Looking for a solution? Dream on.

October 21st, 2011

In keeping with my seasonal display of colorful, bumpy gourds and miniature pumpkins, the November issue of Scientific American Mind magazine arrived yesterday with a cornucopia of provocative articles on consciousness, free will and creativity. In fact, Harvard Medical School Psychologist Deirdre Barrett weaves all three topics into her cover story “Answers in Your Dreams.”

After a two-decade lull, brain researchers have begun studying dreams seriously again, and Barrett presents a number of studies, including her own, conducted over the past several years that suggest the alternative state of consciousness we call sleep is active and fertile ground for dreaming up true inspiration. Here are some highlights:

  • Dreams are simply thought in a different biochemical state.
  • While continuing to focus on all the same issues that concern us while we are awake, the sleeping brain can help us find solutions outside our normal patterns of thought.
  • Brain areas that restrict our thinking to the logical and familiar are much less active during dream-rich periods of rapid eye movement (REM) slumber. Such freedom from conditioned responses is a crucial part of creative thought.

In her newest study, Barrett found that intentionally trying to dream about a particular problem, called dream incubation, increases the chance you’ll come up with a solution.  Here’s a recap of her suggestions for harnessing the dream state and tapping your creative problem-solving abilities.

1.     Write down your problem as a brief statement and place it next to your bed. Also keep a pen and paper – and perhaps a flashlight – alongside it.

2.     Review the problem for a few minutes before going to bed.

3.     Once in bed, visualize the problem as a concrete image, if possible.

4.     Tell yourself you want to dream about the problem as you drift off to sleep. Picture yourself dreaming about the problem, awakening and writing on your bedside notepad.

5.     When you awake, lie quietly before getting out of bed. Note whether you recall any trace of a dream and try to invite more of the dream to return. Write it down.

If you have a problem, chances are good that you also have the solution. And if it doesn’t come easily in waking hours, I hope you’ll try a little dream incubation. The dreams where you can creatively solve a problem or come up with ideas, well, those dreams are indeed sweet.

 

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Ridiculed scientist is vindicated with Nobel Prize.

October 14th, 2011

On the same day the world learned of mastermind Steve Jobs’ death, a remarkable back-story was told by the Royal Academy of Sciences in awarding the 2011 Nobel Prize for Chemistry to Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman.

Shechtman’s status as a profound game-changer may not come to mind with the likes of Jobs, Ford, Edison and Einstein, but his discovery 30 years ago of “quasicrystals” – atoms arranged in non-repeating patterns once considered impossible – has “fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.”

According to the Royal Academy, on the morning of April 8, 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Dan Shechtman’s electron microscope. In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated periodically over and over again. For scientists, this repetition was required in order to obtain a crystal and considered a fundamental truth.

Shechtman’s image, however, showed a different story. Four or six dots in the circles would have been possible, but absolutely not ten. He counted and recounted, then made a notation in his notebook: 10 Fold???

His discovery was extremely controversial. In the course of defending his findings, he was criticized and ridiculed by other scientists. Eventually he was asked to leave his research group. It wasn’t until 1987, when friends of Shechtman’s in France and Japan succeeded in growing crystals large enough for X-rays to verify his discovery, that his finding were accepted.

The medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain and the Darb-i Imam Shrine in Iran have helped scientists understand what quasicrystals look like at the atomic level. In those mosaics, as in quasicrystals, the patterns are regular – they follow mathematical rules – but they never repeat themselves.

Dan Shechtman’s story is fascinating, but not unique. Throughout the history of science, researchers have been forced to fight established knowledge, “truths” and “laws,” which have often proven to be no more that universal assumptions. Because what we know is limited by our tools of measurement, I applaud not only Shechtman’s discovery and Nobel Prize honor, but his confidence and perseverance to go against the rules and challenge conventional wisdom. This is, after all, the International Year of Chemistry.

 

 

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Tribute to a legendary visionary.

October 6th, 2011

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. Ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”   – Apple Computers’ “Crazy Ones” television commercial, 1997

As a loyal Mac user and admirer of the man who transformed the world of personal computers and our digital lives, I was filled with sadness last night at the news of Steve Jobs’ death that came, fittingly, via my iPhone.

I appreciated Steve Jobs. I admired his creativity, vision, energy and leadership. So I  honor him today by linking to a video of his Stanford University 2005 commencement address.

Here are a few highlights of his speech that I posted last year on December 31:

“You have to trust in something: Your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference.”

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle. You’ll know when you find it.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Thank you, Steve. You will be missed.

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Doubling down on the mind-brain connection.

September 30th, 2011

The city with no clocks is the location once again for my annual getaway with Donna, Katie and Margie, my three best gal pals from junior high. We are self-proclaimed Vegas Vixens, and we have the t-shirts to prove it.

Over the past decade we’ve seen some great performances here, like Cirque de Soleil’s “O,”  and the not-so-great, as in Cher’s third comeback show. We’ve been wedding crashers at the Elvis Chapel of Love and toured the spectacular Hoover Dam. Tonight will be our fifth Cirque show, “Zumanity” – yes, the “sexy” one – and tomorrow our fearless foursome will be laughing with funny man Lewis Black. It’s a weekend I wouldn’t miss for the world. But one upcoming NYC event has me wishing I could be in two places at once.

Sure, I can take in the flavor of my hometown at the New York New York hotel, complete with replicas of the Statue of Liberty, Chrysler Building and Coney Island roller coaster; but I know I won’t find a satellite hall for the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.

I didn’t get my invitation to the lecture “Linking Mind and Brain: Lessons from the Latest Neuroscience” until after the Vixens weekend had been booked. That means I’ll be missing an awesome conversation between Princeton University’s Theoretical Biophysicist William Bialek and CUNY’s Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Jesse Prinz. They are set to discuss the prospects for an integrative theory of mind and brain, a topic that holds much interest for me as personal energy trainer and much promise for understanding how it is we think.

My call is in to CUNY’s Graduate Center in the hopes of getting my hands on a recording of the presentation. Wish me luck with that. And a little luck at Bellagio’s blackjack table is also welcomed.

 

 

 

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The cosmic speed limit broken?!

September 23rd, 2011

 

“If it is true, then we truly haven’t understood anything about anything.” – Alvaro de Rujula, a theorist at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research

The global physics community awaits a seminar at CERN today where a group of European physicist will announce they have clocked subatomic particles known as neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light.

According to Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity, a pillar of modern physics known as the equation E=mc2, that feat is impossible. So are we truly hours away from one of the biggest upsets in the world of physics? Are we on the quantum edge of a grand rethink of the laws of nature?

With today’s shocking announcement, it’s anticipated all scientific eyes will turn to Fermilab near Chicago to replicate the results CERN found in collaboration with Italy’s Gran Sasso National Laboratory.

In the meantime, I can’t help but think Einstein would be excited by the news. For it was he, the most famous scientist of the century, who said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

 

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