Category: NEUROSCIENCE


Most of us know it well – the almost physical sensation that we are the object of someone’s attention. Is the feeling all in our head? And what about related phenomena, such as telepathy and premonitions? Are they merely subjective beliefs? In The Sense of Being Stared At, renowned biologist Rupert Sheldrake explores the intricacies of the mind and discovers that our perceptive abilities are stronger than many of us could have imagined.

Despite a traditional academic background, Sheldrake has devoted his notable career as a scientist and writer to challenging the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ science. A firm believer in the power of an experiment to yield answers about nature, he has dedicated years of intense research to investigating our common beliefs about what he calls our seventh sense. After compiling a database of 4,000 case histories, 2,000 questionnaires, 1,500 telephone interviews, and the results of a decade of scientifically controlled experiments, Sheldrake argues persuasively in this compelling, innovative book that such phenomena are real. In fact, he rejects the label of paranormal and shows how these psychic occurrences are a normal part of human nature.
As an explanation for this more intimate connection with the external world, Sheldrake suggests that our minds are not limited to our brains, but rather stretch outward to touch the beings and objects that we perceive. Once this extended influence of the mind is taken into consideration, many puzzling phenomena begin to make sense, including telepathy and phantom limbs.
Sheldrake shows that telepathy depends on social bonds. He traces its evolution from the connections between members of animal groups such as flocks, schools, and packs. In the modern world, telepathy occurs most commonly just before telephone calls.

Sheldrake summarizes startling new experimental evidence for the reality of telephone telepathy, and shows how readers can do tests for themselves. Combining the tradition of pragmatic experimentation with a refusal to allow science to fall into dogmatism, Sheldrake pioneers an intriguing new inquiry into the mysteries of our deepest nature. Rigorously researched, yet completely accessible, this groundbreaking book provides a refreshing new way of thinking about ourselves and our relationships with other people, with animals, and with the world around us.
Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world’s most innovative biologists and writers, is best known for his theory of morphic fields and morphic resonance, which leads to a vision of a living, developing universe with its own inherent memory.

He worked in developmental biology at Cambridge University, where he was a Fellow of Clare College. He was then Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in Hyderabad, India. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project. , funded from Trinity College, Cambridge.
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Rupert Sheldrake: The Sense of Being Stared At

We know that each of us is unique, but science has struggled to pinpoint where, precisely, our uniqueness resides. Is it in our genes? The structure of our brains? Our genome may determine our eye color and even aspects of our personality. But our friendships, failures, and passions also shape who we are. The question is: how?

Sebastian Seung, a dynamic professor at MIT, is on a quest to discover the biological basis of identity. He believes it lies in the pattern of connections between the brain’s neurons, which change slowly over time as we learn and grow. The connectome, as it’s called, is where our genetic inheritance intersects with our life experience. It’s where nature meets nurture. Seung introduces us to the dedicated researchers who are mapping the brain’s connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. It is a monumental undertaking—the scientific equivalent of climbing Mount Everest—but if they succeed, it could reveal the basis of personality, intelligence, memory, and perhaps even mental disorders.

Many scientists speculate that people with anorexia, autism, and schizophrenia are “wired differently,” but nobody knows for sure. The brain’s wiring has never been clearly seen. In sparklingly clear prose, Seung reveals the amazing technological advances that will soon help us map connectomes. He also examines the evidence that these maps will someday allow humans to “upload” their minds into computers, achieving a kind of immortality.

Connectome is a mind-bending adventure story, told with great passion and authority. It presents a daring scientific and technological vision for at last understanding what makes us who we are. Welcome to the future of neuroscience.

Sebastian Seung is Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Harvard University, and formerly worked at Bell Laboratories. His research on artificial intelligence and neuroscience has been published in leading scientific journals, and also featured in the New York Times, Technology Review, and the Economist. His laboratory at MIT is currently inventing technologies for mapping connections between the brain’s neurons, and investigating the hypothesis that we are all unique because we are “wired differently.”

