Thursday, October 26, 2006

Science, you ninny!

I'm mad at science today. Neuroscience specifically, 'cause, like, normally it's my friend and I respect it and all, but I realised something and now I'm mad at it and I won't speak to it for today. Or at least I'll try, 'cause I usually enjoy our conversations, and I still have an issue of New Scientist to read and the RSS feed of SciAm on my googlepage. Hmm. Pffft.

I was actually thinking about diseases such as MS and Alzheimer's, that apparently rely somewhat on thought processes and feelings to occur. And they're quite trendy these days, more people seem to have them than in the past. And so do other diseases and conditions, that may not directly rely on stress and such, but things like that are officially risk factors for them.

And there's a lot of upheaval against more tangible things like smoking or food cholesterol and vitamin deficiency, since there we can "see" the enemy and punch it harder, but thoughts and feelings we can't put a face to, at least not yet. People like Kevin Warwick who managed to encode and transfer feelings over the internet may actually help in this field, and so can various cognitive scientists at some point, who try to map thoughts and feelings and find where they can be pinpointed in the obscure island that we call the brain... but that's kind of the problem, I find.

There don't seem to be that many people, to my knowledge, that examine the "how" of the thing. How thoughts and feelings actually "happen", how they electrically/biochemically occur and are transferred and transcribed in there. Now that's something we could affect if we could pinpoint it. If we knew how our neurons go about making us feel this way or that, if, for example, their physical structure being a certain way and changing to that, or certain biochemical substances' presence, are involved in me worrying too much about having to wash the dishes before I go to class tomorrow morning, now that would help.

And the thing is that there are steps being made, as I said, in the right direction, but it feels like noone has really taken the time to connect the dots, interdiciplinarily. It would take someone who would be equivalently familiar with the relevant neurophysiology fields and psychology, at least, but I do believe that it would make sense that two disciplines that have so much in common would work together more closely and intensively. Or they may have done so, but I don't really know of that many examples of cases that have produced interesting results, where I would imagine that they would.

I'm waiting, people! And so is humanity, in essence. We truly need to find how to look at the ways we think and feel, in ways through which we can tangibly affect them. I think and feel we have many reasons to do so.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well put, actually; but you have to accept that people find it difficult putting together the fact that peer support and self reflect are important processes to maintain mental stability, or, in other words, how to learn to stop for a while and appreciate their status in life...

In the end, you cannot always love yourself or the life you live, as a friend put it once, but you have to take Guilt and Stress and what not from under the rag, 'cause they feed on its goddamn fibres; so, take them out from under it for a glass of wine or what not, stare them deeply in the eyes, and have them rot to Kingdom come, and maybe have some company for help; that's the best advice I can give anyone - even after 2 years of depression and 2 years of reconcilation with myself.