A Kind of Contrivance

"There's a lot more going on in your brain and your body than you can ever be aware of. And yet, most people identify themselves with this little flash-lit area of consciousness."

~ Rae Armantrout

ClarityDaron LarsonNovember 2, 2017poetry, poets, Rae Armantrout, self, identity, memory, metacognition, brain, neuroscience, consciousness, awareness, self/otherComment

The Tug-of-War Between Routine and Novelty

"Brains seek a balance between exploiting the knowledge we’ve earned and exploring new surprises. In developing over eons, brains have gotten this tension well balanced – an exploration/exploitation tradeoff that strikes the balance between flexibility and rigor. Too much predictability and we tune out; too much surprise and we become disoriented. We live in a constant tug-of-war between routine and novelty. Creativity lies within that tension."

~ David Eagleman

Daron LarsonOctober 26, 2017David Eagleman, creativity, brain, neuroscience, perception, Liu BolinComment

We're All Hallucinating All the Time

"We're all hallucinating all the time, including right now. It's just that when we agree about our hallucinations, we call that reality."

~ Anil Seth

Daron LarsonJuly 23, 2017Anil Seth, neuroscience, self, self-awareness, interoception, senses, perception, brain, TED, now, present, hallucination, realityComment

Maybe This Brain Can Be Reset

"I do know enough as a psychologist about learning and memory. And I know that we learn. How much of this I need to do in order to change, I cannot say. But I can say that there is a point at which this brain is not just elastic in moving to what is being suggested, but that it may be plastic in that it can be reset into a new mold."

~ Mahzarin Banaji

All The World's a Self-Reflexive Stage

"Our brains evolved in such a way as to render us all eager but flawed mind readers."

~ Michael Bérubé

Daron LarsonJanuary 25, 2016self/other, theory of mind, brain, mind, empathyComment

Continuously Unfolding Nonlinear Narrative

"The entire orchestration of the symphony of mind unfolds like changes in a music score, and while there is no single, master conductor, the decentralized process does have hot spots of top-down modulation linked by connections built over evolutionary time."

~ Antonio Damasio

Daron LarsonJuly 17, 2015Antonio Damasio, consciousness, brain, self, awareness, narrative, identity, illusion, neuroscience, default mode networkComment

It All Starts in the Brain

How exactly does meditation affect your body?

Myths & MisperceptionsDaron LarsonJanuary 26, 2015meditation, mindfulness, science, neuroscience, research, AsapSCIENCE, brainComment

Beautiful Thinking

"Wearing a futuristic headset embeded with electroencephalography (EEG) sensors, Lisa Park moniters her own brain activity during meditation and transposes this energy onto dishes of water to reveal zen-like vibrations."

Daron LarsonNovember 24, 2014art, artists, performance art, meditation, brain, Lisa Park, thinking, mindComment

The Brain Knows

Have Judson Brewer and his colleagues finally found a clue to how the reduction of suffering looks in the brain? Not the activation of a specific region, but a more general deactivation, a neurological letting go that parallels the experiential one?