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Connectome by Sebastian Seung Book Trailer

The bold and thrilling quest to finally understand the brain—and along with it our mental afflictions, from depression to autism—by a rising star in neuroscience

Sebastian Seung
, a dynamic young professor at MIT, is at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience. He believes that our identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells—our own particular wiring. Seung and a dedicated group of researchers are leading the effort to map these connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. It is a monumental effort—the scientific equivalent of climbing Mount Everest—but if they succeed, they will uncover the basis of personality, identity, intelligence, memory, and perhaps disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. Seung explains how this new map of a human “connectome” might even enable us to “upload” our brains into a computer, making us effectively immortal.

Connectome is a mind-bending adventure story, told with great passion and authority. It presents a daring scientific and technological vision for at last understanding what makes us who we are, both as individuals and as a species.

Description
Personal Transformation Based on Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

What’s your most important goal? Why does it matter so deeply? How will you overcome the obstacles? Answer these questions with sincerity, proceed with mindfulness and compassion, and you have just set in motion a revolutionary method for personal change that is supported by both the latest science and traditional wisdom. On The Neuroscience of Change, psychologist and award-winning Stanford lecturer Kelly McGonigal presents six sessions of breakthrough ideas, guided practices, and real-world exercises for making self-awareness and kindness the basis for meaningful transformation.

Practical Methods to Retrain Your Brain to Support Your Goals

Our understanding of the incredible power of the human brain is at an all-time high, with the emerging fields of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and psychophysiology opening new possibilities for greater health, happiness, and freedom from suffering. Drawing on her training as a research scientist and longtime practitioner of meditation and yoga, Dr. McGonigal reveals these startling findings—including the clinically supported methods for training the mind away from default states and negativity that no longer serve us and establishing behaviors and attitudes aligned with our highest values and aspirations.

The First Rule of Change: It’s Already Happening

As the world’s wisdom traditions teach and science is now verifying, our lives are in fact defined by constant change. Whether you’re looking to change a behavior, improve your health or other circumstances, or simply for a way to bring hope and resilience into your life as it is, The Neuroscience of Change will help you trust yourself and unfold your true capacities for personal transformation.

Highlights

Willingness, self-awareness, and surrender—how to nourish the seeds of change

  • Focusing on the process, not the outcome
  • How to overcome the “trigger-to-instinct” reaction
  • The proven benefits of meditation—and how to start practicing yourself
  • How to transform self-criticism into self-compassion
  • Why your mind creates habits—and how to consciously create new ones
  • Making values-driven commitments
  • Visualization and the principle of “encoding prospective memories”
  • The power of the vow
  • “Deep activation” and the danger of rejecting what is
  • Working with inner experiences as the key to making outward change
  • Six hours of breakthrough science, practical wisdom, guided exercises, and mindfulness meditations for making positive change that lasts

Kelly McGonigal, PhD, is a health psychologist and award-winning lecturer at Stanford University. A leading expert on the mind-body relationship, her work integrates the latest findings of psychology, neuroscience, and medicine with contemplative practices of mindfulness and compassion from the traditions of Buddhism and yoga. She is the author of The Willpower Instinct and Yoga for Pain Relief.

Kelly McGonigal, PhD: The Science of Change

Popular Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal, PhD, spoke at East West about how the latest discoveries in neuroscience have bridged cutting edge science with ancient, time-honored wisdom.

Overview
A revolutionary new map for the soul’s journey

We think of the spiritual search as a pilgrim’s progress-but what if you were less like a pilgrim and more like a student, mastering lessons at a level more and more advanced? Psychiatrist Paul DeBell, MD, outlines the lesson plan with uncommon clarity, combining a scientist’s rigor with a seeker’s passion to illuminate the secret recesses of the soul.

How Spiritual Messages Work

To understand spiritual messages another way, we can represent schematically what a message is and how it works on us. We’ll start by depicting the relationship between our consciousness, our brain, and our soul. Although modern science has yet to determine the precise nature of consciousness, we do know that it exists and in some way seems to emanate from the brain, as represented in FIGURE 1.

To function effectively in everyday life, each of us needs to organize the feelings, fantasies, thoughts, memories, and knowledge stored in our brain’s synapses into a mental model of the world—“the world according to me.” We use this model as a virtual reality in which to imagine the outcomes of the various options available to us and choose the one that gives us the greatest benefit. Whether we succeed or fail at what we are doing, we can use the results to refine our understanding of how things work so that we can do better in future situations. When most situations turn out essentially as we had imagined, we can conclude that we know how things work.

