brain

Compassion? Wisdom?
Sorry, no one by that name lives here...

My son recently graduated from college. He could have been one of these UC Davis students. The well fed skin-head on the right is the riot clad officer hosing our children with pepper spray as they sit, Gandhi style, arm in arm, nonviolently. This act, not by students but by our friend the civil mercenary, and others like it around the world (see below), rips the thin skin of civility off our eyes. Serving and protecting, yes, but who and what? Watching his unaffected cruelty, like food poisoning, vomits up the question, How could he do such a thing?

In 1981 when a friend was nearly raped and murdered by a stalking stranger I asked the same question, Why would a man do such a thing? How can a man who supposedly loves his wife beat her so violently it caused brain damage? Or a coach, scream at an eight year old for dropping a ball? Violence is so easy, so natural. Or is it?

Years ago friend and author Howard Bloom introduced me to the works of James W. Prescott, PhD. In a breathtaking book called the Lucifer Principle Howard takes us on a tour of human nature down through the ages and explains how violence is in our blood, how in many ways we breed violence. Plant a child in a violence producing culture and you will get a violent adult. The opposite is also true. Plant a child in nurturing, affectionate, pleasurable rich soil and you get an empathic, intelligent and perhaps even a compassionate culture. I wonder how nurtured, playfully touched, and unconditionally accepted our pepper spraying officer was as a child?

In light of increasing militarized police activities, that I hope we have all been watching, I asked Howard if I could share the chapter in the Lucifer Principle focusing on Prescott’s works. He said yes, of course. Violence is easy and so natural. So are empathy, wisdom, real intelligence and compassion. Please see for yourself.

The Importance of Hugging – Why some cultures seem abnormally prone to revel in violence?

A personal note about current events and our kids…

Freedom and any form of democracy depend on you and I being informed. The Germans were well informed in 1933, but as you know, their information was cherry-picked, censored, opinion replaced facts.

After WWII the Nuremberg trials revealed how easily the entire population was misled by propaganda. When news is biased (censored or contains propaganda) people are misled. The Fairness Doctrine was established to prevent this from happening in the US. When Reagan, then followed by Clinton, eliminated the Fairness Doctrine religious-political-corporate opinion radio and other one-sided information streams that mimicked news formats emerged, similar to the way Infomercials mimicked documentaries.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described how American’s are the most entertained (distracted), least informed people (by design) in the world. What he is saying is that in our era of tsunami floods of information much is intentionally misleading (censored or propaganda). Here is a great example of what this looks like.

The social, economic and yes political forces at work right now have a direct and lasting impact on our children and will for generations; on jobs, food, education, healthcare, retirement, the nature and quality of our local police, civil rights, free speech, the right to privacy, and as of today even ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is on the chopping block, replaced by ‘prolonged detention’ without charges, just suspicion. Back to the Inquisition?

Occupy Wall Street is shining a light on this and corporate-government-media is fighting back using its ‘play-book,’ ignore them, diversion, distraction, show them football and reality TV instead.

What can we do? Don’t rely only on talk radio and corporate media for news. Seek diverse, international news services available on the net. Read the talk by Kennedy. If there is an Occupy Movement in your town, bake some cookies, sit down and have a chat.

Michael Mendizza

PS,
Egyptian security forces, their version of our man in blue, are now using a powerful incapacitating gas against civilian protesters in Tahrir Square casing multiple cases of unconsciousness and epileptic-like convulsions among those exposed. Yippee, more fun than pepper spray, bleeding from the lungs for more than 15 hours. Several deaths have been reported, something our kids can look forward to.

The Judicial-Moral Mind: An appeal to the American Academy of Pediatrics

The Morality of Pain and Pleasure in human relationships defines the Morality of Human Behavior, which is forged during early life experiences. Aristotle (c.350 B.C.) appreciated the reciprocal relationship between pleasure and pain, and recognized that a compulsive search for bodily pleasure originates from a state of bodily discomfort and pain: ‘the care of the body ought to precede that of the soul." (Politica); and "Therefore, the highest good is some sort of pleasure, despite the fact that most pleasures are bad, and, if you like, bad in the unqualified sense of the word." (Nichomachean Ethics, Book 7).

