The Mind is a Storyteller

Write about the sources that you found for your reading this week. Be sure to give full citation information for them. Relate them to Gottschall's 5th chapter and to your emphases. Discuss why you chose them and how you found them.
I was very intrigued with the idea that creativity is associated with madness, or mental illness  I had often wondered why some of the most notable fiction writer, artists, and poets have had a history of mental illness, and if that dysfunction-for lack of a better word- contributes to the story. I look to Google Scholar to initially seek out research, at Google Scholar you don't have to be as specific in the search engine as you would with other sites like Ebsco Host or Jstor. I simply googled "mental illness and creativity"- and found loads of scholarly articles. After reading through a few, I found this one, "Strong imagination: Madness, creativity and human nature", by Daniel Nettle, (who is also quoted in our text). In our text Lord Byron is quoted as saying, "We of the craft are crazy"(92). The article from Google Scholar caught my attention from this one statement,"The author argues that our minds evolved to give us a faithful understanding of reality, to allow us to integrate into our communities, and to help us adapt our behavior to our environment. Yet, in serious mental illness, the mind does exactly the opposite of these things." The statement is reminiscent of what we read in the last chapter of our book, but furthermore relates to "The Mind is a Storyteller." The article further examines the link between creative genius and the madness the usually accompanies it. Are people that have gone mad just trying to make sense of their world? And I became curious after reading the line, "Could it be that something about the writers life- the loneliness, the frustration, the long rambles through imagination actually triggers mental illness?"(93) - The curiosity I had was, does the mental illness cause frustration or does frustration cause mental illness? Conspirators, I feel like their frustration with people not taking them seriously would cause them to go mad. 
Another section in our book that really interested me was the chapter on confabulation. Our minds need to make sense of situations- storytelling seems almost imperative for us not to go crazy. The experiment of the two ropes and the pliers was interesting. The subjects made up a story to substantiate why they came up with their idea to tie the pliers to a rope and swing it- but subconsciously they had seen a researcher swing it out of the way. Our brain cannot have gaps- it has to make sense of whats going on and Gottschall is saying storytelling  is the key. I found an article through Google Scholar that discusses whether or not confabulators try to remember the things they are confabulating- or whether it is all just fiction. The article is titled, "Do confabulators really try to remember when they confabulate? A case report." The report concluded by stating,  "We conclude that the memory dysfunction exhibited by our patient represents one of many manifestations of a more general underlying disorder characterized by an inability to select the cognitive process that matches the task requirements in conjunction with a compulsion to provide verbal responses."(Zanino, Barban, Caltigirone) The patients had a compulsion to provide verbal responses. Our minds need to make sense of its surroundings- it is not content having gaps. Storytelling is the glue to avoid conscious insanity. 
This chapter, in fact this whole book so far- seems to have been written for my emphases'. All the facts that pertain to the brain, the disorders that are discussed, ie- confabulation, the splitting of the corpus callosum to inhibit left and right brain communication is directly biological. Furthermore, the inhibition of communication to either parts of the brain deals with communication. If you dig a little deeper this last chapter really discussed a lot of intra-personal communication. 

Nettle, Daniel. "Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity and Human Nature." PsycINFO.APA. 8 (2012): 235. 
            PsycINFO. Web. 29 Sept. 2013.Zannino, Gian Daniele, Francesco Barban, Carlo Caltagirone, and 

Giovanni A. Carlesimo. "Do Confabulators 
            Really Try to Remember When They Confabulate? A Case Report." Cognitive Neuropsychology 25.6 
            (2008): 831-52. Print.

Night Story

When answering what professor Jeffreys asked us to do - to compare Wiiliam Dement's, "Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives", and Gottschalls, "Trouble is the fat red thread that ties together the fantasies of pretend play, fiction, and dreams." Seems relatively simple.
The way I see it, Dement and Gottschall's phrases are a team.  Dement said we are permitted to be insane each and every night of our lives- but we do this quietly and safely. Bad things, in whatever form they come, are an established part of dreams, "Dreamland is, incontestably, far more threatening than the average person's waking world" (Gottschall 82).  When we dream- we are allowing our minds to play out scenarios, as Gottschall says, "giving us practice in dealing with the big dilemmas of human life"(83).  But we are doing it without the reality of causing us or anyone else real harm, (unless your an elderly man with RBD).
Why is trouble so predominant in our dreams? Dreaming is the safe zone. This is where I believe Gottschalls fat red thread fits in with Dements statement. What if Dement had left out the word "insane" from his statement? "Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quiet and safe every night of our lives" - our sleep would be pretty much the same as our waking hours. Being insane in our dreams is trouble- trouble that prepares us for potential insanity in our waking lives- this is why the fat red thread is trouble. It ties insanity and extraordinary occurrences into the fabric of our ordinary lives, preparing us for what we may experience.
I find this reasoning valid. I believe we dream to prepare ourselves, I also think we tell stories when we sleep as a coping mechanism. I found an article while searching our librarie's database called, "The Function of Dreaming", by Robert Stickgold. In the article the Activation Synthesis Model proposed by Hobson and McCarley at Harvard University, is furthered questioned. In short- the Activation Synthesis Model is a theory that explains dreams as part random and part specific. Hobson and McCarley claim that dreams, their vividness, bizarreness, and relate-ability to real life- are the workings of neurophysiology and neurochemistry- and thats it. Stickgold, along with his Harvard colleague, Erin Wamsley, found that dreams are much more. According to their research- dreams are, "Far from being a random or meaningless distraction. Spontaneous cognition during states of sleep and resting wakefulness appears to serve important functions related to processing past
memories and planning for the future" (Stickgold 12).
Dreams help us plan for the future! I'm placing "plan" and "prepare" in the same category.
I find all this very interesting because, as a biology major- what is going on in the brain- how the limbic system is allowing emotions to be processed as we sleep, while our hippocampus is actively utilizing our memory is incredible. Furthermore, these physiological occurrences are happening in tandem with our inner self. Our Intra-communication- the communication processes within us is perpetuating these dreams- these simulations. This topic is a perfect integration of both biology and human communication.

