Biology - Brain
 

 

Brain Waves


When you drop a small stone in water, you see waves. Similarly our heart and our brain have wave patterns. The wave pattern of the heart is measured by ECG (electro cardiograph). The brain waves are measured by EEG (electro encephalograph).

Using the brain wave studies, scientists have discovered that our brain waves are of four types.

The brain waves also have peaks that are similar to the peaks we see in water waves. The number of times the peak appears in one second is called "cycles per second ". For example, the electricity in India is of 50 cycles per second.

  • Beta (13 to 25 cycles per second)
    This brain wave indicates that your conscious mind is in control. It indicates a mental state of logical thought, analysis, and action. You are alert and awake talking, speaking, doing, solving problems, etc.
     

  • Alpha (8 to 12 cycles per second)
    This brain wave indicates relaxation and meditation. It is a state of relaxed alertness good for inspiration, learning facts fast.
     

  • Theta (4 to 8 cycles per second)
    Deep meditation. This is associated with life-like imagination. This is best for suggestibility and inspiration. This brain wave is dominant in children of age 2 to 5.
     

  • Delta (0.5 to 4 cycles per second)
    Deep dreamless sleep. Deep relaxation.

 

Left brain and right brain working together

 

Usually the left brain and the right brain waves are independent. They reach peaks independent of each other. During meditation and deep relaxation, the left brain waves and the right brain waves happen together.

 

For both, the peaks are reached together. This is called synchronization. Scientists now believe that synchronization makes much greater mind power available. This is associated with learning large amounts of information very quickly as well as with creativity. Brain self-control

Scientists had long believed that brain activity such as brain waves and secretion of brain chemicals were beyond conscious control. But, experiments on Swami Rama of the Himalayas and on biofeedback have now changed that belief. Now it is proven that some people can control their brain waves, etc.

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 Brain Activity During Meditation

The brain is an electrochemical organ - using electromagnetic energy to function. Electrical activity emanating from the brain is displayed in the form of brainwaves.

 

 

There are four categories of these brainwaves. They range from the high amplitude, low frequency delta to the low amplitude, high frequency beta. Men, women and children of all ages experience the same characteristic brainwaves. They are consistent across cultures and country boundaries.

During meditation brain waves alter.

  • BETA - 13-30 cycles per second - awaking awareness, extroversion, concentration, logical thinking - active conversation. A debater would be in high beta. A person making a speech, or a teacher, or a talk show host would all be in beta when they are engaged in their work.
     

  • ALPHA - 7-13 cycles per second - relaxation times, non-arousal, meditation, hypnosis
     

  • THETA - 4-7 cycles per second - day dreaming, dreaming, creativity, meditation, paranormal phenomena, out of body experiences, ESP, shamanic journeys.

A person who is driving on a freeway, and discovers that they can’t recall the last five miles, is often in a theta state - induced by the process of freeway driving. This can also occur in the shower or tub or even while shaving or brushing your hair. It is a state where tasks become so automatic that you can mentally disengage from them. The ideation that can take place during the theta state is often free flow and occurs without censorship or guilt. It is typically a very positive mental state.

  • DELTA - 1.5-4 or less cycles per second - deep dreamless sleep

 

 


NEWS ARTICLES

  • Meditation found to increase brain size

    PhysOrg - January 31, 2006

     


     

  • Meditation Shown to Light Up Brains of Buddhists
    Yahoo - May 2003

    Using new scanning techniques, neuroscientists have discovered that certain areas of the brain light up constantly in Buddhists, which indicates positive emotions and good mood.

     

     

    • "We can now hypothesize with some confidence that those apparently happy, calm Buddhist souls one regularly comes across in places such as Dharamsala, India, really are happy," Professor Owen Flanagan, of Duke University in North Carolina, said.

    Dharamsala is the home base of exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.

