"Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature."
--Nassim Talib, Antifragile

Coming Fall 2014

Downtime

As an insomniac who consistently wakes up after four hours sleep, I was interested to discover the habit was shared by the people of medieval Europe:

"By adulthood, most of us have adopted the habit of sleeping through the night and staying awake for most or all of the day—but this may not be ideal for our mental health and is certainly not the only way people have slept throughout history. In somewhat the same way that hobbits in Tolkien's Middle Earth enjoy a first and second breakfast, people living without electricity in preindustrial Europe looked forward to a first and second sleep divided by about an hour of crepuscular activity. During that hour, they would pray, relieve themselves, smoke tobacco, have sex and even visit neighbors. Some researchers have proposed that people are also physiologically inclined to snooze during a 2 P.M. to 4 P.M. “nap zone”—or what some might call the afternoon slump—because the brain prefers to toggle between sleep and wake more than once a day. As far back as the first century B.C. the Romans regularly took midafternoon breaks, which they called meridiari from the Latin for midday. Under the influence of Roman Catholicism, noon became known as sexta (the sixth hour, according to their clocks), a time for rest and prayer. Eventually sexta morphed into siesta."

So reports Ferris Jabr in Scientific American (10/15/13)-- "Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime."  The answer is that learning, memory, even our sense of identity is highly dependent on sleep, rest and downtime. Even simple daydreaming stimulates what is called the "default mode network" (DMN), which coordinates and integrates communication between disparate regions of the brain. 

The article notes that the daily practice of meditation has proved especially effective in this regard:

"Numerous studies have shown that meditation strengthens connections between regions of the default mode network, for example, and can help people learn to more effectively shift between the DMN and circuits that are most active when we are consciously fixated on a task. Over time expert meditators may also develop a more intricately wrinkled cortex—the brain’s outer layer, which is necessary for many of our most sophisticated mental abilities, like abstract thought and introspection. Meditation appears to increase the volume and density of the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped area of the brain that is absolutely crucial for memory; it thickens regions of the frontal cortex that we rely on to rein in our emotions; and it stymies the typical wilting of brain areas responsible for sustaining attention as we get older.

"Just how quickly meditation can noticeably change the brain and mind is not yet clear. But a handful of experiments suggest that a couple weeks of meditation or a mere 10 to 20 minutes of mindfulness a day can whet the mind—if people stick with it. Likewise, a few studies indicate that meditating daily is ultimately more important than the total hours of meditation over one’s lifetime." 

Why Read?

"If a book bores you, leave it.  Don't read it because it is famous, don't read it because it is modern, don't read a book because it is old...continue to look for personal happiness, personal enjoyment."
~Jorge Luis Borges

In Memory of 9/11

"Fanaticism is idolatry; and it has the moral evil of idolatry in it; that is, a fanatic worships something which is the creation of his own desire, and thus even his self-devotion in support of it is only an apparent self-devotion; for in fact it is making the parts of his nature or his mind, which he least values, offer sacrifice to that which he most values.  The moral fault, as it appears to me, is the idolatry--the setting up of some idea which is most kindred to our own minds, and the putting it in the place of Christ, who alone cannot be made an idol and inspire idolatry, because He combines all ideas of perfection and exhibits them in their just harmony and combination.  Now in my own mind, by its natural tendency--that is, taking my mind at its best--truth and justice would be the idols I should follow; and they would be idols, for they would not supply all the food which the mind wants, and whilst worshipping them, reverence and humility and tenderness might very likely be forgotten.  But Christ Himself includes at once truth and justice and all these other qualities too... Narrow-mindedness tends to wickedness, because it does not extend its watchfulness to every part of our moral nature, and the neglect fosters wickedness in the parts so neglected."

--Thomas Arnold, 1836

Anger

Peter Jones summarizes the ancients' views of man's most dangerous emotion:

"Ancients took a mixed view of the emotion. ‘Anger’ is the first word of Western literature — the anger of Achilles, with which Homer’s Iliad starts. Even though it results in the death of his dearest friend Patroclus, Achilles admits that there is pleasure in it, ‘sweeter than the dripping of honey’. The Stoics, regarding control of the emotions as the key to virtue, were entirely hostile to it. Seneca (4 BC–AD 65) paints a fine picture of the angry man: devoid of self-control, forgetful of decency, unmindful of loyalties, deaf to reason and advice, excited by trivialities, incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, his whole face crimson with blood, lips quivering, teeth clenched, joints cracking. Even righteous indignation is disallowed. 

"Plutarch (AD 46–120) added useful tips. The angry man, he suggests, should have a mirror handy, to see how ridiculous he looks. He should learn the pipe and play himself a soothing tune when he boils over. Since, like the panicking occupants of a burning house or a ship in a storm at sea, he loses all judgment, he must avoid situations where he knows his anger will explode.

"Aristotle swam against the tide. An advocate of the ‘mean’ in all things, he regards anger as just another passion which it is foolish to indulge in too much or too little. The irascible man, flying off the handle at the slightest provocation, or nursing his wrath to keep it warm, is a danger to himself and others. The sensible man is angry for the right reason, with the right people, at the right time."

Go Deeper

Portrait by Daniela Grapa

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” 
~Francis Bacon

"There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain."
~George Braque