I am enjoying this new book I am reading called "Left in the Dark", a hypothesis on human evolution, the left-right brain, and how humans were affected by early diets based primarily on fruit.
Notes
- he speaks about left brain dominance in our culture. it is usually responsible for concepts like time, sequence, speech and language
- the right brain is know for creativity, spatial awareness and pattern recognition
- e.a. serafetinides administered lsd-25 to patients w/o a right brain and they did not experience hallucinations or mind expanded states. this was not true in participants w/o a left brain. => so are these experiences controlled by the right brain?
- autistic savants often are males whose over production of testosterone has damaged parts of the left brain. a nine year old boy because a genius mechanic after a bullet went thru his left brian. there are other examples of this. => does damage to the left brain "free" up the right brain?
- betty edwards in "drawing on the right side of the brain" : "the dominant left verbal hemisphere doesnt want too much information about the things it percieve - just enough to recognize and categorize. the left brain, in this sense, learns to take a quick look and says 'right thats a chair'. because the brain is overloaded most of the time with incoming info, it seems that one of its function is to screen out a large proportion of incoming perceptions"
- when right hemi is damaged speech is usually monotone and female or male voices becomes impossible to discern
- sleep is less needed by right hemi than left, so after sleeplessness, one becomes more ambidextrous and the right hemi becomes more dominant
- no right hemi leads to low memory, mechanistic, unemotional behavior, monotone voice, processing of a bit of information linearly at a time. do not appreciate subtly, take things literally, do not understand jokes, bad facial recognition, low spatial orientation, bad shape matching. they experience 'left side neglect' and ignore the left side of their body exists, like forgetting to shave left side of face or not eating from the left side of their plate, or denying its existence. if looking at a picture of snow, they have a hard time saying its winter until they are told its January. so they categorize & classify well.
- no left hemi leads to reduction of vocabulary. gestures preferred; no right side neglect; names forgotten but faces recognized; respond appropriately in emotional situations; lost ability to assign verbal name to visual symbol
- scizophrenia = hearing voices, breaking down sense of I, no time consciousness, disintegration of body feeling; more activity in right hemi and more time between switching of hemi. use
- hypnotized female asked to go back to a happy time in childhood but instead goes back to a traumatizing time... she was told the birth of a sibling would be happy but instead her mother experienced great pain and needed to get taken away by an ambulance. her right brain stored true emotions, her left brain stored info that this was categorically a happy time
- "the inhibiting effect of the left hemisphere is illustrated clearly when we awaken from sleep and promptly forget our dreams. we may have a fleeting sense of dreaming something but when the left brain clicks in, the dream images are largely lost. the left on waking reestablishes dominance. the dreams are lost because they did not happen there." when it comes to dream remembering, the harder we try the less we remember.. our rational brain kicks in. we need to not think but engage our _visual memory_.
- "as we age there is a tendency to talk more, to become less imaginative and more fearful.. all indicative of left hemi dominance"
- NLP originators said: "it would be easier to do therapy in a foreign language.. that way you would not have the illusion that the words you heard had the same meaning for the person who uttered them as they have for you. and believe me it is an illusion." ; words are the most disconnected way of expressing our direct experience; we re-energize spending time away from the left brain while on silent retreats
- people tend to choose the right most object in a sequence.. i remember i did this recently with a deck of wisdom cards.. i got the prince of clouds which was told to me to be about the logical mind... so interesting that it was my logical mind (left hemi) that was gravitating me in that direction
- remote viewing by hal puthoff & russell targ.. do we have the ability to accurately imagine scenes? the most important condition but 'a relaxed playful atmosphere & attitude'
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left hemi interference can be accomplished getting out of speech mode, reducing mind chatter....!
- fruit bats, parrots, and primates which all eat fruit have larger brain to body ratios. the former are sometimes called honorary primates because they can grasp concepts & categorize much like primates
- skeletons in forest climates are not easily perserved
- left hemi dominance is characterized by loads of self - denial. when people are asked to choose an attractive face which is swapped for an unattractive one, they justify this choice they did not make. right hemi missing people will have grossly exaggerated defense mechanisms to account for some wrong thing or will lie. they have surreal logic. called anosognosia and not present when left hemi is damaged
- left hemi creates a model, ego, a storyline and defend it. right hemi detect anomalies and tell the left - theory by ramachandran
- one reason we might have developed hairlessness was to capture more vitamin D while under the forest canopy. and did steroid suppressing chemicals in fruit inhibit the absorption of vit d and make direct absorption more essential?
