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ABOUT THE NEW BRAIN SCIENCE AND WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT: Welcome to the brave new world of the "neuro revolution" that is based on the new brain science. The new brain knowledge is already helping doctors and counselors improve the quality of people's lives! It can play a special role in improving the way you relate to others and the way you understand your opportunities for happiness and success in the future. The dramatic new brain discoveries in the past few years by scientists and engineers have verified and advanced brain knowledge to the point that you can now learn the truth about how your brain functions. Learning the practical aspects of brain research can give your life the meaning and purpose you need to thrive personally and flourish socially without further delay. For example, many people afflicted with brain damage caused from accidents or disease or roadside bombs in war zones are able to recover somewhat with proper treatment based on the new brain science discoveries and medical treatments. The unexpected survival of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, who was shot in the head by an assassin in January 2011, is a good example of the practical application of the new brain science facts and ideas in medicine. Such a terrible brain injury would have most likely caused her more severe damage and probably her death if the brain surgeons had not been trained to use the latest brain knowledge. The surgeons saved her life and now her doctors and therapists are using the latest brain knowledge to train her to use her brain to learn how to strengthen her mental and physical skills and abilities. Now for the first time in millions of years of human evolution, scientists can explain how and why your brain is the center of everything good in your life. Now you can honor your amazing brain by using this website to learn more details about the factual basis of your sensational "sensory self." Or you can ignore the new brain information and suffer from unnecessary anger, anxiety, fear, and depression. The new science-based brain facts and ideas and skills are the essential intellectual resources you must understand to find maximum meaning, challenge and comfort out of your life. When you understand how your brain works and how your thoughts and feelings interact to create and define yourself, you will be your own master and not an "emotional slave" of others. This website provides you with trustworthy information about your brain. Human life is getting more complicated because of the robust scientific and technical advances of the past few decades. Also it is getting more dangerous because of the astronomical increase in our human population and the economically-oriented confusion about our government's role in creating equal-employment opportunities. Because of these two big global social challenges, you must increase your brainpower skills in order to keep up with all the changes! For example, you will be able to explore the sources of your own self-awareness (consciousness) as well as your own personal ethics (conscience) and your own social values (morality) in a positive virtual educational environment. Ultimately, you will be able to free yourself from stifling cultural constraints and use your creative brainpower to think for yourself because of your brain's precious intrinsic neuroplasticity. Your profound ability to change your brain is called "plasticity" for short! Plasticity applies to your billions of neurons (brain nerve cells) and your neural networks (brain circuits) from youth to old age. This supreme brain fact, which was just discovered in recent years (and which has been verified many times since), means that all thinking activities, including scientific experimentation, are possible only because of the inherent changeability of healthy human brains. In fact, your brain's plasticity makes all of the other new brain facts possible. The sharing of electro-chemical and hormonal "signals" among the healthy neurons in the neural pathways of your healthy brain makes possible your creativity and your consciousness of yourself. There are no other rational explanations for the increasing human biological and intellectual adaptability and the massive scale of the increasing longevity of human beings that we have enjoyed during the past century. Also your brain's plasticity makes possible your "freedom" to decide from many reasonable choices --- or even irrational or non-rational choices. Even when you fail to make a decision about an important social issue, you are actually making a decision that may impact your life due to the extreme interconnectivity of our emerging "big city" global culture. Your healthy brain has the capacity to adapt to the changing social and environmental conditions happening world-wide at an accelerating rate. The vast number of scientific and technologic changes of the past century have made possible the global economy, global warming, and the global decrease in poverty during the past century. All of these big changes require empathy, respect, and tolerance for differences of opinion regarding relationships and values. These profound "culture clashes" require corresponding major personal changes so you will be able to survive with dignity in the future. The easiest way to empower yourself to survive these "future shocks" and this "information overload" is to increase your brainpower vocabulary. Throughout history there was no way to know what was happening inside a human brain when a person made a decision. But now it is possible to describe a complete comprehensive linguistic model of the inner activity of human brains, which matches the true structure or "fabric of reality" without the need to resort to the use of ambiguous religious metaphors or analogies or vague spiritual and literary words. This website is an educational virtual reality where you can take your time to overcome your ignorance about your brain's main parts and functions without feeling hurried, humiliated or embarrassed. Brain scientists are now able to look inside living human brains by looking at brain scans or pictures of brain activity created by functional magnetic resonance imaging ("fMRI") machines. During the past few years, there have been hundreds of thousands of brains scanned all around the world. They show a remarkable similarity in the patterns of brain activities caused by specific thoughts or feelings or imagined behaviors. The brain pictures created by fMRI brain scans show the patterns of blood flow or the metabolism of glucose in specific parts of the brain when those particular brain tissues are activated by a person's conscious thoughts or feelings or imagined behaviors. In healthy brains, the patterns of blood flow or glucose metabolism in particular parts are similar in the brains of everybody when they are thinking or feeling about the same kinds of behaviors. In fact, a recent study of the brains of three people in London (Nature Magazine, October 2012) clearly shows for the first time in human history how similar our brain structures and functions are at the molecular level! Moreover, some brains that have been damaged due to illness, injuries, or traumas, are able to change their neural pathways. They can "rewire" themselves in some circumstances because of the deliberate retraining of memory storage habits on the part of brain damaged people with the intervention of qualified therapeutic counselors and trainers. The idea of "rewiring" neural pathways is directly related to the brain fact, called