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http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Emotional-Brain-Eliminating-Reconsolidation/dp/0415897173/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437409086&sr=8-1&keywords=unlocking+the+emotional+brain&pebp=1437409088489&perid=1D8PX6XESXTMFM741QS2 Hey everyone, this book has so far been the most interesting and informative thing in Therapy and Psychology I've read, so I wanted to put out a recommendation and overview here, as I'm sure a lot of you would find it very interesting as well. The book starts by providing an overview of the research that was going on over the last two decades, both in analysing psychotherapy in detail and neuroscientific findings about how emotional learning works and can be changed or erased (which was something that was thought to be impossible only ten years ago). After that the author explains the steps that are now known to be necessary to produce that change and then goes to show a lot of examples of how that worked in therapy. The main focus is on therapists using Coherence therapy, however, since there are quite a few therapies that unknowingly use that same steps to create changes, they also show how the same things looks like in some other therapy forms. The steps themselves are fairly simple in principle: (Re-)trigger the emotional learning to access its contents, then juxtapose/mismatch that content in order to erase the original learning. Obviously, in practice that can require quite some work, as the content of the learning is all subconscious and has to be unearthed first. The author is clear that there is no one single best technique to do any of those steps, which means, you can use the whole plethora of available techniques and see what works best for you (or your patient, if you're a therapist). However the steps themselves can be found one way or another in different therapies, although often without the explicit knowledge of the therapist about them, which makes it sometimes more a game of chance whether or not that patient can be helped effectively. Also it is important to note that so far this is the only process we know of that can actually change emotional learning. This works regardless of how deeply rooted the emotion or symptom is, or how intense or long it has been going on. This still relatively knew knowledge alone is quite a big breakthrough for Psychotherapy and anyone interested in self-knowledge/self-therapy, as it essentially changes the discipline like the atomic model changed Alchemy (trial and error) to Chemistry (an underlying explanatory model for how and why the process works). Anyway, I'm kinda bad at writing summaries and overviews for an audience, so I hope this gives you a good overview, but obviously ask if there's stuff you're curious about where I wasn't clear or if you have more questions about the content. Either way, I hope you're gonna check it out, it's really a great book with great content.

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer One paragraph that stood out: "As we navigate through the world, we are changed by a variety of experiences. Of special note are experiences of three types: (1) we observe what is happening around us (other people behaving, sounds of music, instructions directed at us, words on pages, images on screens); (2) we are exposed to the pairing of unimportant stimuli (such as sirens) with important stimuli (such as the appearance of police cars); (3) we are punished or rewarded for behaving in certain ways. We become more effective in our lives if we change in ways that are consistent with these experiences – if we can now recite a poem or sing a song, if we are able to follow the instructions we are given, if we respond to the unimportant stimuli more like we do to the important stimuli, if we refrain from behaving in ways that were punished, if we behave more frequently in ways that were rewarded" The only thing I would counter is, given the standard of most childhoods, the way to become more effective is to behave more frequently in the ways that were punished in our formative years, and less in the ways that were rewarded.

FYI, I stumbled across this organization/blog led by Dr. Mark Brady who translates social neuroscience into digestible information for parents. What he says strongly corroborates the peaceful parenting message promoted at FDR. ...Future guest? The Three Primary Practices: http://www.committedparent.com/IntroFirstPrimaryPractices.html Committed Parent Blog: https://committedparent.wordpress.com/

Hello community, I'm happy to share with you my speech at Porcfest from this past week which is on design thinking, anarchy and philosophy. Please enjoy and share your thoughts below. Matt D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doAwCeQL_Is

"Daniel Reisel searches for the psychological and physical roots of human morality. Full bio He studies the brains of criminal psychopaths (and mice). And he asks a big question: Instead of warehousing these criminals, shouldn't we be using what we know about the brain to help them rehabilitate? Put another way: If the brain can grow new neural pathways after an injury … could we help the brain re-grow morality?" http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_reisel_the_neuroscience_of_restorative_justice About 15 mins My first thought was that this would make a fascinating FDR interview. There is some discussion in the video comments as well. This snippet encompasses much of it, IMO: Emma McCreary I think you are doing some important work, and I don't doubt that you've had several success stories. A lot of times people just need to be exposed to a better way of living. At the same time, though, I must disagree with you that "It's not too late for anyone." That's wishful thinking, plain and simple. There are some people that it is just too late for, and this is not a matter of opinion at this point with our current technology and medical capabilities. Look at someone with a traumatic injury who has had damage to their amygdala. They may have once been pillars of their community but then they become extremely aggressive and unpredictable. You can't restore them to their former selves, barring a medical miracle on the horizon, any more than you can make someone with down syndrome an MIT graduate. It's just not going to happen, and no amount of social programming is going to change people with an underdeveloped or damaged amygdala--such as psychopaths/sociopaths. There have been cases, like with Jill Bolte Taylor (also a TED speaker), who've been able to repair the damage done to their brains after a stroke, but I know of not one case in the scientific literature of a rehabilitated psychopath. Ergo, for now, such a thing should be appropriately placed in the "very highly improbable to impossible" category.