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).
According to Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal The Moral of the Story chapter Gottschall basically discusses how everyone lives has morality. Everyone has a different culture and/or religion that makes our morals all different. The meaning of moral is concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character. Being immoral is violating moral principles of personal and social ethics. As human beings we all have ethics that tells us either right from wrong or simply to do right or wrong. But it all depends on our background and where we came from that helps us have the morals that we have. Religion, imagining, and unimaginable all makes up morality.
The Storytelling Animal, The Moral of the Story by Jonathan Gottschall
In the Sensory Integration chapter of Brain Rules by John Medina, Medina discusses how we all gather information through a variety of senses. The more senses we involve the more information we take in. I was also shocked of the idea the role that scent has. Smells can affect our emotions and emotions play a role in memory and learning. Writing this brings me back to a time while I was going home and I started to smell this nice pasta smell, almost like lasagna and that made me want to either call my mom up to make some or rush home and make some myself. It was just a certain urge to just have lasagna. That’s kind of how marketers get us to to rush and buy their product. Say if a marketer is selling a certain fragrance and it doesn’t sell much at first. But the marketer has then decided to have a celebrity that many individuals would love and admire to do a commercial with this fragrance. People would then start to have more interest into his/her product and have the urge in wanting to buy. I wonder how we could equip that for learning.
Brain Rules, Sensory Integration by John Medina
In Jonathan Gottschall’s “The Storytelling Animal”, in the “The Moral of the Story” chapter, the author discusses how a society can have an huge impact to an individual, and at the same time, construct the community into different form of moral beliefs based on their religion, ideology, or pride. We humans are primate that demands to stick together in every aspect of our life time, failing to do so may cause that individual to become less social, or become an outcast from that particular community. According to the author, majority of us tend to seek religion as the answer to our virtual life (When we are at near death), or the “Meaning to their existence”, in other words, finding out the purpose of our living. He mentions that, religion offers not just the answer to our living, but also the moral values that is taught within it, which allows the community to become closer. It teaches those believers to know what is right, and wrong, and that everything that they did was because it was their path to their existence, and nothing more. The author also points out that we understand moral values through watching films as well. We may interpret the movies in many ways, but nevertheless, we undergo the morality of the film the same way as many people around the world do. We believe that hero must always win against the villain, and if that did not happen, we (as a community) would walk out from the theatre, disappointed. That is because, we feel the magnitude of the movie going against the moral that we believe in; that good thing should always happen to good people. I do agree that, much of our social life or choices that we make in life are heavily influenced with the moral that we are taught. That is because, we understand what is wrong and right based on how we are taught to live.
In John Medina’s “Brain Rules”, in this chapter “Sensory Integration”, John Medina explains how our brains perceive senses such as touch, hearing, vision, and smell, and create a function. The brain goes through many stages of ladder where the information has to be sent from one end to another before a specific reaction is outputted from the brain. Scientists thinks that there are two ways that our brain perceive information. The author describes these hypothesis through an historical example of a Revolutionary war, the way how American and The Great Britain approached the war. In the Britain’s example, all senses are reported separately. In other words, when the ears hear something or, when the eyes sees something, both senses will report to the central command individually. However, in the American tactics, the senses from different part works together immediately once it pick up senses. It will then continue to act on it without any consultation from the central command. The idea behind these two tactics is, the senses that is perceived always undergo the same process, which is to sense, route and perceive. One particularly example that I found this chapter interesting is the smell perception. It states that the smell is immediately sensed when it enters, not only that, it also triggers an increase in memory span. An experiment was made, where the control group were asked to watch a movie in a normal studio, where else in the experimental group, they were also made to watch a movie in a studio, in addition to that, the studio was filled smell of popcorn. The experiment concluded that, the experimental group were able to remember twice as many than the control group. I found this interesting because, I can relate to it. Sometimes, smell can bring back memories of a particularly person.
Sensory Integration
According to John Medina’s chapter “Sensory Integration”, humans are able to absorb information through our senses. As weird as it sounds, it is any of the senses you can think of that I am talking about here and it includes sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Some people may absorb or capture information through their sight while others can capture information from sound. For example: I remember things better that I’ve seen visually or things that I’ve listened to. There are times when I listen to a song and once I’ve heard the same song again in the future, there is a good chance that I remembered what I learned from listening to it the first time.Another strange fact that Medina states is that even smelling has the power to make us remember things, which explains why people can identify food by the smell without visually seeing it because their smelling sense remembers it. Based on the chapter, people learn and remember information best when they use their senses all at once or at the same time.
The Moral of the Story
According to Jonathan Gotschall’s chapter “The Moral of the Story”, our moral is based on what we have experienced throughout life. Moral, in this case, means the decision we make that describe who we are today. It describes our behavior as humans which may be good or bad. Moral helps us to determine whether to do right or wrong and it teaches how to conduct one self. Society also has a huge effect on us, that is why we all have different morals. The author also mentioned religion as a reason why we all have different morals. Religion is one of the main reason why we all believe and see things differently.
In the chapter “sensory integration” Medina talks about how our brain functions when we try to perceive an event that is from the past or occurring. Our brain can remember these events in various ways like smell, touch, or in a multimodal way. Our brain absorbs the information and spread in different parts of our brain. If we want to access that particular event, our brain gathers all the stored memory and combines it to a single memory, therefore remembering the event. Our multimodal senses work together to accomplish a complete thought in our mind. Without our 6 senses we cannot depict what is happening around us and thus making our brain useless..
