Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Babies and Infants Dreams

I've added this to "The Biology of Dreaming" by Vexen Crabtree (2005):

An unborn baby at 32-36 weeks will have the thalamo-cortical neural networks in place that facilitate conscious awareness. Prof. Koch notes that an unborn baby at that point is almost permanently asleep and sometimes in REM sleep; although we do not know to what extent late unborn babies dream, there is evidence that they feel "the way we do when we are in a deep, dreamless sleep". Later:

“Dream content is informed by recent and more remote memories. Longitudinal studies of dreaming in children by retired American psychologist David Foulkes suggest that dreaming is a gradual cognitive development that is tightly linked to the capacity to imagine things visually and to visuospatial skills. Thus, preschoolers' dreams are often static and plain, with no characters that move or act, hardly any feelings and no memories.” - Prof. Christof Koch (2009)
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Sunday, February 25th, 2007

St Paul Was Converted to Christianity by a Seizure

New text on St. Paul: St Paul Was Converted to Christianity by a Seizure:

Saint Paul certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure - "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James, p35.

William James, the well-known psychologist and author on the history of religion, is convinced that St Paul's vision of Christ (his only "contact" with Jesus, ever) was a seizure (ref: Acts 9:3-9). His claim is scientifically likely and has been made by scientists and doctors many times in history4. The prominent book on brain neurology, Neuroscience states that some people have a once-in-a-life seizure that can include visual hallucinations. In the general (non-epileptic) population, it occurs in 7 to 10 percent of people's lives5.

(References exist on the page linked)
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Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

Memory Impairment of Clive Wearing

I've added a quote from Gross to my Clive Wearing text on emotions and the soul:
Clive Wearing [...] lives in a snapshot of time, constantly believing that he has just awoken from years of unconsciousness. For example, when his wife, Deborah, enters his hospital room for the third time in a single morning, he embraces her as if they had been parted for years, saying, 'I'm conscious for the first time' and 'It's the the first time I've seen anybody at all'.
"Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour" by Richard Gross

Deborah Wearing, Clive's wife, says that "even if I just leave the room, he doesn't know if he's seen me just 10 minutes ago or 10 years ago". He is capable of showing all the emotions of any person, including his strong emotions for his wife, who he constantly misses. The brain damage that he suffered has caused all this, what are the implications for those that study the soul? Clive Wearing shows us that there is no 'soul' which is responsible for our emotions; or, if there is a soul, it is completely overridden by physical biochemistry. If damage to the brain effects Clive's emotions and experience of life in such a profound way, it is clear that no 'soul' plays a part in determining those emotions: life is purely biological.

Emotions are Biological: There is no Soul

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