Nancy Andreasen; The Creating Brain
Book Page   Topic                              
Andreasen; Creating Brain 59 Brains are formed during fetal life; nerve cells grow and establish connections to one another; some of them are hardwired and genetically determined, but many are shaped by our experience.
Andreasen; Creating Brain 59 Some neural connections sends excitatory signals, and sometimes they send negative, or inhibitory signals. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 59 Some connections create short feedback loops between neurons,    and some have long loops    that spread across longer spans of the brain. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 59 It is estimated that a large feedback loop covering the entire brain    takes only five or six synapses. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 59 Human brain networks    are in a state of constant change. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 59 Brain networks are constantly active,    even when we are resting or sleeping. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 60 Long-term potentiation (LTP),    the mechanism by which memories are formed    in synapses. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 61 Human brain as a "self organizing system." 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 61 Self-organizing systems    draw heavily on chaos theory,    because they view the self-organization process    as dynamic and nonlinear.    Dynamic means that the system is subject to frequent change,    or is not in equilibrium. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 62 In nonlinear systems, small causes can have large effects, and large causes can have small effects. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 62 "Butterfly effect" in chaos theory,    a butterfly flapping its wings in China    can affect weather in New England. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 62 In mathematics,    nonlinear equations can have multiple different solutions. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 62 One reason for complexity is the interactions among elements,    especially the feedback from one component to another. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 62 The brain is a mass of feedback loops. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 62 An example of self-organizing system is how an audience may applaud after listening to a concert performance.     At first,    applause is scattered randomly,    with hands clapping in many different patterns.    As the enthusiasm of the audience builds,    a few people start clapping to set a rhythm.     More slowly join in.    Eventually    the entire audience starts clapping in unison. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 62 One example of a self organizing system is weather systems.     Examples from biology include swarming of bees,    schooling of fish,    or flocking of birds.     Ants appear to organize themselves spontaneously    into functioning anthill colonies. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 62 Human brain is perhaps the most superb example of a self-organizing system.     It is constantly and spontaneously generating new thoughts.  [Gestalts] 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 63 Human brain with its trillion neurons and quadrillion synapses, has nearly endless components to self organize. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 63 Human brain is composed of many large and small feedback loops,    and because these can have both positive and negative input,    the brain is the perfect organ for producing dynamic nonlinear thought. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 63 Human capacity    to generate an ordered sequence of words    that "makes sense" is an example of "ordinary creativity"    produced by a self organizing system. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 64 We make up coherent sentences "on the fly,"    listening to ourselves speak    while we are speaking, and planning what the next words will be    as the words and sentences are produced. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 64 Brain is a self-organizing system    that can create novel linkages    on a millisecond timescale. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 64 Language involves a simultaneous generation of several components --    a discourse plan that creates the overall shape of the language units to be spoken;    a sentence plan that formulates the individual sentences and pronounces them sequentially;    and a search through the verbal lexicon    for the appropriate words    to place in order within the sentence. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 64 Brain uses its motor components    to move our lips and tongue and palate    so that the speech is well articulated,    as our auditory system listens    to what is being said    and prepares the other components    to make modifications. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 64 While our brains are actively producing spoken language,    we are often watching the face and body language    of people listening to us,    sometimes deciding to make changes in the discourse plan    as we see them wince or laugh or smile. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 65 Nodes in the language network    are widely distributed    throughout the brain (diagram) 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 66 Some people are able to recover language function after he left hemisphere stroke. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 67 Producing sequentially ordered speech    is a conscious activity    that we intentionally perform,    drawing on our brain's capacity    to act as a self-organizing system. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 68 Study of consciousness    has included some of the best minds in neuroscience,    such as Gerald Edelman,    Francis Crick,    and Christof Koch    along with philosophers John Searle and Daniel Dennett. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 69 Free association thinking relies on pulling up a variety of associative links that lurk in the brain at an unconscious level. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 70 Free association thinking    taps into primary process thinking,    i.e. into unconscious thought    that is primitive in organization and often in content. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 71 Episodic memory    is autobiographical memory,    the recollection of information    that is linked to an individual's personal experiences. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 71 Episodic memory    is composed of a series of events,    sequentially ordered in time. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 71 The capacity to place events in time    and to reference them to oneself    may form the basis for self-awareness    or consciousness. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 71 Semantic memory    comprises an individual's repository    of general information. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 71 Episodic memory    is probably uniquely human. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 71 Episodic memory is also used for free association.    It draws on freely wandering    and undirected associative thoughts    that constitute primary process thinking. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 73 Brain regions active during randomly wandering,    unconscious free associations    are almost all association cortex. 2
