Welcome back from spring recess!
Now, let’s get back to work and complete the semester with a strong finish.
During the first fifteen minutes, write summaries of the two readings that we had for today’s class: Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, The Moral of the Story, and John Medina’s Brain Rules, Sensory Integration. To get us back on track with the readings, spend about seven minutes on each reading. I will let you know when seven minutes have passed. After you have written your summaries in your notebooks, type them up and post them as a single comment to this blog post (one comment will include both summaries).
Again, reading John Medina’s “Brain Rules”, chapter eight “Sensory Integration” makes the reader be part of a Psychology class. According to Medina, the process of sensory integration has a positive effect on learning that stimulate more of the senses at the same time. Equally important, a huge amount of sensory information comes at us in any time. However, as Medina said “Perception is not where the integration begins but where the integration culminates.” For example, the brain’s job is to handle the inputs that our senses pick up; allowing us to perceive the world. Therefore, once the information is encoded, it is routed to appropriate regions of the brain for further processing. Finally, I found similar and really interesting the Proust Effect; “Smell can evoke memory”. Moreover, reading Gottschall’s “The Storytelling Animal”, chapter six “The Moral of the Story” again makes me compare the two author’s writing styles. In other words, I found that Gottschall’s writing style still more complex with an incredible amount of information, while Medina’s writing style is more specific and straightforward with the information provided. Going Back to Gottschall’s chapter, Religion and Story play a vital role in our life. Sacred fiction has dominated human existence and Religion is the last expression controlling our minds. Also, national myths play a binding role in society. In general, the three major monotheisms are Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. In addition, Religion coordinates behavior within a group, setting rules and norms. Therefore, Religion provides benefits such as a powerful incentive system. As one can see, Story and Religion is reinforcing a set of common values and strengthening the ties of common culture.
I didn’t quite understand Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, The Moral of the Story, but I think this chapter talks about how we humans evolve to be religious. And more importantly, how did dogmatic faith in imaginary beings not diminish our ability to survive and reproduce? From reading John Medina’s Brain Rules, Sensory Integration, John Medina talks about how we absorb information about events through our senses and translate it into electrical signals. For example; some for sights, others from sounds and etc. It shows that the brain seems to rely partly on our past experience in deciding how to combine these signals. Basically it means that our senses evolves to work together, which means we learn best if we can stimulate several sense at once.
The chapter “The Moral of The Story” talked about all the religions that are practiced through out the world. Some of the Gottschall pointed out was that everyone’s belief is formed by a book full of morals and stories that teach lessons. Most religions are filled with commandments, supernatural miracles, prayer (in some cases rituals) One big question Gottschall asked was “why did we evolve to be religious ?” Pg120 which led me to believe he does not believe human life was done by God. At this point I kind of checked out of the reading because I have a hard time with people believing that we all came about due to some cells, atoms and molecules. It’s insane to think that this whole world, human race and animals was not created by a higher power. Beyond this, in many cases religion keeps many people sane and able to have something to lean on when going through difficult times. And he did point out how followers have to continuously “mentally simulate” all of the stories they have read about which I indeed find interesting because it’s true. Its amazing to think that we all have the imagination to do that.
John Medina’s chapter “Sensory Integration” was difficult to try to imagine. Not because O did not understand what he was saying but because he talked about how our brains perceives everything we encounter in life. Because we use our five senses in order to perceive things our brain is constantly at work which allows us to function and understand everything we do and surround ourselves with. The process of understanding something can be divided into three steps. Sensation, routing and perception (pg202-203 ) What I was able to take from this reading is that I believe the human brain is IMPOSSIBLE to comprehend. There’s just so much to it, even more than we may know.
