brain

Welcome to Brain Stories

Curious about the brain? About behavior and experiences/feelings, your own and other people's? There's lots on Serendip to help you think about such things, and to encourage you to develop new understandings and new questions about them, including a whole section on Brain and Behavior and another on Mental Health. And, of course, there are new observations being made all of the time, reported in professional journals, newspapers, magazines, books, and on the web.


Learning from Asperger's

Learning from "From the Inside":
Being on the Spectrum

Paul Grobstein
December 2008

Excerpts from and comments on Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison (Crown Publishers, 2007)

 


Are You Anxious or Sad? If So, Probably Both


Between the top two most common mental illnesses in the US are anxiety and mood disorders, which includes depression. Often a depressed person will suffer from anxiety, but more often still an anxious person suffers from depression. However, anxiety and depression, while intricately entwined, are not one and the same. This paper aims to explore each and the relationship between the two mental disorders.


The Folly of Examining Life Rationally: The Fantastical Narrative Within Us All

“Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one.”

- Albert Einstein, genius


Psychodrama in the Archives

In the Freud Archives is famous in the journalistic community both for its quality as a piece of careful, investigative reporting and storytelling, but also for the controversy it caused after its publication: the main subject of the piece, Jeffrey Masson, sued the author Janet Malcolm, claiming she made up certain quotes attributed to him in the work. Still, for a reader interested in the life of the mind, Archives is even more powerful as a carefully crafted set of two tales, each one a parable of the other. In the forefront is the story of the meteoric rise and fall of young Freud scholar and analyst Masson at the hands of revered analyst K.R. Eissler. In the background

Dialogues

For those of you who want to jump immediately into reading the dialogues, feel free. For readers who would like an introduction, of sorts, to the project, read the prologue first.

Digging in the wrong place with the wrong tools: An exploration into consciousness and free will

Digging in the wrong place with the wrong tools:
An exploration into consciousness and free will


Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain


Girl, Interrupted - Book Commentary

For my book commentary I read Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen. The book is about Susanna Kaysen when she was eighteen years old, and institutionalized, and spans to her life after the institution. She recounts how she got to the institution, what it was like in the institution, and reveals her thoughts about the world and various theories. The book portrays vivid portraits of the world she enters, and of the world she left. Kaysen is clear and precise, making the reader question what the difference is between the “sane” and the “insane”, between her and you?

Serendip's Complexity and Emergence On-Line Forum

Welcome. This open forum is for postings and discussions relevant to Serendip's Complexity and Emergence resource page. Comments on materials linked to from there as well suggestions for additional materials are welcome here. Visit to find postings from others that you might find useful in your own thinking, and to leave postings that others might find useful. Postings may be delayed in appearing while they are checked to avoid spam.