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ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY
HUMANIST FAMILY BRAIN STUDY
DETAILS ABOUT
HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS
(Featuring Embedded Book References)
November 1, 2021
Knowing how your brain works is essential if you want to thrive in the future. The main purpose of this Alphabetical Brain™ Vocabulary website is to help you understand how your brain works in the most efficient way possible. This website is designed to provide you with the most accurate descriptions of current scientific knowledge about your brain's structures and your mind's functions.
You can learn the new brain knowledge fast and use it to solve everyday problems and even overcome many kinds of traumatic experiences by understanding how your memory systems work. There are "15 Free Brain Flash Cards" that explain the interactive relationships of 15 major brain ideas discussed on this website. You can access them from the Index to this website.
The brain ideas featured on the 15 brain-flash-cards, which introduce the 15 major- brain-ideas, all have quick links to files named "Details" and "Sources."
Also, a quick link named "Quotes, lists key quotations concerning human consciousness and willpower from the perspective of modern science. The quotations are easily accessible at the "Quotations about Human Consciousness" link at the website Index and they include quotations from evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience books.
The text on both sides of the 15 brain flash cards, and their 15 brain diagrams, provide an easy way to learn the basic details required to understand your mind's interactive functions and adaptable self-identity.
The special emphasis of this website is on the connected relationship between your working memory system and your long-term memory system, which is the vital connection that causes your unique willpower and your adaptable self-identity.
The primary fact is that your consciousness is caused by the dynamic interactions of your working memory's random access memory operating system located in your prefrontal cortex and your long-term memory's permanent hard drive memory consolidation system located in your limbic system's hippocampus.
The interactive dynamics of these two memory systems evolved to help our species, Homo sapiens. We won the fierce competition for survival over the past 40-60 thousand years by remembering vital survival information!
This new scientific approach to understanding human nature and human behavior involves the development of a specific scientific brain vocabulary as well as an large general vocabulary.
The objective of this new scientific approach to brain study can help you understand your brain's physical structures and your mind's mental functions in the holistic context of 15 major brain ideas. They represent more than 1,000 trillion vital brain parts when all the estimated 100-200 billion neurons and over 1,000 trillion synapses are included in the total. They are the true causes of your willpower and your adaptable self-identity with all their intricate interactive relationships among the complex tiny parts.
This new focus provides a practical scientific way for you to think about your phenomenal brain's physical structure and mind's mental functions. The paired diagrams of the Circle of Consciousness Symbol© identify the dynamic interactive relationships that exist among the 15 basic brain ideas.
The quickest way to get a new perception of this fabulous source of your willpower and adaptable self-identity is to explore the following four synergistic diagrams:
CIRCLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS SYMBOL©
THE NAMES OF THE 15 BRAIN IDEAS
OUTSIDE YOUR AMAZING BRAIN
TAP, CLICK or SWIPE:
TO MOVE THE NAMES OF THE
15 BRAIN IDEAS INSIDE
YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS
Diagram #1
ALL 15 RED ARROWS OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE
INDICATE THAT YOU HAVE LITTLE OR
NO CONSCIOUS BRAIN KNOWLEDGE NOW
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MEANING OF THE CIRCLE OF
CONSCIOUSNESS SYMBOL©
The Circle of Consciousness Symbol© represents a simplified holistic view of the global connectivity necessary for human consciousness, including your creative willpower and your secular adaptable self to exist.
The brain ideas featured on the 15 brain flash cards, which introduce the 15 major brain ideas, all have quick links to files that are named DETAILS and SOURCES. Also, essential QUOTES, from the perspective of science about human consciousness and free will, are documented with references to neuroscience, biology, and psychology books.
The quotations are directly accessible at the "Quotations about Human Consciousness" link on the homepage of this website.
The text on both sides of the 15 brain flash cards, and their 15 brain diagrams, provide an easy way to learn the basic details required to understand your mind's interactive functions.
