~ Tania Kotsos
The nucleus of the solitary tract, also known as the nucleus tractus solitarius
(pl. solitarii) is a pair of cell bodies found in the brainstem. This structure, along with its tract (the solitary tract or tractus solitarius), has far reaching impacts on many homeostatic systems within the body. Nucleus of the solitary tract has been described by many as the primary visceral sensory relay station within the brain. It receives and responds to stimuli from the respiratory, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal systems.
Many people think Human Consciousness is derived in the universe.
The Universe maybe Conscious!!!
But I think of the universe as space in time just light years away no more or no less.
Consciousness at its simplest is “sentience or awareness of internal or external existence”. Despite centuries of analyses, definitions, explanations and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, being “at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives”. Perhaps the only widely agreed notion about the topic is the intuition that it exists. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied and explained as consciousness and when not to focus on what you want.
Sometimes it is synonymous with ‘the mind’, other times just an aspect of mind.
In the past it was one’s “inner life”, the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination and volition. Today, with modern research into the brain it often includes any kind of experience, cognition, feeling or perception. It may be ‘awareness’, or ‘awareness of awareness’, or self-awareness. There might be different levels or “orders” of consciousness, or different kinds of consciousness, or just one kind with different features. Other questions include whether only humans are conscious or all animals or even the whole universe. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises doubts whether the right questions are being asked.
Human consciousness or transferring ones thoughts to the next is much like when you
step on a nail. Your body perceives a stimulus (change in external or internal environment)
a nervous receptor is the specific thing identifying stimulus. In in this case, the skin is the receptor, then an inward nervous impulse is generated and is transmitted through a chain
of neurons towards central nervous system, sent to the brain where the impulse is interpreted (integration) by the brain, brain will send off new impulse via motor neurons through spinal cord through nerve to muscle to carry out response and tell the rest of you that hurt.
This has been a golden age for brain research. We now have amazing brain scans that show which networks in the brain ramp up during different activities. But this emphasis on the brain has subtly fed the illusion that thinking happens only from the neck up. It’s fed the illusion that the advanced parts of our thinking are the “rational” parts up top that try to control the more “primitive” parts down below. So it’s interesting how many scientists are now focusing on the thinking that happens not in your brain but in your gut.
You have neurons spread through your innards, and there’s increasing attention on the vagus nerve, which emerges from the brain stem and wanders across the heart, lungs, kidney and gut. The vagus nerve is one of the pathways through which the body and brain talk to each other in an unconscious conversation. Much of this conversation is about how we are relating to others. Human thinking is not primarily about individual calculation, but about social engagement and cooperation. One of the leaders in this field is Stephen W. Porges of Indiana University.
When you enter a new situation, Porges argues, your body reacts.
Your heart rate may go up. Your blood pressure may change. Signals go up to the brain, which records the “autonomic state” you are in. Maybe you walk into a social situation that feels welcoming. Green light. Your brain and body get prepared for a friendly conversation. But maybe the person in front of you feels threatening. Yellow light. You go into fight-or-flight mode. Your body instantly changes. Your ear, for example, adjusts to hear high and low frequencies — a scream or a growl — rather than midrange frequencies, human speech.
Or maybe the threat feels like a matter of life and death. Red light.
Your brain and body begin to shut down.
According to Porges’s “Polyvagal Theory,” the concept of safety is fundamental to our mental state. People who have experienced trauma have bodies that are highly reactive to perceived threat. They don’t like public places with loud noises. They live in fight-or-flight mode, stressed and anxious. Or, if they feel trapped and constrained, they go numb. Their voice and tone go flat. Physical reactions shape our way of seeing and being.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, of Northeastern University, also argues that a main purpose of the brain is to read the body, and to regulate what she calls the body budget.
You may see a bully on the playground.
Your brain then predicts your next action and speeds your heart rate and breathing to deal
with it. You experience these changes as emotion — oh, this is fear or oh, this is anger — because your brain has created an emotion concept to make those physical changes meaningful. “You might think that in everyday life, the things you see and hear influence what you feel, but it’s mostly the other way around: What you feel alters your sight and hearing,” Barrett writes in “How Emotions Are Made.”
When we’re really young we know few emotional concepts.
Young children say, “Mommy, I hate you!” when they mean “I don’t like this” because they haven’t learned their culture’s concepts for hatred vs. badness. But as we get older we learn more emotional granularity. The emotionally wise person can create distinct experiences of disappointment, anger, spite, resentment, grouchiness and aggravation, whereas for a less emotionally wise person those are all synonyms for “I feel bad.” People with high emotional granularity respond flexibly to life, have better mental health outcomes and drink less.
