Word: braine
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...kind who could seem at first glance--and not just at first glance--like a bit of a crackpot, something between a panoramic intellect and one of those "outsider" artists who manically fill in every free space of their drawings. There were too many ideas in his teeming brain, most of them system-wide and cosmic in scale. He was unconfined by the real-world considerations that keep you and me from envisioning massive spherical communities that would float from place to place...
...Most storm deaths happen the same way: people drown when they try to drive or walk through floodwater. The brain is not very good at assessing the depth and strength of water on a road. Water can hide dips and valleys, making the path look smooth and shallow when it is not. And the brain is even worse at assessing the risk of anything that appears to be familiar or within control - like driving a car in the rain. To add to the general cognitive confusion, flash floods can happen quickly, without any warning...
...Floods are extremely common all over the country and getting more common in many places. The good news is that we understand how to reduce the odds of dying in one. So what can men (and women) do to override their brain's blind spots? The simplest solution is to stay inside. But if you do find yourself out in flood conditions, here are some survival strategies...
...been a lot of really interesting research that points to a connection between our memory of the past and our ability to imagine the future. In our studies of animal models of memory, where we're able to go in and actually watch the pattern of [a rat's] brain activity, we can see that the brain activity while the animal is in a behavior-based situation, [such as navigating a maze,] directly corresponds to its future behavior: what it can, may and will do in the future. We can see that the animal does in fact - I hesitate...
There's evidence on both sides. The systems that are involved in adding emotional content include a brain structure called the amygdala, which gets activated when we experience strong emotions, particularly negative emotions, and it does influence memory systems - in particular, a structure known as the hippocampus. So there's opportunity there to influence how strongly memories get laid down. But the hippocampus is involved in both the storage as well as the retrieval of memory. Things that are emotionally charged may simply be memories that are more likely to be accessed or used...