Hebbian Theory, which states that: "Cells (neurons) that fire together, wire together." This is the neural basis of all human learning as well as all learning in other animals, no matter how big or small. When you learn more details about how the "transmissions" (wiring) of neurons (brain cells) make your brain unique due to the strength and location of the patterns of your neuron pathways (because of your unique experiences and behaviors), you will have more power to create changes in your image of yourself so you will be ready to confront the future with a complete understanding of your amazing brain. Another incredible brain fact is that some of your brain cells can adapt to damage at the microscopic level by the biological process called "neurogenesis." This phenomenon will be explained in detail later, but the essence of the idea is that the functions of some brain damaged areas ("modules of neurons") can be replaced by brain tissue in other areas under special conditions. But first, it is important to establish a "linguistic context" for learning how your brain is related to your definition of your SELF or self-image and self-esteem and brainpower potential. The new brain knowledge can give you the power to "liberate" yourself from bad habits of faulty thinking and erroneous feelings that were caused by excessive stress and confusion in your life up to now. Essay #1.2: THE SELF-LIBERATION FORMULA AS A RATIONAL LINGUISTIC CONTEXT FOR UNDERSTANDING HOW YOUR BRAIN WORKS: The fundamental assumption of this website is that the best linguistic context for achieving the educational purpose of this website is a rational secular humanistic perspective. The following Self-Liberation Formula is designed to provide you with the best words and assumptions to describe the essential facts and ideas required to understand how your brain works: The new understanding of the remarkable power to change your mind regarding important personal, social and political issues (because of your brain's infinite plasticity) is one of the greatest advances in human understanding in thousands of years! It is a fundamental brain fact that can be taught to anybody, anywhere, and at any time. You can be as "brain smart" as anybody else --- if you are exposed to the correct new scientific brain knowledge in a non-threatening educational environment. And you can learn fast if you practice perfectly! If you use "critical thinking skills" to evaluate the new brain knowledge, you can use it to guide your own incredibly adaptable sensory self to be as happy and successful as humanly possible while you study your brain! The major message of this website is that you are CAUSED by your brain's interaction with the changing global culture. By applying your critical thinking skills in the context of the new factual brain ideas, you will be able to increase your brainpower and achieve your goals with more precision. Only ignorant or mentally impaired people refuse to use critical thinking skills when they need to make better decisions. If you are stuck in habitual ways of thinking, this website can help change your attitude about your brain, based on the best experimental evidence (facts) and practical explanations (ideas) available in the 21st century. This website is designed to nudge you into learning and applying critical thinking skills when you study the new brain facts and ideas. The new brain knowledge was created by dozens of research teams of scientists during the past two decades based on the brilliant hard work of hundreds of brain science pioneers during the past four centuries. The basic strategy presented on this website is to use the enormous communication potential of the global Internet to motivate you so you can train your brain to use the new brain knowledge in a way that will increase your happiness and success. This online training opportunity provides a safe environment for you to expand or extend your self-awareness by learning the new brainpower skills. One of the most important results of the new brain research is the recognition that you can change your "perception" of your SELF by getting appropriate specific training about your brain's intricate "distributed memory" functions. This self-directed learning process, which is often called "emotional intelligence" or "social intelligence," can enable you to control your mental resources with more precision than ever before, because it emphasizes learning self-awareness skills and self-regulation skills. In order to take advantage of this new brain fact, you may need to forget some obsolete ideas about your brain that are inconsistent with the new facts. In other words, you may need to forget some old ideas that you learned when you were too young to know how dangerous they were to your mental and emotional health. Many conventional or customary ideas about the potential of human brains are simply not true and, therefore, not helpful anymore in understanding reality. These statements are especially true in the case of many senior citizens who have little knowledge of science or human anatomy and physiology. Tragically, their mistaken beliefs or false ideas about reality can distort their perceptions about the significance of their brains and how new brainpower skills could improve their lives --- if they only knew the facts. Unfortunately, any mistaken or incomplete information and beliefs about brainpower potential can block a proper understanding of the true nature of human consciousness and the source of self-awareness. Since the brains of some senior citizens (or ignorant people of any age) contain inaccurate memories that were created before the new brain facts were known, their memories simply lack the kind of constructive and useful brain facts and ideas that are now essential for living better lives. Fortunately, the natural biological evolutionary influences on human development have been augmented by our brain's capacity to create the English language for communication as well as democratic societies, and big cities. In addition, human beings with their powerful brains have invented thousands of useful tools that provide us with unprecedented comfort and convenience. The history of humanity for the past 15 thousand years has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt the supreme relevance of science with respect to progress. Since people started agricultural economies and began recording their history on rocks and clay tablets about 13,000 BCE (Before the Christian Era), there has never been so many people living so well as there are now primarily due to the scientific breakthroughs of the past 400 years and especially the scientific and engineering accomplishments of the past few decades and the new brain science results of the past few years. Many historical time lines will be introduced later in the other five essay-sets on this website to prove the claim that the scientific method has superceded magical religious dogma in explaining reality among science-oriented educated people. Thousands of scientists have devoted their lives to understanding and explaining (in scientifically valid ways) how human brains work. But getting the new brain knowledge out to the general public has been a persistent struggle for several centuries. Nevertheless, the new brain knowledge is based on solid scientific evidence described in hundreds of books and articles that have been published in recent years and months. They all show that human curiosity alone can motivate new discoveries and inventions. They prove that our brain's capacity to imagine and reason can provide the ultimate answers to