If bodily reactions can drive people apart they can also heal. Martha G. Welch of Columbia University points to the importance of loving physical touch, especially in the first 1,000 minutes of life, to lay down markers of emotional stability. Under the old brain-only paradigm, Welch argues, we told people to self-regulate their emotions through conscious self-talk. But real emotional help comes through co-regulation. When a mother and a child physically hold each other, their bodily autonomic states harmonize, connecting on a metabolic level. Together they move from separate distress to mutual calm. Welch has created something called the Welch Emotional Connection Screen, which measures the emotional connection between mothers and pre-term babies. By encouraging this kind of deep visceral connection through 18 months, her therapy can mitigate the effects of autism.
When you step back and see the brain and body thinking together, the old distinction between reason and emotion doesn’t seem to make sense. Your very perception of the world is shaped by the predictions your brain is making about your physical autonomic states. You see how important it is to teach emotional granularity, something our culture pays almost no attention to. You also see that we’re not separate brains, coolly observing each other. We’re physical viscera, deeply interacting with each other.
The important communication is happening at a much deeper level.
https://hubpages.com/
education/your-second-brain-is-in-your-heart
https://bigthink.com/philip-
perry/the-universe-may-be-
conscious-prominent-scientists-state
The Essence of Mind Power: “We do not have to wait for future discoveries in connection with the powers of the human mind for evidence that the mind is the greatest force known to mankind. We know, now, that any idea, aim or purpose that is fixed in the mind and held there with a will to achieve or attain its physical or material equivalent, puts into motion powers that can not be conquered.” ~ Napoleon Hill
The pineal gland, otherwise known as our third-eye, is responsible for much more than we have been taught to understand. This tiny, pine cone shaped (which is how it got the name)
area of our brain could actually be the key to a whole new world of understanding,
in all regards.
This particular area of the brain is in charge of the production of serotonin derivative melatonin which determines the amount of sleep time that we obtain in conjunction with our waking life.
It also affects how we function from season to season. The pineal gland is located in the center of our brain, between the two separate hemispheres.
As the gateway between the physical and spiritual worlds for humans, when this gland is activated, we are filled with euphoric sensations, along with a feeling of oneness. This grants a sensation that we actually know everything that we need to know if only we look into our own souls. By using meditation, yoga, and keeping your chakras aligned, you can easily activate these areas.
Other things can also be achieved by activating the third eye, such as astral projection, or remote viewing, which most people think of as traveling to other dimensions. Various ancient teaching show that with advanced practice, you can also control the thoughts and actions of other people in the physical realm.
It may seem impossible to achieve such things; however, the former Soviet Union governments along with other shadow organizations have been researching the effects associated with the pineal gland for quite some time, and as they have discovered more information, they have worked to hide as much of their knowledge as possible from the general public. We have to wonder what exact purpose do they have in hiding our own intuitive knowledge from ourselves?
Sadly, sodium fluoride is filtered through our pineal gland, which in turn stunts its activity.
By filling our pineal gland with sodium fluoride it is too docile and dumbed down to actually do its job, which is to balance our hormonal bodily processes.
Our water supply in the U.S. contains 90% of sodium fluoride and other chemical compounds, and there aren’t any water filters purchasable at your typical supermarket to filter this chemical junk out.
You can work against the chemicals in your water supply by distilling your water,
or by learning reverse osmosis.
There are so many truths that are located within our own minds, if only we look close enough, and deeply enough. It is easy to shut down theories regarding things like our third eye as science fiction or new age hogwash, but there is a reason that these associations pop into our mind, and it is due to the watered down brainwashing that we have endured. You can begin to reopen your mind, and learn a whole new way of positive living if only you focus on your true intuition, and not the opinions that are being fed to you.
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=D7eBQfM3UrA&feature=emb_title
There is a difference between loneliness (the imposition of social isolation) and aloneness
(the choice of being alone), and thus the brain reacts in very different ways. Loneliness, or social isolation, affecting a large part of the population as it became an epidemic in the last few years, is known to cause changes in the brain, possibly leading to more serious consequences such as depression and other mood disorders. However, some of those changes can be reversed if the appropriate social interactions are re-established and the person reengages in social activities. Alzheimer’s & Dementia might be reverse with occasional visits to talk to the elderly.
But what if the person doesn’t have that option?
Neurobiology shows the need to make solitary confinement more humane.
We are talking about the case of solitary confinement, a form of imprisonment still practiced
in many countries, including the United States.
