David J. Linden, a neuroscientist, writes in The Atlantic about how facing the end of his life is teaching him about the human mind. But the impending end of his life doesn’t mean he’s done learning about the human mind just yet. Linden was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. In a piece inDuring a routine echocardiogram, doctors noticed something sticking up next to Linden’s heart that they thought was a hiatal hernia or a benign growth called a teratoma, he says.
After his diagnosis, he writes that feelings of anger about his shortened time came alongside gratitude for his love, relationships and career in neuroscience. “In truth, you can occupy more than one cognitive state at once, even if these states at first blush would seem to be contradictory,” he says, “like in my case, are gratitude and anger.”
“All of our human perception is constructed. There is no objective experience in the world,” he says. “It's all colored by our mood and our expectations.” The human brain isn’t wired to comprehend our own death — that we will someday no longer exist, he says. When Linden entered the neuroscience field 43 years ago, he learned that the brain is reactive: Humans use their senses to make decisions about the world around them. One recent advancement in the field is the knowledge that the brain is always active and predicting the near future.The brain spends a lot of time trying to figure out if other people are friends or enemies, or whether hunger is approaching, he says.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: RollingStone - 🏆 483. / 51 Read more »
Source: PageSix - 🏆 320. / 59 Read more »
Source: Mirror Celeb - 🏆 476. / 51 Read more »
Source: Collider - 🏆 1. / 98 Read more »
Source: YahooNews - 🏆 380. / 59 Read more »