the essential questions about the meaning of life. The books and the scientists themselves will all be cited and evaluated on this website later in order to validate the new brain facts and ideas beyond a reasonable doubt. The new brain vocabulary translates scientific language that describes brain functions into plain English. After you learn the new brain vocabulary in a humanistic philosophical context, you will be able to share your new knowledge with your family and friends. But how you use your new brainpower will depend upon your knowledge of the influence and interaction of both your brain (including your whole body) and society (including our global culture). The good news is that you can learn to achieve a challenging and fulfilling life by competing with and simultaneously helping other people at the same time. You can balance your answers to the following two questions: namely, "What is in it for me?" and "How can I help others?" These questions apply to any activity you are interested in doing, including learning about the new brain research results. This website conveys the essential practical brain knowledge necessary for you to answer those two basic questions about the meaning of your life. The new brainpower knowledge can benefit anyone who is curious about life's greatest challenge, which is to "know your self." By learning how your brain works, you will be able to learn how to think better. Then you will be able to assert your values through purposeful ethical and moral behavior in your community and help change the world to make it better! NOTE: The bolded and italicized and red colored words and phrases indicate the essential keywords, which are necessary for you to understand and memorize, on your lifelong journey of self-discovery and self-liberation. Each highlighted keyword will become as important for you to include in your working vocabulary as the difference between a male and a female or a chair and a table or a plant and an animal. Essay-Set #1.3: ALPHABETICAL BRAIN VOCABULARY LEARNING PLAN: Now you can learn how and why your brain works the way it does if you are willing to master the new brain vocabulary, which is called the Alphabetical Brain Vocabulary on this website. This new science-based brain vocabulary explains how your brain's main parts interact with each other and the rest of your body to produce your consciousness and your conscience. By being consciously aware of the fact that your brain activities are very complicated, you can fill your imagination with excitement and awe as you inquire further. Learning about brain science facts and ideas, based on intelligent arguments, can provide you with endless pleasure and lifelong gratification. But you must choose to use your brainpower skills with respect to fulfilling your own human destiny and your own potential as a contributing member of the human family or you will lose the ability. That is because your infinitely adaptable brain can either improve or get worse depending upon how well you use it to achieve your goals! The structure of the following learning exercises is designed to maximize your attention and curiosity as you learn the new brain science facts and ideas. The learning plan consists of FOUR ACTION STEPS designed to empower you to use the new brain science words and definitions to control the quality of your thoughts and feelings in the most expeditious way. You can start this creative, game-changing, free process of self-discovery by simply learning how to identify your brain's main organic parts and your brain's functional areas. Your motivation will be increased as you see how easy it is for you to memorize the essential brain vocabulary. With careful practice, you can learn the new brain related words and phrases that will enable you to fully appreciate the trillions of synaptic connections and billions of neurons in your brain tissue and nervous system. You can find the the brain language required to understand how the parts of your brain interact by using Training Tool #1 at the following link: Alphabetical Brain Vocabulary Learning Plan This educational process can help you avoid or overcome the strong culturally derived emotional roadblocks that may have blocked your creativity and success in the past. You will be able to learn the mental skill-sets needed to create a new self-image, increase your self-esteem, and achieve self-actualization. Then you will be able to consciously stop negative thoughts and depressive feelings and become self-liberated with an unending passion for learning about the natural world and helping others in the process. This is the true nature of your genuine capacity to love life and yourself! Essay-Set #1.4: MICROSCOPIC IMAGES OF YOUR BRAIN'S CEREBRAL CORTEX SENSORY STRIP: To use your brain well, it is important for you to know exactly how your brain's main moving parts interact at the microscopic molecular level to create your consciousness and conscience. Otherwise, you will be held hostage to old habitual thoughts and feelings that you learned BEFORE you had this opportunity to become enlightened! The following link can help you visualize or "SEE" (in a metaphorical way) an essential part of your brain. The five pictures simulate at the microscopic molecular level what is actually going on inside your living brain's "somato sensory strip" located at the top of your brain in the middle of your cerebrum: Sensory Strip Images Your synaptic ionic connections are essential for all of the important functions of your brain. They enable you to think or study or do anything that takes brainpower. The five pictures or images magnify the intricate arrangement of neurons (or nerve cells) and neuronal networks (or neural pathways) that provide the connectivity of all your brain's parts. Each neuron in your brain and nervous system has an average of 10 thousand synaptic ionic connections and makes possible your amazing brain and your sensational sensory self. Your neuronal networks connect your brain to your spinal cord and all the billions of neurons in both your central nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. As you visualize what is happening inside your brain's sensory strip, at the microscopic level, you will discover the true source of your immense brainpower. It is in the billions of neurons (brain cells) and millions of neuronal networks (brain circuits) and trillions of synapses (electrochemical brain cell connections) that operate in your amazing adaptive brain to create your sense of your SELF. The synaptic ionic actions take place in the neural pathways where your synapses "fire" electro-chemical impulses or signals which flow through either a few synapses, or thousands, or even millions of synapses! The synaptic firings happen when an electro-chemical "potential" (or electrical charge) builds up enough at the sending molecules to cross the synaptic cleft to the receiving molecules of another neuron. This happens anytime you are reading or thinking or talking or writing or doing anything. Synaptic ionic actions are required for you to move your body anywhere. They make it possible for you to have a perception of your SELF as well as perceptions of your social relationships and physical environment. To repeat --- since it is such an important idea to keep in your memory --- synaptic ionic actions are essential whenever you are making goals or plans or decisions or doing any activities including eating, sleeping, walking, having sex or being in love! Your trillions of synapses send electro-chemical ionic signals from neuron to neuron, and neuron to muscle, through the neural