It was created to convey a powerful visual image of the previously unimaginable coalescence of the many diverse and interactive physical structures of your awesome self-manifesting holistic brain, which has evolved with willpower. In addition, your evolutionary brain's dynamic and malleable mental functions include your creative mind's ability to imagine, reason, and remember.
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DETAILS ABOUT THE CIRCLE
OF CONSCIOUSNESS SYMBOL©
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By deliberately repeating this learning process several times, you can integrate and retain the new brain information in your long-term memory consolidation system.
The new brain knowledge explains how your dynamic willpower and adaptable self-identity are produced by your mind's fine-tuned self-organized memories and the phenomenon of "plasticity." It is the instinctual biological changeability of your evolutionary brain which can be influenced and even controlled by your emergent mental functions, which produce your mind's mental forces based on the depth of your personal education.
In addition, your brain can "change itself by itself" --- even when you are asleep!
The book publication data in the following information box identifies the first book that describes how the human brain is capable of recovering from serious damage and disorders by itself with the help of modern medicine.
You can change a memory by "editing" it with your prefrontal cortex, since all memories are "constructed" and "re-constructed" every time you become aware of them again. That is because present social circumstances provide a new social context for the psychological process of re-framing them because of the new situational awareness you are engaged in at the moment in which you recall a memory.
These new brain facts and ideas can help you establish what is real and what is fake about the abundant choices you have to make in our advanced global digitized high-tech society.
When you are empowered by the new brain knowledge to avoid useless social behaviors and avoid dangerous addictive habits before they kill you prematurely, you will be able to create more time to make plans to achieve personally fulfilling goals.
The new scientific approach to understanding human nature and human behavior can help you understand your brain's physical structures and your mind's mental functions in the holistic context of 15 brain ideas. They represent hundreds of trillions of intricate interactive relationships among the parts of your brain. They are the true cause of your willpower and brainpower.
The alphabetized list of definitions of the 15 major brain ideas provides you with a comprehensive linguistic context with which to study the 15 brain ideas that are its central core reality. In addition, dozens of other important brain vocabulary words provide you with a unique complete modern evolutionary context of meaning for understanding your own brain as well as the brains of others.
Now you can see the complexity of your brain structures and mental functions at the following Brain Glossary list where the 15 brain ideas are marked in BOLD RED. They deal primarily with your intellectual and emotional control systems and your memory circuits. And they involve complicated interactive neuronal feedback and feedforward circuits, which make your adaptable self-identity possible:
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ALPHABETICAL BRAIN
VOCABULARY GLOSSARY
BASIC BRAIN KNOWLEDGE
Now you can quickly review 18 brain images on the following three charts that depict the basic brain knowledge. All children learn about the basic brain knowledge by middle school or high school science classes. The two mini-brain charts and the one mini-brainstem chart provide you with the 18 names and definitions of the classic 18 brain structures and functions of your brainstem and both sides of your brain: your Left Hemisphere and Right Hemisphere.
Your two hemispheres are separated by membranes and connected by three nerve cables known as your corpus collosum.
The structure of the mini-brain charts was designed for maximum memory retention of the fundamental brain facts. They include six named brain images on each chart and additional charts with six unnamed brain images for you to use to learn the basic universal facts about your brain's physical structures and your mind's mental functions. They provide you with the easiest way to apply the most powerful learning technique known, which is the spaced-repetition method of memorization.
The following link provides easy access to the basic brain information that has been known for many years but updated with the remarkable new discoveries made during the U.S. Brain Initiative of the past few years:
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BASIC BRAIN KNOWLEDGE
BASIC BRAIN KNOWLEDGE
AND THE 15 NEW BRAIN IDEAS
By focusing your attention on the 15 major brain ideas on this website in the context of the basic brain knowledge, you will be creating a powerful intellectual foundation for all of your future choices and decisions. Both the older classic brain knowledge and the 15 new brain ideas provide you with the latest updated brain information.