The genital mutilation of children (Circumcision, male and female) is the first moral lesson taught our children: Pain (Violence) is a moral good that is carried throughout life. Moses Maimonides' in The Guide of the Perplexed (circa 1190) stated. “The bodily pain caused to that member is the real purpose of circumcision” (III: 49) and prepares the infant/child for a life of violence and helps define a culture of violence—a Crime Against Humanity. http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Levy1945.html
http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Our_Two_Cultural_Brains.pdf

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) will hold its 2011 National Conference & Exhibition from October 15-18, 2001 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. It is timely and urgent that at this meeting the AAP addresses the genital mutilation of children, as an act of torture and mutilation, which is a Crime Against Humanity.

Dr. Judith Palfrey, M.D., Past President, American Academy of Pediatrics was compelled to renounce the AAP Bioethics Committee’s policy statement on Ritual Cutting of Female Minors with the following statement: ”The AAP does not endorse the practice of offering a "clitoral nick”. This minimal pinprick is forbidden under federal law…” (17 May 2010).
http://mgmbill.org/usfgmlaw.htm
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/5/1088.full/reply#pediatrics_el_50189

Judge J. Flaherty (1978). In The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Civil Division. McFall v Shimp, stated in his OPINION: "Forceable extraction of living body tissue causes revulsion to the judicial mind. Such would raise the spectre of the swastika and the Inquisition, reminiscent of the horrors this portends... An Order will be entered denying the request for a preliminary injunction”;; and I would add the Moral Mind. http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/McFall_v_Shimp.pdf

This is particularly the case when the primary beneficiary are other children, e.g. in Urinary Tract Infections (UTI) that affects only about 2% of the population of male newborns and where better and safer treatments are available; and where surgery has never been historically demonstrated to control for infectious diseases, e.g. HIV/AIDS.

A letter has been written to Lewis R. First, M.D., Editor, PEDIATRICS (1 October 2011) requesting his support in the education of the Pediatric Community concerning these issues by bringing attention to Pediatricians the PETITION TO THE WORLD COURT, THE HAGUE.

This letter to Dr. First and the PETITION TO THE WORLD COURT, THE HAGUE is attached for review by the Pediatric Community.

Click HERE.

Appropriate Use of Technology in Education

The overarching insight in neuroscience the past decade is:

‘Brain and environment are one, interdependent, reciprocal dynamic process. Change the environment and you change the brain.'

The human brain created Technology that changed the environment that is now changing the brain. In the mid 1800’s Emerson, cautious of the industrial revolution, noted; the weaver becomes the web.

Yes, technology is here to stay, and like guns and sugar can be very useful in moderation. The typical young child, teen and adult however, invest five or more hours each day relating to flat, two dimensional screens. Relating to a flat screen with eyes and fingers is sensory deprivation compared to swinging on a rope and dropping in a rushing stream.

Screen based technologies are all ‘virtual’. To have an appropriate relationship with a virtual reality one must first have a well-developed physical, emotional, cognitive foundation in what used to be the only reality – natural experience and relationship based and perception.

Introduce virtual reality too early, when the natural reality is still forming and you displace, push aside, critical experiences in the development and stabilization of that natural reality. Do this, and do it in mass and we weaken the core foundation upon which individual and collective life and all its complexities rest.

Consider the crippling retardation of descriptive language as it has been pushed aside by screen based technologies. We have moved from Tom Sawyer to Spiderman. Every picture displaces the need for a thousand descriptive words. Descriptive language is the only way imagination unfolds, imagination being the brains capacity to create inner images not present to the senses, which Einstein openly and correctly declared is much more important than knowledge. Push aside symbol and metaphor with pictures and we retard the capacity to deal with abstractions such as mathematics and science. Imagination is THE core capacity upon which all higher human potentials depend. Knowledge is content. Knowledge without imagination however, is like fireworks on the fourth of July without a match and that is what we have.

It is capacity not content that ‘real’ learning cultivates. The whole body, feeling, movement and thought, in the moment, interacting with the natural world – not some buzzing, flashing, gadget – this rich ‘organic’ engagement and experience, running, jumping, squishing with fingers, smelling, laughing, changing, bigger, smaller, heavy, light, hot, cold, wet, rough, smooth, symphony of three dimensional sounds, and the quiet, intuitive inner ‘knowing’ and shared meaning of real communion with our ‘god given’ natural universe. That is what learning is.