pathways of your brain and nervous system. Now you know that synaptic ionic activity is one of the essential sources of your consciousness and your conscience. This phenomenal brain fact will be demonstrated in a rational linguistic context and validated after your basic brain vocabulary is more fully developed. The massive evidence provided on this website and in print and online provide strong arguments for the evolution of your brain. This incredible idea can become increasingly relevant in your life as you schedule more time to devote to learning more about the brain science facts, which were created by trustworthy professional brain scientists. Essay-Set #1.5: AUTOMATED BRAINPOWER TUTORIAL: Enlarging your brainpower will provide you with the opportunity of integrating your new brain vocabulary of facts within a science-based philosophical context of ideas. The process requires that you memorize specific words in specific contexts so that the facts and ideas will be connected in a useful way in your brain's "distributed memory," which is splattered throughout your brain tissue. With your new brainpower knowledge, you can predict your emotions better in various social situations. Also you can regulate your emotions with your own thoughts and affirmations, since each repetition of an affirmation stores and reinforces it in your long-term memory system. Knowing that you have an organic brain part --- prefrontal cortex --- that has the power to override your feelings can give your thoughts the advantage as you carefully decide what matters most in your life. You can learn that there is always a "tug of war" going on all of the time inside your brain between your emotional brain (limbic system) and your thinking brain (cerebrum). The following Automated Brainpower Tutorial provides a new way to visualize what is going on inside your brain. When you study the pictures of the different parts of your brain and the words that describe their functions with the intention of memorizing the keywords according to the spaced-repetition memorization method, you will be optimizing your brain's powerful and complex memory processes. The following link has 43 pictures and diagrams that focus on the new brain science findings. Since it is designed to run automatically, you can relax and watch it from start to finish to grasp the big picture without stopping. Or, you can click on the "stop link" at the bottom of each image before it moves to the next image if you want to re-read the information for better recall later: Automated Brainpower Tutorial The spaced-repetition memorization method creates new brain tissue that strengthens the neural pathways associated with the new idea or behavior that you want to remember. It increases the dynamic activity of your trillions of synapses or electro-chemical biological switches that connect your millions of neurons. They change the electrical impulses in your nervous system and the hormonal impulses in your glands into "ionic signals," which send messages from your body's nervous system to your brain and back again. These messages can be interpreted by your brain to be either good or bad for you. This incredible interactive phenomenon (of sending life sustaining electro-chemical signals to and from your brain) is what creates your experience of being conscious and having a conscience! It is that simple! You just need to relax and accept that possibility until you learn more evolutionary reasons for believing in this wonderful brain fact! The brain-related words and their meanings will become the Alphabetical Brain Vocabulary in your mind's memory. Those new words can become the core of your new definition of your SELF or self-image. Your self-image is simply your best idea of what you think and feel you are capable of being based on your own imagination or brainpower! Since all learning projects must start somewhere, it is helpful to think in terms of your brain's main fifteen parts and five functions as you begin, even though there are dozens of other essential parts that make it possible for your brain to work properly. And, in addition, there are hundreds of additional brain science facts and ideas that are now known to contribute to your overall self-awareness and your incredible ability to comprehend reality, which can be learned later. This moment can be very important as you seek to broaden your knowledge about how your brain works and how you can create new perceptions of your SELF based on your new brainpower knowledge. When you "chunk" or categorize the brain facts and ideas into groups, you will be able to optimize the memorization process. When you memorize the new brain science facts and ideas, they will become part of your brain tissue itself. When you decide to memorize the brain science words and definitions so they will be consolidated in your long-term memory, you will be able to learn more about the intricate relationships between all the other brain facts and functions as well as the ideas that explain why they are so important to your sense of self. But in order to experience the awesome joy of how your brain's main parts and functions interact with each other to create your wonderful "embodied self" right now, these fifteen main brain parts and five functions are enough to consider. One of the best ways to begin to appreciate the spectacular implications of the new brain science discoveries is to start with the book outlined at the following link: Brain Rules --- 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School However, by using the context of the twelve brain rules to compare what you already know about your brain functions with the brainpower information in the book and on this website, you can quickly make progress learning more about how your brain works:
2) RULE #2 = SURVIVAL --- The human brain evolved, too! 3) RULE #3 = WIRING --- Every brain is wired differently! 4) RULE #4 = ATTENTION --- We don't pay attention to boring things! 5) RULE #5 = SHORT-TERM MEMORY ---Repeat to remember! 6) RULE #6 = LONG-TERM MEMORY --- Remember to repeat! 7) RULE #7 = SLEEP --- Sleep well, think well 8) RULE #8 = STRESS --- Stressed brains don't learn the same way! 9) RULE #9 = SENSORY INTEGRATION --- Stimulate more of the senses! 10) RULE #10 = VISION --- Vision trumps all other senses! 11) RULE #11 = GENDER --- Male and female brains are different! 12) RULE #12 = EXPLORATION --- We are powerful and natural explorers! You can help your memory by making a written list of the keywords in order to remember the meanings of them better. If you use your eyes and sense of touch together to remember the ideas, you would be strengthening the neural pathways for these words, which is where your memory for these words or rules resides. In addition, by speaking the words out loud or subvocalizing, you could add your sense of hearing and muscle memory to the remembering process. (See Rule # 9) Also, after you learn that there is a "30 second attention span" brain rule, you can choose to focus your attention and use your study time wisely for life-enhancing purposes or you can get bored and waste your time being distracted (See Rule #2). These are highly predictable behaviors. One profound idea that is based on the new brain research, which could substantially change our society, is the idea that our American education system needs to be dramatically changed so it will be more consistent with how our brains learn things, from kindergarten through college! Medina proposes using a "medical school model" that would connect students more closely to the real world. Also he recommends that employees should be