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Take What You Want From Me, But Give Me The Option To Say Yes Or No Please. Reaching to my brain without my permission & play with as you want! In whose law you shit satellite station people (terrorists)! Don't Rush Me In Shit Of Yours! Should I Shit With You All? Don't Force Me Please. I Don't Want To Fight Any Of You. Real God Is My God. Fight My God Before Me. Who Wants To Be Me? To Live In Me! Or In My Brain! Who I Am For You To Do So? Any Better? Shit Brains God Is Waiting. I Am Male Or Female What Any Of You Are? Any Better? Don't Play With Me. Playing With Your Own God Own Self's But Not With Me. Stop Your Satan Within Your Selves. Shame On You All. & Shame On Those Who Did Sacrifice Me To You All. And Shut Up All. My God Is So Much Angry On All Of You Because I Cant Find Peace Among You All. Who Wins? GOD Or Satan? I'm Not Taking Cover Behind Any Nation Or Religion! But Under My God I'm Protected From All Of You. What You Want Still?

One satellite can report to many! & so on!

I'm Waiting. I'm Limited But My God Is Un Limited. Those Behind The Shadows Are Still Learning From Me Assuming That I yet To Teach Their Communities. My Life Gone On Waste For All I Guess. Stop Begging People & Live With God Not With Me. That Goes For All. Shut The Fuck Up. Why I'm Suffering? I want Explanation To Show It To You All. My Life Gone On Waste For What & To Whom? Those Who Plays With Our Brains Are Needed To Expose With Confession Of What They Were Doing To Us All & Why Still They Doing So & Still Using TV. Indoor Of Ours? Are They Better Than God? Is This Technology Thought Them To Be So! What About God?

No Zigzag Way

's Please. Who You All To Do This To God? Good Among You & Shit Among You. What Remains Among You All? Good Or Bad? War Or Peace? Who Is God? I am a human but not perfect even while I'm naked, told you all, you'll picked a wrong person to play with since a long time back. Animals feels what's wrong with you all? leave me alone with my God please. Even if I go in the darkest deepest valley of death I wont be afraid once God with me & I'm with. I don't see any reason for me to suffer this much! Since when this virus were there? Are we living or dying? Is there meaning to survive to live with so much pain? Who did this to me with so much insisting of killings? Who brought this Satan Virus to us all since long time back to last for now? This what I felt & still feeling. Did I ask for any of it! I have the biggest why to ask! Who Is Perfect? Who crucified Jesus! killers, cheaters they were. Don't do this mistake again please if it was. NASA & your programs buss off. Or there shall be no God to all. Who wants my past? While God can open not only your pasts put also Nations pasts & histories! As well your religions pasts once we all are connected with brains. !!!! Are we living with two heads now? Logic & un logic? Or learning? Well stick with logic please. Who those behind the shadows to do so to all of us? Stop blaming me. Blame your self's for blaming me. All waiting all to understand. Your kids gives much of hell to me & all of you knows that! a Human Nature to learn & seeks for more. Even Families still learning. What future you all seeking for? Even for your children's! What about God? Bring me my wasted years of my life you Satan's! My soul belongs to me, to my God & to no one else. Any of you God or Satan? Answer this question please! That goes for all of you to ask to ask your self's. Stop killing me. Are you all are sick?! Stop thanking me or blaming me. all of you the same to me. I wish some one helps me. some one who knows God like me. It's over since the day it started! but no one wants to end it. (why?) Because they like to learn for free (is there anything for free), to destroy man kind inner believe towards believing in mighty God & mixing with total different levels of brains. If I'm bad what about you? I can say fuck you all! No matter those eyes of mine or those ears of mine to see & hear, I remain the same as I am. A Human! or maybe wanting me something else? Leave something good in my life at least GOD. Why don't you stop it all! I don't like to be involved with any of you from here or else where. I treat people as how I want them to treat me. Logic honest human & honest logic humans (no zigzag ways please). Stop sucking my brain you Vampires you Dracula’s. Suck all brains then! Who is miss using technology ha? Answer this question your selves. What about God? Challenging God you shit brains behind the shadows in your shit satellite stations assuming Virus in the air. Ask your selves where this virus such as cow madness came from! People started since long back to kill people by their tongs & by their inner thinking. Blaming & making much suffering to many good & bad people that each has a family. My mother last words of her was (((Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God))) She fallen sick with liver cancer in Jordan & suffered a lot for months. Then taken to