From a spiritual perspective, we are more than a body. We are also an eternal soul, which survives the death of our body. Our soul, according to most religions, is conscious and intelligent. It has its own distinctive consciousness, its own “mind,” which integrates all its feelings, fantasies, thoughts, memories, and knowledge into a coherent whole, as represented in FIGURE 2. This has been confirmed by studies of out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, and reports of contacts with other souls.

We know little for certain of how this soul functions when it is not housed in our body and connected to our brain. Our brain’s mind and our soul’s mind perform similar functions. Our brain’s mind analyzes everything from its distinctive material perspective, whereas our soul’s mind analyzes everything from its distinctive spiritual perspective. Although the mind of the brain and the mind of the soul have different agendas, they integrate to form our thoughts and feelings about our everyday lives. What our brain contributes is most obvious in the drives and desires we share with other animals, the drives that sustain individual life and preserve the species. Our soul’s influence, on the other hand, is more visible in qualities that make us different from other primates, such as our more penetrating intellect, the voice of our conscience, and our attraction to spirituality. FIGURE 3 represents our everyday consciousness, where most of the capacities of our soul are used by our brain to try to achieve its own material goals.

We don’t notice most of what is going on from our soul’s perspective because we are completely preoccupied with meeting the challenges of everyday life. At times, when the input of our soul becomes strong enough, a spiritual inspiration will break through.

FIGURE 4 shows what can happen when our soul is able to summon up the energy necessary to transmit the information to the brain in such a way that this information emerges into our consciousness as an inspiration. For us to recognize this information, however, our consciousness has to be sufficiently receptive to the advice being given. If it isn’t, an inspiration may reach us but be ignored as irrelevant. To give an inspiration the attention it deserves, therefore, we need to be prepared to recognize and value its input.We can receive inspirations out of the blue, being grateful when they come our way, but we can gain far more by taking the next step: We can make ourselves more receptive to these inspirations by creating conditions that encourage our soul’s comments on our daily life—a subject that we will return to frequently throughout the course of the book.

A spiritual message, as represented in FIGURE 5, is an inspiration coupled with a real external event that has itself been influenced by spiritual forces. It not only helps us in our immediate situation, but also teaches us how the material and spiritual dimensions interact. By carefully studying these moments of correspondence, we can gradually become familiar with the wider range of influences that our soul has on our thoughts and feelings.

With this schematic in mind, we can see the elements of a spiritual message in Beth’s example. First, Beth received an inspiration to look for a job. Second, she responded by looking for a job, thus creating the right material circumstances for a message. Third, she experienced an unexpected external event (getting the interview quickly and a better job than she had a right to expect). Fourth, she felt strongly that this confirmed for her that spiritual forces had arranged the whole situation.

Beth’s story underscores something that I have found to be true: The more we understand that our messages are aimed at both helping our material life and stimulating our spiritual development in a balanced way, the more we can take advantage of our soul’s input into our everyday thoughts, feelings, memories, and reactions. Both our brain and our soul benefit from the integration of the others’ resources, as depicted in FIGURE 6, so that we can enjoy life more in the physical plane and develop our soul at the same time. What could be better? (chapter 2, pages 33-37)

Dr. Paul DeBell, M.D, – Welcome

View Here Decoding the Spiritual Messages of Everyday Life: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know A Book Review and Signing by Paul DeBell, MD


Many of us go through daily life on autopilot, without being fully aware of our conscious experience.

Neuroscientists Richard Davidson and Amishi Jha join clinical mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn to explore the role of consciousness in mental and physical health, how we can train the mind to become more flexible and adaptable, and what cutting-edge neuroscience is revealing about the transformation of consciousness through mindfulness and contemplative practice.

What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bio-electrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states?

Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book–part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation–describes Koch’s search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest–his instinctual (if “romantic”) belief that life is meaningful.

Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a “fringy” subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action.

Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life’s work–to uncover the roots of consciousness.

Christof Koch

Christof Koch was born in the American Midwest, grew up in Holland, Germany, Canada, and Morocco. He studied Physics and Philosophy at the University of Tübingen in Germany and was awarded his Ph.D. in Biophysics in 1982. After 4 years at MIT, he joined the California Institute of Technology, where he is the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology. In 2011, he became the Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, planning for a ten year, large-scale, high through-put effort to understand the visual system of the mouse, with a focus on untangling the circuitry of it’s cerebral cortex. He loves dogs, Apple Computers, rock and mountain climbing, biking and long-distance running.