more physically active as they do their work and more collaborative instead of being isolated from each other in their little cubicles. He suggests that corporate offices change from cubicles to more collaborative shared workplace. There are many more great insights in the book that might help you resolve personal or social issues and maybe even solve some political problems, if you care about improving your community or the world. You can decide which brain rules (or principles) you would like to apply in your life --- with the expectation that they could reinforce your own strategies for achieving success and happiness. This is a good way for you to create a conceptual framework for remembering the details that will be associated with the brain functions and brainpower skills that you will be learning about on this website. Whether you are raising a family and/or working in a trade or profession that suits your passion or furthering science or the arts or even sports, you can become more proud of your brain. Since you depend upon love and friendship (social relationships) for support and survival just as much as you rely on air, food and water, it makes good sense to want to share your new brain knowledge with others. You can use your new brainpower skills to make new friends who have a common interest in using brainpower skills more effectively and efficiently to improve the quality of life on Earth. Just think of the possible benefits of getting unstuck from procrastination, pessimism, and/or depression so you can increase your optimism and flourish in the future with the power of gratitude and mindfulness. Since your brain and nervous system are the natural causes of your self-awareness, it is essential for you to ask intelligent questions about how they work. Just as children ask "Why?" all the time in order to develop their understanding of their world so they can create a comfortable place to grow up, you as an inquisitive student or adult can improve your own brainpower in this same systematic and predictable way. As you use this website, you can keep improving your brainpower by routinely asking yourself the ultimate underlying scientific and philosophical question that all persons who want to be enlightened must answer, namely: "Why does my brain work the way it does?" There is no more important question to ask, since everything else important in life revolves around the answer to that question! The correct answer to that question is that the purpose of your brain is to survive in a changing environment. It has evolved to be changeable or plastic enough to adapt to gradual changes in the natural environment of Earth. Once you learn the details about this answer about the ultimate purpose of your brain functions, you will have the opportunity to decide how you can optimize your brainpower as you progress through the predictable developmental stages of human life, from childhood through adulthood in our modern urban global culture. One exciting new view of the influence of the brain science on the future is described in the following book outline: Click on this Book Outline: The Neuro Revolution --- How Brain Science is Changing Our World You can even learn to liberate your "SELF" from dysfunctional behaviors, such as excessive anger, anxiety, distress, fear, ignorance, and superstitions, by learning HOW your brain works and WHY it works the way it does. Since a vast amount of detailed information about brain functions has been published recently in many books and articles and since new brain facts are being revealed almost every week on the Internet, this is a great time to study how your brain works! This website organizes the new brain knowledge in the most convenient practical scientific way. And it explains in the simplest way possible what the true cause of your consciousness is. It is your SELF! It is obvious that your brain causes your self-awareness. But knowing how your brain does it has been a mystery until now. Brain research has investigated two crucial aspects of human consciousness, including the "hard question," which is the attempt to discover the "neural correlates of consciousness" and the "easy questions," which deal with the ideas of "perception, learning, attention, and memory" and also "how we discriminate objects or react to stimuli" and "how sleep differs from being awake." The ideas that distinguish the answers to both the hard and the easy questions are concisely described in the book outlined at the next link: Click on this Book Outline: Consciousness --- A Very Short Introduction The good news is that most brain scientists think that the hard question is not as relevant for understanding the practical uses of your brain as knowing the answers to the easy questions. When you drive your car, you do not need to know the details about how the gasoline burns in the engine in order to drive it. But you must have practical instructions in order to learn skills about safe driving and what traffic laws apply. This website argues that you need to have the same level of practical instructions in order to learn basic brain skills for optimizing your brainpower and, particularly, your memory. Your memory is actually "splattered" throughout your brain's main parts and connected by the synaptic assemblies running along your neural pathways. That is why it is called a distributed memory, since it is not in one specific place like many of your brain's essential functional modules, such as Broca's area (where the sequence of movements that you need in order to write anything start) and Wernick's area (where the full meaning of written words is understood and where the words you want to use and write down are conceived). Since your brain is probably the most complex thing in the universe and definitely the most valuable part of your body, it makes good sense to want to use it wisely. You can discover new ideas for creating a comfortable and effective balance between your thoughts and feelings as you celebrate your amazing brain. No matter what your personal lifestyle or family traditions, or your educational level, you can take advantage of the new brain research results to improve your life. The links to the following two book outlines provide two new perspectives for what the brainpower wisdom can mean for you in the 21st century: Wisdom --- from Philosophy to Neuroscience When you use a philosophical approach to productive thinking about the future, you plan for the future based on democratic reasons and whatever historical foundation you have learned from your past experiences. This website provides the additional essential scientific brain information that you need to know in order to thrive in the future because of democratic values, historical realities, and brain science facts and ideas --- all merged in your mind! The link to the following book outline explains how the ancient secrets (or professed wisdom) of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and other early Mediterranean cultures can help you cope with the excessive stress caused by modern communication devices such as cell phones and computers. These electronic gadgets can cause an information overload that can damage your precious brain and bodily senses if you do not master coping skills to avoid the extra stress: Wisdom 2.0 --- Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected This new way of thinking, feeling, and behaving requires that you become wiser. It requires that you remember or memorize all the brain facts and ideas that matter and also that you forget or extinguish all the cultural fallacies that you may have