Kuwait

for medical treatment & died. Then shifted to

Jordan

to be parried. Her last words I heard by phone from

Kuwait

Hi Satellite Station People in Jordan in 2 locations Baqaa old satellite station & Balqaa newer one by Kuwait money & kuwaties share holders since 2002 at the time of "sept 11th".Artificial God & Artificial Satan. Ohh is it nice. Still having a nice fun? Should we all to shit blood & to have bubbles in asshols to satisfy all? Making a human afraid to look for a job even! or stopping from finding any! Should I start to wanck to please you! I Used to tell you all before 10 years & more: Once there is no humanity & mercy in hearts & minds then what its going to be? Nothing but shit, any better than that? Since when Satan in station speaks peace? You tell me!

Today 27th, Oct 2010

I opened the main door & found this cat that been crying at night. I thought its cry was out of hunger & I knew it wasn’t my cat’s voice. I been laying down going to sleep, I said to my self, at morning if it still there I’ll feed some & went to deep sleep. Today when I got up, saw it! It was so hurt, it’s mouth was almost half away out! But teeth were all there. Young cat it was almost 2 months old (black & white) So skinny & so in pain. Cant even to stand, some one brought to my door. My cat didn’t show since last 2 day’s!

I wondered & said it’s ok, have to take care of this one now. I went & purchased some cold meat to feed, it wanted to eat but with pain. Eat so less. I brought some water & it’s head falls into full plate & can’t take a breath. Raising it’s head just to breath. I said it needs more care, went to pharmacy & brought it some medicine to put on the huge cut that large portion of it’s flesh were out & to insert medical needle to provide it with fresh milk. Then to cover its wounds with white powder from pharmacy.

I did the best I could, but it went more sicker within no time its soul to be given to belonging. It took 4 to 5 time that long deep breath watching it’s stomach blowing several time then stopped while its eyes open. It died while I’m watching. Didn’t know what to do! A living being I lost while trying my best. Can any of you to bring back its soul?

Waited for 2 hours to put it in a plastic bag to put in carbage tank. Said God have mercy on its soul. What about you guy’s, what do you think!

------- All has to confess. -------

Satanism’s & their satellites networks:

1) Did they make you to loose so much money?

2) Did they make you to feel that you’re bad?

3) Did they make you to feel that you’re not welcomed to stay at home & in your country?

4) Did they make you to feel that you’re chased by all man kind as if you are criminal nation?

5) Did they beat your heart & your brain by satellites & by neighborhood brains?

6) Did they make a subject out of you & family for all to discuss everything about as if something never ends & makes you to suffer day & night?

7) Did they blame you just because you are a human?

8) Did they try to kill you several times by car?

9) Did they try to rape your privacy & independency all times?

10) Did they start to say that’s why we all dead?

11) Did they still Bla Bla Bla about reading your brain as if they finding answers to solve your problems or still analyzing your past, present & future?

12) Did they solve any of you’re problems?

13) Did they rape you’re past & present by force? Assuming movie, war, peace, business, security, virus & human rights?

14) Did they approached to you by Satellites & played with your TV. Indoor at home?

15) Did they connected you’re inner brain thinking with other countries brains?

16) Did they scanned you’re in brain many times taking you back to past since the day of birth?

17) Did they try always to interfere with you’re privacy of thinking?

18) Did they corrupt you’re inner mind assuming you’re bad or good everyday?

19) Did they try to keep you in their inner thinking to approach to you’re brain to keep you in shame at all times?

20) Did they try to make you to loose control over your self?

21) Did they laugh at you in TV?

22) Did they tell you to play with your self?

23) Did they do or don’t of what ever?

24) Did you hear whisperings in you’re inner skull & chest?

25) Did you hear you’re inner thinking sound in the air?

26) Did you hear voices speaking about you in the streets?

27) Did you hear threatening from many sounds assuming that you with or against the King?

