They have discovered a gene they have linked to creativity, neuregulin 1, and variants of it are actually also associated with problems like schizophrenia. What do you think of this?

It feels “right.” Creativity often involves going for the “edges” and beyond.

Also, recently they have discovered two other related facts. In schizophrenia there is an unusually high instance of what they call jumping genes, sections of the human genome that unplug from their original location and plug into others, and begin duplicating where perhaps they shouldn’t.

Actually, jumping genes are a normal phenomena, but in the case of the illness mentioned it’s over exaggerated, out of control. Recently they have discovered a process that leads to the formation of prions in some synapses in the human brain, but not all synapses.

The theory is, and this is based on the observed influence of the prions, that because they seem to stabilize the activity and existence of those synapses, that they are responsible for long term memory.

Long term memory is a coherent pattern. It actually takes a great deal of effort for these prions to form, mostly the brain doesn’t want to do it, even seems set up primarily to fight it. Why do you suppose that is? You can have an immune response to those prions. You do, and this is why they don’t form very much.

But don’t we remember everything even if we can’t recall it? Yes.

Only so much space. It has to be important to get recorded. They say older people don’t remember things as well because their brains are already full. I have not heard that myself. The theory I have heard is that they have increased sorting challenges, because of the more extensive myelination in the senior brain. They actually have to sort through their mental books to recall what it was they had for lunch.

So everything that causes a cell to change its behavior is actually called stress. That is the biological definition of stress. The changes brought on by having a cup of coffee are biological stress. Seeing and recognizing that you see your house keys is also stress. If no response is generated in your cells then nothing changes, nothing happens, you experience nothing. Honestly without stress, you would literally be dead, life processes could not continue, yet we attempt to create structure through stress management, effort minimization, reducing noise. We attempt to define thought, experience and clarity of mind by minimizing noise.

Is an “absent minded” person less stressed? Generally the absent minded person is more stressed. This is why their senses are not as responsive to their immediate environment.

Ignorance is not bliss? Oh, people believe ignorance is bliss, and they even call this ignorance knowledge.

I’ve always felt not knowing something is not blissful.

You believe you know things when you have excluded things from a set of experiences, when you have “cleaned it up’, made it clear, eliminated external associations, these being seen as excessive or irrelevant.

Then science loves its ignorance.

Some authorities even define this process of pruning, as they call it, as the primary process of learning.

What an artists might call a happy accident rather than a mistake. I guess you don’t know new ways of seeing something without accepting that you don’t understand everything about that something.

Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~