a clinician may utilize to increase function or activation of the right or left brain. One example is big letters made up of small letters. If you look at the small letters you will fire right cerebellum to left brain. If you look at the big letters you will fire left cerebellum to right brain.Auditory stimulation (listening to nature sounds, clicks of a metronome, or Mozart in a major key) in the left ear comes up through the brain stem over to the right brain and vice versa for the right ear.Visual stimulation from the left side in a checkerboard pattern using different colors comes up through the optic pathway to the brain stem and up to the right brain. The T.E.N.S. unit set at subthreshold stimulates large diameter nerves which fire up to the cerebellum and to the opposite brain.Dr. Michael L. Johnson is a Board Certified Chiropractic Neurologist, one of only 700 in the country, with over twenty years of experience in private practice. He has completed over 850 hours of neurological studies and 3800 hours of postgraduate education. His book "What Do You Do When the Medications Don't Work? - A Non-Drug Treatment of Dizziness, Migraine Headaches, Fibromyalgia, and Other Chronic Conditions" outlines his groundbreaking work in the treatment of chronic pain and is a national best-seller. It is available wherever books are sold.
Subconscious Drives Make You Unhappy
Subconscious Drives Make You Unhappy
Feelings and emotions are nerve impulses.The feel of paper and the flush of shame. Feelings and emotions are relayed as nerve impulses. Nerve endings or sensors report on feelings from tissues all over the body. These sensations include sharp pain, burning pain, cool or warm temperature, itching, muscle contraction, joint movements, soft touch, mechanical stress, tickling, flushing, hunger and thirst. Electrical excitation of certain parts of the temporal lobe, cause intense fear to be produced in patients. Excitation of other parts caused feelings of isolation, loneliness, disgust, or even pleasure. Out of the millions of nerve fibres which relayed these messages, the mind differentiated the active nerve impulses finely to sense feelings and emotions. The mind recognized a combination of inputs to feel hunger, thirst, or much else.Nerve impulses make you feel good, or awfulWhile complex mechanisms were used to identify pain, or itching, how could the "pleasant, or unpleasant" quality of nerve impulses be explained? Why should the universal experience of pain be wretched and pleasure agreeable? What kind of code could the mind use to differentiate between nice and awful? The book The Intuitive Algorithm (IA) explains how mere nerve impulses could achieve this. That view was founded on a crucial new insight. That instant pattern recognition ? intuition - could underpin the processes of the mind. This enabled the nervous system to instantly recognize combinations of inputs. This understanding revealed the logic behind the mystery of nice and awful.Combinatorial codingOver the ages, science had speculated on the nature of human intelligence. The IA concept was a new view. That the mind recognized objects and events through a neural combinatorial coding process. This recognition process was recently acknowledged by science for olfactory neurons. A Nobel Prize acknowledged that discovery in 2004. For IA, the vision went further. The massive memories of nerve cells for combinations lay behind the immense wisdom of the mind. These memories were both inherited and acquired. These memories enabled nerve cells to finely differentiate between combinations of sensations to recognize objects and events. Intuition was the logical elimination routine, which could instantly sift a single contextual answer from this immense knowledge base. When you reached into your pocket and identified a key, just by touch, you used this process.A seamless pattern recognition processSo, the mind received, at the input end, kaleidoscopic combinations of millions of sensations. From these, it instantly recognized events. Recognized events triggered contextual feelings. Feelings triggered allied drives. Drives fired sequences of remembered muscle movements. The circuit closed. 100 billion nerve cells recognized events and delivered motor output, within a bare span of 20 milliseconds. The time between the shadow and the scream. All this was enabled by massive memories in neurons and intuition. So, from input to output, the mind was a seamless pattern recognition system.Intelligent drives.The current feeling dictated purpose at the highest levels. A hierarchy of intelligences followed through. At the second level, learned movements were inserted. At the lowest level, fine motor coordination delivered the final output ? whether a spoken word, or a written line. A feeling expressed a purpose. A feeling of fear could dictate an escape drive, whose purpose was to achieve safety. That demanded instant responses, varying across species. A deer bounded away. A bird took flight. A fish swam off. While the activities of running, flying and swimming differed, they achieved the same objective of escaping. Such activities could not be stupid. Escape was hardly possible by heading into the predator. Increasing the distance from danger demanded uncommon cleverness. That objective could even be achieved by slipping into a safe sanctuary, inaccessible to the predator. Like the underside of a rock. The system received intelligent contributions down to the lowest levels. Purpose was expressed as feelings