Octopuses Rewire Brains

Sounds like a 1950s SF horror movie, doesn't it? Don't worry, they rewire their brains -- not ours -- in response to temperature fluctuations:

Octopuses Redesign Their Own Brains

An octopus has about the same number of neurons as a dog and, unlike mammals, has decentralized brains, distributed among its eight arms as well as its head.

The research described in this SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN article explores how octopuses adjust to cold (and sometimes heat) by "editing" their neurons in reaction to the environment. To adapt to seasonal temperature shifts, they "edit their RNA, which is a genetic molecule that carries DNA’s instructions to produce proteins." In addition to cold and heat, this RNA recoding can also promote adaptation to other environmental changes, such as oxygen level.

Most other cephalopods can also "recode the majority of neural proteins," but no mammals do it to anywhere near the same extent. Octopuses and their relatives may need this ability in order to protect their brains in changing environments because, being ectothermic ("cold-blooded"), they can't regulate their body temperature the way we do.

Wouldn't it be nifty if we could rewire our brains in response to environmental and internal factors such as food intake and energy output, to self-regulate our own weight at will? Some team of mad scientists should look into reprogramming the human genome to create that ability.

Other fascinating facts about octopus brain powers, including tool use and the ability to recognize human individuals:

Octopuses Keep Surprising Us

If not for the sad fact that octopuses not only lead solitary lives but also die soon after breeding -- all their offspring grow up as orphans -- and thus can't pass on learned knowledge and skills to the next generation, they might dominate the sea just as we dominate the land.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Stories as a Survival Strategy

A project at John Hopkins University explores how stories enhance learning and memory:

How the Brain Processes Stories

They've even set up a writing contest for flash fiction works to be used in the study. (Open only to Baltimore residents, however.)

According to Janice Chen, one of the professors involved, “Understanding stories is part of the fundamental anatomy of the brain.” Liife consists of "a series of events," and our brains process events into stories.

As a familiar example goes, "The king died, and the queen died" isn't a story; "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is. This processing function is one reason why it doesn't bother me that the four gospels disagree among themselves about the details of some incidents. Of course different people, retelling the same events, often recall them differently. Each person's mind creates a narrative meaningful to him or her. That doesn't prove the event never happened at all.

Arranging facts into a narrative structure makes them easier to remember, and accurate memory is necessary for survival. Chen notes that "stories across all formats are equally useful at transforming fleeting events into permanent memories." Moreover, narrative helps us learn about cause and effect. We are "programmed to crave" stories for the same reason our brains motivate us to seek food and sex -- for survival.

This study reminds me of discoveries about "mirror neurons," which enable animals as well as humans to empathize with others of their kind and learn by watching someone else perform an action:

New Light on Mirror Neurons

Thus we can also grow empathy, learning to perceive the world through the minds and senses of others, by "witnessing" their actions in stories whether oral, written, acted, or filmed.

As C. S. Lewis says in AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM, "But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see."

Just a few ways in which fiction and its creators are vitally important to the human species!

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Setting Brain Boundaries

Here's an article by Stephanie Vozza about avoiding "self-inflicted stress" so we aren't "just reacting in panic mode all day long." Learning to "manage" our thoughts can help us work more efficiently because we won't feel overwhelmed. This essay, outlining principles set forth by Joe Robinson, author of WORK SMARTER, LIVE BETTER, addresses that "where did the day go?" feeling we often experience when we don't check off the items on our to-do list. If I'm at all typical, this sense of time running away, leaving the day's goals unaccomplished, is a predicament writers often face. The daily word count target isn't reached or the designated time set aside for writing drifts by without much to show for it.

The 4 Boundaries Your Brain Needs to Feel Less Overwhelmed

Small warning note: The above website apparently lets you read a page only once before insisting that you register. So, if you decide to read this article, finish it all at once. (I first encountered it in this past Sunday's newspaper.)

The four kinds of "management" to set boundaries for your brain: (1) Attention management, concerned with improving the performance of your working memory so you won't lose focus. (2) Interruption management, which is connected to impulse control. One point under this category suggests setting aside periods of time to be e-mail-free and phone-free, thus disposing of two big interruption sources right away. (3) "Barking" management, contrasting the brain with a barking dog. Dogs bark at disturbances such as another dog going by, but when the triggering incident stops, the dog stops barking. Our brains often keep reacting long after the stimulus ends. In other words, we get mired in "rumination." (4) Refueling management, giving your brain "a break so it can rest and refuel." Production goes up after twenty-minute breaks and even ten-minute breaks. This last precept feels counterintuitive to me. Granted, a few minutes of rest are welcome, but how can they increase production if you happen to be one of those people (like me) who takes a long time to get back into the flow after a lull? Marion Zimmer Bradley used to say that housekeeping was the perfect job for a writer, because it involves a lot of stopping and starting, and you can use the stopping bits for a few minutes of writing. Suppose you have ten minutes waiting for the oven to preheat, and you need most of those minutes just to re-start your writing brain? As important as refueling may be, this advice seems to contradict the second point.

