<p>The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind</p>
<p>wow i just came to the bookstore and impulsively picked that up.</p>
<p>WOW it was good.</p>
<p>(this only comes from memory - I may be wrong on a few aspects - oh well - being wrong helps in learning ^_^)</p>
<p>The prefrontal lobes</p>
<p>It's also interesting seeing the interrelation of the prefrontal lobes with working memory and task persistence (with respect to distractors). Goldberg notes that the frontal lobes consist 11.5% of gibbon neural tissue, as opposed to 7% in dog neural tissue (this is a significant difference). What is interesting is that dogs don't display task persistence when distracted, whereas gibbons do return to a particular task after being distracted. It seems that goal oriented behavior is controlled by the prefrontal lobes. I remember reading a very informal article about the campus wildlife at an university - the author said that crows seemed to actually be motivated towards something - whereas the ducks just responded to whatever stimuli was instantly on their minds.</p>
<p>It's also interesting that those with prefrontal lobe damage are very inert - like Newtonian objects. They're difficult to start (the author actually had to move the patient's hand onto the paper to get the patient to start drawing shapes). But once the patient started drawing shapes, he never stopped drawing them on his own initiative.</p>
<p>The most recent cognitive apparatus in phylogenic history (OMG I ACCIDENTALLY PRESSED BACK BUT WARNING MADE ME KEEP THE TEXT!!) also tend to be the most fragile.</p>
<p>And wow - it has interesting hypotheses behind both ADHD, Tourette's Syndrome, and schizophrenia. The author really sympathizes with those who have such disorders. When this is read in conjunction with "Synaptic Self", it's a real treat (in fact, lack of D1 receptors in the prefrontal cortex are associated with the "negative symptoms" of schizophrenia - whereas an overabundance of D2 receptors in the mesolimbic pathway are associated with the "positive symptoms"). Synaptic Self had an interesting part on depression - cognitive behavioral therapy works better with medication - in the case that neurogenesis in the hippocampus is slowed down in depressed patients (since cortisol hormones tend to monopolize the glucose molecules - leaving the hippocampal neurons depleted of nutrients). SSRI antidepressants help initiate neurogenesis again - by increasing the amount of "background serotonin" - which in turn help excite protein synthesis in the dendrites of those neurons (and this protein synthesis allows new synapses to be formed). </p>
<p>I also found "Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley" very interesting. First of all, his IQ at age 8 was 129. He got tested a year later - 125. It also described his years at Caltech - those years seemed particularly interesting, especially in how he deceived the infamously eccentric Zwicky into assigning grades for a fake character of his own fabrication. Back then most Caltech students commuted to the school (note that it was circa 1920). It also describes some of the interesting flaws in the Terman study of gifted kids - the study wasn't controlled AT ALL - Terman actively tried to help the students in the study to gain resources of all sorts - and took very active interest in the students. The study also did not take a representative sample of the students either - the surveyers deliberately avoided neighborhoods of poorer children.</p>
<p>On the other hand - talent searches like CTY also have some of the same flaws - CTY is better advertised among parents of higher social standing - and does actively try to help its students, though maybe not as much as Terman did.</p>
<p>The later part of the book is interesting as well - Shockley was very paranoid, tape-recorded ALL of his conversations, and got into a lot of conflicts over his proposals for dysgenics. It's said that he helped to diffuse some criticism off Herrnstein and Jensen - who were also psychologists who were set out in publishing papers about the genetic influences on intelligence. Though I was irked when the author used the name "Edmund Wilson" instead of "Edward O. Wilson" when he described the sociobiology wars.</p>
<p>hmm - interesting approaches he had to World War II as well. </p>
<p>==</p>