头脑解密 第一季

The Mind, Explained is a 2019 documentary web television series. The limited series is narrated by Emma Stone and examines themes such as what happens inside human brains when they dream or use psychedelic drugs. [wiki]

Why

• 好奇：Curious about what happens inside human brains.
• 高质量：2019年由奥斯卡奖得主艾玛·斯通讲述纪录片
• 简短有趣：一集20分钟左右，共5集

What

The link could be images or source

Memory：

• Story, place, and emotion are the foundation of some of our strongest memories.
• So this poses the question: Why would we have a memory system that is so unreliable and error-prone if it was designed to remember the past? It weaves together memories of the past and dreams of the future to create your sense of self.

Dreams：

• It looks like REM sleep doesn't just help us remember, it helps us forget. Forgetting is really an important part of learning and it seems like REM sleep is really important for erasing things that our brain needs to erase, that it doesn't need to store, so you can incorporate new pieces of information.
• I think in REM sleep, the brain is creating dreams that are not designed to settle on a single answer, but to help us realize all the possible answers that are out there. If you're not focused on one particular route through the maze, you might discover paths you never knew were possible. We can test out new ideas, put things together without the constraints of logic.
• It might be that part of the function of REM sleep dreaming is to identify sort of wacky associations, connections, that we would never discover while we're awake.
• Creativity is nothing more than taking information we already have and seeing how it fits together in a new and exciting way.

Anxiety:

• People with clinical anxiety often can't reason their way out of the feeling, because the logical part of the brain is unable to rein in the amygdala.
• What? The different types of anxiety disorders can be grouped by the kinds of fears that are involved. There are 4:
  • Catastrophic fears, these are beliefs that something really bad is going to happen.
  • Fear of evaluation. That's the hallmark of social anxiety, the most common anxiety disorder, a persistent debilitating fear of being watched and judged.
  • Fear of losing control. It's a big part of panic disorder. You fear the loss of control that comes with panic attacks. Agoraphobia takes this to an extreme. You avoid public places that might trigger an attack.
    
  • And a fear of uncertainty, of not knowing what's going to happen. This area includes generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, a fixation on impulses and thoughts
• Where do all these anxiety disorders come from?
  • Well, some of it is inherited. If you have a parent with anxiety, you're more likely to be anxious yourself.
  • And women are up to two times more likely to have an anxiety disorder than men.
  • Anxiety also seems to have something to do with the balance of chemicals in your brain. Probably the most famous one these days is serotonin.
  • Your brain is an association machine. It connects things together. e.g. Little Albert & white (e.g. Santa Claus)
  • Or is social media really driving an increase in anxiety?
    • I feel like we have created the automobile. The automobile has gained complete penetration in society and everyone's driving around, and we haven't invented the safety belt yet.
  • e.g. This cartoon from a 1906 Punch magazine paints the wireless telegraph as a threat to natural human interactions.
• How? One 2015 review of 234 studies compared the effects of doing nothing, exercise, placebo pills, therapy, mindfulness meditation, and medication. They found the most effective treatment was a combination of drugs and therapy. One of the most popular types of therapy is cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, where you talk with a therapist to alter negative thought and behavior patterns.

Mindfulness:

