Time Machine Brain: dancing dendrites

Paul Bouissac in "Three Mini-reviews: Focus on the Brain" quotes from Donald Pfaff Brain Arousal and Information Theory: Neural and Genetic Mechanisms

Brains are foretelling devices and their predictive powers emerge from the various rhythms they perpetually generate. At the same time, brain activity can be tuned to become an ideal observer of the environment, due to an organized system of rhythms.

I like to juxtapose this with the words from Adam Anderson as quoted by Jenny Lass in a piece of scientific journalism "Meditation can change brain function, psychology study says. Findings appear in December issue of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience"

"The prefrontal cortex allows us to mentally time travel. It's an amazing capacity," he [Anderson] explained "but it can have some side effects." The ability to learn from the past and predict the future is useful but it can also cause us to worry about what has already happened or what is yet to come.

Rhythm. Modulation. Meditation. "Training your brain to switch off its default desire to ruminate [...]"

And so for day 432
18.02.2008