My next door neighbour is a scientist who researches the connection between gastrointestinal microbes and mental wellbeing. Essentially, he believes that it may be possible to treat anxiety and depression by encouraging the growth of certain beneficial bacteria in your stomach.<p>From <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/why-researchers-think-the-gut-holds-the-key-to-depression-1.2642007" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/why-researchers-...</a>:<p>> Kunze, a researcher with the Brain-Body Institute at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, has discovered a new nerve pathway in the gut that is key to sending signals from an anti-depressant and anti-anxiety microbe to the brain.<p>> Kunze’s findings were recently published in the journal FASEB, or Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology. His team of international researchers have been studying signals in mice, and plan for human trials over the next year.<p>> Kunze’s mouse trials showed that the gut could send signals from specific probiotic bacteria, which have anti-depressant and anti-anxiety properties, to the brain.
Reminds me of this: <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18557594" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/node/18557594</a><p>> At the start of the day, [parole judges] granted around two-thirds of the applications before them. As the hours passed, that number fell sharply, eventually reaching zero. But clemency returned after each of two daily breaks, during which the judges retired for food. The approval rate shot back up to near its original value, before falling again as the day wore on.
Oh man, I can confirm this. I had to take a course of SSRI's last year and my gut-mind was so relaxed and happy on them that I completely lost the sensation of hunger. It was . . . odd. I had to set timers to remember to eat.
What's interesting is that in German, you very often use the word "Bauchgefühl" (literally stomach / gut feeling) as a synonym of intuition, pretty similar as in English. I can't find the same kind of expression in Slavic or Latin languages though.
Aha, is this why I am able to think so clearly after a fast, I wonder! If anyone else wants to try it, this is what works for me : skip dinner, (take as much water as you feel like, though), sleep early, wake up early, and feel the clarity. It's amazing.
Our brains are just crazy chaotic things. Who knows what sort of factors go into affecting how our brains work.<p>That's why it's good to have routines, systems and checklists for pretty much everything. Even these won't be perfect, but at least they codify and somewhat standardize the thought processes that go into the things we do.<p>Edit:<p>And like with any good agile person, we can iterate on our systems.
This topic combined with Google's Project Ara gave me an idea. There is nothing stopping us from being able to "hot-swap" brains or brain modules.<p>If you need to do a lot of work one day or need to figure out an exceptionally difficult task, then plug-in lots of computing resources, then disconnect them afterwards to return to "normal".<p>Maybe even have a "think-tank as a service" that you can connect to. If you have a particularly daunting task ahead of you and need advice and collective brain-power then connect to a remote brain cloud and "collaborate", I'm not sure if latency will be an issue, hopefully that can be overcome.<p>Even defragging or moving memories or emotions around (or to external storage) could be done.<p>When unplugged these brain modules would be "sleeping" and would be fresh and ready to go when you needed to plug them back in.<p>The future will be weird.<p>It has been done at least once (with a man and his wife, for a limited period of time) so it's certainly possible.
This was proven practically by George W. Bush, as reported by Steven Colbert here: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7FTF4Oz4dI" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7FTF4Oz4dI</a>
Well researched article. If a little out there:<p>> His work with the gut's nervous system has led him to think that in coming years psychiatry will need to expand to treat the second brain in addition to the one atop the shoulders.<p>I'm pretty sure that will still be the Gastroenterology...<p>Shameless self plug: if you are in the bay area and interested in taking probiotics, I'd like to give you a free months supply in exchange for tracking mood & stomach function.<p>email me: david@generalbiotics.com
There is a lot of knowledge about this belly brain to be gained from studying the japanese arts (as in Dō).<p>Zazen and Aikido come to my mind, but all the Japan's traditional disciplines seems to center around the development of the Hara [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hara_(tanden)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hara_(tanden)</a>