thinker_jeff

I guess that this sort of contagions were caused by "mirror neurons". Maybe someone should look into the neural system related with that. By the way, I haven't heard of any progress on mirror neuron for a while.

What did they find out about itching? The researchers monitored how 25 participants reacted when they saw a series of five-minute videos — some showing people scratching, others showing them "acting normally." The participants were divided into three groups: People suffering from eczema; healthy subjects who had an itch-inducing histamine applied to their arms; and another healthy group that was given a placebo. All three groups reacted the same way, scratching more when those on screen did, and scratching less when those on screen refrained. Notably, those doused with the itchy arm solution clawed themselves all over, not just on their arms. What causes contagious itching? Based on similar studies conducted on other primates, scientists believe this is an "inherited biological alarm" that once warned humans about potentially dangerous infections among a population. "This shows that the power of the brain is pretty extreme," says Dr. Alexandru Papoiu, one of the study's researchers. Of course, it's not the only human response that's susceptible to going viral. "The mechanisms underlying contagious itching may be similar to the ones involved in contagious yawning, a phenomenon that is still intensely studied, but not exactly clear," said Dr. Gil Yosipovitch, who led the team. What's next? Scientists now know that certain stimuli cause people to scratch even when there's no obvious reason to itch. The next step is to target the specific areas in the brain that produce those responses. "If we can understand the underlying mechanism and its cause," says Papoiu, "we should have a better chance to treat itch, targeting the central nervous system stations involved." Sources: US News and World Report, Daily Mail, Telegraph

Is consciousness a good thing or a bad thing? It really depends on what the standard you're using. Because you believe consciousness belonging to human beings only, it must be good if you think human being better than other species, or it must be bad if you think human being worse than others. I don't see any advantage to human species without consciousness.

The creative philosophy seems backup of the upmost talent and the achievement by such talent; however, such philosophy is really a part of the achievement by the talent. I don't see how you can seperate it from the talent. Einstein would never ask "Is philosophy useful" because he had the upmost one naturally, which was not taught by anybody.

Abstract Anecdotal evidence suggests “contagious” itch occurs in daily life when we see other people itch and scratch. This phenomenon has not been systematically studied previously, and factors which can amplify itch perception were unknown. We investigated whether exposure to visual cues of itch can induce or intensify itch in healthy and atopic dermatitis subjects. Participants received histamine or a saline control delivered to the forearm and were asked to watch short video clips of people scratching. Spontaneous scratching induced by visual cues was monitored and analyzed. Atopic dermatitis patients reported a higher itch intensity and scratched more frequently while watching itch videos, even in the presence of mock itch stimuli. Human susceptibility to develop itch when exposed to visual cues is confirmed and it appears amplified in atopic dermatitis sufferers. These findings suggest that interpersonal social cues can dramatically alter the subjective sensory experience of itch. Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.2011.10318.x/abstract

No misunderstanding, Edtharan. I understood and agreed with your point. What I added was just some flavour to make the point stronger. The FREE WILL belongs to each cell who can makes decision to move around for saving its life. Obviously, the FREE WILL includes the probability of making poor decision because of the limited information and time.

In the Game of life, if each cell can make its decision and has a probability to make wrong decision, it will be more like the world we have.

The most important thing to this kid is his happiness in life. What if he got some huge problem to have a family? If I had a child like him, I would care much more about his feeling, safety, and motivation than his achievement.

Could some administrator move this topic to the panel "Psychiatry and Psychology"? Thanks.

Now you are modifying your definition of communism. That was what Soviet Union did; however, it created a new class above the worker class.

You might as you thought, which means you might do nothing correct and nothing wrong just like clockwork. But I do believe what I should do and what I shouldn't, which makes total difference to me.

If this is your communism, I should vote: yes, it is utopia. The reason is due to human beings because they are imperfect. There are always someones trying to gain their advantage in the system so that the system cannot work as you wished. Soviet Union made some changes to overcome this problem, but they failed. In China they realized the serious problems in the system so that they are trying very hard to modify it.

How do you define "communism"? In reality, I don't see the standard model for the society of communism. The kind of Soviet Union disappeared. The kind of China is still changing, which they call it "under reforming".

Well, if that's what you think, you should never be right or wrong; you should never be sad if something bad happened to you, and never be glad if something good came to you.

I can't believe someone arguing this again over here. Please find the exact topic in the panel "Psychiatry and Psychology".

Ringer's suggestion is correct. Here is one you can start with. http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~rm35/#NVN

To science, this debate has been over for years. The conclusion is that both of nature and nurture influence the development of a human being.