28) Did you hear a voice from TV. To suicide your self?

29) Did you hear that the King want to see own people trough you?

30) Did you hear bad words about the king, government & public?

31) Did you hear that you are involved with upper country heads?

32) Did you try to explain at all times that your soul belongs to you?

33) Did you hear that entire world gone on sane?

34) Did you hear speaking sounds about your son, daughter, father & mother?

35) Did you survive under so much daily pain?

36) Did you feel you living alone but all brains living with you?

37) Did you feel that all behaving Gods & Satan’s upon you?

38) Were they scanning on you to laugh at you while using WC?

39) Were your inner mind corrupted during your prayer?

40) Did you witness that people taking everything from your brain, some laugh, some shout, some understand, some wonders & ask to gain answers from you on daily bases by forcing you to confess?

41) Have you fallen sick several times a day for the last 11years & more?

42) Did you cry day & night with so much pain that kills you inside knowing some one watching & witnessing your pain & having fun a human suffering. What would they gain? What I got to do with any mankind issues once been the victim of you all! Play far away from my brain you brain suckers.

Causing viruses in the air that causing us all cancers & madness! Using NASA package that its programs full of viruses above humans!

1) Rain Brain Scan (all to one & one to all!) (Toura "little" Poura "much")To how many groups or families?

2) Tele-Transport (Input-Output data to machine storages & human brains!)

3) Dynamic Eyes (dim light from above & sparks that causes blindness using for the above 1 & 2!)

4) Media usages for above 1+2+3! (TV, Radio, Mobiles, Sounds in the air, indoor & human inners!).

This is Satan work & waste of time. Is God without meaning now? God remains the only winner. You all have past & histories! Who any among of you without sins & mistakes? Now all of you are sinners & mistake holders till the rest of your lives. Having fun with victims! Thanks to NASA package & your inner minds. God still witnessing each one of you. Brain talk & connection! Virus’s from satellite (sound matching mixing) remains in recordable Cd’s! Other than dead belonging ones words to reach to our brains! Who still plays with such viruses? Any of you better than God?

------ All has to confess.---

Dear highest level ever business makers in the entire world wide on this global planet Earth of ours. Good day to you all;

My regards to your esteemed concerns along with your valuable teams of yours.

Concerning the entire world wide peace & justice, concerning satellite stations & their satellites in space.

As we all knows that there is agreements between manufactures (NASA) & buyers (Countries) NASA build a huge rockets & different types of satellites. Each satellite has a black box full of information’s that shows the full usage of used satellites & how been used such as airplane. Each satellite in the space needs maintenance once there is something wrong. Some viruses, some technical support, some over usage parts yet to be replaced & what ever might happen in connection with station on ground.

For a country to pay much budget to have such project which costs much in accordance to different agreements between. After all it is a business.

Knowing that much of what went wrong for the last 10years & more were un logic to us all. Lot of involvements from many countries took over even in space. News, sound matching mixings in TV, radio & even cell phones! Movies tell of what going on. At the end Peace & war. Approaching to human brains to play with! That sucks.

Sucking human memories & scanning using NASA Package full of virus’s means death to many humans.

Looking at smaller issues to ignore the real big ones, means illegal & against the truth, God & all types of Human law's. Such package is so danger not only to certain humans but to all mankind. It is called killings the way of how been used & with this much of insisting without a break, mainly connected with many other satellites in space & stations on ground. This caused hell to many families. After all it is a Satan work that play’s with the real law of God’s creation. This electro magnetic radiation field is killing virus can kills all beings & make life shorter. A human has sensors & nerves. To loose control means corruptions even in streets & between families.

Once such happens this might lead to internal & external corruptions due to family relations in all over the world. Who wants this to happen? Other than that human rights & what about real God the one who created the entire Universe.

Or is it some business to supply such package for other types for numbers of business!

Such NASA Package full of viruses been used, that also effected other satellites, countries & populations! Has to be eliminated by you NASA International. Same as in the movie of Arnold Shartznagger in terminator III. Who wants a 3rd world war to start? We humans, we fall sick, angry, up normal, going coco & so on. You also having families & caring for & for their future! This also can be called International Peace. I know this might cost much for certain countries. Why not once it’s serving God. Past is past, now & then much important. This also to stop terror activities.

