complexity

“How do you feel today?” my therapist asks me at the start of our session.

“Anxious,” I reply.

“Want to try some EMDR?”

I shrug. “OK.”

It’s not like anything else has helped to ease my social anxiety, except for psychopharmaceuticals.

“What’s EMDR?”

 Raven Harris

Neurobiology and Behavior

Thinking Outside of the Brain

 The human nervous system is made up of three overall types of neuronal connections. These connections link sensory neurons to the rest of the nervous system, the nervous system to motor neurons, or neurons within the nervous system to other neurons in the nervous system. Inter-neuronal connections are by far the most numerous of all connections in the nervous system, while sensory neuron connections are relatively sparse. Because of this disproportionate number of connection types, it is essential that the human brain be able to derive complex reactions from very few sensory inputs. The link between olfaction and memory provides a truly remarkable example of this ability. Olfa

An interesting example of the constraints placed on inquiry by stories that make some things difficult to conceive came up in Neurobiology and Behavior last week, during a discussion of the ability of the nervous system to generate outputs by itself rather than simply in response to external stimuli.

"Perhaps I've just had the idea that 'cause equals effect' engrained in my mind for so long that it's just difficult to sway me, but I still feel that there must be some input to trigger reactions in our body"