unwittingly learned during the past. Then you will have a much clearer view of the genuine historical context of human evolution and the big impact (both good and bad) of global culture on your personality. Your personality is assumed to be simply the social image of your SELF that you wish to project to others! This distinction between the ideas that are "facts" and the ideas that are "masquerading as facts" simply means that your new brainpower skills can help you distinguish which is which. You can learn how to determine whether you are using a good reasoning process (based on facts) or whether you are using a faulty reasoning process (based on inappropriate metaphors) when you philosophize about the reality of human consciousness and the meaning of your life. When you understand the new brain knowledge, you will be able to identify the potentially constructive and the destructive metaphors that you use when you think about the meaning and purpose of your life. In the broadest sense, the neurorevolution represents a cultural paradigm shift (a major change of perspective or mindset) regarding the meaning of human life by people who are smart enough to value evolutionary science and who can read and appreciate the new brainpower knowledge. The rest of this website will focus your attention on the "answers" to the easy questions regarding human consciousness. Essay-Set #1.6: EVOLUTIONARY BRAINPOWER MINDSET WHEEL: For a vivid impression of the interactive connectivity of the brainpower facts and ideas, look at the circular image at the following Brainpower Mindset Wheel link: Evolutionary Brainpower Mindset Wheel Essay-Set #1.7: BRAINPOWER MINDSET CATEGORIES The twelve Vocabulary Brainpower Mindset Categories consist of twelve common English language words that have been chosen for their relevance as universal categories. They make the essential brain science facts and ideas more easily accessible within the convenient "matrix structure" that is displayed at the following link: Evolutionary Brainpower Mindset Categories The twelve Evolutionary Brainpower Mindset Categories can make the brain science facts and ideas more easily accessible within the interactive matrix format. They are used to organize the new scientific evidence that explains the "easy questions" related to your consciousness and conscience. When the rational humanistic ideas of thousands of experts are "chunked" together in concentrated doses of reason-based logical words and sentences, they can have a profound positive impact on the effectiveness of your long-term memory resources. The Evolutionary Brainpower Mindset Categories are a collection of brain science facts and ideas with their implicit and explicit assumptions about how you can find meaning in your life. If you take advantage of the suggestions, you will be able to understand the profound implications of the latest brain science research findings as fast as humanly possible. The idea of educating yourself to have a brainpower mindset means that you understand that your memories are being "saved" in your brain tissue and also "reconstructed" when your new memories are related to old memories. Also it means that all your memories, old and new alike, are stored in your distributed memory, which is scattered throughout many parts of your brain tissue. Your memories cannot be found in any single place, but are scattered throughout your cerebral cortex as well as other organic brain parts. In short, this unique interactive matrix structure creates a pattern or context of facts and ideas. Just like the "wisdom of the crowd" idea and the "swarm" way to make decisions, these reinforcing facts and ideas can penetrate your long-term memory resources faster and stay there longer because you are storing overlapping symbols in your long-term memory. The words or categories are organized to quickly expose you to the essential facts and ideas about the research that has created the new brain science facts of life." In addition, the broader implications of using the Self-Liberation Philosophy as a reliable way of thinking about your future will become clearer as you immerse yourself in the dynamic process of creating your own brainpower mindset categories of psychosocial facts and ideas to describe your own creative SELF! Thus the structure of these Evolutionary Brainpower Mindset Categories can remind you of the true source of your own consciousness and conscience, which is your adaptable plastic brain when it is using these keywords to express and remember key facts and ideas that you want to use for decision making. You can modify these categories to meet your own needs as you create your own unique mindset about your own brain functions. However, another perspective of the twelve categories is presented at the following Brainpower Mindset Categories Index link: Evolutionary Brainpower Mindset Categories Index After you have learned the new brain vocabulary sufficiently, you can use the new brain-related words and their meanings to experience a transition from your memories of the past to a new self-awareness. This new self-awareness of your own unique extended self can give you more personal power in the future, if you want it. The learning process will be relevant to you as long as you want to use it. NOTE: All the important brain science words and phrases along with their definitions (including both their implicit and explicit assumptions) will be explained in the six essay-sets as well as the five skill-sets and the six training-tools, which are all linked on the home page of this website. The creative process of enhancing your own brain vocabulary offers you a new perspective for creating meaning in your life. Essay-Set #1.8: EVOLUTIONARY BRAINPOWER MINDSET PRISM: The following unique symbol, called the "Evolutionary Brainpower Mindset Prism," will be used on this website to encapsulate the three basic beliefs or philosophical assumptions that justify the brainpower mindset. It is a prism-shaped image of a golden-yellow sunburst over a solid green background with a multicolored triangle superimposed over the sunburst with the word "SELF" in the middle: Evolutionary Brainpower Mindset Prism
(2) The EARTH is the only place in the known UNIVERSE where NATURE has evolved to support a biological diversity of LIFE that includes thousands of species including humans, which are in great danger and which require saving by the new GREEN REVOLUTION before climate change destroys the ecology of all or most of the precious LIFE that we have known and enjoyed so far during our lifetimes; and (3) There are predictable developmental levels of HUMAN MOTIVATION as depicted by the triangular shape of the "hierarchy of needs" diagram developed by the famous humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow. The diagram is represented by a multicolored triangle in the middle of the Brainpower Mindset Prism symbol containing the word "SELF." This signifies how essential it is for you to understand the scientific basis of your own human motivation based upon brain science facts and ideas.  Click on the Triangle or Link: Maslow's Human Motivational Needs-Hierarchy Chart
