Friday, December 04, 2009

Edge: TOXO — A Conversation With Robert Sapolsky
"In the endless sort of struggle that neurobiologists have — in terms of free will, determinism — my feeling has always been that there's not a whole lot of free will out there, and if there is, it's in the least interesting places and getting more sparse all the time. But there's a whole new realm of neuroscience which I've been thinking about, which I'm starting to do research on, that throws in another element of things going on below the surface affecting our behavior. And it's got to do with this utterly bizarre world of parasites manipulating our behavior. It turns out that this is not all that surprising. There are all sorts of parasites out there that get into some organism, and what they need to do is parasitize the organism and increase the likelihood that they, the parasite, will be fruitful and multiply, and in some cases they can manipulate the behavior of the host."

Every thought you have is a physical process.

2 comments:

Natasha said...

A very symbiotic thought for sure; )

I know a certain person that would just go f*in crazy if you told him parasites were messing around with his brain....lol...too many germs to handle!

I wonder if these "behavioral reactions" would be judged/deemed as good or bad. Perhaps they might stir the hypothalamus and promote more sexual adventurousness. Then I would be all in support and would want to be at the forefront of that research!
Natasha
PS I am glad to see a PSB in your other blog on music! I expected that! lol ; )But what the f***!is this about Chris Isaak! Hmmm.....I will have to investigate. This is not over yet Buck!

Buck Turgidson said...

Sorry, Natasha but Chris just didn't do it for me this year. I only liked one song on that album "We let her down" and it was for the hooks not the lyrics. He also sings that one rather well I think. Plus for some reason the name Chris just bothers me. ;-)