The crucial new idea is that there are two different neural and psychological systems that interact to turn children into adults. Over the past two centuries, and even more over the past generation, the developmental timing of these two systems has changed. That, in turn, has profoundly changed adolescence and produced new kinds of adolescent woe. The big question for anyone who deals with young people today is how we can go about bringing these cogs of the teenage mind into sync once again.

This might be a more important question for the future than we think. When children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later the number of people behaving in a way we used to ascribe to teenagers increase dramatically we are increasingly living in a world where those who shape it are behaving like teenagers… Can this effect have even more impact than e g an aging Western society will? Meaning more teenage logic??

30 January 80 Permalink

infoneer-pulse:

Monkey brains grow bigger with every cagemate they acquire, according to a new study showing that certain parts of the brain associated with processing social information expand in response to more complex social information.

“Interestingly, there are a couple of studies in humans by different research groups that show some correlation between brain size and the size of the social network, and we found some similarities in our studies,” study researcher Jerome Sallet, of Oxford University in the U.K., told LiveScience.

“[Our study] reinforces the idea that the human social network was built on something that was already there in the rhesus macaques.”

» via Live Science

4 November 109 infoneer-pulse Permalink

A new study of the brain by University of Cambridge scientists explains why some people can’t tell the difference between what they saw and what they imagined or were told about — such as whether they or another person said something, or whether an event was imagined or actually occurred.

[…]

This brain variation is present in roughly half of the normal population. It’s one of the last structural folds to develop before birth, so it varies greatly in size between individuals in the healthy population. The researchers discovered that adults whose MRI scans indicated an absence of the PCS were significantly less accurate on memory tasks than people with a prominent PCS on at least one side of the brain.

When brain research suggests or in the future may be stating that HALF of the population don’t have a reliable memory, what will the consequences of that be? I think it is time to start to research what fundamental beliefs and prerequisites our society’ rules and systems are built upon. Because if brain research are continuing down this path, we need to revise most of our systems, routines and rules on a fundamental level. 

9 October 27 Permalink

Our knowledge about how the brain works is exploding due to e g the development of fMRI technology. But what will happen when we can explain most of our behavior by looking into the brain? And realize that we in fact are unable to control a large part of the behavior we have??

Will that knowledge really have an impact on anything or will be just another scientific truth that will add more knowledge the giant heap of scientific truths that nobody else than scientists really care? The heap that step by step is moving science into the obscure corner with less and less impact on our daily lives?

Source: http%3A%2F%2Fdiscovermagazine.com%2F2009%2Fsep%2F05-i-didn.t-sin-it-was-my-brain

5 October Permalink