Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other's minds
Summary:
In this video, Rebecca is talking about how it is easy to know other minds. Her study field is in cognitive neuroscienceis that can help us to understand people's ideas and have the ability to think. She shows three steps in her study: the discovery of a brain region for thinking about other people's thoughts, some observations on the slow development of the brain system and some differences between people in how we judge others. There is a brain region called RTPJ that children use to think about people. It's different from adults, the brain region in adults is completely specialized. But both of the children and the adult's brain systems are continuing slowly to develop. And the differences in this brain region can explain differences among adults in how we think about and judge other people. So far we know that the brain system can be applied to animals, so we can study the model of some animals. We need to know what the brain can see, how it is to control the body's and also what they hear and feel. The study is brand new that can help us to understand how our brains control our thoughts and think other people's thoughts.
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Response:
The ability to understand other people's thoughts is amazing. We can understand people's intentions through research and it can make the communication more easily. Although it is not an accurate understanding of other people's ideas, it still give us an opportunity to learn the community through the human mind. It's beneficial to our lives. By understanding how people think you can prevent fraud and reduce crimes. So that people can live safer and more comfortable. Also, if you understand what people think, espeially when you fall in love with someone, you do not need to worry about he/she would lie to you. Similarly, when you understand the children's ideas, you can get along well with children and they will trust you more. As the video said, animals also have similar brain system with human, people can understand their pets more and give them a better living environment. Can you imagine that if we can read people's minds how the relationship will be in our society.
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I agree with Iris. For the present, the experiment is limited to induce the change of our moral judgments, but Rebecca is saying that they will be able to change other parts someday. Thus, I believe that all things that Iris mentioned might come true in the future. However, I want to see it from a different angle, too. Rebecca says that the moral judgments changed by stimulating will be the ones of juries, and so I am concerned about the case that it is wrongfully used by criminals. Even though it is restricted to very small part and it is hard to induce the change at this point in time, the method will be developed. Therefore, it will be able to be used in many bad ways just the same as it will be used in many good fields. In addition, I feel that it is not very encouraging when I consider that my thought can be controlled by machines or other things.
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I agree with you Iris. The importance of ability of understanding helps us deal with life and our career. First of all, the brain system is complicating, read someone’s mind is even harder. For example, many people have the difficulty in communication, they do not know how to express their feelings sometime, and people misunderstand them because of this. It is frustrating, but they still can not work it through. I think that Rebecca’s study will help them find the problem, and make them feel comfortable to communicate. Secondly, the generation gap between parents and children is a big issue nowadays. In some families, they even have bed relationships, somehow, those people can definitely solve the arguments if they were really understand each other’s mind and love each other more. Finally, I expect that I could read my dog’s mind in the future. I love my dog, we can understand each other without words, yet I still want to know her feeling. I want to see her growing, and her happy all the time. Thanks, Iris, it gives me lots of thoughts!(words:183)
ReplyDeleteGood response, Iris. Lots to think about here.
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