His laboratory studies the biophysics of nerve cells, and the neuronal and computational basis of visual perception, attention, and consciousness and machine vision. Together with his long-time collaborator, Francis Crick, Koch pioneered the scientific study of consciousness. His latest book, Consciousness – Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist deals with the philosophical, religious, scientific, technological and personal questions relating to his research.

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Christof Koch – Brain, Mind, and Consciousness – Skeptics Society

This is from the 2005 Skeptics Conference where leading scientists discuss issues that strike at the very heart of the matter, our brains. Topics range from morality to evolution to consciousness to life after death. It’s an absolutely amazing collection of lectures.

Christof Koch on the Neurobiology and Mathematics of Consciousness

For more of Dr.Christof Koch’s works view here

You are not doomed by your genes and hardwired to be a certain way for the rest of your life. A new science is emerging that empowers all human beings to create the reality they choose. In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, renowned author, speaker, researcher, and chiropractor Dr. Joe Dispenza combines the fields of quantum physics, neuroscience, brain chemistry, biology, and genetics to show you what is truly possible.

Not only will you be given the necessary knowledge to change any aspect of yourself, but you will be taught the step-by-step tools to apply what you learn in order to make measurable changes in any area of your life. Dr. Joe demystifies ancient understandings and bridges the gap between science and spirituality. Through his powerful workshops and lectures, thousands of people in 24 different countries have used these principles to change from the inside out. Once you break the habit of being yourself and truly change your mind, your life will never be the same!

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Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself with Dr. Joe Dispenza

Uploaded on Feb 2, 2012

Interview dr Joe Dispenza – on the brain and spirituality, how to change your mind

Published on Jan 23, 2013

Neuroscientist & Author, Dr. Joe Dispenza, speaks with Mike & Fiona about his new book. Breaking the Habit of being yourself. the book details concepts about changing your Brain.

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Published on Oct 19, 2012
What is the origin and nature of consciousness? If consciousness is common to humans and animals alike, what are the defining traits of human consciousness?

Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman, philosopher David Chalmers, expert in primate cognition Laurie Santos, and physician-scientist Nicholas Schiff will discuss what it means to be “conscious” and examine the human capacities displayed in cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical behaviors, with a focus on the place and function of the mind within nature.

The New York Academy of Sciences
Wednesday, October 10, 2012

This event is part of The Emerging Science of Consciousness Series, which brings together leading experts from various fields to discuss how the latest research is challenging our understanding of the very nature and function of consciousness in our daily lives.

A manual for relating to the brain in a revolutionary new way, Super Brain shows you how to use your brain as a gateway for achieving health, happiness, and spiritual growth. The authors are two pioneers: bestselling author and physician Deepak Chopra and Harvard Medical School professor Rudolph E. Tanzi, one of the world’s foremost experts on the causes of Alzheimer’s. They have merged their wisdom and expertise for a bold new understanding of the “three-pound universe” and its untapped potential.

In contrast to the “baseline brain” that fulfills the tasks of everyday life, Chopra and Tanzi propose that, through a person’s increased self-awareness and conscious intention, the brain can be taught to reach far beyond its present limitations. “We are living in a golden age for brain research, but is this a golden age for your brain?” they ask.

Super Brain explains how it can be, by combining cutting-edge research and spiritual insights, demolishing the five most widespread myths about the brain that limit your potential, and then showing you methods to:

-Use your brain instead of letting it use you
-Create the ideal lifestyle for a healthy brain
-Reduce the risks of aging
-Promote happiness and well-being through the mind-body connection
-Access the enlightened brain, the gateway to freedom and bliss
-Overcome the most common challenges, such as memory loss, depression, anxiety, and obesity

Your brain is capable of incredible healing and constant reshaping. Through a new relationship with your brain you can transform your life. In Super Brain, Chopra and Tanzi guide you on a fascinating journey that envisions a leap in human evolution. The brain is not just the greatest gift that Nature has given us. It’s the gateway to an unlimited future that you can begin to live today.

