Why do we sleep? And what about dreaming?

Author: Say Buzz. Category: Mad Science

Describing what the dreams are is incredibly difficult. The literature about it is really a lot and making a critics on Freud or other great personalities that tried to interpretate dreams is not the point of this article.

As Mad Science here i just want to give an idea about the “need of sleeping” and a point of view of what dreams represent as menthal activity.

Eight hours more or less a day. We spend in one year about 122 days sleeping, which means that in a ordinary life of 80 years, we spend almost 26 years sleeping. Can we accept this without thinking? For our body to sleep is like going in a standby state. The methabolism reaches a basal energetic consume and the body needs to lie and to not move. Thus sleeping is a resting period, that extraordinary goes with the night hours of the day, it is in connection with the circadian rhythm, so with the cicle of light that amazingly fits with a specific hormonal state regulated by the brain. The reason of sleeping is that the body needs time for a methabolic recharge. So the inactivity present during the sleep period is incredibly necessary for us to be able to live during the awake phase. Let’s say that we couldn’t live without sleeping.

In this standby period what really happens in our mind is also related to changes in the mental activity of the brain. Both in REM and NREM sleep, all perceptions coming from the outside have not the same impact than those during the awake phase.

For example just closing the eyes during the sleep means that the all activity of seeing is dicreased. So in the same way perceptions give less stimuli to the honiric thought, and the thought itself is not controlled by the rationality. So in this way other parts of our mind can be expressed.

Those can be strong sensations or they can be ancestral memories we have stored deeply in our mind and they take place during the uncontrolled menthal activity we’ve got basicly during REM sleep. In this way, dreams can have physiological role and as mental activity, they can also influence the awakeness and consequently our behaviours. Deciding something important after waking up I think it is not casual.

During the sleep there is a kind of fragmented thought that in a way methabolises what we have lived during the awakeness mixing it with memories of experiences of an intire life. Inside this, so deep emotive states emerge in contrast to the lowering of rational control.

I’d like to say that most of our important desitions in life are taken unconsciously during the sleep. Sleeping is life as well and even if we don’t have memory of our thoughts during it, we still think, plan, feel, imagine, love, hate, or fear. All those features are in connection with the deepest emotive states and all is mixed with last useless memories we have in mind. This relation creates a network of connections between differents sides of our brain activity, and this brings to an unorganized and unrational thought that anyway expresses our being.

Personifications of feelings, distortion of the reality, enhancement of deep sensations, fake stories in unknown places, people of our life and people not existing, in other words dreams are structrured allucinations. Great fears emerge sometimes as result of a deep sufference of the ego, and it expresses in the dreams as everyone experienced as a nightmare. Crazy things happen in ourselves when we sleep, inside the honiric period, we are psychiatric allucinating patiences. While when we wake up the story completely changes. Dreams are menthal recontructions of our emotions, coming from the uncontrolled unrational imagination that many times doesn’t definitively recognize what is true from what it is not. In dreams we have the chance to express hidden sides of our mind, sometimes those we don’t know, those we fear or we refuse but anyway existing.

We can really get something of how we are and we can learn a lot about the way we behave during our “ordinary” life in a sort of autoanalysis of our dreams. So much from dreams we can comprehend ourselves.

Party Pooper

Author: A "guiri" in Spain. Category: Lost in Translation

Dear English Speakers,

Language is a funny thing. Developed and perfected over hundreds of thousands of years, where would we be if it weren’t for language? But even more curious I suppose, is just how different languages of the world can be. Even speaking the common language of English can leave a lot of room for misconception depending on where you learned it and how you pronounce it. But, fear not, there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel of miscommunication. 

I have been told, throughout my own struggles to learn a new language, that a smile is the same in every language. 

While I could not agree more, there are just some things that do not easily translate. And to me, this just happens to be hilarious. (I once called someone a pillow, thinking that was her name!) Through my own language blunders, mistranslations, and misunderstandings I have learned that laughter really is the best medicine and that laughter too is the same in every language – even when people are laughing at you.

So for today, I would like to thank the German DJ Flula for reminding me that I’m not alone in my own language misunderstandings. Apparently this too happens in every language. As I stumbled upon his video page of language ponderings, I couldn’t help but enjoy this video about Party Poopers. 

http://www.jest.com/videos/playlist/57473/playlist-best-of-flula#57290

I’m sorry Flula, but you may be taking some things a little too literally.

Until next time.

Anatomy or Anthropology??

Author: Say Buzz. Category: Mad Science

How to analyze humans? Are we divine beings or we are just effect of evolution?

