Well its been long since I wrote something. Today sitting in the library feeling dizzy it occurred to me that I should write an article. Something which I wanted to do since long.
Well this one is on my dream and my personality and real world research 
I dream to make Intelligent Machines which work just like the brains, inspired from my previous article.
I believe that most of the research in brain science can be done by just writing such blogs , coz there are so many open questions which will be answered only when people discuss about it. We need to study ourselves more and more rather than rats (kidding!)
Start:
I have been observing my close friends and many other people closely since few weeks, noticing a very common behavior which we call nervousness. I observed some guys touching their hair,ears while talking to a new girl(common for everyone), squeezing the fingers of both the hands together without any specific reason, vibrating their legs very fast, having a different(scared) expression, All these and many more which you also might have noticed in your real life and is not so easy to express here in this article. Strange huh?
Let’s talk about it in a more scientific way in this article.If you carefully observe when do you become nervous: When you meet a young/sexy counterpart, job interview, public presentations etc… The most obvious answer seems that its self conciousness, The feeling that what others are thinking about you makes you feel nervous, that is why most psychologists suggest that you should not be stressed and always have the attitude of “dont give a fuck about anyone ” to overcome this, some people also say that the main reason behind it is lack of self confidence, when we start thinking that “what the other person might be thinking about me” makes us feel even more concious.
Ok so its self conciousness or less confidence(I dont give a fuck), the question is why do we do these crazy gestures which make our nervous behavior so predictable?This happens coz your mind and your body are supposed to be in opposite phase e.g. You are tensed from inside but you have to show you are confident, just like the game of wolf, if you are the wolf, you have to act like you are not. The act of not showing what you are feeling from inside triggers this kind of random behaviour. Its this randomness which makes it so noticable.
I will give one more example. Assume that you are watching a movie for past one hour peacefully in you room at night 3am when everyone has slept. Suddenly a guy comes and shouts from your partially opened window. You will observe that for a second your breath will stop and it will take you 10-15s to recover and get hold of the situation. Lastly, the most important thing, you will always remember that incident
There is one common thing in both these instances, PREDICTION
If you carefully observe the first case: You become nervous coz of self conciousness(so what?) but you do those random gestures coz you have to decorrelate your mind and body(mind is fearful, tensed and worried, wheras body language should be confident). This type of situation is rarely experienced by the Human Brain.So it does not know how to react, coz its something it did not predict and is doing for the first time. So => random gestures
Second case: When a guy comes out of nowhere, for 10-15s you either become still or do random gestures coz you did not predict his arrival and your Brain does not know how to react.
More scientifically our Brain has a neuromodulator called dopamine which is released in such a case. Recent theory suggests that dopamine is responsible for learning in the brain and it is released only when there are prediction errors(Dopamine dependent plasticity)[I won't go in much detail coz of a mixed crowd], In short, you learn when there is a prediction error which is the reason why you will always remember that incident
Due to lack of time I cant spend time editing grammatical or spelling mistakes(Sorry!). Please fell free to comment.
Lastly,All the text is written from my own thoughts, I dont have any citations
Hey Sagar
Good Work.. NIce insight into the realms often unsought !! I wish it was a little more interactive .. ensuring that any layman is captured by the discussion and finds himself as one of the characters of the thread..maybe a li’l modofication of d style in which the thoughts are unleashed.. nyways, Kudos. I liked it !!
Yogyata
Comment by Yogyata — August 16, 2010 @ 9:07 am |
hi sagar
A nice one!
after reading this blog few Q. raise in my “BRAIN” too.
“Are these gestures are really “random”? ”
If yes are they distributed randomly over population(different person make different gesture in same situation) or over individual (an individual make different gesture at similar situation) or over situation (make similar gesture at different situation.) (can be in any permutation or combination )
If no are these gesture some how related to the personality of the person or may be related to development/learning of the individual.
some of my observations are as follows
like when an insecure girl make some request some guy for favor she usually press her finger (my observation no scientific proof available) never waves the leg or bite nail.
a girl with attention seeking behavior waves her hair, or changes posture curving her waist while talking to some one. also these girls when not provided attention walk by you in a sexy gait (sort of a cat walk).
a person with depression when in class and not grasping any thing start waving his leg.
Comment by shubahm — August 16, 2010 @ 9:00 pm |
@yogyata: Thanks for your kind words. I would spend more time editing the next one
@ Shubham: Really nice insight, I think the gestures got to be random coz the brain is dumb and has no learning but I am only considering a normal behavior.Whereas if we consider the concept of preferential gestures in the cases you described all I can say is maybe these gestures are instance dependent. e.g. maybe these reactions have been mapped over time(trained). There was a similar experiment conducted by a neuroscientist in which a school girls met their to a new handsome teacher, and the teacher left the room after introduction. In all experiments it was observed that the students started laughing out of excitement(as soon as the teacher left). This reaction was different and unexpected and might help in answering your question.
Comment by sagardewan — August 17, 2010 @ 5:31 am |
I can now see clearly, what you are aiming at. Its an ‘Open Field’ for you to grab. Lot of ‘Opportunities’ to take away home. Great that you have a ‘crystal clear’ aim in your life.
Mazaa
Comment by Rajan — August 21, 2010 @ 7:17 am |
Abey, stop making maggi in lab and do some real research
Comment by pava — August 19, 2011 @ 10:10 am |
Nice article
Comment by pava — August 19, 2011 @ 10:13 am |