• WHY?
• When researchers studied the brain waves of a whole group of long-term meditators, they found similar results. The moment meditation began, there was a sudden rush of activity. Meditation causes big changes in the minds of experts. But when beginners meditate, not much happens. These observations seem to back up a long-held claim that meditation can make you a master of your own mind.
• Scientists invited Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche to Wisconsin, so they could look at his brain. They found that although he was 41, he had the brain of a 33-year-old. When they had him go in an fMRI machine and cultivate a sense of compassion by meditating, the activity and his empathy circuits shot up seven to 800 percent.
• And we can see that activity in brain scans, lighting up something called the Default Mode Network, or DMN. It's what allows us to call up memories or imagine the future, but it also lets us endlessly ruminate about regrets and fears. It's what some Buddhists call the “monkey mind.” If your mind goes out a million times, be mindful and kind enough to bring it back to the present moment a million times. You can tame the monkey mind. That noticing of distraction, of noticing that your mind is lost, is so important because it's a moment of awakening.
• In that moment, when you direct your attention back to your breath, a part of the brain lights up, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It’s one of those brain regions that sets us primates apart from other animals, part of the control center that helps us focus. Meditation strengthens its connection to the DMN, and in brain scans of expert meditators, their DMNs are less active. This could be the mental muscle that meditation sessions develop. We are simply practicing the quality of paying attention over and over again.
• But a study found that the more meditation experience someone has, the less their amygdalas react to these kinds of images. That could be because the connectionbetween the emotional part and the regulatory part of the brain has been strengthened by mindfulness training.
• Expert meditators, like all of us, can’t fully control what happens in their lives, but they have much better control over how they respond. And that can be a powerful tool when tensions are high.
• But expert meditators react much less in anticipation, then they feel the pain very intensely, and then activity falls much faster. Something similar is seen in the emotional center of the brain, the amygdala. Beginners have a lot of activation there when anticipating pain, but experts don't.
• WHAT？
• Things happen and we react. And so part of the practice of mindfulness is bringing awareness to what it is that our minds are actually doing. e.g. Mr. Turtle and Mr. Fox
• In 2019, the two companies (Headspace & Calm) were valued at 320 million and one billion dollars.

psychedelic

• What?
  • In the years to come, scientists would investigate molecules with similar properties found in mushrooms, cacti, including the peyote cactus, and tropical plants that are used in the psychoactive drink Ayahuasca. LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT are known as the classic psychedelics. They can all be eaten, DMT and mescaline are sometimes smoked, and these three can be brewed into a tea.
  • LSD is so potent, tiny drops can be placed on blotter paper, which you let dissolve in your mouth. They all enter the bloodstream and then bind to serotonin receptors in your brain, which can dramatically change your perception of reality for three to twelve hours, depending on the drug and the dose and the person.
  • In a way, it's kind of like meditation. Meditation is the tried and true course to investigation of nature of mind, and psychedelics is the crash course. Most people will rate this experience a year afterwards as being among the most personally meaningful or spiritually significant experiences of their entire lifetime.
• How?
  • They're kind of ground control while you're traveling up in space. I mean that's what shamans do. You believe in the authority of this person and that the potion he's giving you is going to heal you.
  • The guide's job is to cultivate a set and setting that’s conducive to a meaningful but not too terrifying experience. They might play music... or put on blindfolds and headphones to limit stimulation from the outside and encourage a turn inward. The guide’s work doesn’t end when the trip is over. The integration is so important. How are you going to make this now a part of you rather than just an experience?
• Why?
  • In 2014，researchers mapped what’s happening in the brain during a trip. This is a representation of a normal sober brain. These dots are different regions of the brain, and these lines are the connections. And here’s what the tripping brain looks like. Regions that wouldn’t usually talk are now in lively conversation.
  • A leading psychedelic researcher once said you can think of your mind as a snow-covered hill and your thoughts are sleds. A path is pressed into the snow. It gets deeper and deeper and soon it’s hard to escape that groove. A psychedelic trip is the fresh snowfall that lets your sleds explore a new path. That could mean changing an ingrained behavior, like an alcohol or cigarette addiction.
  • Depression and anxiety are very much like addictions. People in depression and anxiety are often in this ruminating pattern. You're getting stuck in loops of thought, you're getting stuck on narratives of who you are. The brain circuitry responsible for constantly mulling over the past and future, creating this narrow sense of self, is the default mode network. This seems to be the seat of the ego. In depression, activity in the default mode network is increased and it's decreased acutely with a drug like psilocybin. By dissolving the ego, you may dissolve the hold of narratives on people.
• Warning
  • These drugs are unique. More than any pharmaceutical on the market, the effects of these compounds depend on where you take them, who you take them with, and what you want them to do. I don't think these drugs are right for everyone, but for a great many of us, I think they offer potential.