(2) The biological evolutionary process of Nature, which operates by way of "natural selection;" and (3) The psychosocial evolutionary process of "sexual selection," which provides the biological way of sustaining human life and improving it. Human motivation is now known to be the primary cause of the supremacy of humans in the evolutionary story of LIFE on planet earth. This is because our brainpower (or thinking capacity), when it is assisted by the scientific method of inquiry, is capable of influencing our genes and the human genome! This phenomenal brain fact is called "epigenetics." This is the same way humans have consciously influenced the heredity of plants and animals for thousands of years through selective breeding. Now however we know that the "selfish gene" theory is not the only major aspect of evolutionary change. We now know that the socialization processes of learning a language and needing the social support motivated by the learned adaptive feeling (emotion) of "empathy" caused by our brain's "mirror neurons" plays such a large role in our continuous evolution as a species. All three of these powerful forces are the main causes of happy hopeful human beings. Your educated brain (in combination with the quality of your social support groups) can help you become a successful survivor with a mission to help educate others so they too can feel the joy of self-discovery and self-liberation as much as you. Also when you understand how your brain works in the context of your new brainpower knowledge of facts and ideas supported by the results of scientific experimentation, you will be able to understand that the quality of your new science-based brainpower mindset will depend upon the accuracy and the size of your new brain vocabulary. Brain science has been vastly improved by the direct observation of living brain tissue using "functional" Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) machines that produce brain scans. The brain scans of living human brains in action result in images or pictures that reveal what is happening inside both healthy and unhealthy brains when subjects are being observed doing specific designated things. The brain scans measure blood flow activity to various parts of the brain under controlled conditions. In addition, it is important to realize that along with your brain's plasticity or changeability, it has another astonishing capacity. It can create new brain circuits in order to make new connections to repair damaged brain functions such as a stroke under certain conditions. This incredible process is called "neurogenesis." A stroke victim, for example, can recover some important semblance of his or her former SELF by training other brain tissue to take over the functions of damaged brain tissue due to the stroke-caused hemorrhaging that destroys brain cells. This profound brain fact can give you the power to change your sensational sense of self --- if you want to change your behavior. Both neuroplasticity and neurogenesis act together when you have motivating reasons to want to make your life better! In addition, a variety of internal "feedback circuits," connect your billions of brain cells from various regions inside your brain. This fact makes it possible for you to change your behavior anytime you deliberately choose to use the skill. Essay-Set #1.9: SMART SKILL-SETS The process of changing your attitudes and behaviors involves taking more responsibility to use critical thinking skills to do smarter reasoning. The five SMART SKILL SETS can help your brain perform its thinking and feeling and remembering activities with optimum precision. For detailed recommendations about how you can improve your brainpower, you can use the following links to analyze: (1) Your "self-creation," thinking skills, (2) Your "self-actualization" memory skills, (3) Your "self-control" motivational skills, (4) Your "self-talk" communication skills, and (5) Your "self-mapping" note-taking skills: Your Smart Self-Creation Thinking Skills Click on Skill-Set #2 Your Smart Self-Actualization Memory Skills Click on Skill-Set #3 Your Smart Self-Control Motivational Skills Click on Skill-Set #4 Your Smart Self-Talk Communication Skills Click on Skill-Set #5 Your Smart Self-Mapping Note-Taking Skills You can motivate yourself to become a happier and more creative person with a clearer picture of your SELF that is empowering and liberating and also socially responsible all at the same time. When you think about this fact, it is a marvelous payback for whatever effort your can commit to the task. The effort that you make to achieve a higher level of satisfaction and happiness can keep you healthier longer. The challenge for you is to read on and learn about the thousands of creative and intelligent people who are contributing to human knowledge and wisdom right now as they interpret the research of thousands of clinical brain studies over the past few years. The humanistic approach to personal ethics and social values puts the problem of solving moral issues squarely on the shoulders of human beings themselves. Humanism assumes from vast amounts of historical and psychological evidence that there are no godly superhuman beings in the known universe of the 21st century. This rational secular scientific mindset is the new solid ground of human consciousness or being. And it includes a new realization of the importance of human empathy towards other humans and all other animals since there is a symbiotic ecological relationship among all animals as they compete for a place to thrive on planet earth. Since science is a collaborative self-correcting process of inquiry, it most often leads to helpful predictions and conclusions about what will happen in the future. In addition, it allows for objective testing of hypotheses and conclusions by anyone. Scientists are able to predict the future to a great extent by using the scientific method of inquiry and good reasoning skills. No other method of inquiry and analysis of human behavior can provide the essential true humanistic "facts of life" combined with a reasonable objective perspective for developing solutions to the persistent existential predicaments and problems of living. This process of scientific experimentation with its symbolism (scientific vocabulary) and method (practice of evidence-based inquiry) appeals to reasonable people everywhere who want to solve the paradox of not knowing exactly what reality is. As you learn the scientific humanistic "linguistic logic," which explains the process of self-liberation, you can adopt this profound Alphabetical Brainpower Mindset (attitude) toward your brain so that you will be able to help others, especially children, learn how their brains actually work. Science has made possible thousands of dazzling discoveries and inventions that have provided greater safety and security for more people than at any other time in history. Also science has given us more control over natural processes than ever before, especially in the area of modern medicine and space science and electronics. Science offers vast amounts of helpful objective information that can help us survive and thrive in the future whereas historic religions, which have not respected human brainpower, have often slowed down or even stopped progress in the past. In contrast, religious values are threatening the quality of life in many countries right now and causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. The religious stories, which have been believed to be the "gospel truth" during the past 10 thousand years, are now known by most scientists to be unsatisfactory false explanations of the meaning of life when evaluated in the context of the modern 21st century scientific mindset. All of the thousands of different simplistic religious myths and folk tales are simply metaphors or linguistic forms that describe abstract fear-based wishes, which were essential in more primitive historic times. They do not give proper respect to our brain's ability to solve existential problems by using reason. In contrast, the modern