Far from the Madding crowd - Thomas Hardy

This book is one that found its way to me in a day of rain of meditative stance.

From the first pages it appear clear that something powerful and yet wonderful would be encapsulated in the book. I don't consider myself to be the type that reads romantic novels, but I found this book to be a very accurate account of what love and pride can do to people caught in its strings.

Batsheba Everdene is a woman who takes life by it's strings, values honesty, integrity and independence. All this are on top of her beauty and feminine power that makes Gabriel Oak, Boldwood and Troy fall in love with her and try to win her heart. In the developing of the story it becomes clear that only one man endowed with perseverance and wisdom will be able to be a perfect match for her. This is more clear to the reader than the characters and so a long chain of tragedies unfolds until the happiness that all people want takes place.

Without wishing to spoil the action of the novel, I will limit myself to some brief remarks. It is wonderful to get an idea of the English countryside and to see a powerful women in times when it was thought that a women's best role was to be a good wife to her husband. One can almost sense the power and vigor of her actions, and see her transformed from a youthful, intelligent and impulsive woman to a more mature and wise one. At the end of the book it seemed as if it was the only realistic possibility: her inner force would not have allowed her to drown in the harshness of life.

The novel is a really nice and enjoyable read and one could easily see the messages that are still applicable today and will be as long as men and women are in love while struggling to keep their independence. In the end independence might not be the value that gives you happiness so one must be wary and wise when the time to put it aside comes near, because otherwise she/he will find herself/himself in unwanted troubles and pain.

Why Kids Lie: How Parents Can Encourage Truthfulness

As a school counselor I work with children, their parents and teachers. It is important to see how the relationships develop and are maintained, mainly because almost any major event in the life of a student will be reflected in her/his academics.

I hoped to find more insights into this matter, and my hopes were partially fulfilled, because I expected somehow a more theoretical approach to this issue, and that was a mistake from my part, due to the fact that the book was written for the lay public. With this reference in mind, I changed my expectations and I began to take a new approach to the information presented. I could appreciate its usefulness its depth of insight and how to transpose it into my work.

I would warmly recommend it to anyone who is thinking about why some relationship work, and why others don't, the starting point being the building block that is trust. Of course when we think more about it we realize that it was something we knew in the back of our minds, but it needs researchers and methods to actually make it meaningful to a world that is bigger than one's own view. 

Working with Dreams, Understand your dreams and use them for personal and creative development

Some books come into your life drawn by the desire to understand yourself or to understand others. For e it was the former path by which this book entered in my lecturing interests. Everyone dreams and sometimes the dreams are so beautiful, so much as you want your life to be, that you want to linger in their company even after you wake up.

The desire to understand why some things appear in my dreams led to read the book and it helped me realize what I forgot: to pay more attention to what I want and the obstacles in my life. After reading it and through some discussions with a close friend I started to relax and just take things as they go. The book offers an insight into the most common symbols for dreams and is an instrument that can be used to create and develop your own dream notebook.  Due to these helpful and easy guidance tips it becomes ease to be more aware of what you want, what are the influences of events in your life and on your general well-being. This was for me one the perfect thing in a tumultuous time, and helped me take a break from it all and enjoy my life as it is. 

Truth be told, this book alone would have been useless without the aid of the conversation had with my best-friend.

Neuroscience of Decision Making

This book treats contemporary topics in cognitive neuroscience and has given me a myriad of ideas to follow and think through, making it more difficult to settle on just one idea for research. I assure myself that  this might be one of the factors characteristic to creative thinking, particularly the defocused attention described by the “cognitive disinhibition hypothesis” (p.320), although I feel the stringent need to use some sort of heuristic (that will presumably activate my left temporal pathways, p.126), a kind of spontaneous thought (p. 275), which will lead me in taking the decision to elaborate just one idea for a research project.