I have found both Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, The Moral of the Story, and John Medina’s Brain Rules, Sensory Integration chapter to be very intriguing. To begin with, Gottschall’s chapter speaks of the moral of many stories, two of which captured my profound attention. According to Gottschall, in traditional societies, truths about the spirit world were conveyed not through lists or essays-they were conveyed through story. I agree with Gottschall, because even though every religion may have their own belief, they all have one thing in common, stories. Each religion uses stories to teach their believers about the history of their faith. Also, Gottschall explains, “Based on what the sacred stories say, believers regulate the practices of their lives: how they eat, how they wash, how they dress, when they have sex, when they forgive, and when they wage total war in the name of everything holy.” I am not here to condemned, but to think of the total madness most religion believes in, it is beyond insanity. I believe there is only one God, despite the fact that every religion intend to have one or more Gods that they serve. Also, I believe that most religions, if not all, use God’s name as a cover to enforced their ways of how they perceived the world to be. In addition, I think that any religion that creates destruction is not a religion that serves God.
On the other hand, Median’s chapter talks about the way the brain organizes sensations for engagement in occupation. Median argues, “An incredible amount of sensory information comes at us in any given moment. I think Median is right, because I believe that for most of us, sensory integration occurs without conscious thought or effort. Let us say you are ironing and chatting with your child. You stay focused on your conversation and hear all the fascinating details of the latest episode of Blue’s Clues. You may find that you have ironed an entire pile of shirts without even thinking. You certainly did not have to consciously consider how to apply the correct pressure to the iron, or figure out what to do when you came across a wrinkle or finished a sleeve. You just ironed. That is how good you are at using your senses to function adaptively. Of course, if something unexpected happens, say, you notice a stain, your senses would sharpen and focus on this alerting information.
Gottschall, “The Moral of The Story” talk about humans evolved to be a religious race. Religion helped us believe in something and have faith in a creator which gave us the ability to reproduce and survive. Religion is one of the core survival methods for the human race. John Medina’s Sensory Integration chapter talks about how take in information from events in our lives and when we take in that information it is turned into electrical signals in our brains. Example perceiving information from any of our senses. Our brain seems to recycle our past events and arranging the information. In conclusion our we evolved to make our senses perceive information together and that’s how we can take in information easily.
Brain rules- Sensory integration
A person constantly learns using his/her senses throughout his/her life. We absorb information about an event through our senses, translate it into electrical signals, disperse those signals to separate parts of the brain, then reconstruct what happened, eventually perceiving the event as a whole. Our brain likes sensory integration. I found McGurk effect very interesting as it explains how our brain struggles between ga and ba. When scientists ask to listen to a video keeping eye closed we hears ba but when same video is played but our eyes are open brain triggers ga although our ear is hearing ba. Like Medina said before our brain is such a brilliant artist it can build something from nothing. An important factor in sensory integration is perception. There are three steps on how perception is created First is sensation, Second is routing and Third the perception formed. However no scientist is entirely sure how brain perception works. Our senses evolved to work together like vision influencing hearing which implies that learning is at its best when stimulated with several senses at once. Smell also have an unusual power to bring back memory. Furthermore, Medina also states that the brain relies on past experiences to decide how to combine these signals. Thus two people can perceive the same event in very different ways.
The story telling animal- The moral of story
There are many religions in this world. Each believes in their own stories. In traditional societies , truths about the spirit world were not conveyed through lists or essays they were rather conveyed through stories. Jonathan Gottschall writes ” The world’s priest and shamans knew what psychology would later confirm: if you want a message to borrow into a human mind, work it into a story”. Supernatural myths aren’t the only stories that play a blinding role in society. National myths can serve the same function. Like we were told Christopher Columbus discovered America by sailing the blue ocean. And back in my country the stories of Gorkhali’s, It is said that British gave a medal of honor to the Gorkhalis after the war ended. Since there are so many stories by the time American children reach adulthood they will have seen 200,000 violent acts and the countless enemies they have slaughtered in video games. Social scientist believes that it leads to an increase in real world aggression. But fiction never gives us morally neutral presentation of violence. Fiction drives home the message that violence is acceptable only under clearly defined circumstances. Appel studied people who mainly watch drama and comedy and it concludes that fiction by constantly marinating our brains in the theme of poetic justice, may be partly responsible for the overly optimistic sense that the world is, on the whole a just place. Thus as Gottschall writes “story is the counterforce to social disorder, the tendency of things to fall apart. Story is the center without which rest cannot hold”.
