Hi,
This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silva_Method
Has anyone heard of this? I'm not quite sure how it could be practically
applied for learning japanese (or anything for that matter), but it does sound interesting. Or is it only a "scam"?
Thoughts?

This is so not legit. Where is any of the scientific backing to this?

I read a book about it a while ago. It promises almost supernatural powers so you can't really treat it seriously, but I actually still use a couple of techniques I learned from it: one for forgetting things that bother you, and another one that helps you fall asleep (that's how I interpret it. This technique is actually used for putting yourself in an 'alpha' state, similar to what happens when you're daydreaming, which happens to be an early stage of sleep).

Will this make me a more powerful magick user than Derren Brown?? If I combine it with The Secret and NLP and the teachings of Master Crowley.

Kubelek Wrote:one that helps you fall asleep

...now that would be useful.

"Where is any of the scientific backing to this?" --->

How about this?: "The Silva Method is now a multi-million dollar business with thousands of Silva Method instructors teaching the system over several days to groups of students in numerous countries worldwide." -quoted from the very same wikipedia page
If it works, then who cares if it can really be scientifically explained? Most of the human brain, specially the subconscious level, is mostly unknown to today's science, and cannot be interpreted scientifically.

Kubelek, could you tell me the title and aouthor of this book you've read? (Only if there's an english version), and could you elaborate the way to forget things..I'm really looking for something like this, say, a technique, which can be used to control your thoughts, memories, and emotions. As I understand the mind defines itself based upon it's experiences in the past, namely, the action-reaction between the environment and the mind, thus eliminating, or willingly forgetting "bad memories / experiences", specially on a subconscious level as well, could make us a better and more successful individual...or something like that.
Raschaverak goes to sleep *turns on brain alpha waves*

A profitable method is not a reliable or well-founded method.

[ファブリス]

If the technique "aims to reach and sustain a higher state of mental functioning, called alpha state, where brainwave frequency is eight to thirteen Hz." (according to Wikipedia) then you could experiment with binaural beats, which have some scientific backing AFAIK. There's loads of binaural beat programs out there, designed to help you reach the relaxation states.

He seems to base it off this whole notion that some people think with their left-brains and some with their right. This is false because unless you've had a hemispherectomy, you think with both sides of your brain.

But there are some differences between left-handed and right-handed people? Only for curiosity...I'm left-handed...

That whole "left brain/right brain" thing is mostly pseudoscientific junk -- there is some scientific basis to it and brain lateralization is a real scientific topic, but people spin it into bizarre things that have no basis.

cescoz Wrote:But there are some differences between left-handed and right-handed people? Only for curiosity...I'm left-handed...

You're more apt at motor control on the left side of your body than I am. All I take this to mean is that some pathways in your brain are stronger than others, including the pathways from your cerebellum to your left hand vs the pathways from your cerebellum to your right hand.

A major part of it is the fact that I practiced my fine motor skills with my right hand and you practiced yours with your left.

From experience unicycling, I've found that I can do some things better with one foot than the other. This is entirely based on how much practice I did with that foot. Since I practiced riding 1 footed mostly with my right foot, it was easier to transition into wheel walking with my left foot.

Thus, I can do spins and stuff riding with my right foot (with the left foot resting on the frame), and I can do gliding pirouettes and stuff wheelwalking with the left foot, with the right foot resting on the frame.

The best I can do with wheelwalking with my right foot is... uh ... go forward a few pushes, then allow the unicycle to slide out from under me and skittle down the street.

The best I can do riding 1 footed with my left foot is go forward, idle for a little while, then try to go backwards and fall on my face.

I don't see how right handedness/left handedness could lead to any major differences.

Raschaverak Wrote:How about this?: "The Silva Method is now a multi-million dollar business with thousands of Silva Method instructors teaching the system over several days to groups of students in numerous countries worldwide."

Oh, working as an instructor will get you more money than using the superpower you get from both sides of your brain? Or are they pretending to be so unselfish they don't use the power for themselves while running the multimillion dollar business?

Caveat: I'm not condoning the Silva method because clearly it's pseudoscience. I read it when I was a kid and I adapted a couple of techniques from it, that's all. I haven't embraced the supreme being that's supposedly helping me through my activated right hemisphere Funny fact: it's considered a sect in Poland.


Raschaverak:

the technique is pretty simple really. The whole Silva thing is based on
1. putting yourself in alpha mode, ie relaxing yourself and 'slowing down' your brain waves. The same technique is used in language learning btw, in a so called SITA system. I don't know if it's popular outside of Poland, but here they make some big bucks.
2. Imagining and visualising things in that state, while reassuring yourself that you can do the things you want to do.

So when something is bothering me, let's say an unpleasant image, or an embarassing memory, I 'put' that memory at the tips of my fingers, and then shake it off like it's water.
Seems silly but it works for me. I've been doing it since I was 10 or so.

