RE: Researcher finds sites of brain activated by romance

From: Mark Mills (mmills@htcomp.net)
Date: Wed Nov 15 2000 - 16:11:28 GMT

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Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 10:11:28 -0600
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Mark Mills <mmills@htcomp.net>
Subject: RE: Researcher finds sites of brain activated by romance
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    Derek,

    Mark:
    >Evidence of the neural-meme?
    ><http://www.dallasnews.com/national/210505_love_09nat.ART.html>

    > Derek
    > No, that's evidence that the brain has an effect on your emotions, and it
    >would be surprising if it didn't. In any case 'love' can't be a meme
    >because it isn't a transmissible cultural trait, but a biological universal
    >(in humans - not sure about dogs etc), so its basis will be purely genetic.

    I didn't assert the '4 bits' of neural tissue were a meme. My question
    'evidence of the neural-meme?' was in the spirit of particle accelerator
    physicists saying they find evidence of a 'Higgins particle.' The
    physicists don't expect to 'see' the Higgins particle, only its tracks.

    What if the 4 bits of neural tissue were activated by pictures of Marilyn
    Monroe, President Clinton or Pope John-Paul?

    It might be an interesting way to document replication of a neural meme
    across populations without requiring linguistic and cultural convolutions
    to get in the way. A Martian visiting earth could potentially run the
    brain scan experiments and track the neural-meme population growth without
    knowing anything about human culture.

    Mark

    http://www.htcomp.net/markmills

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