Lizard Brains

J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
I was reading Slate this evening, and came across this paragraph:

"Prince of Persia—Ubisoft's adventure of a tower-climbing, cliff-jumping prince and his princess companion that posits that, yes, you actually can craft a romance in a game. The slowly developing flirtation of male and female lead don't get in the way of all the less-sentimental climbing and monster-killing the developers needed to put in the game to keep the player's thumbs and lizard-brain engaged."

This touches on stuff which has been sliding in and out of some other discussions. It also touches, intriguingly, on David Icke's theory that lizards are running the world. (this theory last seen in the Minnesota Senate Race Recount: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/di..._would_someone_for_the_lizard_people/?refid=0)

Perhaps lizard people - that is, captivated lizard brains - really are running the world, via the channel of our engaged attention spans...
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
If this is true, lizards have always been ruling the world, since the limbic system or "lizard brain" is the oldest (some say the most primitive) structure in the brain.
 
P

petergunn

plywood violin
kaneericjim5.jpg
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Prince of Persia, I remember that from when I had an Amiga, the way the guy moved seemed amazing at the time, probably looks fairly primitive now I guess.


Wow that really takes me back to long summer holidays trying to complete that game.
Sorry, back to the lizard brain.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
One thing that's interesting about the limbic system is that in most studies of the functions the limbic system regulates (fear, arousal, anger, love, hate), there's really no way (yet) to distinguish from the outside, from looking at what's going on in the LS on an MRI or other imaging system, the difference between a person feeling love and a person feeling hate.
 
nochexxx

nochexxx

harco pronting
are there any direct areas where the lizard part of our brains resides?

if so i wonder if there's any evidence to suggest that prolonged use of marijuana or other such mind altering drugs could cause significant brain damage to lizard brain areas. and therefore the user (by default) experiences more thoughts from the neo-cortex area.
 
Agent

Agent

dgaf ngaf cgaf
ascoltare said:
i wonder if there's any evidence to suggest that prolonged use of marijuana or other such mind altering drugs could cause significant brain damage to lizard brain areas. and therefore the user (by default) experiences more thoughts from the neo-cortex area.
Click to expand...

i hope this is true :D

i think this is called the triune (bird-mammal-lizard) model, and it was either invented or endorsed by Carl Sagan. the idea seems to be that these 'brains' work independently, but i'm not sure if those divisions are clean. i would guess that all our lizard brain impulses are always-already organized/sequenced/modified by the neo-cortex, unless you are a huge sociopath, Internet forum troll, whatever. you could probably overlap Lacan's model with this one (Real = reptile; Imaginary = mammal; Symbolic = bird).

does Icke make an explicit connection between the lizard brain and the reptoids? IIRC, according to Icke the reptoids are shapeshifters from another dimension and they use a bizarre system of occult symbols to communicate. But yeah all electronic media basically turns off the higher cortical regions. I think i read somewhere that, from a neurological perspective, watching television is the equivalent of staring at a blank wall.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Agent Nucleus said:
But yeah all electronic media basically turns off the higher cortical regions. I think i read somewhere that, from a neurological perspective, watching television is the equivalent of staring at a blank wall.
Click to expand...

You also burn fewer calories while watching TV than you do when you're sedentary and not watching TV.
 
Agent

Agent

dgaf ngaf cgaf
ascoltare said:
what even my mpc?:eek:
Click to expand...

i think anything that uses CRT technology causes the shift from left to right brain, and beta to alpha brain waves, because of the hypnotic effect of the flashing lights. I think Eric McLuhan (or someone with the McLuhan Institute) did experiments that proved this back in the 70's, and there have been other experiments that back it up. The effect is especially pronounced with young viewers. I wrote a horribly inaccurate article about this for Disinformation about 8 years ago. I can link it up if you are interested.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
ascoltare said:
are there any direct areas where the lizard part of our brains resides?

if so i wonder if there's any evidence to suggest that prolonged use of marijuana or other such mind altering drugs could cause significant brain damage to lizard brain areas.
Click to expand...

The limbic system is deep in the brain, here

11.GIF


The amygdala is one of its deeper structures.

As far as drug use goes, I would guess that most drugs damage short-term (marijuana) and long term (amphetamines, cocaine) memory channels more than anything else. The thing about "killing" brain cells is that your brain will always find new/different channels or pathways to perform basically the same function.

