Brain Politics

Jack wants not just to recover from mental illness to his baseline but to do better. We discuss Jack’s exploration of the things that make him happier in a conversation with him and we go with him in to a dream in which he gets recommendations from ET on spirituality.

Dr. Parinja’s fictional patient Jack meets ET in his dreams and comes away with a different perspective on the state of human progress and learns how we should logically have a lot more positive emotions than we do. He gets an idea of what the distant human future could look like as artificial intelligence grows and Jack and ET try their hand at some evolutionary hypotheses.

Every interaction between two people can be thought to be an interaction of two realms, each with their own respective characters. Successful communication involves managing not only one's own realm but also navigating the realm of the other person to get them to understand and feel what you are trying to tell them. We walk through some of the techniques and pitfalls of communication using the two...

We take a journey in a time machine to see how ancient humans lived and also get some insights into the evolutionary challenges that shaped our brains using dreams that Dr. Parinja’s fictional patient Jack had, inspired by two iconic Hollywood movies. This episode summarizes what humans want socially and why.

The Robot is the brain's habit system. It works to automate anything that we do repeatedly. It reduces the effort needed for the action and eventually takes over the action so we can do it without thinking. The Ghost is the brain's unconscious. There is a lot that goes on in the brain outside of our conscious awareness, which profoundly influences how we think act and feel. Knowing the rules by wh...

The King sits in front and above the rest of the systems. He is younger (in evolutionary terms) than some of the more ancient systems. The King can inhibit and modulate the drives arising from the other parts of the brain. He is smart but not he must take his time to know the rules by which the other players operate to help us get the outcomes we want. The King must be an expert in Brain Politics...

We revisit emotions and see what goes into making people have the kind of emotional system they have. We look at the impact of childhood experiences in shaping our emotional lives. We move on from negative emotions to the positive emotion-happiness. We discuss a pitfall that comes with pursuing happiness.

The emotional system is the Duke of the brain. It is ancient, powerful and makes us think, feel and want to act in certain ways. It also makes us see everything through the emotional lens we are feeling. It makes us recall information linked to the emotion and our future seems to be imbued with the emotion we are feeling. We look at the evolutionary function of emotions and some life lessons we ca...

The Reward System is like the brain’s treasurer makes us like and want anything that we want. It has its peculiarities and certain rules that govern it. We learn those rules from events in Jack’s life. We understand the basis for the one cardinal Reward System rule for our well being and lay out that rule.

This an introduction the challenges our modern environment poses to our brains that are evolution optimized for another time. A time when food shortages were a greater risk to the health of humans then excess food intake. We meet my fictional patient Jack for the first time.