Word: explain
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...brain's spin doctoring is displayed even more dramatically in neurological conditions in which the healthy parts of the brain explain away the foibles of the damaged parts (which are invisible to the self because they are part of the self). A patient who fails to experience a visceral click of recognition when he sees his wife but who acknowledges that she looks and acts just like her deduces that she is an amazingly well-trained impostor. A patient who believes he is at home and is shown the hospital elevator says without missing a beat, "You wouldn't believe...
...understand consciousness--like finding out what wavelengths make people see green or how similar they say it is to blue, or what emotions they associate with it--boils down to information processing in the brain and thus gets sucked back into the Easy Problem, leaving nothing else to explain. Most people react to this argument with incredulity because it seems to deny the ultimate undeniable fact: our own experience...
...that most people find hard to stomach. Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But to my ear, this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness...
...your adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys, to start pumping out cortisol, which acts as a wake-up signal. Cortisol levels continue to rise after you become conscious in what is sometimes referred to as the "Oh, s___! It's another day" response. This may help explain why so many heart attacks and strokes occur between...
...monkeys would be sitting still, doing nothing in particular, and one of the researchers would pick up some raisins or sunflower seeds in order to place them on a tray. At that point, the same neurons started buzzing again, in just the same pattern. The scientists couldn't explain it; they thought that perhaps the monkeys were subtly moving in anticipation of being fed. Through a series of experiments, however, they finally established that the neurons started firing whenever the monkeys saw a person grasp an object. It was as if the monkeys were mentally mirroring the action they observed...