    The scanning studies by scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison showed activity in the left prefrontal lobes of experienced Buddhist practitioners. The area is linked to positive emotions, self-control and temperament.

    Other research by Paul Ekman, of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, suggests that meditation and mindfulness can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory.

    Ekman discovered that experienced Buddhists were less likely to be shocked, flustered, surprised or as angry as other people.

    Flanagan believes that if the findings of the studies can be confirmed they could be of major importance.

    • "The most reasonable hypothesis is that there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek," Flanagan said in a report in New Scientist magazine.

 

 

  • Meditation mapped in Monks

     


    During meditation, people often feel a sense of no space
     

    March 1, 2002 - BBC

    Scientists investigating the effect of the meditative state on Buddhist monk’s brains have found that portions of the organ previously active become quiet, whilst pacified areas become stimulated.

    Andrew Newberg, a radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, US, told BBC World Service’s Discovery programme:

    • "I think we are poised at a wonderful time in our history to be able to explore religion and spirituality in a way which was never thought possible."

    Using a brain imaging technique, Newberg and his team studied a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks as they meditated for approximately one hour.

    When they reached a transcendental high, they were asked to pull a kite string to their right, releasing an injection of a radioactive tracer. By injecting a tiny amount of radioactive marker into the bloodstream of a deep meditator, the scientists soon saw how the dye moved to active parts of the brain.

    Sense of space

    Later, once the subjects had finished meditating, the regions were imaged and the meditation state compared with the normal waking state.

    The scans provided remarkable clues about what goes on in the brain during meditation.

    • "There was an increase in activity in the front part of the brain, the area that is activated when anyone focuses attention on a particular task," Dr Newberg explained.

    In addition, a notable decrease in activity in the back part of the brain, or parietal lobe, recognized as the area responsible for orientation, reinforced the general suggestion that meditation leads to a lack of spatial awareness.

     

    Dr Newberg explained:

    • "During meditation, people have a loss of the sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time and that was exactly what we saw."

    Prayer power

    The complex interaction between different areas of the brain also resembles the pattern of activity that occurs during other so-called spiritual or mystical experiences.

     

    Brain Images provide painless study


     Dr Newberg’s earlier studies have involved the brain activity of Franciscan nuns during a type of prayer known as "centering".

    As the prayer has a verbal element other parts of the brain are used but Dr Newberg also found that they, "activated the attention area of the brain, and diminished activity in the orientation area."

    This is not the first time that scientists have investigated spirituality. In 1998, the healing benefits of prayer were alluded to when a group of scientists in the US studied how patients with heart conditions experienced fewer complications following periods of "intercessory prayer".

    Inner world

    And at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston last month, scientists from Stanford University detailed their research into the positive affects that hypnotherapy can have in helping people cope with long-term illnesses.

    Scientific study of both the physical world and the inner world of human experiences are, according to Dr Newberg, equally beneficial.

    • "When someone has a mystical experience, they perceive that sense of reality to be far greater and far clearer than our usual everyday sense of reality," he said.

    He added:

    • "Since the sense of spiritual reality is more powerful and clear, perhaps that sense of reality is more accurate than our scientific everyday sense of reality."

 

 

  • Areas of the brain activated during meditation
    Tracing the Synapses of Spirituality
    June 17, 2001 - Washington Post

    In Philadelphia, a researcher discovers areas of the brain that are activated during meditation. At two other universities in San Diego and North Carolina, doctors study how epilepsy and certain hallucinogenic drugs can produce religious epiphanies. And in Canada, a neuroscientist fits people with magnetized helmets that produce "spiritual" experiences for the secular.

    The work is part of a broad new effort by scientists around the world to better understand religious experiences, measure them, and even reproduce them. Using powerful brain imaging technology, researchers are exploring what mystics call nirvana, and what Christians describe as a state of grace. Scientists are asking whether spirituality can be explained in terms of neural networks, neurotransmitters and brain chemistry.