Reality is brain development dependent. Introducing screen – and that means image based technologies - to young children, before age eleven, is like feeding steak to a baby or sexually explicit material to a seven year old. The developing ‘reality’ is not prepared nor is it stable enough to ‘appropriately’ digest these inappropriate experiences. All the so called ‘learning’ that is taking place, at a precious price in terms of money and more importantly in the child’s attention and true whole development is placed on a malnourished foundation.

Virtual reality is sensory deprivation to the developing brain, similar in many ways to bottled feeding. Not only is bottle feeding ‘junk’ food compared to the infinitely more complex nature of the breast but it displaces the touch, smell, the warmth, the heartbeat, the closeness of mother’s loving smile, not to mention the pleasure that mother and baby, possibly even orgasmic pleasure the shared experience offers. The pleasure inducing hormones released through this simple experience is the glue that bonds human relationships for a life time, not only mother and baby but baby and the natural world. Technology has none of these ‘experiences.’ The developing body and brain weaned on technology is more selfish, less empathic, far less imaginative, less connected to the ‘real’ natural, organic world around him or her.

The known addictive techniques the gaming industry use are exploitive to the young child’s body, emotions and mind. Like pimps the gaming and most of the so called – educational media products –steal all these living, moving, relationship based experiences for a profit and call their dolled up prostitute-products ‘learning.’ I know. I am a documentary film maker and have studied and developed media for 30 years.

Yes, technology is here to stay. So are genetically engineered food, toxic pollution in the environment, radiation in the air, food and water and our bodies, broken families, domestic violence, corruption from sea to shining sea, sexual exploitations and addictions of every kind. All these are here to stay but are they necessary and appropriate? Do we cozy up to, embrace and become these or do we see the dangers they represent to ourselves and to our child’s ‘real’ development and put them in their proper place?

A question the blind leading the blind can’t ask is: ‘Does a population deprived of what was normal and natural (organic) developmental experiences have the capacity to know what they have missed?’ Obviously not.

Those who are color blind experience their monochromatic world as ‘normal.’ If they ruled the world, published the text books, sat on school boards, like Midas, everything they touched would be beautifully black and white. Systemic sensory deprivation alters the perceptual baseline we call reality. Entire colors of the human potential spectrum can disappear in a single generation and won’t ever be missed. In there lies the rub.

Michael Mendizza

See:
Michael Mendizza
Virtual Reality is Sensory Deprivation
http://www.ttfuture.org/blog/2/Virtual-Reality-is-Sensory-Deprivation

Jerry Mander
on media, the mind and democracy
http://ttfuture.org/files/2/members/int_mander.pdf

Ralph Nader
On corporate exploitation of children
http://ttfuture.org/files/2/members/int_nader.pdf

Joseph Chilton Pearce
Play is Learning
video: http://ttfuture.org/store/play-is-learning

Bev Bos
Tour of the Roseville Preschool
video: http://ttfuture.org/authors/bos

James W. Prescott, PhD
The origins of love and violence,
how sensory deprivation impacts the developing brain.
video: http://ttfuture.org/bonding/front

Marian Diamond, PhD
Enriching Heredity, how stimulation grows the brain
http://ttfuture.org/authors/marion_diamond

“The addict’s reliance on the drug to reawaken her dulled feelings is no adolescent caprice.
The dullness is itself the consequence of an emotional malfunction not of her making.”

Gabor Mate, MD, Author,
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction

More on Pleasure, Pain and the Developing Brain

The development of each new human being involves the complete evolutionary process of life on the planet. Native traditions recognize and honor this fact. Western civilization, driven by an anti-feminine passion for male intellect does not, thus the classic mind-body split. One self-world view nurtures the deep ecology that we are, the other attempts to dominate and control nature, including our own.

In each of us is the entire process of creation, what Joseph Chilton Pearce calls Evolution’s End. Each stage of development anticipates the past and creates the necessary foundation for the next unknowable leap forward to unfold. The developing fetus in the liquid world of the womb, for example, has no use for lungs and yet creates lungs anticipating an oxygenated environment it ‘knows’ nothing about. The entire spectrum of human development implies this unfolding anticipation and unknowable expectation.

