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A neurological basis for environmental psychology

Posted by MisterB on August 14, 2000, at 2:56:55

If there is an industrial basis to the increasing prevelance of mental distress in our society, perhaps it results from constant stimulation and the abrubt patterns of change that distinquish fabricated systems from natural systems. This passage from Ernest Kent's "The Brains of Men and Machines" describes a likely mechanism...

"As the axons carrying sensory information to those areas which analyze its contents pass by the reticular formation, they give off branches which contact cells in the lateral part of the reticular formation. These cells in turn activate cells in the central portion of the reticular formation which give off long axons that carry activation 'control' impulses to the rest of the brain. What is interesting here is that there is little attempt to keep the sensory input lines separate. Inputs from receptors for touch, sound, light, and all other senses all synapse at the same neurons. There is no clear qualitative component in the reticular formation's input data. What it is responding to is the total amount of sensory activity in the receptors, or in other words, the general level of environmental noise. Like all sensory systems, this one responds most strongly to things that change. Thus, abrupt changes in the level of sensory activity at any sensory receptor will serve to activate the reticular formation and arouse the rest of the nervous system. Strange as it may seem, it is not the conscious perception of sensory input that is arousing."


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