    What creates that transcendental feeling of being one with the universe? It could be the decreased activity in the brain’s parietal lobe, which helps regulate the sense of self and physical orientation, research suggests. How does religion prompt divine feelings of love and compassion?

     

    Possibly because of changes in the frontal lobe, caused by heightened concentration during meditation. Why do many people have a profound sense that religion has changed their lives?

     

    Perhaps because spiritual practices activate the temporal lobe, which weights experiences with personal significance.

    • "The brain is set up in such a way as to have spiritual experiences and religious experiences," said Andrew Newberg, a Philadelphia scientist who authored the book "Why God Won’t Go Away."

    • "Unless there is a fundamental change in the brain, religion and spirituality will be here for a very long time. The brain is predisposed to having those experiences and that is why so many people believe in God."

    The research may represent the bravest frontier of brain research. But depending on your religious beliefs, it may also be the last straw.

     

    For while Newberg and other scientists say they are trying to bridge the gap between science and religion, many believers are offended by the notion that God is a creation of the human brain, rather than the other way around.

    • "It reinforces atheistic assumptions and makes religion appear useless," said Nancey Murphy, a professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.

    • "If you can explain religious experience purely as a brain phenomenon, you don’t need the assumption of the existence of God."

    Some scientists readily say the research proves there is no such thing as God.

     

    But many others argue that they are religious themselves, and that they are simply trying to understand how our minds produce a sense of spirituality.

    Newberg, who was catapulted to center stage of the neuroscience-religion debate by his book and some recent experiments he conducted at the University of Pennsylvania with co-researcher Eugene D’Aquili, says he has a sense of his own spirituality, though he declined to say whether he believed in God because any answer would prompt people to question his agenda. "I’m really not trying to use science to prove that God exists or disprove God exists," he said.

    Newberg’s experiment consisted of taking brain scans of Tibetan Buddhist meditators as they sat immersed in contemplation. After giving them time to sink into a deep meditative trance, he injected them with a radioactive dye. Patterns of the dye’s residues in the brain were later converted into images.

    Newberg found that certain areas of the brain were altered during deep meditation. Predictably, these included areas in the front of the brain that are involved in concentration. But Newberg also found decreased activity in the parietal lobe, one of the parts of the brain that helps orient a person in three-dimensional space.

    • "When people have spiritual experiences they feel they become one with the universe and lose their sense of self," he said.

    • "We think that may be because of what is happening in that area ‚ if you block that area you lose that boundary between the self and the rest of the world. In doing so you ultimately wind up in a universal state."

    Across the country, at the University of California in San Diego, other neuroscientists are studying why religious experiences seem to accompany epileptic seizures in some patients. At Duke University, psychiatrist Roy Mathew is studying hallucinogenic drugs that can produce mystical experiences and have long been used in certain religious traditions.

    Could the flash of wisdom that came over Siddhartha Gautama ‚ the Buddha ‚ have been nothing more than his parietal lobe quieting down? Could the voices that Moses and Mohammed heard on remote mountain tops have been just a bunch of firing neurons‚ an illusion? Could Jesus’s conversations with God have been a mental delusion?

    Newberg won’t go so far, but other proponents of the new brain science do. Michael Persinger, a professor of neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, has been conducting experiments that fit a set of magnets to a helmet-like device. Persinger runs what amounts to a weak electromagnetic signal around the skulls of volunteers.

    Four in five people, he said, report a "mystical experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or near" them.

     

    Some weep, some feel God has touched them, others become frightened and talk of demons and evil spirits.

    • "That’s in the laboratory," said Persinger. "They know they are in the laboratory. Can you imagine what would happen if that happened late at night in a pew or mosque or synagogue?"

    His research, said Persinger, showed that "religion is a property of the brain, only the brain and has little to do with what’s out there."

    Those who believe the new science disproves the existence of God say they are holding up a mirror to society about the destructive power of religion.

