Distorted Brain True Images

I have an issue with those who claim that the world you see around is just a holographic projection of what your senses tell you. And that, that is not the reality.

Let's examine this for a little while. Right now - this very moment - what you see, or rather what you do not see is because of your brain's limited capacity to process electro-magnetic radiation beyond the visual range. The sound that you do not hear in that distance is limited by your brain's capacity to process the frequency limited to the audio range. Birds can see more colours than us. Sharks "see" electrical impulses with the help of the sensors that line their sides.

Fair enough. What we see and hear and feel and taste and smell is limited.

But it is not unreal, is it?
Perhaps, a portion or a subset of the reality. But still a reality, nevertheless.

But is the reality distorted by our brain? After all the brain is a product of random evolution that merely helped us survive (some of you may disagree, feel free to do so). So if distorted reality helps us survive, so be it. The brain is not in any hurry to see the reality as is - there is no apparent evolutionary advantage. Or is there?

Stimulating Creativity

Some management studies surprise me no end. Take this study on How To Stimulate Creativity? for instance. "Go live abroad", it says. Immersing yourself in local experiences for a prolonged period helps stimulate creativity. People who are bi-lingual or tri-lingual are found to be more creative in the study.

I have no doubt it does. Different inputs fire different neurons in your brain. variety of experiences help trigger creative juices. You do not have to live abroad for that. Just do things differently.

Do you drive to your office everyday? Do you take the same route? Try a different one. Or go to office in a bus for a month. Or better still pedal to office.

Do you love thrillers? Go to your local bookshop or the library and pick up a genre that you would never think of reading.

You can't stand classical music? Listen to Carnatic / Hindustani / Wsetern classical for a month. Oh! You are already into classical music? Listen to Jazz then.

Learn a new language on your own.

You do not have to go live abroad to become creative. You can create your own different environment at home. And I promise you, each of my suggestions given above will increase your creativity. It is the new experience and the ability to weave the new experiences into your daily life that makes one creative.

And if creativity was linked to number of languages, then all Indians would be overflowing with creativity. Any educated Indian would know at least 3 languages, if not more.

Wait a minute! Perhaps, we Indians are really very creative.

Mind Over Matter - the Placebo Effect

The placebo effect in medicine is now an established fact. If you could fool the brain to think that the thing you are swallowing is actually a high potency drug instead of sugar laced caffine, the brain triggers appropriate hormones and body defence systems to drive away the disease. This much is known.

But I was pretty much zapped when I read about placebo in surgery. This is from Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely ...

But on day in 1955, a cardiologist in Seattle, Sr. Leonard Cobb, and a few colleagues became suspicious. Was it really an effective procedure? Did it really work? ... To carry out this test, Dr. Cobb performed performed the traditional procedure on some of the patients, and placebo surgery on the others. The real surgery meant opening the patient up and tying up the internal mammary artery. In the placebo procedure, the surgeon merely cut into the patient's flesh with a scalpel, leaving two incisions. Nothing else was done.
The results were startling. Both the patients ... reported immediate relief from their chest pain. In both groups the relief lasted about three months ... Meanwhile the electrocardigrams showed no difference between those who had undergone the real operation and those who got the placebo operation.

Dan Ariely goes on to cite another such experiment.

Because of the nature of these surgeries and the ethical issues involved it is not possible to verify if placebo effect can replace most of the surgical procedures that are done today. But it certainly is impressive.

Just imagine you go for a bypass surgery. You come out hale and hearty as the surgeon declares that the bypass operation has been a great success. In actual fact, all the surgeon has done is made some deep cuts down your chest and stictched it up.
Your brain has been fooled and your body thinks everything is hunky-dory. Now, how cool is that.

Your main crib might be the cost ... there is no way one is going to pay a huge amount for one small cut. But the cost of the operation is part of the p;acebo surgery, you see. Because the surgoen has charged a huge amount, s/he must be good at what s/he does. See?

Wake Your Mind Up

Didn't you always want to become a genius? Without trying, of course! Wouldn't you like to achieve more in less time? Resolve difficult problems at one glance? I always wanted to do this. Imagine walking into a room full of people struggling with a tough issue. You have a glance at the flip charts, shrug, offer a solution and walk out leaving everyone flabbergasted. Now that would be something! Such 'wow' moments have been few and far between. But I never stopped dreaming.

I am not alone in my thinking though - the market is flooded with how-to-think-like-a-genius type self-development books. I have always tried to avoid such books. I have always viewed them with suspicion. If only becoming a genius was that easy ...

But I have two. One is How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb. I have blogged on this before. Here. Not sure whether this helped me or not, but the only reason I am learning German is this book. (You need to read the book to find the connection - though it is very obvious).

Some time ago I succumbed to another book. It was the title that caught my attention. The Mind Gym: Wake Your Mind Up. I must have purchased this book about a year ago and only today managed to force myself to read it. It lay untouched all these months. The book comes with a free membership to the mind gym website.

Will let you know as the days progress if this book helps me use my brain in new ways. You can check it out as well.

Wish me luck!

If you liked this blog, why don't you stay back a bit and read my other blogs discussing books that buy. Here.