You can do a lot to improve or restore your cognitive brain functions. You can take advantage of the opportunities of living in the most advanced democratic society in the history of humanity, which has the most advanced scientific basis for understanding your brain structures and mental functions.
LANGUAGE SKILLS AND MEMORY
Your ability to imagine, reason and remember all depend upon the process of long-term potentiation, which happens in your body's communication systems. These spectacular creative functions can be activated by either conscious or unconscious biochemical triggers in your brain. However, they depend on the "reconstructed memories" (partially real remembrances) of what actually happened during a past event that is being remembered.
Furthermore, you can either activate or deactivate the biochemical signals (electro-chemical signals) in your neuronal pathways by seriously (purposefully) thinking about activating them or by choosing to never think about them again.
The very important biochemical signals are strengthened (stimulated) or weakened (inhibited) at specific neuronal connections, known as synapses, when action potential spikes pass back and forth through specific neuronal pathways.
The result is that your anterior cingulate cortex neuronal pathways, which connect your prefrontal cortex to your hippocampus, gain "density" as more biochemical signals are sent, either from your prefrontal cortex or your hippocampus. That means that more synapses are created by the process of long-term potentiation, which results in the synaptic connections becoming more tightly "wired" together.
The significance of strengthening the connections by increasing the number of synapses (connections of neurons) via the biochemical signaling process cannot be overemphasized.
This vital biochemical process is what causes your perception of yourself as a unique person whose integrated self-awareness and adaptable self-identity are both genuine facts and not imaginary illusions or hallucinations.
Since you live in the most technically sophisticated civilization in history, your choices are limited only by your motivation to create your own reasonable goals and plans for achieving them. You really do have the freedom to choose from a large number of attitudes and behaviors consistent with the turbulent digitized global connected world of the 21st century.
However, your freedom is constantly being threatened by destructive cultural pressures to conform to the economic goals and plans of others, such as business corporations and social institutions. This is due to the powerful influence of business advertising, which all children are born into and which all adults are exposed to throughout their lives.
Every day your brain is vulnerable to hidden cultural pressures that can shape your behavior, if you are not aware of what they are doing to you or if you let them.
Prominent among the many negative cultural influences, which can upset your brain's fragile balance, are the steady stream of marketing distractions from the mass media and social media and entertainment companies.
The total massive volume of the disruptive images and the sounds from the mass media and social media and other cultural institutions can diminish your sense of self or self-identity and decrease your happiness set-point. Nevertheless, by learning how to control your own emotions, you can combat the many kinds of manipulation and false information sources from the social media and political and educational cultural resources.
In addition to knowing the new brain vocabulary, you must deal with disruptive influences caused by the menacing mass media and social media business conglomerates, which both demand that you pay attention to them and conform to their incessant commercial pressures to stay online --- and buy, buy, buy! They want you to "Hurry up and buy things and keep making clicks!"
But you can learn how to protect your mind's mental force from the pervasive negative cultural influences and menacing metaphorical memes. Imagine having your brain chewed by shark teeth:
YOUR BRAIN IS BEING ATTACKED DAILY
BY CULTURAL LIES AND MISINFORMATION,
WHICH INCLUDE SUCH THINGS AS FALSE
ADVERTISING, HISTORIC FALLACIES, AND
OBSOLETE ANCIENT MYTHS ABOUT POLITICAL,
ECONOMIC, AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
FUNCTION OF MEMES
[The word memes rhymes with teams and themes and dreams and schemes.]
The definition of meme is now in the Oxford English Dictionary as "An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, especially imitation." This was cited in the book, THE MEME MACHINE, in the Foreword by Richard Dawkins on page viii. See the book publishing data and link to the book outline and book reviews in the following information box:
Some of the most dangerous cultural metaphors are memes. They are ideas, beliefs or belief systems, or patterns of behavior, which can spread throughout a culture (any social group) either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers or social media). The global entertainment media can be singled out as a major cause of wasted time and money.