     

    They say that religious wars, fanaticism and intolerance spring from dogmatic beliefs that particular gods and faiths are unique, rather than facets of universal brain chemistry.

    • "It’s irrational and dangerous when you see how religiosity affects us," said Matthew Alper, author of "The God Part of the Brain," a book about the neuroscience of belief.

    • "During times of prosperity, we are contented. During times of depression, we go to war. When there isn’t enough food to go around, we break into our spiritual tribes and use our gods as justification to kill one another."

    While Persinger and Alper count themselves as atheists, many scientists studying the neurology of belief consider themselves deeply spiritual.

    James Austin, a neurologist, began practicing Zen meditation during a visit to Japan.

     

    After years of practice, he found himself having to re-evaluate what his professional background had taught him.

    • "It was decided for me by the experiences I had while meditating," said Austin, author of the book "Zen and the Brain" and now a philosophy scholar at the University of Idaho.

    • "Some of them were quickenings, one was a major internal absorption ‚ an intense hyper-awareness, empty endless space that was blacker than black and soundless and vacant of any sense of my physical bodily self. I felt deep bliss. I realized that nothing in my training or experience had prepared me to help me understand what was going on in my brain. It was a wake-up call for a neurologist."

    Austin’s spirituality doesn’t involve a belief in God ‚ it is more in line with practices associated with some streams of Hinduism and Buddhism.

     

    Both emphasize the importance of meditation and its power to make an individual loving and compassionate‚ most Buddhists are disinterested in whether God exists.

    But theologians say such practices don’t describe most people’s religiousness in either eastern or western traditions.

    • "When these people talk of religious experience, they are talking of a meditative experience," said John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown University.

    • "But religion is more than that. It involves commitments and suffering and struggle ‚ it’s not all meditative bliss. It also involves moments when you feel abandoned by God."

    • "Religion is visiting widows and orphans," he said. "It is symbolism and myth and story and much richer things. They have isolated one small aspect of religious experience and they are identifying that with the whole of religion."

    Belief and faith, argue believers, are larger than the sum of their brain parts:

    • "The brain is the hardware through which religion is experienced," said Daniel Batson, a University of Kansas psychologist who studies the effect of religion on people.

    • "To say the brain produces religion is like saying a piano produces music."

    At the Fuller Theological Seminary’s school of psychology, Warren Brown, a cognitive neuropsychologist, said,

    • "Sitting where I’m sitting and dealing with experts in theology and Christian religious practice, I just look at what these people know about religiousness and think they are not very sophisticated. They are sophisticated neuroscientists, but they are not scholars in the area of what is involved in various forms of religiousness."

    At the heart of the critique of the new brain research is what one theologian at St. Louis University called the "nothing-butism" of some scientists ‚ the notion that all phenomena could be understood by reducing them to basic units that could be measured.

    And finally, say believers, if God existed and created the universe, wouldn’t it make sense that he would install machinery in our brains that would make it possible to have mystical experiences?

    • "Neuroscientists are taking the viewpoints of physicists of the last century that everything is matter," said Mathew, the Duke psychiatrist.

    • "I am open to the possibility that there is more to this than what meets the eye. I don’t believe in the omnipotence of science or that we have a foolproof explanation."

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 Third Eye - Pineal Gland

 

 

 

 

In the physical body the eye views objects upside down.

 

It sends the image of what it observes to the brain which interprets the image and makes it appear right side-up to us. But the human body has another physical eye whose function has long been recognized by humanity.

 

It is called the ’Third Eye’ which in reality is the Pineal Gland. It is long thought to have mystical powers.

 

Many consider it the Spiritual Third Eye, our Inner Vision.

 

 

 

 

It is located in the geometric center of the brain. This correlates to the location of the Great Pyramid in the center of the physical planet.

The Pineal Gland is about the size of a pea, and is in the center of the brain in a tiny cave behind and above the pituitary gland which lies a little behind the root of the nose. It is located directly behind the eyes, attached to the third ventricle.