Robert King, an ex-inmate who was in solitary confinement for 29 years, shared his experience with a room full of curious neuroscientists during the world’s biggest neuroscience conference by the Society for Neuroscience in November 2018. Being confined in a 6×9-foot cell for almost 30 years, with very limited contact with other humans or physical exercise, surely has consequences on one’s overall health, including the brain. King knew that solitary confinement was changing the way his brain worked. When he finally left his cell, he realized he had trouble recognizing faces and had to retrain his eyes to learn what a face was like. His sense of direction was also messed up, and he was unable to follow a simple route in the city by himself. It is as if his brain had erased all those capabilities that were no longer necessary for survival in a cell no bigger than the back of a pick-up truck.
One of the most remarkable effects of chronic social isolation, as in the extreme case of solitary confinement, is the decrease in the size of hippocampus, the brain region related to learning, memory, and spatial awareness. The sustained stress of extreme isolation leads to a loss of hippocampal plasticity, a decrease in the formation of new neurons, and the eventual failing in hippocampal function. On the other hand, the amygdala increases its activity in response to isolation. This area mediates fear and anxiety, symptoms enhanced in prisoners in solitary confinement.
Studies on mice have shown that one month of social isolation caused a decrease of around 20% of the total volume of neurons, though researchers saw that remaining neurons were branching out more than those mice that were not isolated. When the isolation went on longer — up to three months — researchers saw that the extra branching of the neurons was no longer happening, and that, in exchange, spines (structures that neurons develop to place the machinery that is required to communicate to each other) were greatly diminished. What does this mean? The branching that took place in the first month of isolation may represent some sort of compensatory mechanism that the brain puts in place in order to overcome and prevent the detrimental effects of isolation. However, when isolation went on for “too long,” this mechanism seemed to come to an end, and trigger the loss of neuronal communication in the form of spine elimination.
In addition to the effects that loneliness will cause in the brain, solitary confinement also has an important component of sensory deprivation. The small cells where inmates are isolated are windowless, and though inmates are entitled to have one hour of physical exercise every day, sometimes this would not happen due to the busy schedule of the prison, King reported. The sensory deprivation contributes to important health impairments, such as alterations of circadian rhythms, the internal biological clock that regulates overall
the proper functioning of our bodies.
Solitary confinement as a punishment is closer to a form of torture, with serious consequences for neurological health. Teams of researchers are investigating further the deep effects of this practice, and studying the possibility of regulating it to maintain physical activity as well as sensory input and circadian rhythms, in order to prevent profound changes in the brain.
This calls attention to the necessity of integrating science in law, as legislators may not recognize possible emotional injuries in the same way they recognize the physical effects of imprisonment. Lawyers and neuroscientists need to work together to understand the full consequences of dangerous practices that still take place in the system, such as solitary confinement.
References
The growing problem of loneliness. Cacioppo JT, Cacioppo S. Lancet. 2018 Feb 3;391(10119):426. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30142-9.
Law & Neuroscience: The Case of Solitary Confinement. Jules Lobel & Huda Akil. 2018 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00520
Note: Click on the article title to read the full article.
The Misguided Virtues of Humility and Pride: Contrary to mainstream advice, humility
and pride are two of the most misguided virtues that human beings can aspire to possess.
They are not virtues at all but rather are two extreme states of being that, like all extremes,
are best to be avoided.
Effective Mental Focus – When Not to Focus on What You Want:
To consciously create your reality in the face of a negative belief, mentally focus on something that is a by-product of what you want but not specifically what you want.
Essentially, this by-passes your related subconscious negative beliefs.
The Incredibly Important Role of Your Conscious Mind: Your conscious mind is your the seat of reason. This ability sets human beings apart from plants and minerals and places us highest in the animal kingdom. The conscious mind is supposed to be guardian of your subconscious.
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind & its Achilles Heel: The potential of your subconscious mind may be limitless but potential alone can be more detrimental than useful when the programmes being carried out are negative. Its incredible power is also its greatest weakness.
Thought Power – Your Thoughts Create Your Reality: Everything you perceive in the outside world has its origin in the inner world of your thoughts. To consciously create your reality, you must learn to control the nature of your dominant, habitual thoughts. This is mind power.
You are One With the Universal Mind: There is a single, intelligent Consciousness that pervades the entire Universe – all knowing, all powerful, all creative and always present. As it is present everywhere at the same time, it follows that it must also be present in you. Know this Truth.
Brain Waves and the Deeper States of Consciousness: Every part of your body vibrates to its own rhythm. Your brain has a unique set of brain waves. Learning to access deeper states of consciousness enables you to consciously programme and re-wire your mind for success.