at the highest level and remembered drives operated at lower levels.A drive, which assembled combinatorial memories of contextThe nerve cell memories, which powered the intelligence were both inherited and acquired. This IA concept of drive channel memories was supported by research. The record of cortical activity, while learning skills, remained a mystery to science. PET scans revealed that as a person learned a skill, purposeful cortical activity was initially high. But, with learning, it gradually reduced. Why did practiced effort require less cortical activity? Why should practice need less neural interactions? Surely, highly skilled activities should have more cortical neural traffic? Science remained in the dark. However, for IA, cortical purpose differed from lower level drives. Mastering a skill needed attention. Landmarks had to be identified and remembered. Attention increased cortical activity. The combinations of context were recorded by the drive channel. Learning recorded memory at these lower levels. The cortex laboured to teach the drive channel. The memories of the drive channel neurons later responded appropriately, without cortical intervention.Largely unconscious drives.The drive channel initially learned by recording context. That was when you first learned to drive a car. As the mind learned, combinations of contextual memories were encoded into the memories of drive channel neurons. Over the years, millions more contexts would be added. Shortcuts, early lane changes, responses to traffic snarls. Because the channel neurons remembered, it was no longer necessary to highlight a landmark through attention. Increased cortical firing was not needed to indicate context. Normal perceptions were adequate. The channel remembered and managed habitual activities, leaving you free to worry about bills, on your drive home. Without conscious management, the drive channel acted through learned memories. But those memories also had inherited components. It was these components, which responded to feelings and emotions. These drives also acted at a subconscious level.The historic basis of drives.Purposeful drives had antecedents from the beginnings of life. The Hydra was a primeval example of such a mechanism. It was a branched tubular animal. A netlike arrangement of neurons was interposed between its outside and its internal digestive cavity. A stimulus applied to any part of its body resulted in contraction or bending of its tubular body and its tentacles. The Hydra moved about with this simple nerve net, varied its length and used its tentacles to push food particles into its mouth. Occasional strong contractions of the whole animal served to expel indigestible material from the same orifice. From the beginnings of history, nature had devised ongoing drives, which enabled essential activities - to move about, swallow, or expel food. Across millions of years, more sophisticated feelings and emotions developed. Inherited memories generated a far wider range of drives to meet the needs of these emotions. Drives to nurture the young, to lie in the grass, or to play in the water. But the essentials remained. Drives to seek out and accept, or to avoid and escape.The agreeable and disagreeable quality.Medical texts reported that the pleasure emotion was triggered from the septal areas of the brain for rats. The animals were observed when they were able to self stimulate themselves, by pressing a lever, through electrodes implanted in the septal area. They continued pressing the lever till they were exhausted, preferring the effect of stimulation to normally pleasurable activities such as consuming food. The pleasure emotion impelled the animal to repeatedly seek that stimulus. On the other hand, pain was felt in two waves, separated by an interval of a few tenths of a second. The first was sharp and localized. The second wave was diffuse and still more disagreeable. So, also, after an operation called lobotomy, the presence of pain was no longer distressing to the patient who would say that the pain was still there, but it did not "hurt." Pain was divided into a sensation and a disagreeable element. That element was, in reality, a drive to avoid the stimulus.Pleasant and unpleasant drives.The primitive Hydra, moved about, swallowed, or spewed out food. Its drives worked to approach, accept, reject, or escape. Millenniums later, the control systems were more sophisticated. But, humans traveled the seas, enjoyed delicious meals and occasionally became sea sick. Pleasant emotions generated a drive to approach and accept. The rat kept pressing the lever. Such emotions made you feel good. Unpleasant emotions generated a drive to escape, or reject the stimulus. The second wave of pain was a drive triggered by cortical recognition of pain. That feeling triggered a drive to escape. That drive was disagreeable. It made you want to run away. When the drive was disconnected in lobotomy, pain became just a sensation. Drives operated at subconscious levels. When you reach out to hug a child, or hurry away from a gruesome sight, remember, a subconscious drive is in charge.Abraham Thomas is the author of The Intuitive Algorithm, a book, which suggests that intuition is a pattern recognition algorithm. This leads to an understanding of the powerful forces that control your mind. The ebook version is available at http://www.intuition.co.in. The book may be purchased only in India. The website, provides a free movie and a walk through to explain the ideas.
