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| 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 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 by writing to: mail@ritacarter.co.uk 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.  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.
“I’ve been here before…” No you haven’t – you’re just experiencing déjà 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. Gorilla blindness: so you think you can see? Like everyone else I have a sweetly naïve 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. 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 new book. Tune in and turn off: autistic savants The brain is modular – that is, different and fairly discrete 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. Chronicling the Future In 2000 I was invited to contribute to the Sunday Times "Chronicle of the Future" - a series of news stories of the future. These are some of the events I thought might happen. Shadow syndromes There used to be a very clear distinction between illness and health. But increasingly it is recognised that there is no such dividing line. This is especially true of mental conditions. Things like shyness may be seen as a cute sensibility in one culture, and a socially crippling disorder in another. A "clumsy" child is now likely to be labelled "dyspraxic", a dreamy or naughty child may be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, a literal-minded one as Asperger's. Is this a sign of creeping medicalisation (bad) or enlightened recognition of individual differences (good)? Is human perceptipon limited, or can our awesome powers of imagination allow us to see the world in any way we wish? In this article - derived from a talk I gave during an ICA seminar on Human Nature - argues that our brains force us to see and interpret the world in a way that is peculiar to our species. Architecture and the Brain TIn 2002 I was thrilled to learn that "Mapping the Mind" had been adapted as a course in neuroscience for students at the San Diego New S Director of Research Planning for the American Institute of Architects. JOhn is one of the first profesinals to recognise the huge practical applications of brain science, and he has now founded the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture to help realise them within his own field. He has also written a book dedicated to the topic, for which I wrote this foreword: The Curious Case of the Alien Hand "Alien hand" or "anarchic limb" is sometimes called "The Dr Strangelove Syndrome" after the Peter Sellers character whose right arm seemed to have a life of its own. Real life Dr Strangeloves have fascinated psychologists and neurologists (and practically everyone else who comes across them) for more than 100 years. Things that go bump in your brain (Some of) the science behind ghoulies and ghosties, doppelgangers, vampires, werewolves, out-of-the-body and near-death experiences, succubi and incubi, and all the other spooks that haunt us. |
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