Breathe In, Breathe Out

5 Reasons I Reunited with Inspiration

Years ago, before I became enlightened and switched from Windows to OS X, I used a mind mapping application named Inspiration . This was right after I'd begun using The Pyramid Principle to organize my writing and thinking. I was looking for a diagramming tool that would let me build and edit pyramids on the computer instead of by hand. There wasn't much else out there, so I tried Inspiration.

And for the most part I liked it, even though it didn't really let me build idea pyramids the way I want to. That early version of Inspiration lacked the ability to add "free floating" topics, that is, topics not linked to anther topic.

Frustrated, I gave up updating the software and eventually forgot about it.

Then one day Windows crashed one too many times to suit me, and I switched to the Mac and OS X. With my new found love of graphical interfaces, I soon found mind mapping apps for the Mac, seemingly trying all of them at one time or another.

I settled on two: Novamind and Mindcad Incubator. Novamind offers lots of bells and whistles, but still lacks the ability to add free floating topics; everything needs to be connected to the central topic. Incubator offers the independent topics, but skimps on other seemingly standard mapping features.

I'm always on the lookout for information on mind mapping, so when I saw that Chuck Frey was deeply discounting his book on mind mapping tools, I bought a copy. Frey offers links to reviews of many a mapping tool, and Inspiration was among them. Frey's positive review led me to the Inspiration site, a download and eventual purchase of Inspiration.

After these many years, I was back. Here's why:

• It offers free floating topics - You can put topics where ever you want: there's no need to link them to any other topic. This lets me build my beloved idea pyramids to my heart's content.

• It offers more than mind maps - Concept maps, webs, trees, almost anything you'd want. Inspiration offers the ability to add text labels to any link between topics, making it possible to do these other types of maps.

• It has an integrated dictionary / thesaurus - Highlight a word anywhere in a map and up pops a tool with a dictionary that defines the word in one column and a thesauras in another that gives you synonyms and antonyms for that word. Very useful for brainstorming.

• It can generate web sites, not just web pages - Use the Site Skeleton option to generate the makings of entire websites, not just an individual web page or image.

• It's very easy to use - As are most mapping applications. But the design and completeness of functions on the program's toolbar integration sets it apart.

My reunion with Inspiration has been a happy one. In fact, I've used it to compose this blog post in a fairly short time. I'm looking forward to many more.

If you're looking for a mind mapping application, on either OS X or (shudder) Windows, don't overlook Inspiration. Don't let the Inspiration web site's focus on the educational market discourage you, either. Inspiration can hold its own with any other app out there.

Brain Maps: What You Might Not Know About Your Brain and Your Body

Am I Cockeyed?

My back is lying against a carpeted floor in a relatively new building. The floor should be level, but it feels like it slants dramatically to the right like one of those optical illusion houses. Only it doesn't. Remember, it's new construction. Put a level down and it would tells us there's nothing wrong with the floor.

Maybe it's me. I feel the slanting sensation very clearly. Could I have a cockeyed back all of a sudden? No, I'm not really cockeyed, but it sure feels that way. What's really going on is not in my body, not literally. I'm sensing myself as cockeyed because of what's happened in my brain as a result of performing half of an exercise in something called the Feldenkrais Method. And that's given me the illusion that the room is tilted.

Ironically, the sense of embodiment that let's you feel like, well, like you is in your brain. More specifically, it's in the maps of your body that reside in the brain. I've had experience working with these maps since I became a Feldenkrais Method practitioner almost ten years ago.

Evidence of these maps dates back to only the 1930s. And science being done today is turning up even more stuff about them and the way they work.to make us who we are, or at least feel like it. I've always wanted to know more about them. But not being academically inclined, material on the subject has been hard for me to find. Until now.

Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee's The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help Your Do (Almost) Everything Better, is a new book that clearly explains what body maps are and how they work.

What are body maps?

The book is too rich with information about the maps to write about in one blog post. So let me spin a helicopter view here: what are body maps and how do they work?

Body maps are representations of the various parts of you in brain tissue and in a number of different brain locations at that. There is not just one type of map. The basic types are maps for touch and movement. Another type sends and received information to the viscera.

Touch maps represent the sensations corresponding to parts of you - one for each hand, arm, leg and so on. When something touches one of these parts or a part moves in space, it activates one or more of the corresponding touch maps in the brain. Your brain kindly puts all this information together to give you a sense of your embodied self that changes as you and your environment change.

Touch maps (or homunculi) were uncovered in the 1930s by brain surgeon Wilder Penfield. To do this, Penfield would probe a part of the brain and then have the awake patient report what they felt. (Curiously, there aren't pain receptors in the brain itself, so the awakened state was possible for this procedure.)

Now days, we have fancy scanners that let us peer into the brain in real time without the need to open up the skull. That makes all sorts of research possible, which the Blakeslees present clearly.