With this in mind I choose to elaborate on the implications and ramifications of decision making in a social context, especially under the pressure of a significant person, and find that important regions lie in the prefrontal cortex having projections to and from the hypocampus, amygdala, the human striatum which is a central region of interest when researching social decisions. Another brain region of interest is the anterior insula, which exhibits a greater activation in unfair situations, an interesting point when one considers that it is also found to be responsive to physically painful stimuli (p.233).

Taking it on the “who knew!?!” aspect that each neuroscience book comprises, I have found that:

• Ventromedial prefrontal cortex is important in personal and social decision making, and impairment in this structure can make it difficult to choose friends, partners and activities (p. 74).
• An abnormal social environment can have negative consequences on the structures involved in triggering somatic/emotional states, deficits which were observed in various laboratory settings, when individuals with neurobiological abnormalities failed to express proper emotions, empathize or fear negative consequences. This negative learning can be undone when individuals are exposed to proper learning environment (p. 90).
• An acetylcholine (ACh) deficit (lack of sensory bound signals) might be involved in some hallucinatory experiences, a consistent point of the idea that hallucination is antagonistic to sensory processing(p.105).
• The ventral striatum is sensitive to the magnitude of an anticipated reward (p.151).
• A feature of depression is a diminished functional connectivity within fronto-cingulate pathways which can contribute to a diminished behavioral adjustment as a consequence of difficulties in cognitive control (p.212).
• Intranasal administration of oxytocin (a neuropeptide involved in affiliative behavior) increased trust behavior (p. 231)

These ideas were just a few of the wonderfully treated ideas presented in the book. They have harvested my interest and the corresponding neuronal pathways involved in learning and memory formation.

I must confess that writing a review, or rather a personal view of the book I carefully read and learn from has proven to be a challenging task. For any confusions or misunderstandings made I apologize in advance. 

The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making

When I received the book (that came among a collection of great books) I thought it will help me get a few research ideas stick and take me to another level. It has helped me in that sense. :)

Scott Plous’s account of some of the most intriguing and striking cognitive biases and implications of decision heuristics on everyday life has helped me rethink all the classes on Social Psychology.  From a hindsight bias “it was clear” that all the information is context dependent, that I have an attribution error, that memories are reconstructed and above all that I make prediction based on facts scrambled together by my mind in search of meaning, not taking into account some actuarial evidence, therefore setting and actuarial prediction regarding future events.

It was an informative book, and although it was written in 1993 it felt very up to date. This feeling might be due to the fact that I feel that I need to read more about decision making process and partly because I strive to make the basic ideas of research more clear and relevant to research laboratories. The fact that each chapter finishes with a set of conclusion that offer some guidance in how to avoid the negative outcome of some biases is of great help. For instance, concerning representativeness heuristic, I have to take into account the tips offered (Plous, 1993, pag. 119):

•  don’t be misled by highly detailed scenarios;
•  whenever possible pay attention to base rates;
• remember that chance is not self-correcting; and
• Don’t misinterpret regression toward the mean (especially useful when considering that we all would like to have an exceptional performance all the time).

Another set of useful suggestion is that offered in relation to probability and risk. I must remember to: - always think back at the actual probability that something I envision in my future is only a desirable event and it is no more probable than un undesirable but unforeseen event; and most importantly perhaps to break compound events into small events in order to see that is something has a small rate of probability or risk than an accumulation of small events with their respective small risks might lead to catastrophes (pag. 143-144).

The most relevant information to remember is that concerning correlation, causation and control, and to remember to take into account the illusory correlations and the invisible ones, after all, Holmes was very keen on addressing things which ought to happen and failed to be seen, not just sticking to the obvious events that might validate hypotheses.

There are many biases which seem to help or hinder us when trying to go through this motion we call life. We may be entrapped in different situations and fail to see the reward of exiting the situation just because we have invested so much that we feel as we stand to lose too much. Many times the decisions we take are not the most accurate by mathematical standards or prove to be economical correct, yet they help us in everyday tasks and therefore prove to be useful. After all, we have limited resources, cognitive and otherwise, to make the best decisions we can make.