Responding to Touch the Future and National Institute for PLAY’s important PLAY SCIENCE DVD:

Creative play is the foundation for social-political freedom and liberty which is not possible when abnormal brain development is induces by a failure of affcctional bonding in the maternal-infant –child relationship.

Depression, stereotypical rocking behaviors and compulsive stimulus-seeking behaviors, all produced by sensory deprivation to the developing brain that is induced by failed maternal-infant/child affectional bonding, robs the developing offspring of the capacity to engage in touching and body movement that is essential for creative/spontaneous play; and to later development of behaviors associated with personal freedom and liberty.

Violence, particularly child abuse, is another destructive consequence of these early life experiences that prevents the development of creative/spontaneous play, which is the foundation for social-political freedom and liberty.

Figure 1, a photo montage, illustrates the pathological emotional behaviors induced by early
deprivation of physical affection. Figure

2 illustrates the avoidance of physical contact with other animals and humans in mother-deprived monkeys; and positive affectional behaviors in monkeys reared with their mothers.

Table 1 presents how our Two Cultural Brains are formedby Pain and Pleasure, which determines the kind of Culture we become.

Explore the full essay

13 February 2011

Hi Jim,
Just want to make sure you saw this study by http://linlab.med.nyu.edu/members.html Dayu Lin at New York University that corroborates your own studies and the work you have been doing for over four decades. Here is the Nature summary of the study: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7333/full/nature09736.html

Excerpt:
Immediate early gene analysis and single unit recordings from VMHvl during social interactions reveal overlapping but distinct neuronal subpopulations involved in fighting and mating. Neurons activated during attack are inhibited during mating, suggesting a potential neural substrate for competition between these opponent social behaviours.

"The mating circuit acts like a gate on the aggression circuit and actively suppresses nearby fighting neurons when there is a potential mate around," says Lin.

Peace through pleasure
Susan M. Block, Ph.D.

Thanks Susan for the reference. The reciprocal inhibitory relationship between Pain and Pleasure and Peace and Violence have been known for a long time. It is great to know that “mating circuits” actively suppress “nearby fighting neurons” in the mouse brain.

The scientific history of this relationship goes back to the 1950s with the studies of Robert G. Heath, M.D., Sc.D. at Columbia University and continued as Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Tulane University Medical School. His edited 1964 textbook The Role of Pleasure In Behavior is a classic in the field.

More
James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

In the spring of 2010 a small group, including the editor of Joe’s latest book and David B. Chamberlain, PhD, a leader in the field of prenatal intelligence and memory, gathered in Ojai California to explore with Joseph Chilton Pearce his Collected Works.

Throughout his life Joe shunned speaking about himself. For the first time, with this close group, Joe explored what was happening in his life and life around him as he wrote each of his major publications beginning with Crack in the Cosmic Egg.

Let’s say we have this wonderful mom and she’s nurtured and feels safe during pregnancy.  She had a rather ideal experience inutero but then the nurturing environment collapsed after birth.

This has a tremendous impact on the fourth neural structure in the human being, which is the pre-frontal cortices right behind our forehead.  That’s the largest part of the whole brain.  Larger than any other structure.  But this grows, not inutereo where the fore-brain, what we think of as the ordinary fore-brain and hind-brain grew, which is determined by the mother’s emotional state, but the growth of the pre-frontal cortices, which is what makes us unique humans over all the other mammal species, the pre-frontal cortices grow primarily after birth because otherwise the head would be so huge you’d have real troubles with birth.

The term bonding assumes that two things are being connected. The mother-child is a shared, reciprocal unit. The question is maintaining the connection that is there throughout the entire nine months of gestation.  That bond is simply that the other is the actually and only environment for the growing fetus and infant.  To refer to that as a bond might strike you as strange but that’s what it is.  It’s a bond between the new life and the environment which gives rise to it, and that’s the mother. 

Rachel wrote:
I have a question around bonding/brain/skin-to-skin.  I have a 7 week old, that I am attachment parenting...carrying in arms, co sleeping etc.  I spent a lot of the first 4- days with skin to skin, however since then hardly any skin to skin (as it is winter and I have two other children so it's not convenient.)  Can you give me some information around whether the skin to skin I did for the majority of the first 4-5 days was sufficient for optimal brain development/bonding or whether I should still be doing this?  Thank you. LOVE the website and the work you are all doing - it's the best thing for the world!