The moral of the story.
By Jonathan Gottschall
This chapter surprisingly starts off by talking about religion, which is a very famous topic around the world. Jonathan Gottschall uses religion in this chapter to explain his point about stories. A line that Gottschall wrote that caught my attention was “the conventional secular explanation of religion is that humans invent gods to give order and meaning to existence”. When I read this line I didn’t know how to feel about it, because our ancestor might have created gods and written all these holy books we see everyday but if that’s the case, who created us, how did we get here, who designed our bodies, who designed our brains, I mean it had to be someone, the theory of the big explosion that made us is definitely a myth so there’s have to be a god or something bigger than the universe. Another topic that Gottschall mentioned was how school teach true stories about history but in a fictionally way, he explained how his daughter was taught on such historical event as the discovering of America by Christopher Columbus, Gottschall added that what they taught his daughter was mostly fiction and a wrong story in most details. I believe he added this example to show us that a god might be real but since it’s been such long time people have re-invented a whole new stories and believes such as the Christopher Columbus story.
Sensory Integration
By John Medina
I usually prefer Medina’s writings over Gottchalls but this one chapter was very hard for me to understand however something interesting I learned about the brain was the whole synesthesia event that happens in our brain. Synesthesia seems to be a short circuiting in the way the brain processes the world’s many senses. That proves that our sensory processes are wired to work together. What I understood with what Medina said about Synesthesia is that whenever we see or hear something we usually experience a taste or feel something. I personally haven’t experience the whole see and taste but I have seen and feel whichever feelings are wired to what I am seeing. For example I was watching a Drake concert online, Drake is rapper/singer and he was performing one of his lonely concept songs and all of a sudden I started feeling what I was seeing and most important what I was hearing on the song such as loneliness, lust among other feelings.
“The Moral of Story”
Jonathan Gottschall
One of best things of reading Jonathan Gottschall’s book “The Storytelling Animal” is all the concentration it requires to be able to understand and get to the point of each chapter. At this time, I am going to talk about The Moral of Story chapter, which is based on the relationship between religion and story. “Religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence”. According to the author, Religion is a human universal; present in one form or another, in all of the societies that anthropologists have visited and archaeologists have dug up. Religious tendencies are either an evolutionary adaptation, evolutionary side effect, or some combination of the two. The conventional secular explanation of religion is that humans invent god to give order and meaning to existence. Nicholas Wade said that the evolutionary function of religion is to bind people together and make them put the group’s interests ahead their own. Basically, Gottschall is trying to explain us what has happen through the time with religion and how societies have answer back. Religion has divided the people in different groups, with different thoughts and beliefs of what is good and bad, they have chosen to believe in their own Gods, traditions and stories. It binds communities together by telling stories to get to one specific objective. There always has been something similar to competence between religions because they all judge to each other. As is explained in the chapter, “There are good things about religion, including the way its ethical teachings bind people into more harmonious collectives. But there is an obvious dark side to religion, too; the way it is so readily weaponized. Religion draws coreligionists together, and it drives those of different faiths apart.”
“Sensory Integration”
John Medina
Medina never disappoints me, he always finds the best ways to explain his ideas to his audience without confusing them, and he makes it so easy to read them as well. “Sensory integration” is his ninth chapter from his Brain Rule’s book. Before reading this chapter, I did not know what “Synesthesia” means. At the beginning of the chapter, he talks about a person that suffers of that and that it just happens to one of 2,000 people. “It is a short-circuiting between the processing of various sensory inputs”. “Is a condition in which one sense (for example, hearing) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses such as sight. Another form of synesthesia joins objects such as letters, shapes, numbers or people’s names with a sensory perception such as smell, color or flavor”. Medina declares that our senses are designed to work together, so when they are combined in a learning environment (images paired with text, for example), the brain pays more attention and encodes the memory more robustly. Medina says that we have to stimulate more of the senses at the same time. Our senses work together so it is important to stimulate them. Our head crackles with the perceptions of the whole world, sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. Furthermore, he asserts that those in multisensory environments always do better than those in unisensory environments.
