timothykpaulson
ID: 6KWH7EKU
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ET2 Architecture?
timothykpaulson (M)
Los Angeles, US
Immortal since Nov 1, 2007
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    From timothykpaulson
    Long Duration Psycholgy
    From cupcakewizard
    Birth Of A Galaxy
    timothykpaulson’s project
    ET2 Architecture?
    This research studio will focus on architectural horizon and ground in a new way; from the perspective of what was called the big blue marble in...
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    Long Duration Psycholgy
    Project: ET2 Architecture?
    Long-duration flights, such as a Mir residency, impose very serious psychological demands on astronauts for which significant pre-flight mental training is required. While this kind of training presently lies outside the purview of the space tourism industry, with its focus on short-duration flights, it is reasonable to project a not-so-distant future in which the "common man" may have to prepare for longer residencies in orbit and beyond. Sensory deprivation, isolation and loss of sense of time present the space resident with very formidable mental obstacles. Space ports currently under development may well house the sorts of facilities & activities designed to train tourists and professionals alike for the rigors of long-duration space habitation.

    Adrien Brody in a sensory deprivation chamber-from the film The Jacket

    The effects of mental strains induced by long-duration flight can be very detrimental to normal brain activity, as evidenced in this comparison of CT scans of the brains of two different 3 year-old boys. The image on the left is of a normal child, while the image on the right is an image of a child who suffered from sensory deprivation at an early stage of development.

    CT scans comparison of 3 year-old boys...notice the difference in brain size!


    Clip from the 1958 Bell Science Series documentary film Gateways to the Mind

    And of course, who can forget former astronaut Lisa Nowak. Was her temporary psychosis a result of long durations in orbit? Most likely not, but prove to me it wasn't.

    Former astronaut Lisa Nowak, before and after the diaper

    Thu, Nov 29, 2007  Permanent link

    Sent to project: ET2 Architecture?
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    cupcakewizard     Thu, Nov 29, 2007  Permanent link
    Great clip from Gateways to the Mind. It's fascinating that after prolonged sensory deprivation that our brains begin creating active imagery in order to thrive. So basically it's necessary for our mind's survival to maintain activity (as shown in the CT scans). Now, where do these wild images come from? What in particular causes one study to hallucinate marching eyeglasses, (SO funny!) while another sees geometric shapes? And is it plausible that this is actually an ever-present state masked by the barrage of constant stimuli in our society?
    timothykpaulson     Thu, Nov 29, 2007  Permanent link
    There's a chapter E. O. Wilson's book Consilience (great book, by the way) about the neuroscience of dreams, and it boils down to this: when real stimuli are absent, the mind loses its connection to basic causality, but since the mind never really turns off, it has to invent events. That's partly why dreams are often so strange and surreal, because they're unchecked by realistic inputs. It's like negative feedback. So the mind starts drawing from all kinds of memory reservoirs...some shallow & common, some deep & arcane.
     
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