I'm So Behind

Okay, so I haven't been keeping up with my blog at all, but that doesn't mean I'm not keeping up with my project. My project is really based more on my personal involvement in it and how much I do in my day-to-day life. Based on how this project works and how it makes me think and act, I have completely forgotten to blog. So this post is going to be a huge summary of what all I've done. It won't be too long though, so stick with me here.

Alright. Over the past almost 3 months of school, I've actually done quite a bit of work on my goal to become more observant. I've been taking in everything around me and focusing on the little things. I’ve started noticing little things about people and what certain things they do mean. A few weeks ago, the transmission feel out on my car, so I have been looking for a new car. I’ve talked to so many different people and seen how they all try and sell what they have. It’s been really interesting to watch all these people use their different methods of sales. My dad is a commercial real estate broker, and his job involves a lot of talking and negotiating with people. While driving around and looking at cars he and I have been talking strategy and he has been explaining what certain things people do mean and how to react to them. This has really created an interest for business for me. The idea of reading and relating to people being my job is so appealing.

I’ve also watched a lot of TED Talks on our brains, new neuro technology, and how people interact with each other. I love watching TED Talks and hearing people’s personal experiences from their studies. One TED Talk was about how scientists are beginning to create small robots that think and interact with each other like humans do. They studied basic human interaction and then programmed those signals and sets of information into a robot. At the end of the speaker’s allotted time, they released a few of the little robots onto the stage just to demonstrate how they worked, and it was really cool to see how well they worked.

So overall, my project is going well, I have just completely gapped on blogging. My subject is really interesting, but there is a limited amount of things I can do behind a computer so blogging just slipped my mind. I’m really enjoying becoming more and more observant and aware.

How Do Our Brains Work?

I’ve done a lot lately for this study, but I haven’t blogged about any of it yet. I’ve watched two TED talks about Neuroscience and how our brains work, both of which were really interesting. The first one I watched was given by Oliver Sacks, who is a neurologist who typically helps with elderly people in nursing homes who are having mental problems when he is not teaching neurology at the New York University School of Medicine. The second one was given by Rebecca Saxe, who is an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT and is also an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is primarily known for her research and focus in the field of social cognition.

In his talk, Oliver Sacks talks about an elderly woman named Rosalie he helped who was about 95 years old and in a nursing home. When she was 90 years old, her eyes started to deteriorate and she had been blind for about 4 or 5 years. Sacks was called by the nurses at the home because Rosalie had been talking about seeing things and people in the hallways and the stairwells. Sacks went to the home and talked to Rosalie and ensured her that she was not insane, as the nurses had suggested to him. Sacks discovered that she had a fairly rare condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, in which the visual cortex becomes hyperactive and creates images that a person sees. Charles Bonnet Syndrome is commonly compared to phantom pains that amputees feel. I enjoyed listening to Sacks talk about this syndrome and how it affects people simply because I really enjoy learning about the human body and why I work the way I work. This TED talk didn’t directly relate to my study, but it was still fun to learn something new about the human brain.

The second TED talk I watched definitely directly related to my study because it was about social cognition, or storing, retrieving, and processing of information about other humans. Saxe did a study on a certain portion of our brain that controls our ability to pay attention. This area also controls our ability to tell right from wrong. Saxe talked to children, giving them an example of a mix-up with a sandwich. The children in the age range of 3-5 did not understand why someone would take something they thought belonged to them, when actuality it didn’t. However, at age 7, children were able to take in their surroundings and understand what people got from external influences. The rest of Saxe’s talk was about how after the age of 7, humans are able to tell what people are thinking and what that causes them to do. I liked this TED talk because I was able to see how our brains work and what we are able to learn from external sources. The human brain fascinates me so much and the tests people are doing to further understand how it works are something that I really enjoy reading about.

TED talk links:

http://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds

https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments   

Overview of 20% Time

What is the Sherlock Mentality?

• What? I'm going to learn how to focus better and focus more on the things around me in the world. I also plan on learning how to read people and determine certain characteristics of people just by looking at them.
• Why? I have always wanted to be more observant and be able to see things about people since I was probably about 9 or 10 years old.
• How am I feeling? I'm feeling confident. I feel like I know what to do to learn more about this subject, and that I'm also capable of training my brain to focus more. I'm also really excited about learning about this "Sherlock Mentality."
• What have I accomplished? I haven’t really accomplished anything of importance yet. I have looked up books to read about reading people, being observant, and increasing focus, though.
• What am I going to do? I’m going to order some of the books I have picked out, and I plan on reading them, or at least starting to read them, in the next week. Also, I’m just going to gradually train my brain to focus and be observant by looking around and trying to see things about people others normally don’t see.