The Special Secret of Intuition
The Special Secret of Intuition
The limbic systemNerve impulses were known to relay feelings and emotions - whether they be the feel of silk, or the flush of shame. Sensors, or nerve endings reported on feelings from tissues all over the body. These included sharp pain, burning pain, cool or warm temperature, itching, muscle contraction, joint movements, soft touch, mechanical stress, tickling, flushing, hunger and thirst. Electrical excitation of certain parts of the temporal lobe, caused intense fear to be produced in patients. Excitation of other parts caused feelings of isolation, loneliness, disgust, or even pleasure. Out of millions of possible combinations of relayed nerve impulses from the limbic system, the seat of emotions, the mind differentiated the current combination to sense feelings and emotions. The ruling combination made you feel anger, fear, or shame.The limbic system controls.More often than not, these feelings and emotions controlled you. Did your wishes, or the limbic system finally decide your actions? This was easily verified by testing, say, your ability to hold up your hand. Of course, the hand obeyed your wish while sitting alone in a room. But, it would be frozen in place in, say, a theatre. Fear of public opinion decided the issue. The limbic system decided that it was not appropriate. It was the same when you first wished to jump off the high diving board. Fear of falling decided "NO!" The limbic system made you rigid. There were so many situations, when emotions ruled, while your wishes waited in the wings. Scientists reported that such responses of the mind occurred within a bare 20 milliseconds. The nervous system processed all available information and commanded the muscles to be frozen in just that span of time.The holistic character of the mind.The system, with over a hundred billion neurons, processed the information from input to output in just half a second. All your knowledge was evaluated. Walter Freeman, the famous neurobiologist, defined this amazing ability. "The cognitive guys think it's just impossible to keep throwing everything you've got into the computation every time. But, that is exactly what the brain does. Consciousness is about bringing your entire history to bear on your next step, your next breath, your next moment." The mind was holistic. It evaluated all its knowledge for the next activity. How could so much information be processed so quickly?Combinatorial codingThe mind received kaleidoscopic combinations of millions of sensations. Of these, smells were reported to be recognized through a combinatorial coding process, where nerve cells recognized combinations. If a nerve cell had dendritic inputs, identified as A, B, C and so on to Z, it could then fire, when it received inputs at ABC, or DEF. It recognized those combinations. The cell could identify ABC and not ABD. It would be inhibited for ABD. This recognition process was recently reported by science for olfactory neurons. In the experiment scientists reported that even slight changes in chemical structure activated different combinations of receptors. Thus, octanol smelled like oranges, but the similar compound octanoic acid smelled like sweat. A Nobel Prize acknowledged that discovery in 2004.Nerve cell memoriesCombinatorial codes were extensively used by nature. The four "letters" in the genetic code ? A, C, G and T ? were used in combinations for the creation of a nearly infinite number of genetic sequences. The book, The Intuitive Algorithm, (IA), discusses the deeper implications of this coding discovery. Animals could differentiate between millions of smells. Dogs could quickly sniff a few footprints of a person and determine accurately which way the person was walking. The animal's nose could detect the relative odour strength difference between footprints only a few feet apart, to determine the direction of a trail. Smell was identified through remembered combinations. If a nerve cell had just 26 inputs from A to Z, it could receive millions of possible combinations of inputs. The average neuron had thousands of inputs. For IA, millions of nerve cells, could have galactic memories for combinations. This could enable the mind to recognize patterns in the environment.A pattern recognition problem.IA disputed the assumption of most scientists that neural interactions were computations - maths, or logic based. Because, no formula could compute the loss of a loved one and feel the pain. The elegance of the mind could never be explained by computations, or by convoluted reasoning chains. But, pattern recognition could be infinitely subtle. Unfortunately, the recognition of subtle