Pretty neat stuff.

I’ve watched a lot of porn. You’d think with all this reference material, my mind would be able to conjour up some fantastic scenarios. But no, my imagination is totally shot. The best I can do is remember porn that I have watched in the past. I think the imagination center in my brain has atrophied from underuse, because I remember it being more active back in the days.

As for depression…

The mind has an incredible ability to explain away almost anything, even with no information to go on. I read this article recently about studies on people with split brains, the bundle of neurons connecting the two halves being cut. Surprisingly, this condition does not really affect them much in daily life, the two halves are able to communicate with each other using different means, such as subtle back and forth movements of the head to allow both eyes to see what the other is seeing.

In artifical situations, with the eyes being seperated by goggles or a wall between the eyes, weirdness manifests. In particular, if a displeasing image is shown to the left eye (thus fed to the right brain), this would make the subject uncomfortable or sad or some other negative emotion. The left brain would pick up on the changed emotions (presumably since both halves are still connected to the brain stem), but it would have no idea as to why they changed because it did see the displeasing image. Instead of just admiting ignorance, the brain instantly makes up a reason using whatever information it does have, no matter how unrelated. When the subject was asked why they were feeling ‘upset’, the most common response was that the person administering the experiment was being a jerk, or some such. The exact opposit would happen if the subject was shown a pleasent image.

The amazing thing about this is the brains rationalization took place without any conscience realization by the subject. As far as they are concerned, ‘the experimenter being a jerk’ is simply a fact. Our brains ability to fill in the blanks can lead us to all sorts of erroneus conclusions, and knowing that it has this ability cannot help us distinguish between reality and our brains truthiness equations; to our conscience minds, it’s all the same. It’s like opening a Mad Libs and seeing all the blanks filled in already, even when they are not.