When I can't fall asleep because my mind is occupied with a million things, I imagine walking down the stairs into a pitch-black cellar, while breathing slowly and counting backwards from 100 to one. It happens quite often that I don't get to 1, as I start half-dreaming instead of pondering the events of the day.

The book was written by Jose Silva himself, and from what I remember it contained a lot of pseudo scientific talk about the brain, a set of exercises on how to put yourself in a relaxed state and visualise things, and also several chapters describing how you can use his method to find lost people, posessions, win the lottery and whatnot.

____
Yes, you can train your kid to be right-handed even if he clearly is left-handed, but this can have adverse effects, and it is a practice that's becoming obsolete (although I remember that when I went to elementary school left-handed kids were forced to conform and use their right hand. It was a standard practice.). We're pre-wired to be either left-, right-handed or ambidexterous. Also it's not true to say that a right handed person has his writing area in the cortex of the left hemisphere. They exist on both sides, but the one on the other side is usually the primary one. Damage to the certain areas in the cortex in each hemisphere, such as reading, writing or speaking areas, will cause different disorders depending on whether it's the secondary or primary center. Dividing your brain in half (corpus callosum to be precise) funnily, usually doesn't. It's sometimes performed in severe epilepsy. You may be familiar with one particularly nasty side effect of it, however, as it's made its way to the pop culture: the evil hand syndrome.

Sorry for incorrect jargon or lack there-of, but I haven't studied it in English.

This seems like a pretty good primer... http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/a/a_10/a...r_lan.html - Especially the section that begins with this paragraph:

"Lastly, a number of researchers now reject classic locationist models of language such as Geschwind’s and Mesulam’s. Instead, they conceptualize language, and cognitive functions in general, as being distributed across anatomically separate areas that process information in parallel (rather than serially, from one “language area” to another)."

Also see 2004's 'discovery' of 'Geschwind's Territory' (which is mentioned somewhere on that site I linked above): http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2004/12/fi...inds_.html - Note where it, like Wikipedia on handedness and language, mentions the AF (arcuate fasciculus) connecting Broca's and Wernicke's, followed by this 2009 article which 'complicates' things further: http://en.scientificcommons.org/50118943

Abstract: In aphasia literature, it has been considered that a speech repetition defect represents the main constituent of conduction aphasia. Conduction aphasia has frequently been interpreted as a language impairment due to lesions of the arcuate fasciculus (AF) that disconnect receptive language areas from expressive ones. Modern neuroradiological studies suggest that the AF connects posterior receptive areas with premotor/motor areas, and not with Broca's area. Some clinical and neurophysiological findings challenge the role of the AF in language transferring. Unusual cases of inter-hemispheric dissociation of language lateralization (e.g. Broca's area in the left, and Wernicke's area in the right hemisphere) have been reported without evident repetition defects; electrocortical studies have found that the AF not only transmits information from temporal to frontal areas, but also in the opposite direction; transferring of speech information from the temporal to the frontal lobe utilizes two different streams and conduction aphasia can be found in cases of cortical damage without subcortical extension. Taken altogether, these findings may suggest that the AF is not required for repetition although could have a subsidiary role in it. A new language network model is proposed, emphasizing that the AF connects posterior brain areas with Broca's area via a relay station in the premotor/motor areas.

If you can, get a hold of Dehaene's book Reading in the Brain, which discusses the 'letterbox area', and he has an interesting idea of 'neuronal recycling'. He's written a bit on the visual-semantic aspects of kanji as well and he and Dennett inform many of my ideas on consciousness: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dehaene0...index.html ... See how I don't mention 'how the brain processes kanji' thread, embodied cognition, or emergentism? Oh, oops.

Some skills we're naturally cross-dominant in to varying degrees, from what I've read. Inspired by books where I read about balancing the brain, that talked of the corpus callosum as analyzed in pianists and how it was thicker because of the connections built up--perhaps my first taste of the potentials of neuroplasticity well into adulthood (see Wikipedia article on that)--I taught myself to do many things with both hands, from the simple to the complex. Some things I am better at with my off hand, such as wielding an implement used in a particular martial art I once studied--that was deliberate through practice, but I overcompensated a bit with drills on that side. I can not use ESP and listening to binaural beats will not let you levitate. I do have a general increased comfort level when learning to do something new with my off hand, or even when I let skills trained with my off hand deteriorate, they still 'feel' natural/comfortable. More on binaural beats (scroll down for some links to current research): http://greenmanskeptic.blogspot.com/2009...fiers.html

Bonus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralizat...e_research

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/...in_myt.php

As for IQ, I have foils and elaborately time-wasting arguments elsewhere for topics like that, but I'm with this side of that argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenc..._and_views (Mismeasure of Man, etc., though both criticisms and models have become more complex since then)