Brains On Purpose™

Interview of renowned OCD researcher Jeffrey Schwartz

Kellie Madison [on Twitter] is working on a movie titled Machine Man about a man with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this video, she and Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz are interviewed by Dawna Lee Heising about the movie and about OCD.

Notes:

• Jeff Schwartz's upcoming book: You Are Not Your Brain: The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life
• Jeff Bell's book: Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
• Press release about the movie: Veteran Female filmmaker Kellie Madison tackles obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) with narrative feature film; Kicks off never-been-done-before grassroots campaign to raise awareness and funding
• Facebook page for Machine Man

Will the topic of neuroscience of conflict resolution soon be outdated?

A blog post from The Saybrook Forum reminds us that we almost certainly think with more than just our brains. We also think with our minds, wherever you think the mind is located. And, of course, that location is hotly debated, as we have discussed here before.

Leaving out the location (or non-location) of the mind for now, perhaps most factions in the debate can agree that cognitive processes occur not only in our brains but also our body.

From You are not your brain (Saybrook Forum):

Where is your brain?

Well, of course it’s in your head.

Your mind is in the same place, right? Well, not so fast…

As a recent article in the New York Times asks, “Is it possible that, sometimes at least, some of the activity that enables us to be the thinking, knowing, agents that we are occurs outside the brain?”

I think so, and believe the study of embodied cognition is showing us that thinking is a full-body process. (Links to past posts about embodied cognition below.) I also think that, in the not-too-distant future, people who follow the research will look askance if you say that you focus on the neuroscience of conflict resolution. Soon the the complete picture will be something like the psychoneurosomatics of conflict resolution.

I am not changing the description of my courses and blog yet, but foresee that I will soon incorporate brain, mind—and body—in my approach to the resolution of disputes and conflicts. Although I follow the research on embodied cognition, I have only recently begun to develop and apply techniques and approaches of brain-mind-body conflict resolution. Do you use embodied cognition in your conflict resolution? If so, how?

Some of my past posts about embodied cognition:

One world, one song? Probably not: Looking at music in conflict resolution

I have blogged so frequently here about the possible use of music in conflict resolution that music is one of the categories in the list over to the right. If you are interested in the question of whether or not there is any music that is universal enough to positively benefit most mediations, you will likely like the article "The Mind on Music" (Chicago Tribune).

Excerpt:

Philosophers for millenniums have marveled at the power of music to speak to our souls, to inspire joy, melancholy, aggression or calm with visceral insight beyond the grasp of our rational minds. Thanks to advances in neuroscience, researchers are beginning to understand what it is about music that touches us so deeply, and how to harness that power to soothe, uplift, comfort and heal — to use music as medicine for emotional and physical health.

...

It can seem obvious which songs would bring you up and which might bring you down. And indeed, there are structural components to songs that are meant to communicate joy, such as a fast tempo in major mode, or sadness, such as a slower tempo in minor mode. But there's a difference between the emotion communicated through music and the emotion actually induced in the listener. Our memories, personal preferences and