patterns posed formidable problems. The difficulty was an exponential growth of the recognition search path. The problems in the diagnosis of diseases was typical. Normally, many shared symptoms were presented by a multitude of diseases. For example, pain, or fever could be indicated for many diseases. Each symptom pointed to several diseases. When searching for the target disease, the first selected ailment with the first presented symptom could lack the second symptom. So, the back and forth searches expanded exponentially as the database of diseases increased in size. That made the process absurdly long drawn ? theoretically, even years of search, for extensive databases. So rapid pattern recognition could never be imagined.An elimination algorithm.But, industry strength pattern recognition was feasible. IA introduced an algorithm, which could instantly recognize patterns in extended databases. The key was to evaluate the whole database, using elimination, not selection. Every member of the database was individually coded for elimination in the context of each answer. For disease recognition, if an answer indicated a symptom, IA eliminated all diseases devoid of the symptom. If the symptom was absent, IA eliminated all diseases which always exhibited the symptom. Diseases, which randomly presented the symptom were retained in both cases. Every answer eliminated, narrowing the search to reach diagnosis. When several parallel answers were received, recognition was instant. IA acted with the speed of a simple recalculation on a spreadsheet, to recognize a disease, identify a case law or diagnose the problems of a complex machine. It was instant, holistic, and logical. The website www.intuition.co.in and the book explain IA in detail. Real time pattern recognition was practical. Elimination was the key. And, intuition used elimination.Elimination ? inhibition ? to recognize.Elimination was switching off - inhibition. Nerve cells were known to extensively inhibit the activities of other cells to highlight context. With access to millions of sensory inputs, the nervous system instantly inhibited ? eliminated trillions of combinations to zero in on the right pattern. The process stoutly used "No" answers. If a patient did not have pain, thousands of possible diseases could be ignored. If a patient could just walk into the surgery, a doctor could overlook a wide range of illnesses. Elimination was the pivotal key, which evaluated vast combinatorial memories. Medical texts reported that the mind had a hierarchy of intelligences, which performed independent tasks. For example, there was an association region, which recognized a pair of scissors using the context of its feel. If you injured this region, you could still feel the scissors with your eyes closed, but you would not recognize it as scissors. You still felt the context, but you would not recognize the object. So, intuition could enable nerve cells in association regions to recognize objects. Medical research reported many such recognition regions.The mind ? seamless pattern recognition.A pattern recognition algorithm, intuition enabled the finite intelligences in the minds of living things to respond holistically within the 20 millisecond time span. These intelligences acted serially. The first intelligence converted the kaleidoscopic combinations of sensory perceptions from the environment into nerve impulses. The second intelligence recognized these impulses as objects and events. The third intelligence translated the recognized events into feelings. A fourth translated feelings into intelligent drives. A feeling of fear could dictate an escape drive, whose purpose was to achieve safety. That demanded instant translation into responsive actions, varying across species. A deer bounded away. A bird took flight. A fish swam off. While the activities of running, flying and swimming differed, they achieved the same objective of escaping. Half a second for a 100 billion nerve cells to use context to eliminate irrelevance and deliver motor output. The time between the shadow and the scream. So, from input to output, the mind was a seamless pattern recognition machine, powered by the key secret of intuition ? contextual elimination, from massive acquired and inherited combinatorial memories in nerve cells.Abraham Thomas is the author of The Intuitive Algorithm, a book, which suggests that intuition is a pattern recognition algorithm. This leads to an understanding of the powerful forces that control your mind. The ebook version is available at http://www.intuition.co.in - The book may be purchased only in India. The website, provides a free movie and a walk through to explain the ideas.