Justin Echevarria
While reading the chapter “The Moral of the Story” By Jonathan Gottschall I noticed he was talking about religion. I mean no offense to other viewers whom may be reading this, but I personally do not believe in any religion. The topic of “Religion” is very controversial and for the most part leads to some type of verbal or physical violence. Although I do not practice any religion I truly believe the concept of religion is to maintain peace and equality with one another. With this being said some people may worship their religion more than others, this has happened before during the renaissance with the Roman Catholic fighting against Muslims. The topic of religion could be just an easy way out. I am not discouraging any religion, but there are things that we do not know the answer to. For example, life, we do not know for sure where and when man or anything was designed or created or what happens after someone dies. These things we will not ever know in the modern day world maybe one day “a god” may appear maybe someone will discover how everything was created its a topic and an argument no one will truly have the answer.
While reading “Sensory Integration” by John Medina this chapter was a little more difficult to read compared to his other writings. My interpretation of “Sensory Integration” is how all five sense are connected to one another and if one sense isn’t working the neurons go to other senses which actually heightens other senses. For example, the sense of taste is connected with the sense of smell. If one blocks their naval cavity and decides to taste anything it will taste like nothing you will just be able to feel the product in your mouth. This is also connected to the sense of sight. Visions can try to determine what something will taste like, I remember watching a short video of taste testing. They would blind fold and prevent them from being able to smell what ever was given to them. People wonder how to blind people walk I once heard someone say, “you can still see without your eyes.” People who are blind sometimes have a watch dog to help them, but some use a white cane to help track their movement which allows them to feel vibrations better than an average person who still has their senses. With this being said majority of the chapter I read I was more focused on sense I am not sure if this was the right interpretation or not, but I will reread this chapter and attempt to get a better understanding
In Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, The Moral of the Story I liked how the author stared his chapter by using Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I also like how he connects all the religion together and how they have similarities .In John Medina’s Brain Rules, Sensory Integration , I found this chapter to be interesting because it talks about how we absorb information about an event through our senses witch is translated into electrical signal like from sight, sound and other for example smell. Smell has the ability to bring back memories for some strange reason, probably because smell signal bypass the thalamus and head straight to their destination witch also cause emotions.
Jonathan Gottschall
“The Moral of the story”
That is a very interesting chapter that is presenting in this book. First, Gottschall is talking about religion. He is analyzing the holy book of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The world’s priests and shamans believed that if you want message to burrow into a human mind, work it into history. Gottschall believes that religion is ultimate expression of story’s dominion over our mind. Instead of loosing their beliefs, most of the world is getting more religious. People are born curious, and they want to know or find answers to the unanswerable questions.
Some of the scientists believes that human life would be a lot better without the religion, on what the author and personally I disagree.
Religion coordinates behavior within the group, setting up rules and norms, punishments and rewards.
Also in this chapter Gottschall talks about national myth or history that we study at school and other institutions, as a fiction. People are willing to imagine almost anything, but at the same time the are unwilling to imagine a scenario that are crossing their morals and principals. Fiction almost never gives us morally neutral presentation of violence.
John Medina
“Sensory Integration”
That chapter was very hard to read and it probably took me longer than any other chapters of that book to get to the sense of it.
It shows how all five senses are connected to one another and if one sense isn’t working the neurons go to other senses, which actually heightens other senses. This is also connected to the sense of sight. Medina says that we have to stimulate more of the senses at the same time. Our brain seems to recycle our past events and arranging the information.