- female hyenas have more testosterone than males and are the dominant and agressive sex
- early agrarian societies show people that had anemia, lived shorter, and were sicker that their ancestors
- lack of plant material in the fossil record results in an overemphasizing of meat eating
- australopithecus robustus teeth fall into fruit eating category; and ramapithecus; homo habilis has smooth enamel like chimps
- wild fruit has more protein than what we eat today
- humans very efficient at processing vegetable fiber from dicotyledenous sources... flowering plants... but not so much monocotyledens... grasses and cereals
- food going through a carnivores gut takes 7 to 26 hours but in a human it takes 40 to 60 hours... meat hanging around in there is toxic
- vit C is the main antioxidant in the blood; it concentrates in the brain area which is mainly unsaturated fat so it is more likely to need extra electrons to prevent oxidizing. it is in the cerebral spinal fluid to the blood by a ratio of 10:1
- if monkeys need 55mg of Vit C a day, humans would need 3,850 mg but we are told we only need 45 mg. great apes eat between 2 to 6 grams of Vit C a day
- we cannot synthesize Vit C but can do Vit D... so why would we depend on meat for it? its not very bioavailable
- unlike starches from grains, sugar has a lower glycemic index and are digested more slowly... avoiding glucose rush... chemicals in fruit also reduce sex hormones.. they are diametrically opposed to the effect of refined cereals which results in an excess of male hormones and acne
- humans have small teeth and cannot chase meat well; carnivore saliva is acid, humans saliva is alkaline where enzymes like amylase can break down starch
- sugar in wild fruit - glucose & fructose but in commercial fruit, it is bred for more sucrose content
- appleton central alt charter high studied behavior changes when they got rid of all junk foods in their schools
PS. I find this to be a pretty neat chart comparing Humans to Herbivores, Omnivores, and Carnivores :-)
Steroids
- steroids are fat-soluble organic compounds that occur naturally in plants & animals and are transformed in the body after a few steps into specific hormones. ie cholesterol which turns into testosterone, estrogen or progesterone in the reproductive system by the enzymes that lie there. or it becomes cortisol which is secreted by the outer layer of the adrenal glands in response to stress.
- steroids pass into the nucleus of a cell and regulate transcription that creates enzymes (chemicals that run cells actions) and proteins (which are for structure)
- hormones alter cellular operations - they change the types or quantities of important enzymes and proteins; they can also turn enzymes on or off;
- steroid hormones are an integral part of the mechanism that reads dna and dictates the structure and chemistry of what is built and how it works
- Example: when a person has a Y chromosome, it initiates the production of a protein called 'testes determining factor' which induces neutral gonadal cells to create a testes. once this has occurred, continued gender development is determined by the testes not the Y chromosome. the testes releases hormones like one that inhibits the development of a female reproductive tract.
-Dna = code or book; ribosome = reading equipment; hormones = tell ribosomes what to read
- taking different hormones can completely effect a process, regardless of what is written in the dna
- neuroendrocrinology - the brain regulates the glands in what hormones they produce. the neuroendocrine system is modified by the mothers system in the womb at birth, hypothesizes the author. and this affects the next gen. this lays down their hormone concoctions
- flavonoid rich diet severely inhibits the neo natal testosterone surge
- beta carbolines are produced in pineal gland; if taken in large doses are hallucinogenic; they inhibit steroids and fine-tune transmitter activity; prevent monoamine oxidase from breaking down seratonin & noradrenaline; the build up of these neurotransmitter at synapses allows greater neural activity.. causing hallucinations at some pt
- harmala alkaloids are beta carbolines in ayahuasca, assyrian rue, and passion flower in small quantities
- flavanoids inhibit MAO
- melatonin slows arrival of puberty and development of repro. hormones
- success rate matings:conception 5% in humans, 95% in animals
- bioflavanoids strengthen capillaries line uterus
- physical castration (or chemical) of sex offenders and serial murders reduced chance of reoffending by 20
- reducing testosterone levels reduces crime almost totally
- melatonin for contraception?
- DMT, derived from tryptophan, is quickly absorbed across the brain blood barrier and broken down by MAOs
- every neurotransmitter in the brain is in the gut too. gut uses 95% of bodies seratonin.
- for every one msg sent from the brain to the gut, 9 are sent from the gut to the brain
- melatonin protects from ulceration of gut by its antioxidant properties.
I read much of the book, skimmed over the rest. Overall, I would say it poses a lot of interesting questions which it leaves unanswered. It's ok to do that. My criticism is that his hypothesizes seem too far fetched without more data. It would be better to pose a list of them as what-ifs. I need more perspective from the other side to really understand if he is not cherry-picking information that suits his theories. Anyway, I learned quite a few interesting things overall. More things to study deeper into one day... :]