There is always a main point of a story, whether it is good or bad, our experience hearing that story will reflect in our daily lives. “ The Moral of the story” by johnnathan gottshall talks about many examples of stories that reflect the moral of a story in a angelic or horrific manner. These morals affect our manners in different ways and how we act towards each other. Religion was an example that gottshall went over in this chapter. According to him religion is a way people find the “Meaning to their existence” purpose of living in a world full of many distractions, and ideas. At the end of a movie or show, it usually shows a moral, whether it is said or not, our brain registers what has happened and tries to make sense of it. If it doesn’t make sense in our brains, human nature seeks answers. Religion being the most controversial subject, “ the belief of someone” it can change a person’s moral by applying the revelations these different type of religions vocalize.
TSTA Moral of the story:
In this chapter, Gottschall discussed how morals are made and how it makes us human. Religion, imagination, and unimaginable makes up morals. Everyone’s morals are different, depending on the person, but most communities have a social norm for what is right and wrong. Religion, for one, is how people try to find their “meaning of existence” as stated by Gottschall. Based on how we and other people fit into these morals, we can be viewed as either an egotistical or moral person. Based on a person’s morals, what is “right” and what is “wrong” may differ, which is why when most people view someone as a villain, there is someone who can understand what is going through that character’s mind.
Brain rules: sensory integration:
In this chapter, medina talks about the human senses, and how they each are used, either individually or together, in order to understand and remember the world around us. For example, Medina mentions how strong smells can remind us of a certain memory linked to it, like how it tasted and looked and what was going on around that memory in accordance to that smell. Based on each of our individual experiences, the way we perceive information can vary greatly. Even if two people are experiencing the same exact thing, like a movie of example, based on the experiences they each have as individuals, they would perceive the movie in a different way.
JM
The senses of humanity and the mind define humanity. 5 senses to observe; hearing, smell, taste, touch, and sight. These 5 senses are crucial to everyday life. What is interesting is how we employ these senses, using them to influence our thoughts in a particular way. For example, when 2 persons are having a conversation, at minimum 2 senses are being used, these being hearing and sight. Senses are not problem free, they can be influenced by previous experiences. The senses transmit information to the brain where it is compiled and condensed, fed to the thought centers to influence thought. The corruption of these thoughts will cause different decisions to be made, this is called synthesia. Synthesia, simply put is when more senses than necessary tens of signals to the brain, thus causing confusion. The brain becomes overloaded with information and cannot function properly. The senses can also receive information from the brain influencing their function. It is not so much the senses that should be admired but the rather how a person chooses to use them.
JG
Stories define humanity. Think of a important story that most humans; at least the ones who agree with you believe. This is religion, a collection of stories and fables designed to control and influence. This statement itself may be harsh, but it shows the purpose(s) of religion. Religion can also be interpreted as stories which tell you how to live your life. What is your thoughts pertaining to religion and the influence of thoughts. I’m going to save the rest of the religious bit for another time. Humanity has a thirst for stories and in general information. I infer this is because people like to think about things. When a person is told something, they either follow it or object it. People are like sheep in a way, sometimes the information they receive is false and they follow it anyway. How do we know something is true or not? Well, we use our heads and the information given to make an educated guess. People must filter thought if they wish to survive. Why are people influenced? Who is really controlling everyday life?
In John Medina’s, “Brian Rules, Sensory Integration,” Medina discusses how our senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell contribute to how the brain perceives and stores memory bringing us to “Brain Rule #8: Stimulate more of the senses.” Our brain goes through a process before actually perceiving information. We sense or pick up activity in our surroundings, our brain wires them to the appropriate area of the brain and then we perceive it. Because our brains go through the wiring process, based on “Brain Rule#5: Every brain is wired differently,” we know that everyone perceives the world differently. Medina discussed how the conjunction of senses improved our learning by significant amount. One of the most powerful senses to help stimulate memory is the sense of smell. Unlike the other senses, the smell signal bypasses the thalamus, and heads straight to the amygdala, which is where the creation of emotional experiences occurs.
In Jonathan Gottschall, “The Storytelling Animal, The Moral of the Story,” Gottschall discusses how morals play a part in story. When one thinks of the word morals, we think of a set of personal values distinguishing between right and wrong for them to do. Religion is a source that brings together communities based on the same common and beliefs. Gottschall explains how morally we would not agree upon a mother and son relationship based on a story. In conclusion, morals are what make us who we are and whom we are is the bases of our story.
The Moral of this essay is to convey that I read the chapters I was suppose to read. Actually I want it to be a little bit more(wink). I think the message Jonathan Gottschall was trying to get through, is that some stories have different meanings and effects on people.Some stories are able to control the minds of people,but I think it goes a little deeper than it just being a story for some. If it is not grounded and based on truth than ultimately it is just a story. I pose this question,”if Jonathan Gottschall wrote his autobiography and left it for his children to read without any lies or embellishments,would it just be a story for them or something a little more? To think about your sensors getting mixed up is something fascinating. If I read a book and every time I saw the word “for” I tasted a strawberry,I do not know how I could function. One of the things I did agree with John Medina’s Sensory Integration was the fact that I think our sensors work together to process different things we see,hear,feel,taste and smell.