drmstream[writing]

I take Adderal. I didn’t used to.  I’m writ­ing an essay about it — the work­ing title is Under­stand­ing My Stu­pid. The thing about writ­ing an essay is that you have to tease out the sense in things that are loosely con­nected in your head.  Some­times the essay peters out because the things that you […]

    My face is blank.  Soft skin.  The hint of lines.  More like you than not like you. You don’t like to see my face con­tort, its plas­tic­ity mak­ing anger, joy, sad­ness, fear.  When my face con­torts you think I look wrong. What we’re taught:  Keep your feel­ings in check.  Make the sad things feel better. […]

  When we read a story, our brains plot every­thing that’s going on, from the character’s phys­i­cal loca­tions in space to their inter­ac­tions with objects in the envi­ron­ment to their pur­suit of var­i­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tional goals.  Many of the brain areas active while read­ing are also active when we actu­ally take part in or […]

For each ecsta­tic instant For each ecsta­tic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quiv­er­ing ratio To the ecstasy. For each beloved hour Sharp pit­tances of years, Bit­ter con­tested far­things And cof­fers heaped with tears. –Emily Dick­in­son Sit some­day and watch the light­ning crack over a deep swamp. The flat water, seep­ing along the […]

1857 lith­o­graph by Armand Gau­tier, show­ing per­son­i­fi­ca­tions of demen­tia, mega­lo­ma­nia, acute mania, melan­cho­lia, idiocy, hal­lu­ci­na­tion, erotic mania and paral­y­sis in the gar­dens of the Hos­pice de la Salpêtrière. In an attempt to cat­a­log mad­ness, the artist has cre­ated a zoo exhibit for lunacy. They are curi­ous objects, these women who have lost their mind with […]

Do you have things that you think you remem­ber, that you should remem­ber, but that you don’t really know? When you open your­self to these images, they hang imma­te­r­ial and allur­ing. Sci­ence has taught us that when we imag­ine remem­ber or dream of doing some­thing, or see­ing a thing or hear­ing a sound, mir­ror neurons […]

I, for one, wel­come my Nean­der­tal ances­try. It may not sound like a lot — between 1 and 4 per­cent. But that’s the equiv­a­lent of one great-great-great grandparent’s DNA con­tri­bu­tion. In the case of the Nean­der­tal con­tri­bu­tion, more than 1500 gen­er­a­tions ago, it’s an endur­ing legacy of an ancient group of peo­ple, spread across many […]

The title’s only a lit­tle bit of an exag­ger­a­tion.  Accord­ing to research by Mark Changizi, sum­ma­rized in a great inter­view on Neu­ronar­ra­tive, what we see is our brain’s approx­i­ma­tion of the world in a tenth of a sec­ond, not the world at the instant that we see. Con­fused?  Here’s an excerpt from Changizi. When light hits […]

Eru­dite and thickly-written essay in The Chron­i­cle Of Higher Edu­ca­tion by David Barash speak­ing to the need of “a gen­eral the­ory of indi­vid­u­al­ity.” It’s back to the the­ory of self for us. In part, the resis­tance encoun­tered by human socio­bi­ol­ogy, Dar­win­ian psy­chol­ogy, evo­lu­tion­ary psychology—call it what you will—may reflect that none of the “ulti­mate” inter­pre­ta­tions thus […]

B.F. Skin­ner invented a con­trolled envi­ron­ment designed to give infants and new­borns more inde­pence; it was com­monly known as Baby in a Box.