What is a personality? What is it that makes you the distinct individual that you are? There may be over seven billion people on this planet but what are the chances that you will come across an individual with exactly the same personality as you? And i’m talking about someone with identical likes, dislikes, hobbies, passions, emotions, views, beliefs, values, thoughts, tastes and so on. Of course, its not impossible but highly unlikely.
But what is it that determines who we are and the decisions we make? How much control do we really have over who we want to be? I think most of us fail to realize how complex the factors that influence our personalities and characters are. First of all, for instance, there are the influences of society and its values and norms. The beliefs and traditions of the place and society you live in can greatly influence what your own beliefs are. Then there are the influence of your family and I don’t just mean the background you come from. Psychological studies have constantly shown that whether you’re a first child or a last child can by itself influence your personality. Then you have your friends, the peer groups, the type of school you go to or the kind of people you hang out with. These in return can be influence by the social classes and social background you come from which influences the type of opportunities you are give to express and discover yourself. Moreover, there are the social roles and societal expectations. All of these determine the experiences you’ve had which in return shape who are. Then there’s media with the all trends they try to implant into you as a consumer. In addition to all of this, there are the genetic and dispositional factors that also play a huge role. Brain chemistry and the way in which your neurons are constructed in your brain also play a very significant role in who you are.
All of these are just a few examples of all the many factors and influences of your personality which in return is dynamic and changing, especially if you’re still young.
This video is absolutely mind-blowing! Turns out that when it comes to our brains, imagination and actions are not very different and in fact, inter-related. This means that imagining doing something, can be almost as effective as actually doing it. Every single thought that you have actually changes the physical structure and function of your brain. Now take that into consideration with the fact that you have about 70,000 thoughts a day!
What most of us often fail to realize is that a large portion of personalities and day-to-day decisions are controlled by our brain chemistry or in other words, the chemicals that are flowing in and out various pathways in our brains. The slightest bit of imbalance can often leave us feeling off, or can have even more drastic consequences. I think its a fascinating thought; our moods, emotions and feelings are all controlled by a whole range of chemicals that we are unaware of.
I’ll give you a few examples of these chemicals. One of them is serotonin, low levels of which are associated with depression. In fact, people who are diagnosed to be “clinically depressed” have naturally low levels of serotonin and have to take drugs to balance things out. Then you have dopamine, which is associated with rewards and is responsible for arousal and simulation. There are also Endorphins, which are released when we are stressed out or in pain. They are responsible for relaxing us and allowing us to feel euphoric. And the good news is that chocolate enhances the secretion of endorphins!
These are only three examples of the innumerable types of chemicals that control who we are. Its important to keep in mind that our moods and emotions are not only controlled by each individual chemical but an interaction between many of them if not all…
“But, if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from these heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime… But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The human brain is an unimaginably intricate and complex organ. The more we study it, the more mysteries we stumble upon. One of the many examples of this is in an captivating but rare disorder known as sudden artistic output. This is when a patient, usually after some sort of a brain injury, experiences an uncontrollable explosion of creativity. This can be in the form of poetry, written works, painting and even music. It is as if, out of the blue, patients are transformed into artists. They are described to be abnormal and seemingly possessed by uncontrollable drive to create, expressing their inner turmoils and ideas unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
There are very few documented case studies on this rare disorder. The term “disorder” here may sound negative, but these individuals are suddenly provided with a wonderful gift of creating some of the most beautiful and enchanting works of art. They often describe the process as a comforting way of throwing out all their emotions and thoughts. They become obsessed about their new passion whilst they frantically create and create and create…
Sudden artistic output is thought to be a result of a chemical imbalance in the brain as a result of the injury or sometimes even a traumatizing event. By Studying such patients, scientists are better able to explain how creativity and the human ability to create marvelous works of art arises in the brain.
“Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up eagerly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his own soul. And when has has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.” - Somerset Maugham
“But then suddenly it’s as if all doors and drawers fly open. Everything comes tumbling out by itself, and we can find all the words and images that we need. This is when we have “lifted the lid” of the unconscious. We can call it inspiration, Sophie. It feels as if what we are drawing or writing is coming from some outside source.” - An extract from the brilliant book Sophies World by Jostein Gaarder.
