From "Your Brain Is Not for Thinking/In stressful times, this surprising lesson from neuroscience may help to lessen your anxieties" by psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett (NYT).
November 23, 2020
"Consider what happens when you’re thirsty and drink a glass of water. The water takes about 20 minutes to reach your bloodstream, but you feel less thirsty within mere seconds."
"What relieves your thirst so quickly? Your brain does. It has learned from past experience that water is a deposit to your body budget that will hydrate you, so your brain quenches your thirst long before the water has any direct effect on your blood.
This budgetary account of how the brain works may seem plausible when it comes to your bodily functions. It may seem less natural to view your mental life as a series of deposits and withdrawals.... Every thought you have, every feeling of happiness or anger or awe you experience, every kindness you extend and every insult you bear or sling is part of your brain’s calculations as it anticipates and budgets your metabolic needs.... [E]very mental experience has roots in the physical budgeting of your body. This is one reason physical actions like taking a deep breath, or getting more sleep, can be surprisingly helpful in addressing problems we traditionally view as psychological.... If you feel weary from the pandemic and you’re battling a lack of motivation... [y]our burden may feel lighter if you understand your discomfort as something physical.... [A]cknowledge what your brain is actually doing and take some comfort from it. Your brain is not for thinking. Everything that it conjures, from thoughts to emotions to dreams, is in the service of body budgeting."
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37 comments:
The finding that the brain is not for thinking explains a lot about the NYT.
Your brain is not for thinking/In stressful times....
Seems reasonable. Most of my friends on the left have been stressed for four years.
Women's science.
One of the "other things I learned" while losing 80+lbs some years ago was that the part of your brain that says "thirsty" sounds a lot like "hungry" if you aren't paying attention.
Thus the "drink a glass of water before eating" trope.
-c
Reminds me a bit of the observation that muscle building after exercise comes not directly from the exercise, but from the repair process that follows exercise. In which case, why is the exercise necessary?
Here, feeling better can be the result of anticipating some benefit. In that case, is the benefit really necessary?
The finding that the brain is not for thinking explains a lot about the NYT.
Or any other Democrats.
Your Brain Is Not for Thinking
Actually almost all of a human brain is for thinking; that's why a human brain is 10 to 20 times as big as the brain of a large dog.
Fernandinande said...Actually almost all of a human brain is for thinking; that's why a human brain is 10 to 20 times as big as the brain of a large dog.
Now do humans and dolphins.
She's been on Lex Fridman's podcast twice. Gonna hafta take a listen.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NbdRIVCBqNI&t=5131s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S_AFc_BXht4
Now do the brain and tequila shots.
I body budget, therefore I am.
It must be hard to process all this random and dubious information, Ann. Take a drink of water.
That sounds like the NYT's psychological template for its dissemination of propaganda.
Man is Not a Rational Animal, He is a RATIONALIZING Animal
Robert Heinlein
When I go in for a blood test, if the technician has trouble finding a vein, she gives me a glass of water. After waiting about 30 seconds, she starts probing and usually finds it right away. One time, I expressed surprise that drinking a glass of water could make a difference so fast and she told me that my body absorbs the water that quickly. I not sure why neuroscience so directly contradicts my experience.
Now do humans and dolphins.
It isn’t really about total brain size but encephalization, the ratio of brain mass to total body mass.
It's nice to see this subject out and about. I have been meditating regularly for a bit now. This morning I did a short meditation with the Fitmind app and one of the directions that stuck with me was to consider that "thoughts are inner hearing." Anything to practice some seperation between my thoughts/feelings and myself is helpful. I've wasted a lot of time in my life thinking and reacting as if I am my thoughts and feelings. Not so.
The brain tells us about unique mental states, like feeling anguish. Humans feel anguish over the charred, broken Earth, and the greedy capitalist pig-dogs who have stolen labor from the oppressed.
All the journals say so.
-Chase Weller-Wells (All I Want For Christmas is A Watermelon Revolution)
tam, I’m not sure your phlebotomist is necessarily that much of an expert. In any case that doesn’t refute the point, which is that your body behaves in an anticipatory way.
'I sat with professor Mondelglot, and we examined the brain-cases of Homo Floresiensis, Homo Africanus, and a journalist like myself. I could not tell the difference.
I worried that I would not be able to translate this work of lifetimes into the 3,000 word think-piece which would secure my Pulitzer.'
Chase Weller-Wells ('Gaia Gone Wild' and 'Do Polar Bears Smile?')
'Many journalists, under direct threat of extinction, have banded together in universities, book festivals, and in Washington D.C. to add considerable value to the GDP.'
I'll leave readers with these words from Rigoberta Menchu: 'Comfort the afflicted. Afflict the comfortable. Speak truth to power. Celebrate Science.'