One incisive quote from Joe Robinson: "We think because something's in our head, we've got to pay attention to it. We don't." Words to live by in dealing with both interruptions and pointless rumination.

Another article I happened to come across this past weekend offered suggestions for increasing efficiency by reordering the work day's priorities. To begin with, the author advises against checking e-mail and/or social media first thing in the morning. We can easily get caught up in the message stream, lose track of time, and glance up to discover prime working time has been frittered away. Another piece of advice, maybe counterintuitive for many of us, is to resist the impulse to "warm up" with easy tasks. I know I often take that approach. Instead, he says we should tackle the day's tougher agenda items first, while we're fresh. There's also a sense of accomplishment in getting them out of the way.

I find that if I put off writing in order to "clear the decks" of niggling little stuff first, I often don't get around to the current WIP until late in the day. In line with that article's advice, I do produce more words when I force myself to spend at least a few minutes writing (whether fiction, blog posts, or my monthly newsletter) before opening e-mail or checking off a list of routine, "easy" chores. Also, composing in fifteen- or twenty-minute chunks two or three times a day makes the process less arduous. Unlike the lucky writers who actually enjoy writing (such as Isaac Asimov), I find the first-draft stage slow and difficult, so any device to "trick" myself into generating prose helps.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 20 - Why Love Matters

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration

Part 20

Why Love Matters 

Previous parts in Theme-Worldbuilding are indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

All readers, of fiction or non-fiction, are detectives working a mystery case.

First they want to know what this book is about, and why should I waste my time reading it.  A closed book is a mystery.

Once hooked by your first line, your reader becomes YOUR READER.  They have "entered" your world, they have invested themselves in opening the book.

At that point, the mystery becomes, "what are the rules of this "world" and how do those rules differ from the rules by which I live my everyday life."

A story becomes interesting by posing a question, and part of the intriguing nature of a question is the unconscious assumptions behind the frame of the question.  Those unconscious assumptions behind your crafting of a first line are in fact the elements that frame your theme.

The theme of a work of fiction must be stated, baldly, in "on the nose" vocabulary once in a work of fiction, first at the end of the opening scene -- about 5% of the total wordage of the work -- and then near the end, right after the climax.

The theme is what the story is about, but whether the thematic statement is true for your reader has to be argued in the Worldbuilding part of your story, not in plot, story, character, action -- all of the other components of a work of fiction illustrate the theme, and the theme is the statement of the essence of the World your Characters must cope with.

The mystery the reader is working through is, "How does this fictional world differ from my everyday world?"  And beyond that, whether the fictional world is an improvement on the everyday world -- or perhaps if the thematic thesis somehow illuminates or explains the everyday world.

The overall, core, theme of Romance is Love Conquers All, and beyond that, once "conquered" then All will deliver the Happily Ever After smooth glide through life.

In everyday reality, it's hard to see that happening to anyone, least of all yourself -- and very probably yourself while you are in love.

People who "fall in love" are usually astonished, bewildered, and experience the state of mind and heart as a "game changer."

Today, there is a lot of research going on focused on the brain, while even more money is being poured into research on the mind.  Scientists are trying to prove that the mind is a product of the brain.

If they can establish this beyond doubt, then they will have proven that the hypothesis of the existence of a Soul is an unnecessary complication, and all human behavior can be explained simply as a function of the brain.  Occam's Razor logic says go for the simplest explanation that works, so that will be the thematic basis of the science of the future.

To write SCIENCE FICTION -- and therefore to write SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE -- the writer takes an idea that is currently unquestioned by science, something assumed, an axiom, or so well proven it may as well be an axiom.  Then the writer builds a world around the premise that this axiom of science just is not true.

The mystery the reader is solving is, "How would the world be different if this axiom of science is not true?"

No single novel, or single author, can compile all the possible differences a shift in axioms might bring, so we have to select one possible consequence and build the entire fictional world around that.