Movement maps send messages to the muscles to have them do your bidding. These movement maps are separate from the touch maps, but work intimately with them.

Body maps are changeable!

The most amazing part of this is the plasticity the body maps repeatedly demonstrate. That is, the maps can change, sometimes dramatically, and not always for the better. (Think of strokes or other types of brain damage.)

But they can also change from experience or practice. Practice playing musical scales long enough, and your touch and motor maps adjust accordingly: your playing become smoother, maybe easier to listen to.

My own sensation of cockeyedness after a Feldenkrais session is another example of plasticity in the brain maps. Only this time it was produced by novel experience, small and highly unusual movements that I was careful to sense as accurately as I could as I was making them.

I think the Blakeslee's book really fills a void for accessible information about this fascinating topic. Check it out.

I plan on writing much more here about brain map plasticity. Look for posts like:

• Why intelligence depends on brain maps.

• How tools can become part of your brain maps

• How some athletic or performance motor skills can go awry and what you (may be able) to do about it

• Your body extends much farther than you think

• Out of body experiences and brain maps.

Quitters Can Be Winners

In (the original)  Rocky movie, Sylvester Stallone plays a fighter who never gives up - even when the champ is beating the crap out of him. The Rocky character's dream was to "go the distance" with the champ, and seemingly gave everything he had to get there.

But is it always a great idea to never give up, no matter what? Probably not, according to some psychological research cited in Psychology: Why Quitting is Good for You  - Newsweek Mind Matters - MSNBC.com .

The study divided its subjects into Bulldogs (who never give up) and Quitters (who ... you know.) It seems the Bulldogs run into more problems with stress and health than the Quitters.

But is giving up really the bugaboo that society sometimes makes it? Writer and blogger Wray Herbert puts a different spin on it:

It’s said that depressed people have a more realistic view of the world, and in fact some evolutionary psychologists now believe that depression may have had survival value when we were evolving on the savannahs. Depression is what told our bodies to slow down and take stock of the situation, be cautious, don’t dis the silverback. Today a little melancholy might help us give up on that Olympic gold, and in the long run avoid killers like diabetes and heart disease.

Don't get me wrong here; taking on a challenge is usually a good motivator. But when the goal becomes realistically unattainable, it may be time to reassess. That doesn't alway make for a great story though.

Eyes (and Other Senses) in the Back of the Head

Ever heard of peripersonal space? It's "the bubble of space around a person's body that his brain as part of him in its map of his body."

Body map? Yeah, it turns out that the human brain is filled with representations of the body and the environment it finds itself in. The maps are for both sensing and for moving. It's these maps that you use to move your arm or leg, and not the muscles that reside there, at least not directly.

Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee beautifully and clearly describe the ideas of body brain maps in The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better. I just finished an initial reading yesterday, and I plan to have much more to say about this wonderful book. Lots of very rich Feldenkrais-related material here.

But what reminded me of it was this New Scientist post on an experimental headband that helps its wearers sense physical stuff around them when blindfolded. There are even some video illustrations. And the New Scientist post mentions other sources of information about this sort of contraption.

It's not hard to predict that these sorts of haptic devices will be widely available, probably pretty soon. What'll be really interesting is when they hit the consumer market. All sorts of athletic applications, I'd think.

But most interesting to me is what kind of effect it'll have on kids as they develop. Maybe the term "eyes in the back of the head" will be more than a metaphor in the future.

Not Your Father's Nursery School

"If your goal is to get your kid into an Ivy League school, this is definitely the wrong place to be,” Goldman said. “But we hope the kids will be so well educated that they get into any place they want.”

I'd never have guessed that quote came from one of the founders of the Blue Man Group. But it did, because these three guys have started a nursery school heavily influenced by the Reggio Emilia educational approach that emphasizes kiddie creativity. But they're also including Blue Man Group stuff:

During a trial run of the center for a group of two- and three-year-olds last year, Goldman and Wink experimented with incorporating actual bits of Blue Man Group business into the curriculum. They decided against teaching their pupils how to catch paintballs in their mouths (“Maybe in second grade,” Goldman said), but they did adapt their spin-art routine, which involves a Blue Man spitting paint onto a canvas rotated by his fellow Blue Men, as an exercise in cooperation. “By the end of the experience,” Wink said, “they got to a tribal place.”

OK, then.

Can't wait for the Cirque du Soleil school. Might be fun, but gym class might be tough.

Here's a happy fellow

OK, here we are on the iPhone. Seems pretty easy at least this first post. And there's always that self-correcting keyboard thing to lean on.

It would be nice if there were something like this on the regular keyboard.

Hello

I hadn't thought about doing a Typepad blog until they announced an iPhone version today. So we'll see what happens with this.