A meme is the fundamental unit of information, analogous to the gene in the emerging evolutionary theory of culture and epigenetics. A meme has the characteristic of being a pervasive thought (or thought pattern) that replicates itself through cultural means (socialization), such as cliches, or parasitic codes, or viruses of the mind that are especially contagious to children and impressionable adults.
For example, many commercial memes are dangerous for your brain since they can distort or exaggerate the importance of particular products to confuse customers and inflate profits. They can make exaggerated product claims and hike price points to obfuscate the essential transparent economic information needed by consumers so they can make proper choices about what products to buy.
Decades ago Vance Packard wrote books that illustrated the growing problem of mass media influence on individuals then with such books as "Hidden Persuaders" and "Waste Makers." Since then, the mass media and social media together have captured the attention of consumers more than what was ever imagined in the past.
However, by learning the new brain vocabulary and by making healthy educated decisions regarding your own personal and family welfare, you can reduce the damage caused by negative cultural influences on your mind's ability to reason.
As you expand your brain vocabulary and focus on positive brain facts and ideas, you can also investigate all aspects of nature and the cosmos as well. The same scientific method is good for all kinds of decision-making and problem-solving.
In order to avoid imitating the dysfunctional manipulative behaviors of others, you can focus on the 15 major brain ideas presented on this website until they are fully learned and integrated into your long-term memory system.
The educational philosophy behind this new approach to explaining the importance of understanding your brain's structures and your mind's functions is called the "whole brain" cognitive method or way of thinking.
This "whole-brain" cognitive method of educating students about brain structures and mental functions has been developed and explained by UCLA professor Daniel J. Siegel in nine books. The implications of his educational approach for children and therapy for adults are explained in the following two books: THE MIND: A JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF BEING and THE WHOLE-BRAIN CHILD. See the publication data for the the books in the following information box:
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MIND:
A Journey to the
Heart of Being Human
by Daniel J. Siegel.
W. W. Norton, 2017 (378 pages)
AND
WHOLE-BRAIN CHILD:
12 Revolutionary Strategies
to Nurture Your Child's
Developing Mind
by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson.
Delacorte Press/Random House, 2011
(192 pages)
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When you learn the new brain vocabulary, and the new propositional logic that explains the meaning of your mind's mental force, you will be able to improve your ability to reason. You will be using your critical thinking skills and good reading strategies to search for reasonable ways to solve the big social and economic issues of our time, such as climate change, fair trade, creating a humane immigration policy, and reducing warfare.
This fact is based upon your ability to learn new scientific knowledge, which derives from your brain's neurosplasticity. It gives you the ability to adapt to changes in your social relationships for greater success.
It has taken 50 to 60 thousand years for a culture of learning to have emerged. History took a great leap forward when fire was invented for security and its use for cooking food so the complex chemical molecules in food could be broken down during digestion to become a richer source of nutrients for our big human brains. Our human brains are proportionally larger for our body size compared to other animals. Big brains evolved the capacity to connect a huge number of 100-200 billion neurons to 1,000 billion synapses. This made possible our unique human brainpower!
By using several senses of your body instead of just reading alone or looking at the new brain information, you can speed up long-term memory consolidation (memory retention) of the essential brain knowledge. You can summarize the text in your own words or subvocalize as you read important words or write down unfamiliar words until you master their meanings or re-read sections until they become understandable.
Also you can print out selected sections of text and then underline or highlight the brain ideas you want to memorize quickly or use an audio or video recording device to augment memorization.
When the distinct functional parts of your anatomical brain are working properly together, you are using 100% of your mind's ability to reason in order to think and feel and be curious about life's wonders.
Thus, you can think of your ability to reason as being the awesome mental force that is described in the ground breaking brain book, THE MIND AND THE BRAIN, by UCLA researcher, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, and science journalist, Sharon Begley. See the publication data for the book in the following information box:
In addition to thinking about your ability to reason as your powerful mental force, you can use this super-power to read and discover more corroborating details about the scientific study of the relation between food and your ability to think clearly in the following four excellent books, YOUR BRAIN ON FOOD, END OF OVEREATING, THE HUNGRY BRAIN, and FAST FOOD GENOCIDE. See the publication data in the following information box:
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[1]
YOUR BRAIN ON FOOD:
How Chemicals Control Your
Thoughts and Feelings
by Gary L. Wenk.