The true function of this mysterious gland has long been contemplated by philosophers and Spiritual Adepts. Ancient Greeks believed the pineal gland to be our connection to the Realms of Thought.

 

Descartes called it the Seat of the Soul.

 

This gland is activated by Light, and it controls the various biorhythms of the body. It works in harmony with the hypothalamus gland which directs the body’s thirst, hunger, sexual desire and the biological clock that determines our aging process.

When the pineal gland awakens one feels a pressure at the base of the brain. This pressure will often be experienced when connecting to higher frequency. A head injury can also activate the Third Eye - Pineal Gland.

While the physiological function of the pineal gland has been unknown until recent times, mystical traditions and esoteric schools have long known this area in the middle of the brain to be the connecting link between the physical and spiritual worlds. Considered the most powerful and highest source of ethereal energy available to humans, the pineal gland has always been important in initiating supernatural powers.

 

Development of psychic talents has been closely associated with this organ of higher vision.

 

 

The third eye can see beyond the physical as is looks out through the chakra system

when we meditate or look for answers from higher frequencies.

 

 
The pineal gland contains a complete map of the visual field of the eyes

and it plays several significant roles in human functioning.

 

 


 

 

There is a pathway from the retinas to the hypothalamus called the retinohypothalamic tract.

 

It brings information about light and dark cycles to a region of the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN).

 

From the SCN, nerve impulses travel via the pineal nerve (sympathetic nervous system) to the pineal gland. These impulses inhibit the production of melatonin. When these impulses stop (at night, when light no longer stimulates the hypothalamus), pineal inhibition ceases and melatonin is released. The pineal gland is therefore a photosensitive organ and an important timekeeper for the human body.

Retinal research done with hamsters demonstrates another center for melatonin production.

 

Located in the retina, this center implies that the eyes have their own built in circadian timepiece. This retinal system is distinct from the brains body clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). Biologists found that they could throw the retinal rhythms out of sync with other circadian cycles. They also found that they could set and reset the retinal clock even when the SCN was destroyed.

The retinal clock produces (stimulates the production of?) melatonin. Researchers are now looking for the exact location(s) of this clock in the human eye (and expect to find it).

 

No one yet knows what the separate clock is for or how it relates to the SCN.

 

 

 

 

In some lower vertebrates the Epiphysis Cerebri - Pineal Gland - has a well-developed eye-like structure; in others though not organized as an eye, if functions as a light receptor.

 

In lower vertebrates, the pineal gland has an eye like structure and it functions as a light receptor and is considered by some to be the evolutionary forerunner of the modern eye.

The gland weighs little more than 0.1 gram. The gland is large in children and begins to shrink with the onset of puberty. It appears to play a major role in sexual development, hibernation in animals, metabolism, and seasonal breeding. In humans it affects circadian rhythms, sleep patterns (melatonin levels increase at night), and is implicated in seasonal affective disorder. The abundant melatonin levels in children is believed to inhibit sexual development. When puberty arrives, melatonin production is reduced.

The pineal gland secretes melanin during times of relaxation and visualization. As we are created by electromagnetic energy - and react to EM energy stimuli around us - so does the pineal gland.

When activated, the pineal gland becomes the line of communication with the higher planes. The crown chakra reaches down until its vortex touches the pineal gland. Prana, or pure energy, is received through this energy center in the head. With Practice the vibration level of the astral body is raised, allowing it to separate from the physical.

To activate the ’third eye’ and perceive higher dimensions, the pineal gland and the pituitary body must vibrate in unison, which is achieved through meditation and/or relaxation. When a correct relationship is established between personality, operating through the pituitary body, and the soul, operating through the pineal gland, a magnetic field is created.

 

The negative and positive forces interact and become strong enough to create the ’light in the head.’ With this ’light in the head’ activated, astral projectors can withdraw themselves from the body, carrying the light with them.

