Second Brain Discovered In Humans!

Although some might locate the "second brain" a little lower, scientists reckon there's more to the idea of a "gut reaction" than you might think:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gut-second-brain

Brings new meaning to the term "you are what you eat"?

  Quote

A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.

 

Although its influence is far-reaching, the second brain is not the seat of any conscious thoughts or decision-making.

I quoted this as the main point of the article.

Now, there's no useful conclusion I can get after reading it twice, this article is unclear and I'm not even sure the author understands what she is writing about.

1) The term "mental states" is vague. Are we talking about beliefs, desires, emotions or moods ?

2) Is there anything we can do to influence these "mental states" ? In other terms, how does the causality work here ?

basically, you fell for it

mainstream media constantly broadcasts different ways of looking at the same things over and over, to make uneducated people (not you) think that science i actually moving forward, and that society is progressing

yes, the brain, controls the critical functions of the body, and the organs are attached to the brain computer with neurons. weve known this for decades. how does this change your life? it doesnt! funny how scientific american will publish an article about some pseudo science bullshit...how about some articles about how 99% of mice die when fed GMO food, or anything about fluoride or chemtrails

basically, to have a serious conversation about this article would be the equivalent of having a real conversation about the existence about santa clause. its so fucking stupid. you can spot these types of articles in the tone of the writing style

grow up

Well, the book quoted is obviously several years old (1998 I think?) but mainly I intended the thread for shits & giggles a la "ooh, maybe I can hive off my boring job to my gut-brain and spend all day composing symphonies with my head brain, and see if anyone in the office notices."

Also - endless opportunities for coffee enema jokes.

It doesn't take a scientific expert to see that food and mood are often linked and intertwined in many different ways. But it's probably slightly less direct than the sensationalist tone of the article.

  On 2/15/2010 at 1:44 PM, ET said:

99% of mice die when fed GMO food,

 

 

1% of GMO fed mice are immortal?

*heads to Aldi in burka*

What *is* is about this kind of music that attracts conspiracy nutters? This is the third forum I've been on that's been infested with one. I thought that kind of thing stopped being fashionable when the Milennium went out like a damp squib. But they lurk around experimental music forums going on about chemtrails and fluoride like it's 1999. Quite cute in an anachronistic kind of way.

Yeah, these idm kids get all wet for aliens, acid music, conspiracy theories and Known (1). And bad philosophy. What else ?

  On 2/15/2010 at 1:57 PM, the anonymous forumite said:

Yeah, these idm kids get all wet for aliens, acid music, conspiracy theories and Known (1). What else ?

Nah, the other forums weren't IDM, one was for sort of Electro/Indie-Friendly Electrodribble and the other was for a music magazine. The former kind of adopted their conspiracy nutter as a kind of pet, the other banhammered him and his million sock puppets as a nuisance. I think the former actually worked better in the end.

Serotonin, the wonder-gut drug. It's funny how they don't tell you the links between it and digestion when they put you on SSRIs and you have to discover the side effects for yourself.

  On 2/15/2010 at 1:44 PM, ET said:

basically, you fell for it

 

fluoride or chemtrails

 

its so fucking stupid. you can spot these types in the tone of the writing style

 

grow up

Speaking of which, The Dark Lord just turned up on one of those forums.

I'm getting 90s flashbacks, like any minute now, someone's gonna offer me a SmartShake or whatever those weird amino acid thingeys were. Remember those?

haha. smartdrinks, yes I do.

Total 90s moment: my best friend got one at Lollapollooza (92 I think?) and I kinda watched her making "euw, gross" faces as she drank it. So I said, "are you feeling any smarter?"

She said "Yes, actually I am. Red Hot Chilli Peppers are shit, let's go get the car and leave before the crush."

IT CLEARLY WORKED!!!!

So fat people are really smart? I don't get it

yes. smart and happy.

posting in a masonic boom thread

My Turkish isn't good enough to understand this meme, clearly.

you don't have to learn turkish to understand it, you just look at the dude do his thing

i just had a dream, like ten minutes ago, that i had a brain in my penis. i was freaked out when i saw this thread title.

  On 2/15/2010 at 4:35 PM, Rabid said:

i just had a dream, like ten minutes ago, that i had a brain in my penis. i was freaked out when i saw this thread title.

A ha ha ha ha, hilarious! I would post *that* picture of RDJ but I think Joyrex will actually ban me if I whip it out again. tee hee.

It was quite a screwball comedy subgenre in cinema in the mid 20th century, wasn't it? Schtick gags about sentient or talking genitals.

it wouldn't surprise me if this doesn't end here. I remember hearing how people who have recieved heart transplants suddenly take on new characteristics. I saw a documentary where this stereotypical biker type dude suddenly needed to write poetry once he recieved a new heart. Anyway, they tracked down the organ donors wife and she was blown away as her dead husband had been a lifelong poet. Shit fucking tripped me out like itunes.

or maybe the biker fatass finally realized he only lives once, and turned to art and shit as an expression for his pain and what have you

that's just one example, this is actually quite a common occurence after heart transplants apparently. They seem to be compulsions rather than, you know, the kind of shift you might have in your personality after a life changing experience or an E or something.

This sounds very interesting indeed, but I'm googling and can't seem to find any real case studies, or indeed any reports articles except in the Daily Mail, which I'm certainly not going to trust. The myth-hunters at Snopes seem skeptical.

In fact, the general consensus of what I'm reading seems to be that it's the life-threatening event of the surgery that causes personality changes in the rare instances that they do occur.

Not disputing that personality changes can and do happen for very random reasons - there are medically documented examples of people suddenly becoming musical prodigies after being hit by lightning (Oliver Sacks Musicophilia has some great examples of things like that). But it seems to be wishful thinking that people pick up the unknown characteristics of transplant organs.

Which is a shame, as it's a great story.