-Chase Weller-Wells (Baby's First Brain-Scan Says It's Gonna Be A Transgender)
"Everything that it conjures, from thoughts to emotions to dreams, is in the service of body budgeting."
Except commenting at Althouse. Off budget.
'Yes, We Should Budget The Economy Like The Brain Budgets The Body'
Seen at BuzzPo, 11:32 am.
J. Farmer said...
Now do humans and dolphins.
It isn’t really about total brain size but encephalization, the ratio of brain mass to total body mass.
And the relative amount of space/mass use for particular functions.
When people go blind for instance other functions start hijacking the area that doesn't get used anymore. Amputees who lose legs have other parts of the body move in on those areas that used to control the legs.
The "we only use 10% of our brains" thing made some bad movies and not much else.
Humans have more space for other things. Our decision making processes, the actual point where we make a decision seems to be tied directly to our emotional centers. It is these emotions that we seem to have a much wider variety of. Executive functioning probably has to do with our ability to sort these emotional cues.
It isn’t really about total brain size but encephalization, the ratio of brain mass to total body mass.
The highest encephalizations after humans are in sea mammals (dolphins are about half-way between humans and dogs), partly because the weight of a large, simple brain doesn't matter as much in water as it would on land; a lot of the brain is used for processing sonar; and their brain hemispheres sleep at different times ~ like two brains.
Sounds like bullshit to me.
The "we only use 10% of our brains" thing made some bad movies and not much else.
In rebuttal, I submit Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life ;)
"Sounds like bullshit to me."
On stilts. When steam engines drove the economy, Freud described the workings of the mind in terms of pressures that built up and were released by actions. But technology has moved on, and now the brain is a calculating machine.
Fernandinande said...Actually almost all of a human brain is for thinking; that's why a human brain is 10 to 20 times as big as the brain of a large dog.
William50: Now do humans and dolphins.
I won't go into details, but I've had a first hand experience with dolphins in the ocean that has convinced me they do, indeed, think.
Her 2017 How Emotions are Made is an interesting book, well worth reading. She mentions "body budgeting" quite a bit but I didn't think she made a clear connection between it and emotions.
You and your brain.
Funny how these well-educated scientists don't seen the distinction drawn by their own text. There is a 'you' and the 'you' has a brain. There is no hidden, inner 'you' hiding among the neurons that make up the brain. So far, so good. Then we see this:
"Every thought you have, every feeling of happiness or anger or awe you experience, every kindness you extend and every insult you bear or sling is part of your brain’s calculations as it anticipates and budgets your metabolic needs."
Funny how the 'you' slides into 'your brain's calculations,' but that's the first step on the road to perdition. Talking about 'calculations' makes the subject of discussion a person's intentions, desires, objectives. If that's what you want to talk about, chemistry (even biochemistry) isn't going to advance the conversation. Molecules don't have intentions. If you doubt that, try asking the lump of silicon and copper you are using to type a comment on this blog how it's feeling today and what it wants to do tomorrow.
Lots of conceptual confusion here, but at root it's the difference between parts and wholes (the mereological fallacy): the brain is a part of the whole person, and it's the person who does the thinking, feeling, intending, etc. Biochemistry provides a description of the whole person, but its powers of description are limited by its axioms which treat as real only the purely physical and measurable. A lot gets lost when reality is so reduced.
Neuroscience isn't necessary to the realzation that the brain is the reason we feel an immediate relief from thirst, that part was already obvious, but it's necessary to sort out the physiological details.
My father's thirsty switch has been failing for over 8 years--about the time his memory loss affected his functioning. Dehydration (because he's pig-headed and ignored me) led to muscle cramps (and later a compression fracture). He took (very few) ibuprofen, which gave him a bleeding ulcer, which nearly killed him. I found a few things he'll drink more than a couple sips of. I have to prod him to drink with dinner instead of after.
she told me that my body absorbs the water that quickly
More likely, the cardio-vascular system reacts to something new in the stomach.
I read that the water in milk stays in the body about 50% longer than water alone, longer than other drinks. It didn't say where it stays.
I've long theorized that artificial sweeteners fool the body into thinking it was getting all those wonderful sugar calories. Then, later, when the body can't find those calories, the brain demands its calculated deficit be made up. Thus overeating.
Once, desperately homesick for the South, I switched from Diet Coke to sweet tea but lost weight. Didn't last because I have an unhealthy attachment to Diet Coke. Do you figure this is of one with the neuroscience?
Neuroscience is just brains thinking about brains.
A brain, examining a brain, is both subject and object. Seems as though there could be a problem there.
Antonio Damaso, call your office.
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