Astral travel, and other occult abilities, are closely associated with the development of the ’light in the head ’. After physical relaxation, concentration upon the pineal gland is achieved by staring at a point in the middle of the forehead. Without straining the muscles of the eye, this will activate the pineal gland and the ’third eye’.

 

Beginning with the withdrawal of the senses and the physical consciousness, the consciousness is centered in the region of the pineal gland. The perceptive faculty and the point of realization are centralized in the area between the middle of the forehead and the pineal gland. The trick is to visualize, very intently, the subtle body escaping through the trap door of the brain.

 

A popping sound may occur at the time separation of the astral body in the area of the pineal gland.

Visualization exercises are the first step in directing the energies in our inner systems to activate the ’third eye’. The magnetic field is created around the pineal gland, by focusing the mind on the midway point between the pineal gland and the pituitary body. The creative imagination visualizes something, and the thought energy of the mind gives life and direction to this form.

’Third eye’ development, imagination, and visualization are important ingredients in many methods to separate from the physical form. Intuition is also achieved through ’third eye’ development. Knowledge and memory of the astral plane are not registered in full waking consciousness until the intuition becomes strong enough. Flashes of intuition come with increasing consistency as the ’third eye’ as activated to a greater degree, through practice.

The pineal gland corresponds with divine thought after being touched by the vibrating light of Kundalini. Kundalini starts its ascent towards the head center after responding to the vibrations from the ’light in the head.’ The light is located at the top of the sutratma, or ’soul thread’, which passes down from the highest plane of our being into the physical vehicle.

The ’third eye,’ or ’eye of Siva,’ the organ of spiritual vision, is intimately related to karma, as we become more spiritual in the natural course of evolution.

As human beings continue to evolve further out of matter, on the journey from spirit to matter back to spirit, the pineal gland will continue to rise from its state of age-long dormancy, bringing back to humanity astral capacities and spiritual abilities.

At certain brainwave frequencies, a sense of ego boundary vanishes. In the theta state, we are resting deeply and still conscious, at the threshold of drifting away from or back into conscious awareness. As the brain enters deeper states, our consciousness is less concerned with the physical state, our ’third eye’ is active, and separation becomes natural.

 

Many native traditions and mystical practices refer to the ability of ’seeing,’ or being aware of energy fields at higher levels. This abstract awareness is much more subjective and does not involve the normal level of mundane consciousness, which is mostly concerned with self-identity. This ’seeing’ refers to the sight of the ’third eye’.

Consciousness is raised from an emotional nature into an illumined awareness when the pineal gland is lifted from dormancy. If the pineal gland is not yet fully developed, it will be in the course of evolution.

 

When our sense of ego and personality are set aside and we keep our mental energy intact, we can become conscious of the non-physical, our inner self, the subconscious, through different practices to activate the ’light in the head.’

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 The Reptilian Brain

The brain stem is the oldest and smallest region in the evolving human brain. It evolved hundreds of millions of years ago and is more like the entire brain of present-day reptiles. For this reason, it is often called the ’reptilian brain’.

 

Various clumps of cells in the brain stem determine the brain’s general level of alertness and regulate the vegetative processes of the body such as breathing and heartbeat.

 

 

                    

 

 

It’s similar to the brain possessed by the hardy reptiles that preceded mammals, roughly 200 million years ago. It’s ’preverbal’, but controls life functions such as autonomic brain, breathing, heart rate and the fight or flight mechanism.

 

Lacking language, its impulses are instinctual and ritualistic. It’s concerned with fundamental needs such as survival, physical maintenance, hoarding, dominance, preening and mating. It is also found in lower life forms such as lizards, crocodiles and birds. It is at the base of your skull emerging from your spinal column.

The basic ruling emotions of love, hate, fear, lust, and contentment emanate from this first stage of the brain. Over millions of years of evolution, layers of more sophisticated reasoning have been added upon this foundation.

