AbOUT KEYS 2 COGNITION

What is your brain activity like? Will your brain "light up" when you spot your favorite person or dessert? Are you creative? What does that mean anyway? Is there such a thing as a good liar? Why do some people embarrass easily?

Keys2Cognition provides you with uptodate information about brain research and social/psychological models of cognition, notably Carl Jung's framework of eight mental processes. You will find here information about Jung's eight processes, a self-reflective online questionnaire, a PDF of the latest research results, and more.

I utilize EEG (electroencephalogram) and GSR (galvanic skin response) equipment to profile people's neurological activity while they perform tasks, from solving math problems to sorting objects blindfolded and telling stories based on ambiguous visual scenes.

Why bother? Check around on the Internet and in book stores and you will find numerous conceptions of human behavior. For example, one idea describes right-brain vs. left-brain folks. Does this variation exist, and if so what does it mean for you? Most of these ideas hold a kernal of truth but are speculative at best and perhaps quite wrong. Yet we make meaning and policies for our lives based on these ideas... if we wish to have meaning with value, perhaps we might want a more solid, emperical basis for our ideas.

There is plenty of neuroscience research to-date. How does this site differ? First, much neuroscience research explores dysfunction or is narrowly focused to specific questions such as extroversion, depression, and so forth (all legitimate areas for inquiry, but more focused on individual trees rather than the larger forest of human nature). Also, much neuroscience information is disorganized and presented in technical language that is not accessible even to well-educated individuals. Finally, people exist in a social context. Only recently have researchers begun to concern themselves with how people's brains behave when placed in situations with other people. Most the research reported here is aptly defined as social neuroscience, because the focus is on people in a social context.

Please contact meif you wish more information beyond what you find on this site.

Cheers,

Dario Nardi, Ph.D.
Human Complex Systems degree program
Dept. of Anthropology, UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095

 


Copyright Dario Nardi, 2007. Please contact dnardi [@] ucla.edu touse material on this site.