These are the bits and pieces that make up a deep understanding of our mind.
At the witch trials in Salem, when the accused witch was brought into the courtroom, adrenaline and cortisol would have shot into the bloodstream of the spectators. Neurotransmitters would have surged through their brain. Their very brain waves would have shot up from 12 to 40 cycles per second. A P300 brain wave would have screamed “ALERT”. Their heart jumped. A chill went up their spine. Three girls began to shriek “Witch, Witch!”
We know this because the same thing happens in America today among those watching a Hollywood horror movie about witches, zombies, demons, murder and more. We can measure this on a GSR or watch the brain waves on an fMRI. This is basic to understanding how our brain works in dealing with anxiety, depression, politics, love, sex, interpersonal relations, and life.
PSYCHOLOGY CONTROLS THE BIOLOGY OF OUR BRAIN. Knowing how this works is essential to understanding how our mind works. The failure to understand that has led to the media’s preoccupation with claiming it is all in your DNA or biochemistry; a media preoccupied with the magic words of DNA and biochemicals in the brain cannot grasp a deeper level of understanding.
In a critical study by Harvard, MIT, The National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian, they found that we are often unable to get across even the most basic of ideas that we teach. A study by the prestigious PEW Research Center found that America ranks 24th in the world in science. Why? We still teach by rote memory and we have failed to get across the very information we need to think with.
The “New” in this approach involves integrating history, culture (Ch 9), perception (see p.189-197 on 3D images inside the brain), and life as an essential basis of understanding how the mind works (Ch. 2, 9, 10, and 17), and weaving together the threads that run through all the approaches into a more comprehensive whole (Ch 1-23).
These are the bits and pieces that make up a deep understanding of how the mind works. Welcome to the deep woods…