Oxford University Press,
2019 3rd edition (275 pages)
AND
[2]
END OF OVEREATING:
Taking Control of the
Insatiable American Appetite
by David Kessler.
Rodale, 2009, 2010 2nd edition
(i-xxii, 330 pages)
AND
[3]
THE HUNGRY BRAIN:
Outsmarting Instincts that
Make Us Overeat
by Stephan J. Guyenet with
illustrations by Shizuka N. Aoki.
Flatiron Books, 2017 (291 pages)
AND
[4]
FAST FOOD GENOCIDE:
How Processed Food is Killing Us
and What We Can Do About It
by Joel Fuhrman with
Robert B. Phillips
Harper One, 2017 (342 pages)
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The new brain facts and ideas can help you establish what is real and what is fake about the abundant choices you have to make in our advanced global digitized high-tech society.
Many scientific studies have demonstrated that you can optimize the functions of your mind by taking care of the physical parts of your brain. To achieve this profound goal, simply do more deep breathing and relax more during the day and stay focused on your most important goals and plans for achieving them.
You must be prepared to deal with the menacing mass media and social media pressures to conform to their commercial demands. They assault your brain every moment of every day with almost overwhelming cultural distractions and temptations to buy things. But this is precisely the kind of immense challenge that your brain has evolved to conquer.
After you have memorized the brain ideas and learned to manage your thinking habits, you will be able to organize your long-term memories by choosing realistic categories of subjects (chunks of data) in which to store appropriate new memories to strengthen your own sense of reality and to satisfy your personal needs. This is when your critical thinking skills and critical reading strategies will be most helpful.
Also you can boost memory retention by writing or typing notes and by using the spaced-repetition method of memorization to create a personal immersive multisensory learning environment inside your brain through optimistic self-talk.
QUICK REVIEW: With proper study, the new brain facts and ideas can become a part of your declarative memory circuit in your long-term memory system, whose triggers are in the hippocampus part of your limbic system.
Then, your working memory system, in your cerebrum's prefrontal cortex, can use your new factual memories about your brain's structures and mind's functions to augment your creative imagination and enlarge your own conscious self-awareness.
In addition to this website, there will be more information at the Alphabetical Brain™ App, which will be launched soon to provide more evidence of the validity and relevance of the brain ideas on this website. The diagrams will appear on separate pages in an Amazon handbook to be published this year with the title DISCOVER YOUR ALPHABETICAL BRAIN VOCABULARY HANDBOOK, which will be about consciousness, willpower, happiness, and success based upon modern scientific humanism.
note =
See the 15 major brain ideas, which include your: working memory #1, neurons #2, dendrites #3, axons #4, nucleus of a neuron #5, glial cells #6, synapses #7, potentiation #8, connectome #9, plasticity #10, cerebral cortex #11, prefrontal cortex#12, limbic system #13, pleasure circuit #14, and your long-term memory #15.
Printable PDF Form
DETAILS ABOUT
HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS
(printable copy for your easy
editing and memory consolidation)
RECOMMENDATION:You may print this pdf version and read it and edit it by adding or deleting ideas. Also you can underline or highlight with colored inks or read it out loud to use these proven memory boosters to help you capture this brain information in your long-term memory.
Then, you can read your edited version of these ideas according to a reinforcement schedule; such as in a few hours Then in a few days you can repeatedly skim your version several times during the next week or two to take advantage of the power of the spaced-repetition method of memorization. Such deeper introspection can change your self-identity and increase your self-awareness and ability to self-actualize.
REMEMBER ALWAYS:
You Are Your Adaptable Memory!
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WEBSITE INDEX
Alphabetical Brain™ Vocabulary
produced by
Infinite Interactive Ideas©
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