evolutionary explanation of how our brains work is an epoch story unrivaled in its power and grandeur. Its new emphasis on the importance of empathy, which is a learned skill like all other essential social skills, in conjunction with evolution's "survival of the fittest" or "selfish gene" ideas as the best scientific explanations of the origin of human life. Evolution is a better idea than religious creation myths or primitive folk tales because it is based on modern science or evidence-based reasoning. Now the massive amount of current scientific evidence proves the truth and relevance of evolution when compared to faith-based explanations of the meaning of human life. Now the center of human consciousness is known to be the brain and nervous system and understanding this fact is the supreme challenge or our lifetimes! The ultimate evolutionary purpose of your brain is to have an agile memory for survival purposes. This is both and empowering and humbling fact about how your brain works. Right now you can take this opportunity to use your natural curiosity as a unique individual to develop your own special multiple intelligences --- including intellectual intelligence, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and scientific intelligence. In addition, you can choose to work as a member of various groups in your local community to help save your SELF and others from the negative consequences of ignorance, superstition and blind obedience to mythical magical nonsense and the general lethargy and craziness which our mass marketing consumerism culture fosters. Since time is our most important resource, this website was designed specifically to help save time by organizing the new brain science facts mindfully efficiently. With the new brain science facts and ideas safely memorized, you will be able to create new ideas about your SELF that are based upon the new scientific perceptions of your changing human experiences. It really does matter what you believe about the source or force which actually does cause your senses and sensibility, namely, the meaning in your life and your personal ethics and social values. This most profound brain fact, namely, that the source or force of your happiness and success in life is your own brain can provide you with more actual freedom from fear and despair and ignorance than most people have ever experienced during the past 15,000 years of human progress on Earth. When you begin thinking about your consciousness and conscience, it is crucial to analyze the "time paradox" as it impacts your life. The ideas in this book provide the proper existential context for philosophizing about or evaluating all aspects of your life and behavior and relationships with others: Time Paradox --- The New Psychology of Time that Will Change Your Life The rest of this website is devoted to providing "infinite options" for answering that question. Essay-Set #1.10: FLYING EAGLE ALLEGORY: The young eagle symbolizes the systematic facts and ideas that explain the process of self-liberation. To celebrate this positive ethical viewpoint, the theme of this website is to "fly" like an eagle. It symbolizes the positive psychological idea of "flow" as it is being used by leaders in the new positive psychology movement. It stands for your ability to sustain a positive harmonious feeling when all your thoughts and actions are integrated in focused "goal-driven" behavior that is pleasurable: Flying Eagle Allegory You can pick at least one big social issue that you are passionate about from the infinite number of global problems and challenges that you could deal with during your lifetime. And you can apply the new perspective of the "brainpower mindset" to create wholesome "flow" in your life. Then you will have empowered yourself to be free to be truly happy and successful as you experience every day fully by being satisfied with your progress. After you have interacted with the many aspects of this website, you will be able to transform your unconscious motivations into conscious goals and plans. You will be more prepared for the challenges that you face and the decisions that you must make in order to survive with comfort and fun as well as challenge. With a keen awareness of the brainpower mindset, you can now rapidly increase your brain vocabulary and expand your brainpower knowledge in order to predict and control your life better and make more effective choices to facilitate your plans and help you achieve your goals faster and more efficiently. Essay-Set #1.11: BRAINPOWER REFERENCE SOURCES: You can become a part of this sensational story of human enlightenment by deciding to learn more about your brain. This history is the most profound story of human achievement in the 40 thousand years since humans began evolving with their big brains. Only a few thousand people from around the world understand the new brain facts and ideas enough to apply them in their daily lives. However, the reference sources on this website provide you with a direct connection to the men and women who have worked so hard in the past or who are now working to reveal more detailed aspects of how human brains work, both when healthy and unhealthy. You can connect your brain with the hundreds of authoritative books and articles that describe the details of the meaning of the new brain science insights by visiting the following link: Best Books and Articles Essay-Set #1.12: WEBMASTER'S PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIAN BACKGROUND: This website was created by a retired public librarian who lives in California. He worked for the County of Los Angeles Public Library for 38 years. He served the information and research needs of several multicultural communities in one of the largest public library systems in the United States. The ethnic groups served included African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Korean-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, European-Americans, Near Eastern-Americans as well as Caucasian-Americans. The following link provides background information: Professional Biography of Librarian-Webmaster This distinction between fiction (imaginary untrue fantasies) and non-fiction (true facts) is a crucial distinction on this website. That is because many of the ideas, which people have memorized and which they think are real facts, are not really "true facts." They are just words, or symbols, or metaphors for things people believe in without any evidence of their truth or reality! When ideas are not based on objective evidence that can be tested by the scientific method, they can dangerous to our health and well-being. Librarians use special "indexes" or indices as well as computer data bases to guide their thinking when they help people find answers to their questions. The home page of this website has a unique index called the Brainpower Index of Factual Ideas. This "interactive index" makes it possible for you to leap-frog ahead of the given structure of brain facts and ideas instead of simply reading each item in the formal order presented on the website. It also makes core ideas instantly accessible via links at the end of each of the six essay-sets and five skill-sets and six training tools. In addition, there are dozens of interactive links inside each of the essay-sets and skill-sets and training tools, including hundreds of relevant book outlines, for your personal use. 
flyingeagle@earthlink.net Instantly go to Essay #2: Focus on the Brain Science Facts of Life Instantly return to: Brainpower Skills Website Index |
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