motivational speaker

who do you think is the first google hit for "motivational speaker"? tony robbins? tom peters? deepak chopra? steven whoever, of the 'seven habits' series?

yossi ghinsberg. who the heck is that? never heard of him (?) before. the first speaker result with a name i recognize is result 16, which includes bonnie blair, the olympic speed skater. number 19 includes lance armstrong. when i say includes, i mean, their name isn't in the title of the page. finally, at entry 26, tony robbins is mentioned, again, not in the title.

why did i think about looking this up? i'm having a little motivational trouble. i'm presenting two papers tomorrow night in a class. it's my second presentation for the class. i was happy with how the first one went. part of my problem with focusing on the presentation is that i find the papers boring. i can tell the conclusions to someone with no neurobiology in three (long) sentences.

1) we're looking at two parts of the brain: the amygdala, an area that's involved in processing emotion, and the orbitofrontal cortex (the part in front (frontal) by the eyes (orbital)), an area that processes rewards and punishments.

2) if you measure the level of activity in the amygdala, for both taste and smell, you see changes corresponding to different INTENSITIES of stimuli (the thing that's being tasted or smelled), but you don't see changes corresponding to different KINDS of stimuli (pleasant, citrusy, icky (that's science right there)).

3) on the other hand, if you look at the orbitofrontal cortex, you see the opposite: changes corresponding to different KINDS of stimuli but not different INTENSITIES of stimuli.

ok, if you gave up on that list, here's the one sentence version: changes in intensity are reflected in activity in the amygdala; changes in kind of stimulus are reflected in activity in the orbitofrontal cortex.

those facts are somewhat interesting. it's interesting that the brain really can treat intensity and kind differently. these results also imply that the KIND of stimulus is more relevant to punishment and reward/orbitofrontal cortex and that the INTENSITY of stimulus is more relevant to emotional processing/the amygdala. that's interesting too.

neither of these results says much (that i can see anyway) about how effective olfactory cues are at eliciting memories.

you might say, surely you left stuff out that people with a brain science background would be interested in. well, maybe. there's the part about how we can't really know that the results are right for a bunch of technical reasons, and how they need to be repeated and confirmed using other methods. but that's it. i swear. i should go rogue and present the paper on monkey butts.

well, enough complaining from me. i'm going to walk the dog and get the laundry out the dryer. that'll liven things up.