The only drugs that are proven to very seriously damage cognitive function in the long-term are methamphetamine and MDMA.

CNS depressants like alcohol slow down dopamine release and other brain functions initially, so in the addict, the receptors/cells eventually speed up production very rapidly to compensate for this. This is why during alcohol withdrawal a person has seizures, because in the absence of alcohol, the person's dopamine receptors (among others) are still producing at several times the normal rate, which is too much for the brain to interpret or handle at once.

The epilepsy meds I take are sort of like a lobotomy in a bottle, they give me hardcore aphasia, but as soon as I stop taking them it goes away.
 
Agent

Agent

dgaf ngaf cgaf
nomadthesecond said:
This is my favorite part of the brain, not a part of the limbic system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleus_accumbens

There's a book called This is Your Brain on Music about the role of the nucleus accumbens in our perception of music, in terms simple enough that anyone can understand them.
Click to expand...

which part of the brain is responsible for representing space? i ran into a theory earlier this year called Tensor-Network theory which says that the senses map space with a matrix, or metric space, but the proprioceptive sense (or kinesthesia) is mapped onto a topology. I have some fundamental problems though with the whole idea of representing space abstractly. It seems like it always has to have a material/physical component to be real. There has to be direct contact and embodied as well as sensory immersion.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Agent Nucleus said:
which part of the brain is responsible for representing space? i ran into a theory earlier this year called Tensor-Network theory which says that the senses map space with a matrix, or metric space, but the proprioceptive sense (or kinesthesia) is mapped onto a topology. I have some fundamental problems though with the whole idea of representing space abstractly. It seems like it always has to have a material/physical component to be real. There has to be direct contact and embodied as well as sensory immersion.
Click to expand...

Ah I like your article. I'm no expert, but it didn't seem inaccurate to me. I would only add that runner's high-induced migraines happen partially due to a quick switch from vasodilation to vasoconstriction of blood vessels when a runner goes from full speed to resting.

According to google, the hippocampus is important in spatio-sensory perception.

http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/navspace-hippocampus
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
Agent Nucleus said:
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/5jcl/5JCL59.htm

i'm not sure if all these claims are totally accurate, esp vis-a-vis television's narcotic/addictive properties. I was reading Understanding Media at the time. McLuhan is still my favorite writer. There's an article about this article on PBS.org of all places, and Scientific American ripped me off a year later.
Click to expand...

yes nice article. will be useful in many ways... thanks.

this might be a dumb question but i suppose films have the same effects on our chemical and neurological states as television? and what about watching programs on computers? also, the article states that the effects of TV is the same regardless of content, but surely there must be a difference between watching the Wire on my laptop and reading Dissensus?? also what about video games, audio books vs. reading... fascinating to think about.

who was it said that the problem with TV is not how it is used, but are inherently part of the technology - akin to violence being inherently part of the gun.

Agent Nucleus said:
which part of the brain is responsible for representing space? i ran into a theory earlier this year called Tensor-Network theory which says that the senses map space with a matrix, or metric space, but the proprioceptive sense (or kinesthesia) is mapped onto a topology. I have some fundamental problems though with the whole idea of representing space abstractly. It seems like it always has to have a material/physical component to be real. There has to be direct contact and embodied as well as sensory immersion.
Click to expand...

what do you mean with that last bit "there has to be... to be real"? particularly what do you mean by "real"? producting real sensations in our brains?

this is interesting to think about in connection to illusionist or virtual pictorial space -- the use of perspective in painting vs. non-illusionistic flat space. also those high tech virtual space simulation goggles, and of course video game space perception.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
zhao said:
this might be a dumb question but i suppose films have the same effects on our chemical and neurological states as television? and what about watching programs on computers? also, the article states that the effects of TV is the same regardless of content, but surely there must be a difference between watching the Wire on my laptop and reading Dissensus??
Click to expand...

You burn more calories staring at a wall or reading than you do while watching TV. TV/film puts your brain in a sort of hypnotized, passive, sub-sedentary hibernating or sleep mode.

The computer presumably doesn't, unless you're watching moving pictures on it. Video games I imagine are a lot like films or TV.

TV watching also exacerbates autism and ADD, along with a lot of other spectrum/developmental disorders.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
why should games be the same as tv? seems completly different activity to me. i certainly don't feel the same way after a few hours playing a game as a few hours watching tv.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top