Internet detox continues…hence the lack of posts. But I did want to point out this excellent discussion between musician/artist/awesome dude David Byrne and neuroscientist/musician Daniel Levitin. I find neuroscience endlessly fascinating, and if I had any kind of science background at all, I’d go get my PhD on creativity and the brain at UT Austin, where they have a great center for neuroscience. But alas…
One particularly great subject for neuroscience is babies. Here, DT and DB are talking about mirror neurons:
One of the great mysteries in human behavior was that a newborn child can look up at its parent, and the parent smiles, and the newborn will smile. Well, how does it know how to do that? How does it know by looking at an upturned mouth what muscles it needs to move to make its own mouth turn up? How does it know that it’s going to produce the same effect? There’s a whole complicated chain of neuroscientific puzzles attached to this question.
And:
DL: …There’s actually a theory that all infants are synesthetes, and that sensory differentiation takes a few months after birth to occur. And that infants live in this sort of psychedelic world of everything being jumbled together.
DB: Wow.
I love this stuff…
hold up…are you telling us something here?
“I find neuroscience endlessly fascinating, and if I had any kind of science background at all, I’d go get my PhD on creativity and the brain at UT Austin, where they have a great center for neuroscience. But alas…”
Austin, if you’re serious about that…aren’t you, like, 23 or something? Take it from a 39-year-old…you’ve got more than enough time to get a science background. An English-major friend of mine started with science at 27 and is a practicing marine biologist today. This sounds like “advice” but it isn’t, it’s just a tip. If you’re serious, you’re not running late. Yet.
Start.
Nathaniel: No. I just think babies are cool. Especially my new nephew.
Erik: You’re totally, totally right.
Hi Austin, I have studied many of the latest findings from neuroscience research because I’m thirsty to learn more, as you are.
I like your blog and especially this post. Frank Roche at Know HR blog gave me a link to your blog. I’ll be back to see what you’re posting.
hey robyn! thanks for stopping by!