Deepak Chopra, MD, is the author of more than 65 books including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His medical training is in internal medicine and endocrinology and he is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and a Senior Scientist at the Gallup organization.

Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD, is the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Tanzi co-discovered the first Alzheimer’s disease gene and several others, as head of the Alzheimer’s Genome Project and is the co-author of the book Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Change The Structure of Your Brain! – Neuroplasticity | SUPER BRAIN

Published on Jan 18, 2013

Description: How can we change the structure of our brain and what is neuroplasticity?*

SUPER BRAIN is a manual for relating to the brain in a revolutionary new way. Learn how to use your brain as a gateway for achieving health, happiness, and spiritual growth.* Hosted by author and physician Deepak Chopra, and Harvard Medical School professor Rudy Tanzi, the series and book combines cutting edge research and spiritual insights to help you tap into your brain’s incredible capacity to heal and change. Dr. Tanzi is one of the world’s foremost experts on the causes of Alzheimer’s and includes tips and ideas to health promote brain health.

Meditation and the Brain | SUPER BRAIN with Rudy Tanzi & Deepak Chopra

Description: How does meditation affect your brain?*

SUPER BRAIN is a manual for relating to the brain in a revolutionary new way. Learn how to use your brain as a gateway for achieving health, happiness, and spiritual growth.* Hosted by author and physician Deepak Chopra, and Harvard Medical School professor Rudy Tanzi, the series and book combines cutting edge research and spiritual insights to help you tap into your brain’s incredible capacity to heal and change. Dr. Tanzi is one of the world’s foremost experts on the causes of Alzheimer’s and includes tips and ideas to health promote brain health.

Love and the Brain | SUPER BRAIN with Rudy Tanzi & Deepak Chopra

Description: What happens in your brain when you fall in love?*

Sleep, Brain Health, and Alzheimer’s Prevention | SUPER BRAIN

Description: What is the relationship between sleep, brain health, and Alzheimer’s disease?*

Memory and the Brain | SUPER BRAIN with Rudy Tanzi and Deepak Chopra

Description: What is the relationship between memories and our brain?*

Take-charge strategies to heal your body and brain from stress and trauma.

Understanding how our brains and bodies actually work is a powerful tool in mitigating the anxiety generated by unpleasant physical and emotional symptoms that we all may experience from time to time. Here, Robert Scaer unravels the complexities of the brain-body connection, equipping all those who are in distress with a plausible explanation for how they feel.

Making the science accessible, he outlines the core neurobiological concepts underlying the brain-body interface and explains why physical and emotional symptoms of stress and trauma occur. He explains why “feelings” represent physical sensations that inform us about the nature of our brain-body conflicts. He also offers practical, easy-to-implement strategies for strengthening motor skills, learning to listen to our gut to gauge our feelings, attuning to the present, and restoring personal boundaries to relieve symptoms and navigate a path to recovery.

Robert Scaer, M.D. received his B.A. in Psychology, and his M.D. degree at the University of Rochester. He is Board Certified in Neurology, and has been in practice for 36 years, twenty of those as Medical Director of Rehabilitation Services at the Mapleton Center in Boulder, CO. His primary areas of interest and expertise have been in the fields of traumatic brain injury and chronic pain, and more recently in the study of traumatic stress and its role in physical and emotional symptoms, and in diseases.

He has lectured extensively on these topics, and has published several articles on posttraumatic stress disorder, dissociation, the whiplash syndrome and other somatic syndromes of traumatic stress. He has published three books, the first The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation and Disease, presenting a new theory of dissociation and its role in many diseases. A second edition of this book was released in October, 2007. A second book, The Trauma Spectrum: Hidden Wounds and Human Resiliency, addresses the broad and relatively unappreciated spectrum of cultural and societal trauma that shapes every aspect of our lives. A third book, Eight Keys to Brain/Body Balance, released in September, 2012, is a lay person’s guide to the workings of the brain, related to how the brain changes in stress and trauma, and may be healed. He is currently retired from clinical medical practice, and continues to pursue a career in writing and lecturing in the field of traumatology.

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Robert Scaer, M.D. Trauma Treatment: EMDR and Brainspotting.m4

Clip from DR Scaer’s extended interview on The Master Clinician Series.

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