Albert Einstein had famously quoted that imagination is more important than knowledge. This makes absolute sense since imagination is required for the manifestation of novel knowledge in the first place. But is imagination all that we need? Jostein Gaarder presents a wonderful answer to this in his gripping book Sophie’s World;
“Maybe the imagination creates what is new, but the imagination does not make the actual selection. The imagination does not “compose”. A composition- and every work of art is one- is created in a wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and reflection. For there will always be an element of chance in the creative process. You have to turn the sheep loose before you can start to herd them.”
Our brains constitute of about 86 billion nerve cells. For comparison, note that there are about three hundred billion stars in our galaxy. If these nerve cells were laid end to end, they would stretch around our planet four and a half times.
But its not the mind-blowing number of cells that make the human brain such an extraordinary organ - its their interactions with one another. It’s the complex manner in which they connect with each other that makes us so intelligent. In fact, your brain forms about a million new connections with each second that passes by, and the patterns of these connections are constantly changing.
The shapes seen in the image are about the size of a thumbnail. They are created by mixing ferrofluid with water color and putting it into a magnetic field. When put under a magnetic field iron particles in the ferrofluid solution start to rearrange, forming the black channels and separating the water colors from the ferrofluid.
Beautiful!
“There is a widespread fear amongst the scholars in the humanities and arts that science may someday take over their discipline and deprive them of employment, a syndrome i have dubbed “Neuron envy”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our appreciation of shakespeare is not diminished by the existence of universal grammar or Chomskian deep structure underlying all language. Nor should the diamond you are about to give your lover lose its radiance or romance if you tell her that its made of carbon and it was forged in the bowels of Earth when the solar system was born. In fact, the diamond’s appeal should be enhanced! Similarly, our conviction that great art can be divinely inspired and may have spiritual significance, or that it transcends not only realism but reality itself, should not stop us from looking for those elemental forces in the brain that govern our aesthetic impulses.”
-V.S Ramachandran on the unraveling science behind art
A delightful video on the Bowerbirds from Australia and New Guinea, whose males spend a lot of time building and decorating enormous spectacular bowers in order to attract the best mates. In other words, these bowers are their own personal bachelor pads.
Most of the bowers they build constitute of elaborately constructed entrances, archways and even lawns in front of the main entry. There are some species that even build bowers up to eight feet tall. Almost all of them arrange radiant clusters of flowers into exquisite bouquets, sort berries of various types by color and arrange smooth shiny pebbles into elaborate designs. The male bowerbird will do all that he can in order to impress and attract female individuals - if even one berry is displaced, he will hop over to put it back.
What I find most remarkable about these enthralling living creatures is that each bird within the same species has its own unique style. Each one tries to be as original as possible in order to attract potential mates. This reveals that human beings are not the only species with an aesthetic delight nor are they the only ones capable of being artists.
Perhaps if every powerful and influential person on earth was made to watch this video, the world would be a better place.
Imagination is not only an enthralling attribute of our ‘minds’ but also an ability that makes us so unimaginably exceptional. For all we know, no other species has such a wondrous and extensive capacity to imagine as much as we do. All one has to do is look at the sheer amount of artwork mankind has created for tens of thousands of years. However, Its not merely the arts and science, but every other branch of knowledge that depend on imagination. In true essence, Imagination is the very origin of knowledge.
Whats even more intriguing is the science behind imagination and the processes that occur in our brains when we perform it. Recent studies and brain scans have conveyed that If you imagine a math problem, your prefrontal cortex is being stimulated. If you imagine moving your body, then it is your motor cortex. If you envision monsters and fairies, then it is your occitpal cortex. In other terms, When you envision something, the same regions of your brain that are involved in “reality” are actually stimulated. It is as if you are actually solving the math problem, performing the action or seeing monster and fairies. Also, there are contributions from you emotional and memory regions.
Indeed, its this capacity to envision what could be that makes us so distinct and so intellectually successful.
