How We See and Feel Through the Eyes of our Brain

-
Image result for Brain joke
     Studying the brain and its behavior, I read many different articles of how the brain creates, processes, and, most importantly, feels. Looking at two specific video assessments over the brain, I was overwhelmingly fascinated by about how the brain works, and I still cannot get a grip on it. In Anjan Chatterjee's "How your brain decides what is beautiful," and Rebecca Saxe's "How we read each other's minds," both of these speakers discuss the brain's ability to express itself  through desire, sympathy, and many other powerful emotions.
     In Chatterjee's speech, he discusses the connection our brain makes when each individual person sees beauty. Some observed factors over the years stretch from the likes of having a symmetrical face/body to a preference of the stereotypical looking man/woman, and just simple hormones. In our brain, there are actual parts which are specifically activated when we see beauty. Our vision center connects with hormones that signify pleasure, our minds then setting off this universal feeling of attraction. Anjan also states, after conducting multiple tests, people do not necessarily even have to be thinking or focusing on something "beautiful" for the brain to trigger a sense of pleasure. An observed group were shown different pictures of people and asked if they were the same. Even though their brains were focusing on the question, pleasure hormones were still activated by just seeing what their brains thought of as beautiful. Anjan then goes on to talk about the negative side of our mind's relation to beauty, how people who have deformities or are not translated as beautiful are often looked at as less important, dishonest, and even bad. A man by the name of Sir Francis Galton did an experiment to decipher this idea of beauty, compiling a bunch of photos of criminals and putting them together to make a new face. Thinking he would see the true face of a criminal, he ended up being astonished by the fact that these criminals had made such a beautiful man. 
    
Sir Francis Galton's compilation of Criminals

      Moving onto Rebecca Saxe, Saxe talks about how the brain can process the actions, feelings, and generally the lives of others. Using an example from the video, Saxe describes how, when we see certain pictures or settings of human lives, a certain part in our brain called the Right Temporo-Parietal Junction (RTPJ) actually processes the beliefs, feelings, and states of other minds. As we grow, this part of our brain grows as well, helping people learn and improve what they understand about reasoning for other people's decisions/ actions. In the video, Saxe uses children of three different ages (3, 5, and 7) to test this. All children are told the same story and asked the same questions, but each child's answers is different, the oldest child being the most logical as the youngest just beginning to understand the reasoning behind the situation. A similar test was also done with adults, which are almost at max, if not, with the formation of their RTPJ. There were multiple different answers, indicating how humans are very complex when it comes to their beliefs. There was also a test done where a magnetic pulse was used to actually distort the RTPJ, changing people's previous answers.
     To conclude, this may only be one small part out of the hundreds of different abilities in the brain, but the nonetheless a humungous contributing factor to who we are and our everyday lives. It blows my mind how this one little part of us can have such an impact on everything that makes us human. How a tiny organ in our head gives us the ability to love, understand, create, and manifest in all that we do. The brain is a crazy and complex community that works together and strives to be more and more. I am happy to say that I have a brain, and I am going to use it.      

 Sources:
 https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments#t-169625

https://www.ted.com/talks/anjan_chatterjee_how_your_brain_decides_what_is_beautiful#t-73325

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 11, 2018 at 1:02 PM

    This is a great blog!! I really like the information you chose to talk about! I think you did a really good job at summarizing and talking about the sources you chose. This is such an interesting topic! I wish that maybe you had included some other sources that were not just the Ted talks so we can find out more information about these subjects! But overall great job!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Just Because Birds Have Wings Doesn't Make Them Good Flyers.

-
Image
                The topic today I am going to discuss is Nature vs. Nurture. If you may have heard of these two ongoing debaters, but have never taken the time to truly understand what these two words mean, I am here to tell you the believed truth of both sides. Starting with the basis of the conversation, there are two different ideas about us (you and I) living organisms and how we are put together, from our anatomy to our skills and talents and every single part that makes up who we are.       If you are on the nature side, you believe that everything comes from genetics, from our height to being good at math or even the way we feel. Nature believes you are who you are because of your DNA, not because of your experiences or environments or own will power to achieve greatness. Nurture is the complete opposite. With the idea of Nurture, it is believed that you are you, not because of your genetics, but because of your environment, experiences, and your hard work.  Nurture
Read more

You Probably Won't Remember This Blog

-
Image
            Memory is something every person has, some better than others, but we all need it as a basic way of survival. One of the topics over memory that stood out to me was Sensory. This idea fascinating idea that we can see a picture or hear couple words in just a second, and our brain is able to capture that second and give us the ability to retain it. I also thought it was really interesting how when we don't need certain memories anymore, our brain just throws them away, reasoning why we can't remember our first birthday or what we even wore two days ago. The only memory that is kept is what we hold most valuable or we continuously practice.      Although our brain has the ability to preserve memories, sometimes our brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to, as overtime and sometimes earlier than usual, our brain can lose it's grip and start to malfunction, causing permanent damage. Two common examples of this would be short term and long term memory
Read more

Dear Diary

-
Image
Through the course of multiple journal entries, I pushed myself to defeat a common addiction/problem I have had all my life. I attempted to be healthier, better me, picking the salad instead of the cheeseburger or the veggie sub instead of pepperoni pizza. At the beginning of this experiment, I worked really hard to achieve these goals, picking a healthy sub or salad and drinking water rather than soda. If I did achieve these goals, I would reward myself by watching an episode of my favorite T.V show, relaxing and just enjoying my night. Later in the week, I was not as successful with my goals, eating late night sweets and drinking soda for dinner. I believe my behavior for eating and drinking healthier fluctuated by day, as some days I were better than others. I feel the biggest problem was not enough motivation. If I were to do it all over again, I would pick something else as my reinforcement.  This idea of reinforcement and behavior comes from this leaning psychology called op
Read more