Our intellectual capacity for complex rational thought which has made us theoretically smarter than the rest of the animal kingdom.

When we are out of control with rage, it is our reptilian brain overriding our rational brain components. If someone says that they reacted with their heart instead of their head.

 

What they really mean is that they conceded to their primitive emotions (the reptilian brain based) as opposed to the calculations of the rational part of the brain.

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Back to The Reptilian Brain

 


 


 Memory


Memory is one of the activities of the human mind, much studied by cognitive psychology.

 

It is the capacity to retain an impression of past experiences. There are multiple types of classifications for memory based on duration, nature and retrieval of perceived items.

The main stages in the formation and retrieval of memory, from an information processing perspective, are:

  • Encoding  (processing of received information by acquisition)

  • Storage  (building a permanent record of received information as a result of consolidation)

  • Retrieval  (calling back the stored information and use it in a suitable way to execute a given task)

A basic and generally accepted classification (depending on the duration of memory retention and the amount of stored information during these stages) identifies three distinct types of memory:

  • sensory memory

  • short-term memory

  • long-term memory

The first stage corresponds approximately to the initial moment that an item is perceived. Some of this information in the sensory area proceeds to the sensory store, which is referred to as short-term memory.

 

Sensory memory is characterized by the duration of memory retention from miliseconds to seconds and short-term memory from seconds to minutes.

 

Once the information is stored, it can be retrieved in a period of time, which ranges from days to years and this type of memory is called long-term memory.

The sensory and short-term memory are bio-electrical types of memory, as they store information in form of electrical signals, whereas the long-term memory is a bio-chemical type of memory.

When we are given a seven digit number, we can remember it only for a few seconds and then forget (short term memory). On the other hand we remember our telephone numbers, since we have stored it in our brain after long periods of consolidation (long term memory).

The definition of working memory, which is erroneously used as a synonym of short-term memory, is based on not only the duration of memory retention but also the way how it is used in daily life activities.

 

For instance, when we are asked to multiply 45 with 4 in our head, we have to perform a series of simple calculations (addition and multiplications) to give the final answer.

 

The process of keeping in mind all this information for a short period of time is called working memory.

Another good example is a chess player, who is playing with multiple opponents at the same time and trying to remember the positions of pieces in all games and using this information to make a good move, when required.

 

Long-term memory can further be classified as declarative (explicit) and procedural (implicit).

  • Explicit memory requires conscious recall, in other words the information must be called back consciously when it is required. If this information is about our own lives (what we ate for breakfast in this morning, our birth date etc.), it is called episodic memory, if it concerns our knowledge about the world (capital of France, presidents of US etc.), then it is called semantic memory.
     

  • Implicit memory is not based on the conscious recall of information stored in our brain, but on the habituation or sensitization of learned facts. We perform better in a given task each time we repeat the task, that is we use our implicit memory without necessarily remembering the previous experiences but using the previously learned behaviors unconsciously. For example, classical conditioning is one kind of implicit memory.

Another example is memory resulting from motor learning, which depends upon the cerebellum and basal ganglia.

 


Articles

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 Messages From Hypnotic States

As a Certified Hypnotherapist I have placed many clients in a hypnotic state.

During a session clients can bring messages from:

  • another entity

  • other aspects of themselves

  • their unconscious mind

  • other dimensions of reality

Messages received through a hypnotic state may not seem valid - but there could be a connection with another aspect of the person’s physical reality.

Some people speak in ’tongues’ when hypnotized. This is called Polyglot or Xenoglot.

Often people who have had traumatic experiences such as an alien abduction - will go to a hypnotherapist to gain relive them and release pain suffered or to help them understand their spiritual purpose or personal lives.

Message gleamed through past life regression therapy allow the individual - insight into a collective memory and greater understanding of their behavior in this time line.
 

 


NEWS ARTICLES

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