Andreasen; Creating Brain 73 Association cortex    are areas in the frontal,    parietal,    and temporal lobes    that are known to gather information from the senses    and from elsewhere in the brain    and link it together    in potentially novel ways. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 73 Association cortex regions    are the last to mature    in human beings.     They continue to develop new connections    until around the early twenties in age. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 73 Association cortex regions    are much larger in humans    than in other higher primates. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 73 Association cortex regions    have more complicated column organization    than other parts of the brain. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 73 Association cortex regions    receive input    from primary sensory or motor regions,    from subcortical regions such as the thalamus,    as well as from one another. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 73 When the brain/mind thinks    in a free and unencumbered fashion,    it uses its most human and complex parts. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 73 Focused episodic memory    uses primarily areas in the temporal lobe    that are used when we recall things,    a process of memory retrieval. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 74 Inferior frontal regions    are known from lesion studies    to be involved in social awareness    and the ability to possess a value system    and experience guilt.    Lesions in this region    tend to produce uncensored    and potentially antisocial behavior. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 74 The precuneus has received little study, since it is rarely damaged in strokes or accidents,    but its location and structure    suggest it to be major association cortex    that could subserve a variety of cognitive functions. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 74 Perhaps the connectivity    between the medial inferior frontal region and the precuneus    represents the network through which personal identity and past personal experiences are interlinked,    permitting us to move between self-awareness and disengagement,    or consciousness and the unconscious. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 93 American Psychiatric Association (APA) developed its criterion-based Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III (DSM-III).  (DSM-V) revisions, Nature, 23 July 09, p.445. 19
Andreasen; Creating Brain 100 John Nash    was an original and gifted mathematician,    made contributions to game theory,    for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize.     Nash exhibited schizotypal traits early in life    and developed a psychosis at age 30.    His son, also named John, suffered from schizophrenia. 7
Andreasen; Creating Brain 100 Albert Einstein had an unusual and eccentric personality    and manifested many schizotypal traits,    such as poor grooming and hygiene,    and deficiencies in interpersonal skills. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 101 A highly original person    may seem odd or strange to others.  Sometimes the person may drop over the edge, into depression,    mania,    or perhaps schizophrenia. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 102 Creative ideas probably occur as part of a potentially dangerous mental process,    when associations in the brain are flying freely during unconscious mental states   (i.e. thoughts become momentarily disorganized)    prior to organizing.    Such a process is very similar to that which occurs during psychotic states of mania, depression, or schizophrenia. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 102 Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who gave schizophrenia its name, described a "loosening of associations" as its most characteristic feature. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 102 On schizophrenia -- of the thousands of associative threads that guide our thinking, schizophrenia seems to interrupt, quite haphazardly, sometimes single threads, sometimes a whole group, and sometimes whole segments of them. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 102 When associations flying through our brains self-organize    to form a new idea,    the result is creativity.    If the associations either fail to self-organize,    or if they self-organize to create an erroneous idea,    the result is psychosis. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 102 John Nash,    a creative person    who was also psychotic --    "the ideas I have about supernatural beings    came to me the same way    that my mathematical ideas did,    so I took them seriously." 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 102 Delusions --    fixed false beliefs --    are very common symptom of psychosis.    Typically, delusions involve misinterpretations or misperceptions    about things going on around a person. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 103 Delusions begin vaguely    and then become quite specific and fixed.     Delusions are said to "crystallize." 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 103 The five senses    gather much more information    than the human brain is able to process.     We must have a facility to ignore a lot of what is happening around us. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 103 Our ability to filter unnecessary stimuli    and focus our attention    is mediated by brain mechanisms in the thalamus and the reticular activating system. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 103 Creative individuals    have sometimes complained that they are too easily flooded by stimuli,    so that they become easily distracted. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 103 Tendency of some people to drink excessively    may be an effort to use alcohol    as a central nervous system depressant    to cope with the sensitivity    of being flooded by stimuli. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 103 Being overwhelmed    by more stimuli than the brain can manage    is a potential mechanism that could lead to a manic high. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 104 During a manic episode,    people become excessively energetic,    distractible,    talkative,    and full of ideas.    A manic high a usually followed by a depressive crash. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 104 Depression is an alternative mechanism    for dealing with an input dysfunction.    The individual copes by withdrawing from social contacts    and almost everything else,    even food and sex. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 104 Sensitivity to excessive inputs from the five senses    may be a resource for creativity. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 104 Unlike schizophrenia,    mania and depression are episodic illnesses.    People usually recover fully and have a normal mood most of the time. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 104 Creativity in the arts    is more closely linked to mood disorders. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 104 Tendency to have enriched associative thinking    is a component of mental illness. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 105 Mood disorders and schizophrenia    have unusually high rates of suicide. 1
Andreasen; Creating Brain 105 Many creative individuals have taken their lives --    Vincent van Gogh,    Virginia Woolf,    Ernest Hemingway. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 105 Plight of mentally ill    50 years ago,    when no treatments were available.     People were condemned to suffer through episodes    of mania or depression until they spontaneously remitted. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 105 Efficacy of lithium carbonate for treatment of mania was established in the 1970s. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 105 Newer antidepressants have been developed during the past decade or two;    in general, these have fewer side effects that might affect creativity,    such as sedation. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 136 The Bach family is perhaps the most powerful example of creativity running in families. 31
Andreasen; Creating Brain 136 Bach's family's creative members extend over eight generations, beginning in 1550 and extending to 1800. 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 136 Thomas Henry Huxley ("Darwin's bulldog") was a notable scientist who had three distinguished grandsons.  Grandson Julian was an anthropologist who carried forward his grandfather's work on the theory of evolution. Andrew was a physiologist who received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.  Aldous was the author of Brave New World (1932). 0
Andreasen; Creating Brain 137 William James was a distinguished philosopher and psychologist.     His father was a 19th-century American intellectual who was a close friend of Thoreau and Emerson. 1
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