Poetic Dissection

"Our analysis also identifies a subset of brain regions in which the activity in the listener’s brain precedes the activity in the speaker’s brain. The listener’s anticipatory responses were localized to areas known to be involved in predictions and value representation (20–23), including the striatum and medial and dorsolateral prefrontal regions (mPFC, dlPFC). The anticipatory responses may provide the listeners with more time to process an input and can compensate for problems with noisy or ambiguous input (24). This hypothesis is supported by the !nding that comprehension is facilitated by highly predictable upcoming words (25). Remarkably, the extent of the listener’s anticipatory brain responses was highly correlated with the level of understanding (Fig. 4B), indicating that successful communication requires the active engagement of the listener (26, 27)." Stephens and Hasson On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer By John Keats Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien. Handy Guide By Dean Young Avoid adjectives of scale. Dandelion broth instead of duck soup. Don’t even think you’ve seen a meadow, ever. The minor adjustments in our equations still indicate the universe is insane, when it laughs a silk dress comes out its mouth but we never put it on. Put it on. Cry often and while asleep. If it’s raw, forge it in fire. That’s not a mountain, that’s crumble. If it’s fire, swallow. The heart of a scarecrow isn’t geometrical. That’s not a diamond, it’s salt. That’s not the sky but it’s not your fault. My dragon may be your neurotoxin. Your electrocardiogram may be my fortune cookie. Once an angel has made an annunciation, it’s impossible to tell him he has the wrong address. Moonlight has its own befuddlements. The rest of us can wear the wolf mask if we want or look like reflections wandered off. Eventually armor, eventually sunk. You wanted love and expected what? A parachute? Morphine? A gold sticker star? The moment you were born— you have to trust others because you weren’t there. Ditto death. The strongest gift I was ever given was made of twigs. It didn’t matter which way it broke.             Both poems are similar in that they tell about a comment on a very real happening. The first on the translation of Homer and the other begins with a caution of some sense. However, the latter goes on to an unpredictable pattern. This is where the Stephens article becomes key. This article was a study on oral speaker-listener connection and its cognitive effects. This is interrelated to the Theory of Mind talked about in an earlier class The small excerpt brings up a very interesting point and one that relates well to these poems.            When one treats these narrators as though they are a speakers, which is indeed the case due to our theory of mind, they might in fact exhibit these same qualities. The above excerpt tells how the listeners mind in fact activates before the speakers in order to find a pattern in speech and thus in the conversation's content and timing. This can be clearly seen in Keats poem. While his colorful language is a little unpredictable, the majority of the poem is easily predictable and can be followed with ease. However, the Young poem is a contradiction to this process. It uses unpredictable sentences that lack a cohesive superficial meaning such as: "My dragon may be your neurotoxin." or "Your electrocardiogram may be my fortune cookie." Because of this unpredictability, the poem baffles the "listener" and their progression to a pattern-filled conversation. However, this makes poetry more true to its purpose of imagination and interpretation. Through this lack of pattern, one must come to conclusions through self-interpretation and possible education on topics unknown. How a dragon could be a neurotoxin is not a normal statement, but a dragon could stand for many things (like strength, mysticism, fire, evil, etc.) that could possibly correlate with neurotoxin. This allowance for variability allows for a freedom of the mind for the mind. In other words, it allows for the listener to disengage predictability and thus nonchalant care towards the poem in order to allow the full imagination and interpretation that lets the poem speak differently to each member of its audience.

Baby Don't Hurt Me, Don't Hurt Me No More.

"Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind. As we shall see, emotions and the host of related reaction that underlie them are part of the basic mechanisms of life regulation; feelings also contribute to life regulation, but at a higher level. Emotions and related reactions seem to precede feelings in the history of life. Emotions and related phenommena are the foundation for feelings, the mental events that form the bedrock of our minds and whose nature we wish to elucidate." Antonio Damasio in Of Appetites and Emotions

"On the other side of a mirror there’s an inverse world, where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the earth and recede to the first slime of love.

     And in the evening the sun is just rising.

      Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon childhood robs them of their pleasure.