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

One of the few writers that can convey such moments of pure transcendental awareness that you are left feeling utterly amazed. It has helped me realize that some problems are bigger than others (mainly how I would feel about the subject of Earth being what it is and therefore here, not demolished).

I read the entire trilogy and found it refreshing and delightful. The first book is about discovery and the rest of them are about being completely and continuously perplexed at the things that are in the Galaxy. Ford Prefect (one of my literary models) acts so nonchalantly in just about everything and manages to get Arthur Dent in all sorts of adventures throughout the Galaxy. Trillian and Zaphod only add to the rich context of stories that engulfs your imagination whilst at the same time enhancing your creativity.

Threading through the book, big questions like “how”, “why” and “where” receive different answers which fail to provide a sense of knowing, let alone comfort or cognitive stability. The only way to take the book and its characters is just to read it and enjoy it for what it is. I did that and at the end of the last book, “Mostly Harmless” I felt that something beautiful was laid in front of me and now it was fully unraveled and that I’m not capable of thinking like that on daily basis. I sure know I’ll try. The book has helped through some serious life events and provided me the opportunity to change perspectives and therefore to grow in an exponential manner in which I did not think I was capable of.

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had become one of my favorite books so far and the style of the author, Douglas Adams, charmed me and made me longing for more.

I warmly recommend it to anyone who feels at time life is just too much. Take a ride in the Total Perspective Vortex, imagine a multitude of parallel universes in which Earth and its inhabitants live and you will end up feeling a lot more at ease with whatever you have to deal with.

The Satanic Verses

There are a lot of things which can be said of a novel that has caused religious debates

I found the novel interesting, and to sum it in a word, brilliant. I must confess, reading about the fact that a death sentence was issued to the author for writing it, made me curious and willing to pay great attention to every metaphor or other stylistic approaches to literature. I found the book to be a clear account of the lives of two main characters, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin (Salahudin) Chamcha. I couldn’t find any remarks or any passage that could indicate any mockery towards any religion.

The story seems very awry and is filled with mythological references and historical facts that could be attributed to the period in which the Prophet made the revelation. The main characters are the only survivors of a plane hijack and both are trapped in Britain trying to rebuild their life after the plain crash. Because they are listed as dead by the official statement of the aviation company they seem to have a period in which they must prove to themselves and other that they are in fact alive. Gibreel Farishta finds this to be much easier than Saladin Chamcha because he was a great Bollywood superstar and apparently is recognized be many. Saladin Chamcha goes through a series of transformations in order to regain his identity. The characters are presented in an antithetic fashion, Gibreel, for whom any mistakes are forgivable, and Saladin a man who is seen as threatening and must prove himself as a British citizen through times of abuse and maltreatment.

Due to the way in which Rushdie builds his novel, the plot and its tension seem to gradually arch and bend in each episode, as the characters go through metamorphosis and transformation. The author constructs the novel be creating narrations in narrations, using the metaphor of revelation to provide continuity. Gibreel assumes the role of the Archangel Gabriel and Saladin is sometimes perceived as Shaitan (the devil) especially through his ordeal in London in order to regain his old life and identity. Both characters seem to have problems with identity, Gibreel presenting episodes of recurring schizophrenia and Saladin having problems with British authorities. Although the characters are Indian they seemed to me to be universal, because I could relate to them and the problems which they sought to solve are universal. Both seek love and a way of living it with the person they love. Each of them seems to have a distorted view of love (one due to mental illness and the other due to an illusion regarding the British way of life and his wife’s morality). In fact their ethics about love and morality are tested and in the end one of them manages to construct himself and live accordingly while the other succumbs to his misinterpretation and distortions of reality due to mental illness.

The book made me think about my own struggle with my identity and made me realize that part of the resolution lies in the persons you manage to have around you, because if you have people around you which can offer support when you need it, you can grow and become stronger and therefore a step closer to living your life in a full and enjoyable manner.