Humans are animals, specifically mammals belonging to the “orden of primates”. In other words humans are crazy intelligent monkeys... What does it mean? A human body is a biological point. But as well every other living animal is a biological point, with a difference in the developed brain structures and in the quantity of hair in all body! According to Darwin’s theory, every animal is brought to survive and to reproduct, so we can imagine also that a body itself is shaped on these needs and attitudes, and the brain itself works in the way it is structured.

But what happens when an animal has already satisfied all needs? He doesn’t need to eat, drink or other things.. so in this moment he will start playing with everything he finds interesting around just for fun. “Fun”, playing with the reality for hundreds centuries, animals evoluted in their ways developing particularities based on their attitudes and qualities. Humans developed very sophisticated skills of calculation,language, discernment.

Reality is something that can be understood in many different ways by the different animals. Based on the inner analisys of the perception, the brain directly identify the reality around and this is a common thing for all the beings with a nervous sistem. When we talk about humans, we describe very complex animals, above all when we describe the mechanism of the brain working.

After many years trying to understand how is possible that humans are incredibly more intelligent than all the other animals in earth, we still don’t have a definitive answer. So what the hell happened to Humans?

VIDEO: THE DAWN OF MAN: FIRST STEP IN EVOLUTION

Of course our brain cortex is much more developed, but still we have the 99% of the our DNA completely equal to that one of a chimpanzee. But chimpanzee didn’t develop the language skills of humans, and neither a great counsciousness, neither more other things like we are incredibly more attractive, and we don’t stink, and yeah.. of course i would never go with a monkey...

Humans never understood how this great comprehension of the reality was

possible, so it seemed to be a miracle.. (from here the topic can end anywhere in

any historical time, but let’s move on...) An important knowledge to talk about the behavior in humans is understanding that we are part of a evolution of the nature. So we follow the same features. For example, our brain is of course the most developed, but it comes from an ancestral nervous sistem like it is for all the other animals. The nervous sistem developed so well in this way because it worked for the surviving. Human brain is structured in the same way of the other animals and for this reason we experiment on mouses or cats or whatever, cause their brain is incredibly similar to ours. Rita Levi Montalcini is a glorious scientist, she was awarded with a nobel prize for an important discovery. She was able to find and to describe the NGF (Neuronal Grow Factor). This is a short molecule that work during developing of the brain to guide it during its growing. In humans it is probably something like this that lead to the develop of our intelligence. The almost centenary Rita Levi talks so well about it, remembering repetitively the importance of the Neocortex in the developing of the brain. All this description is just to say that we are built in a very similar way to all the other animals, and we have same brain structures of reptiles and kangaroos but we have more ability in perception and in analisys of the reality.

According to this scientific point of view, it seems that human being is only part of a evolution course, and that this is a process in continuous change and develop. So we can hypothetically say that  also our behaviour is determined biologically... it is true, we all share needs and behaviours so common between everyone, and between humans and animals as well, cause of the affinity between different sides of the nature itself.

The most difficult question is what in the end are the feelings? Are they part of evolution as well? Should we really think they just come out from the developing of neocortex like Rita Levi could say? And what about the idea of counsciousness or the imagination? Can we really think they’re only made by electrical neuroconnections? We all can basically describe the reality with method, so yes we are biological beings, and what we know is true, but our nature has something more and very deep that is not possible to describe in scientific words. Feelings are objectively spiritual and are the deepest sensations that more caracterize human beings. Science will be able to explain the mechanisms for everything but it will never tell the reason why things are in this way, and also in anyway we observe the human behaviour both from the anatomical to the anthropological point of view, we will never be able to deeply comprehend all secrets staying behind our

being.

Shadow...

Author: Chica Checa. Category: ART-iculation


What do you imagine when you think of “shadow“? Anything scary or deep? Whenever this word comes to my mind I only see two art pieces which I have seen in the International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy and I have a good laugh.

Imagine. You are walking around, listening to all the posh talks about art and then you see another mound of junk which is supposed to be art. Great! But wait and come closer!!! That junk is lightened and makes a wonderful picture on the opposite wall. Loads of scrap at the end of its life is turning into something new: a pair of rats in the middle of copulation. Tim Noble and Sue Webster are turning the space into a plane, death to life and useless into fun and art of course. Good job! Fucking rats. Even better is the placement. The artwork is located in the beautiful nearly collapsed old palace.

Another visual artist fascinated by shadow is German Hans-Peter Feldmann. You can stare for hours and hours at his Shadow Play. Feldmann is well known for his collector's passion. He locates various types of toys, souvenirs, cookware and kitsch (Barbie doll, the crocodile, the beater, the palm tree, etc.) on a slowly rotated platform and lights it up by a strong source of light. All together it creates an amazing and ingenious spectacular completed with the screechy sound of the machines. What do you imagine now?

Hans - Peter Feldman. Shadow Play. 2002 - 2009

Tim Noble, Sue Webster. Metal Fucking Rats. 2006