      In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy . . .   " Antimatter by Russell Edson

       This little snippet of a fascinating article, by Demasio, sums the entire paper. It tells of the bio-psychological occurrences that are associated with humans at various levels of cognition, both conscious and not. He says that there should be a distinction between "Emotions" and "Feelings." While this is fine, he makes a distinction that is not normal to conventional thinking. This thought that the outward emotions are the cause of feeling rather than the result is different yet ingenious. In this view, feelings are a reflective process that allows one to reason actions/emotions and influence personality and future actions. With this view, the above poem becomes a story that makes sense in more than just a metaphorical way. The poem on first glance is about opposites becoming the natural order of a parallel world. But after reading the article the last few lines really stand out. "Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon childhood robs them of their pleasure. In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy . . ." This line becomes much more interesting with the edition of emotions preceding feelings. Their feelings of joy and sadness are different because their world is different and because emotions exhibited are different. Lovers cry because this emotion of sorrow is then reflected on the loss of time of maturity. All in all this mirror world is one that is wholly not unlike our own, but the details seem askew.

        However my one concern with this article is the lack of definition of the cause of emotions. It is mentioned that emotion is biological and that we do not need to learn how to exhibit them but why we exibit them changes. I questions this drive to show emotion and why it is undefined. This drive to exhibit an emotion is not classified by the Spinoza Appetites or Desires. I would just like to know the classifications of this state otherwise known as the emotional development. For example, anger is sometimes grown from annoyance but this is then developed from an unknown "feeling" or another appropriate word.

Imaginative Entities

"The close relation between navigating social- and story-worlds has a number of
implications, not the least interesting of which is the proposal that readers of predominantly
narrative fiction may actually improve or maintain their social-inference
abilities through reading. The same is unlikely to be true of non-fiction readers.
Although in both cases individuals are removing themselves from true social interaction
by virtue of the solitary nature of reading, non-fiction presumably does not
sponsor the same simulation of the social world as narrative fiction. Frequent readers
of non-fiction, then, by sacrificing human interaction and replacing it with no similar
substitute, may actually impair their social skills. Individual differences in reading
habits and preferences, then, may relate systematically to individual differences in
social-processing ability." By Raymond A. Mar et al. "Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to Fiction
versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds"

         This study opens with a discussion of social stereotypes that comment on the charisma of those who predominantly read more than other activities. It brings up the hypothesis that, while those who read non-fiction may be inept in social situations, those who read fiction are actually better in social situations and are stronger in things dealing with the "Theory of the mind." It tells the process and subjects used in the study (which included a wide age range and many types of tests). The article takes into account some uncontrollable variable (like age leading to wisdom or knowing English for longer period of time) by halving results multiple times to ensure trends. This resulted in a slight but significant correlation between fiction and social ability.
           While these were taken into account, the main fact was that the narratives found in fiction novels are the main result. However, the question I have is, "Can this be taken further?" My question is fueled by curiosity but more importantly in pursuit of education. Perhaps a study comparing those who read fiction very little if at all and those who read fiction a lot. One point I would like to raise is reminiscent of my talk about the education of language. If one can learn to pronounce words and talking in ones mind and experience language without a personal attachment (through a computer for example) then can one learn social actions and personality from fiction alone? Of course one would have to read the books of the culture of the time because of the ever changing social aspects of different cultures. If this could be overcome, then can one learn how to socialize in a manner that seems very unorthodox, but perhaps has an educational and social validity.
         One other idea that could be interesting is to try and teach other primates about human society. Primates have the ability to learn sign language and memorize with great speed and accuracy. If there was a way to have these animals "read" fiction novels with great narration, could they be able to function in society. Charles Darwin commented on humans and other animals saying, "their differences are in degree not kind." Other ethologists have said that animals show emotions and other human actions to a lesser degree, and by accomplishing a feat such as this perhaps we could see that the development of complex society is not unique and rather can be learned. The foundation for such social intricacy then can be implied as being biological. This would have to be taken cautiously because this could be twisted into a dark place (i.e. sociobiology and eugenics). However, it could lead to a revolution in not only animal biology but in cognition as well. It could help us perhaps trace the lineage of different thinking processes among species and more.