If all events are predetermined, do you have the "free will"? If you don't have the free will, why do you think so much for making a decision?

Yes, I read the similar case from another book. If I remember correct, it was The Story of Psychology by Morton Hunt.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 17, 2011) — Dr. Olivier Collignon of the University of Montreal's Saint-Justine Hospital Research Centre compared the brain activity of people who can see and people who were born blind, and discovered that the part of the brain that normally works with our eyes to process vision and space perception can actually rewire itself to process sound information instead. The research was undertaken in collaboration with Dr Franco Lepore of the Centre for Research in Neuropsychology and Cognition and was published March 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research builds on other studies which show that the blind have a heightened ability to process sounds as part of their space perception. "Although several studies have shown occipital regions of people who were born blind to be involved in nonvisual processing, whether the functional organization of the visual cortex observed in sighted individuals is maintained in the rewired occipital regions of the blind has only been recently investigated," Collignon said. The visual cortex, as its name would suggest, is responsible for processing sight. The right and left hemisphere of the brain have one each. They are located at the back of the brain, which is called the occipital lobe. "Our study reveals that some regions of the right dorsal occipital stream do not require visual experience to develop a specialization for the processing of spatial information and are functionally integrated in the preexisting brain network dedicated to this ability." The researchers worked with 11 individuals who were born blind and 11 who were not. Their brain activity was analyzed via MRI scanning while they were subjected to a series of tones. "The results demonstrate the brain's amazing plasticity," Collignon said. Plasticity is a scientific term that refers to the brain's ability to change as a result of an experience. "The brain designates a specific set of areas for spatial processing, even if it is deprived of its natural inputs since birth. The visually deprived brain is sufficiently flexible that it uses "neuronal niche" to develop and perform functions that are sufficiently close to the ones required by the remaining senses. Such a research demonstrates that the brain should be more considered as a function-oriented machine rather than a pure sensory machine." The findings raise questions regarding how this rewiring occurs during the development of blind new born babies. "In early life, the brain is sculpting itself on the basis of experience, with some synaptic connections eliminated and others strengthened," Collignon noted. Synaptic connections enable our neurons, or brain cells, to communicate. "After a peak of development ending approximately at the age of 8 months, approximately 40% of the synapses of the visual cortex are gradually removed to reach a stable synaptic density at approximately the age of 11 years. It is possible that that the rewiring occurs as part of the maintenance of our ever changing neural connections, but this theory will require further research," Collignon said. Collignon's study received funding from the Fondation de l'Hôpital Sainte-Justine, the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, and the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique of Belgium. Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110316104123.htm

Do you have some source about the study to this issue?

I didn't think either that the visual system would be effected that much until I read this paper. Clearly no other sensory systems sensed the "third arm" but the visual system did; therefore, this system must involve the change of neural circuitry between input and output. Of course I don't have empirical data to support my thought; however in logic, it should be right.

Do you think the behavioral change unrelated with psychological change? Good question. I guess that the effects of neuronal layout should be mainly in visual system and motor system.

The first, I have to be clear that is not what I mean by those words. These words are actual ABSTRACT OF THE PAPER. I have such post here for sharing and discussion, which typically has the topic I like. To my understanding, what it means by "experience as our physical self" are both of feeling as connected your nervous system and coordination as a part of self-body. You can verify that in the full paper which I gave the link already.

Abstract Could it be possible that, in the not-so-distant future, we will be able to reshape the human body so as to have extra limbs? A third arm helping us out with the weekly shopping in the local grocery store, or an extra artificial limb assisting a paralysed person? Here we report a perceptual illusion in which a rubber right hand, placed beside the real hand in full view of the participant, is perceived as a supernumerary limb belonging to the participant's own body. This effect was supported by questionnaire data in conjunction with physiological evidence obtained from skin conductance responses when physically threatening either the rubber hand or the real one. In four well-controlled experiments, we demonstrate the minimal required conditions for the elicitation of this “supernumerary hand illusion”. In the fifth, and final experiment, we show that the illusion reported here is qualitatively different from the traditional rubber hand illusion as it is characterised by less disownership of the real hand and a stronger feeling of having two right hands. These results suggest that the artificial hand ‘borrows’ some of the multisensory processes that represent the real hand, leading to duplication of touch and ownership of two right arms. This work represents a major advance because it challenges the traditional view of the gross morphology of the human body as a fundamental constraint on what we can come to experience as our physical self, by showing that the body representation can easily be updated to incorporate an additional limb. Link: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017208