Budgets speak to you NASA & maybe money can take us all back to normal life.

After all, this is a good business to you NASA. You know how big the universe that contains much Galaxies & planets (who creates?) Now a day’s nations caring sins & mistakes in their inners for not solving such problem. All are guilty for having physical torching to them selves & to others. Reaching to no where & at the end all say’s God to help. This type of virus should have no existence in any nation once Universal Justice is there. As if all living & still living in a big lie not knowing what’s still coming! Good or bad! But Law & God is logic for us all. In whose law this still going on? Money, money that’s so funny in a rich man’s world. How much do you want? Help, a Satan virus took over us all. SOS poor lonely planet. Should we keep on crying? For how long? What a big waste. Or this is my feelings only?

As you know that since 11th Sept 2002 up to now un logic took over many countries with this type of virus. Movies, musical clips & songs, been established to play certain roles to expose such virus & what can do to mankind.

United States of America along with Arab world played as America under attack with Al Qeeda organization assuming business & peace. This type of business trapped many families & individuals. Created victims nonsense & made them to loose much. Made people to trap people but the question is: is this logic?

History been created & registered in countries history for still coming future to call for. Was it war or peace? One for all & all for one! (Human issues one by one) but once for all (one satellite to stop for all to stop such NASA package). So it is International Issue (world wide) since that time. All now including populations are involved! Waiting for something to happen without knowing what might it be.

What about the 1) future, 2) history, 3) peace & 4) justice? The main question is what about GOD that covers the 4 mentioned above & much more. Our planet is still under attack. Shame on all. Why should I go trough this to speak about to you all even by force & under pressure? That's why all God's (different brains with different levels, different age, different traditions & religions, males & females!) is this law or business or something else! Is this God's wish? One more thing, stop sharing my brain many God's & how many you all? What it got to do with me or with any of you? It could happen to any of us at any time! Be aware from the coming unknown. As if a subject that can not be closed! Hi Electronic Governments, still wishes to play? All satellites hacks on each others in the space that gravity has no existence & easier to pick any signals everything is connected! Seek knowledge far away from me! What I got to do with any of you? You all hurt me so much! I did not ask for this owner! Besides I'm not Jesus of yours. Oh God have mercy on us all & heal the world. It seems all been trapped! All has to quiet, stop playing with viruses. Are Tsunamis & Earthquakes natural disasters or artificial? Once a satellite can vibrate a human skull. What a magic! Mini Skull quake, Heart quake & Body quake? Other than brains redirecting & torching. What a technology! Where is peace? God is so angry.

------- At the end All has to confess.------

Knowledge & information seekers, those behind the shadows once they takes by any type of technology & share such information's by force or not Has to pay in return. such right has to be reserved to those who is suffering & not wanting to give any of their secrets. This is called terrorists against human brain & soul (a victim been created) & once there are witnesses this also to assure the victim rights. This is the logic to all man kind mainly this remained for over than 12 years playing with a human nerve system. Or there shall be no human rights or no God to many that might create a war as during such period lot of corruptions took over a place. The money or what ever commodities can be exchanged but a human brain & suffering soul with what to be exchanged. Satellites played with human destiny assuming business & trade with human brains & inner feelings & playing still with souls to create lecturing or corruptions using dark side & bright side of a human brain & inner believes. No private secrets, work or business & no future thinking once taking the thinking what to do for tomorrow! Gods or Satan's, FBI, Judges. Advocates, Hollywood, Bollywood! Artificial or Natural! Logic not logic! Broad casting to many satellite channels in one satellite such as Arab & Nile Sat & branch satellites that plays with all Sat's as well. Soul marriage been created with inner thinking & brain suckers. Did you all forget about God for over than 12 years? & keeping parrying victims while they still alive! Read the meaning of money below!

Please Read:

Now a days, It seems we are living in a "human brain sucking" life which is completely different than what was in the past either real facts or only in movies! Such as "Wolf Man, Dracula & Vampires". Is this a movie or a real fact Logic that all are living since past years?

WOLFMAN You don't understand. Every night when the moon is full I turn into a wolf.