The THEME is composed of A) the axiom that's wrong, B) the corrected axiom, C) the consequence of the new axiom.

Suppose science concludes there is no Soul, but in fact there are Souls, therefore the meaning of life has nothing to do with the appearance, or fate, of the body.

THEME: LIFE IS ABOUT THE LEARNING EXPERIENCES OF THE SOUL.

Or maybe

THEME: LIFE IS ABOUT THE LEARNING EXPERIENCES OF THE BRAIN.

THEME: LOVE IS AN ATTRIBUTE OF THE SOUL

THEME: LOVE IS AN ATTRIBUTE OF THE BRAIN

Whether Love can Conquer All might depend on whether it is an attribute of the brain, the mind, or the soul -- and that writer's decision is called world building.

Here is an article (which may not be true, but makes good fiction fodder) posted in Elite Daily:

https://www.elitedaily.com/p/how-your-brain-changes-after-meeting-the-one-according-to-science-16422001

which says

-----quote------

If we really want to get technical, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans *actually* measure oxygen levels in the tiny veins in our brain, not just "the brain." For those of us who aren't literal brain scientists (hi), the take away here is that there's a lot to be learned from observing brain scans, especially when it comes to love. Finding "The One" has been linked to increased activity in the areas of the brain associated with sex, reward, and memory. And what's better? Being in love is also connected to decreased activity in brain sections linked to fear and dislike. So basically, being in love means more stuff is happening in the good places of your brain, and less stuff is happening in the bad.

------end quote-------

And that is science completely about the brain.  Is that all we are? Cells, and nerves, electrical signals?  Or is there a Soul that science can't detect?

You might want to reread the 6 or more parts of SOULMATES AND THE HEA series:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/index-to-soul-mates-and-hea-real-or.html

If your thematic thesis is that there does exist a Soul, then your story, or your novel, would be about a particular Soul ripped, torn, mashed, stretched, and flung through a learning experience.

As you specify what Soul, starting where, going where, doing what, with which consequences, and what obstacles to conquer, your story emerges complete with plot, characters, situation, setting, etc.

Two good examples to contrast and compare are these novels:

Tanya Huff's Peacekeeper Series is one to watch -- #3 in the series, THE PRIVILEGE OF PEACE is about a second encounter with the defeated obstacle of previous episodes, Big Yellow, an alien spaceship which seems to mean humanity no good.  It's a takeover attempt, invading the body-brain of humans, and doing more than just spying.

https://www.amazon.com/Privilege-Peace-Peacekeeper-Book-ebook/dp/B075HY7YDB/

Now contrast/compare THE PRIVILEGE OF PEACE with C. J. Cherryh's 1997 entry in her MERCHANTER series, part of the ALLIANCE-UNION saga she is still expanding for us with the 2019 entry, ALLIANCE RISING (#1 in the HINDER STARS series).  (note this was from Warner Books, not DAW, so it's hard to get since she went back to DAW as her main publisher).


https://www.amazon.com/Finitys-Cherryh-August-Market-Paperback/dp/B015X4BDWG/

"Finity's End" is the name of a starship.

I enjoyed re-reading FINITY'S END after that ship turned up, brand-spanking-new in ALLIANCE RISING.

So I puzzled over why I enjoyed this old story so much -- and concluded it was the meticulous world building that generated the vivid, deep, torn and tormented Characters, shattered by war and loss of those close to them, but now healing, re-connecting, creating a new vision of a better future.


Tanya Huff deals directly with a sexual love bond, while Cherryh explores the strife/strength axis of family bonds -- great-grandmother, cousins, aunts, etc. extended over (rejuvenated) lifetimes complicated by the time-dilation of FTL travel.

But they both write in universes where the Soul is a real component of the world building, while the Characters (just like us) have no clue about that and don't want to know.

This world building technique (what the Characters don't know about their world and aren't curious about) lets the reader either see it's there or firmly believe that it is not there.

Ambiguity is one of the most difficult aspects of Art to master, and both these writers have achieved that. 

But in both these novels, you see that ambiguity used in broad strokes to great effect.

Why does love matter?  Because, whether there is a Soul or not, Love reconfigures the brain and that changes what you do, when you do it, why you do it, and even whether you'll do it or not.

Love configures behavior by reconfiguring the brain.

Since the brain is so plastic, so impressionable, it is entirely possible that love could be reconfigured out of the circuits.  And therein lie a lot of novels.  The question could become, "Can love conquer the obstacle of its own lack of existence?"

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com