http://web.ebscohost.com.libproxy.dixie.edu/ehost/detail?vid=6&sid=4a4f98af-62d5-435f-9b5c-5c83653712ef%40sessionmgr15&hid=9&bdata=JmxvZ2luLmFzcCZzaXRlPWVob3N0LWxpdmU%3d#db=aph&AN=88010423

Hell Is Story-Friendly

After reading chapter three I let it simmer in my mind for a while. After folding some laundry, and loading the dishwasher, I got online and googled random key words like, "importance of fiction, humanity and fiction, effects of fiction vs. non fiction"- and I found really interesting stuff. However, when I entered, "the importance of fiction on humanity"- an article showed up simply titled, "The Importance of Fiction", written by a blogger who goes under the name "poploser".  The reason I really like this short article is because it parallels what Professor Gottschall writes in his book. I agree with Gottschall when quoting Janet Burroway in that fiction, "allows us to love, condemn, condone, hope, dread, and hate without any of the risks those feelings ordinarily involve"( 58).  Gottschall compares fiction in our lives to a flight simulator used to train pilots. The more we engage in an activity, practice it, the more equipped we are when the time comes to execute it. We all know repetition and practice is important, and according to forward thinkers like Brian Boyd,Steven Pinker, and Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, "story is where people go to practice the key skills of human social life" (57).

In the blog I recommend, the author writes something very interesting, "Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape. This statement coordinates to what Gottschall has written regarding mirror neurons. When quoting Marco Iacoboni regarding why movies feel so authentic to us, the first two sentences  by Iacoboni are, " Because mirror neurons in our brains re-create for us the distress we see on the screen. We have empathy for the fictional characters- we know how they are feeling-because we literally experience the same feelings ourselves"(61).  So by engaging in fiction we are simulating social experiences and emotions, and furthering our social capabilities, " When we experience fiction, our minds are firing and wiring, honing the neural pathways that regulate our responses to real-life experiences"(65).

Both the chapter in our book and the research I found relates to both of my emphases.  Regarding all the research pertaining to neural mirrors and how certain parts of our brain light up when specific stimuli is presented is all biology. The fact that while we are engaging in story while these areas light up- and that the fictional stories are furthering our abilities to handle social situations correlates to human communication.

http://poploser.org/2012/05/10/the-importance-of-fiction/

Blog 3- The Riddle of Fiction

Before reading the second chapter of Gottschalls book, what Roald Dahl said confused me- "the mind of a child is a dark wood." why would a childs mind be a dark wood? To me childs play is so innocent...or so I thought. Kids completely base storytelling around a problem, and sometimes those problems are relatively dark! Why are the Grimm tales so morbid and creepy? How did a baby falling from a tree, cradle and all -become such a sweet little song? All fiction does appear to be a dark wood. I think maybe Gottschall may be trying to tell us that storytelling is not an adaptive trait of humans, however- the material our minds make up certainly is. Good overcoming evil, and resolutions to problems, are always the themes of fairy tales, stories, and nursery rhymes. The storyteller has ingrained these values into the mind of the listener. I do not think children would imagine bad things unless they were introduced to it somehow.
Jared brought something up in his blog regarding story telling that I found very noteworthy, "From a neurological standpoint it is definitely beneficial just like any other activity that stimulates a dopamine release." Humans are an innate group species. We need to be with others, to interact with others, and to feel like we belong. When we engage with each other by telling stories of overcoming adversity, or gossip- we are interacting, we are forming bonds- and dopamine is being released in our brain. That good feeling hormone perpetuates life. It enables humans to carry on, to be happy, productive, and thrive. So I am going to contradict what I said previously, "Gottschall may be trying to tell us that storytelling is not an adaptive trait of humans". I think maybe storytelling is an adaptive trait.  It is comparable to exercising, or even intercourse- they feel good, and it also perpetuates life. Storytelling has the same effects.