Articles
These are a few of the many articles I have written about the human brain and its oddities. All of them have been published in various newspapers and magazines but - with the exception of a couple that appeared in New Scientist - you can read the full versions on this site and may quote or use them as you like, though I would be grateful if you would contact me first (RitaCarter2 (AT) aol.com)
Tune in and Turn Off!
The brain is modular � that is, different, fairly discreet bits do different things. One bit, for example, works out what�s needed to make a physical action while another counts beans. Many of these areas have a see-saw relationship: if you inhibit one the other becomes more active and vice versa. This piece looks at some fascinating studies which suggest that turning off the �cleverest� parts of our brain might allow other parts to function in such a way as to give the appearance of genius.
Read the article in New Scientist
Fractured Minds:
This is about Multiple Personality. I became fascinated by the subject when I was researching �Consciousness� - how can a person switch from one �self� to another? �it seemed impossible. As a result of this article I made contact with some �multiples� who strongly reject the notion of multiplicity as some kind of weird pathology. They insist that their condition is actually beneficial rather than incapacitating. This led to my researching the possibility that multiplicity is actually a normal state � the idea that underpins my latest book.
Read the article in New Scientist
So You Think you can See?
Like everyone else I have a sweetly na�ve idea that I can see what is going on around me. But change blindness, and its near neighbour, inattention blindness, makes fools of us all. I first saw one of the experiments described in this piece at a large conference of cognitive neuroscientists. The audience of 500-plus were as comprehensively caught out by it as any hapless victim of Derren Brown. ..
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�I�ve Been Here Before��
No you haven�t � you�re just experiencing d�j� vu. The strange familiarity produced by this quirk of memory has often been interpreted in a supernatural way. I am fascinated by weird experiences, but I have little tolerance for supernatural explanations. In this piece I look at possible scientific explanations for that �been here before� feeling.
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Phineas Gage and the Flying Tamping Iron
Phineas Gage is known to every first year psychology student as the man who had a metal rod go through his brain. And survived. But who was never the same after. This odd fame arises because his accident demonstrated something that , even today , people find very hard to swallow: that many of our most cherished characteristics: such things as a sense of decency, morality, conscientiousness, self-discipline � even love - could be extracted from our bodies in much the same way as a speeding cricket ball might extract a tooth.
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The Moral Brain
People who don�t know anything about science, and are not interested in knowing anything, often justify their position by claiming that it can tell us nothing about the �big� questions that haunt us: what is Good? Is there a God? How should I lead my life? And so on.
The work I describe in this piece, by the US psychologist
Marc Hauser, gives the lie to this arrogant assumption ..
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Books:
→ Mapping the Memory
→ Mapping the Mind
→ (Exploring) Consciousness
→ Multiplicity