Secrets of the Mind

At the very end of the class discussion today the idea of kinship was brought up as well as the idea of being able to recognize the differences in one’s reality, in someone’s loved ones. In the Twilight Zone-esqe story that Prichard told, the idea of coming home and having a pet look, feel and act the same, and yet have this strong sense that the pet is not the same pet. Despite the fact that the pet would respond to the same cues (such as its name or the tricks that you’ve taught it), there would still be this overall feeling of difference, that something is simply not right. This idea and the comments that students had (such as the comment about having family move to a new location and then going home, knowing that it is still your family but having the overall feeling of difference, of change, of not recognizing parts of your world) reminds me of a video that I watched in class in Psychology 101 (Secrets of the Mind with Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran). The video introduced a man, who after some form of head trauma, returned home from the hospital months later and felt that it was not his home. He recognized his parents, his house, his belongings, but he was completely convinced that his parents were not his parents and his house was not his house. He believed that his parents were actors or ‘imposters’ as he called them. He would speak to his ‘parents’ as if they were imposters about his ‘real parents’ (saying things like “my real father wouldn’t have said that”). Interestingly enough the young man would recognize his parents on the phone, so the ‘imposter’ could leave the room, call the son and the son would believe that he was now talking to his real parents. Ramachandran used this special case to delve into the human mind, trying to figure out what exactly it was that had changed in the patient’s brain due to the damage. Ramachandran concluded that the part of the brain that is responsible for recognizing faces, kin and companions, is separate from actually perceiving the face (which is the amygdala, the basic emotion house of your brain, which in this case processes the emotions of what you see). I was absolutely fascinated with this case study, listen to the young man try to key in and understand why exactly he thought his parents were imposters. It was interesting to see that the young man had all the same memories of his parents but still didn’t believe that the ‘imposters’ could really be his parents. (another talk about the same case http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html)

A second topic that was touched on in class as well as in the third part of the Technopolypse video was the idea of omnipresence. This, once again, immediately made me thing of the same video (I love when I actually feel like I am learning things from classes, when things come up again and I can relate it to another topic of discussion) but a different case study. Ramachandran did another similar case study that addressed the topic of spiritual feelings and a certain part of the brain. According to research on people with epilepsy or people who simply have seizures in the front left temporal lobe of the brain, tend to get out of body experiences, strong religious feelings, and in some cases the belief of being abducted by aliens. In the Secrets of the Mind video Ramachandran did a study on a man who had seizures in his temporal lobe that caused him to hallucinate and feel spiritual. After a seizure he could literally feel the grass, trees, flowers, every single thing around him. The man felt like God, that he was God, and as he stated in the video, “No one is going to call the police on God”. The man felt that everything was a part of him and that he was a part of everything. The left frontal lobe is the specific location where spiritual feelings come from, and people are researching devices that will specifically stimulate that part of a person’s brain, allowing them to have permanent access to these ‘God like feelings’. Is it possible that extremely religious people, those who believe that God speaks to them, are simply using more of their left frontal lobe and therefore getting more spiritual thoughts? Can an atheist be turned into a religious person by merely using electromagnetic pulses aimed at that part of their brain? Is the idea of God or the ability of being omnipresent completely and 100% something that remains in the human brain? In that case, what is God? http://www.everythingispointless.com/2007/02/ramachandran-temporal-lobes-god.html