COSTELLO You and twenty million other guys!

THE ORIGINAL PRINCE DRACULA

Bran Castle

Bran Castle sits high in the mountains of Transylvania, a region in central Romania. Prince Vlad Dracula, who inspired the Count Dracula of horror fame, used the castle as his headquarters during raids on Transylvania in the 15th century.

Encarta Encyclopedia

Susan McCartney/Photo Researchers, Inc.

The novel by Stoker was inspired by the fearsome reputation of Vlad Dracula, prince of Walachia (now part of Romania). Vlad was born about 1431 in Transylvania, the son of Vlad Dracul, who was then in exile. Dracul means “dragon” or “devil” in Romanian, and dracula was known by his enemies as “son of the devil.” They were fierce rulers. Vlad Dracul was murdered in 1447, and his son ruled by terror. By the time Vlad Dracula was overthrown in 1462, he had killed tens of thousands of his people, primarily by impaling them on stakes, a gruesome way to die. Vlad became known as Vlad the Impaler.

Vampires are creatures of legend and folklore. Like all vampires, Count Dracula is able to come to life each night by sucking the blood of living people. When Dracula leaves his castle in Transylvania to go to England, he creates a reign of terror in the Stoker novel. After first attacking the beautiful Lucy Westenra, who later becomes a vampire, Dracula seeks out her friend Mina Harker. As Dracula pursues his victims he is, in turn, pursued by Jonathan Harker, a lawyer married to Mina. Harker is convinced by Dutch scientist Abraham Van Helsing that the only way to stop Dracula is to find the coffin that conceals him during the day and drive a stake through his heart. Harker discovers the coffin and Dracula is destroyed.

Brain Suckers, stop killing us all. Are we all humans or not? Away from our brains.

Vampire, in folklore, a corpse that rises from the grave during the night, often in the form of a bat, and, for nourishment, sucks the blood of sleeping humans. Various talismans and herbs supposedly avert vampires, but, according to tradition, they can be destroyed only by cremation or by stakes driven through their hearts. Belief in vampires originated in ancient times and was especially widespread among the Slavs. The novel Dracula (1897) by the British writer Bram Stoker tells the story of the Transylvanian vampire Count Dracula, who became one of the most popular subjects of horror films.

Cremation, practice of burning human corpses. In cremation the body is reduced to ashes in specially constructed furnaces; the ashes are then preserved in an urn, and are either buried in the urn, or are scattered (often in accordance with the wishes of the deceased, for instance, at sea, or over sacred ground).

Evidence of cremation dates from antiquity. Pottery vessels from the Neolithic Period, filled with the ashes of several individuals, have been found throughout Europe. Between 1400 BC and AD 200, cremation was the preferred burial custom, especially among Roman aristocrats; the Caesar family was one of many to choose this mode. Between the 3rd and 19th centuries, Christianity became widely accepted. Its doctrines forbade cremation because of the belief that the body could not be resurrected if it were destroyed. Early Jews also prohibited cremation, believing it was the desecration of a work of God. Orthodox Jews, the Eastern Orthodox Christian Churches, and Muslims are still forbidden to cremate their dead. Other groups of people, especially in India, continued to practise cremation and still do today. At present, cremation is practised by some Jews and Christians, and by Buddhists, Sikhs, and Hindus.

Economic and sanitary considerations are the principal reasons for the increased number of cremations in recent years. Expanding populations have created land shortages, causing a space for burial to become scarce and expensive. In addition, burial can sometimes contaminate water supplies for entire communities. This is especially serious when death has been caused by a highly contagious disease.

A society advocating cremation was founded in England in 1874. Although initially opposition was great to the modern revival of cremating the dead, strict legal requirements to determine the cause of death allayed opponents' fears that evidence of a murder might be destroyed by cremation.

Echolocation, use of sound by some animals to perceive surroundings. By emitting sounds and listening for their echoes, animals are able to find prey, avoid obstacles, and navigate without using vision. Echolocation is used at night or in environments that are perpetually dark, such as inside caves, underground, or in the deep sea. Four groups of animals use echolocation: cetaceans (whales and dolphins), bats (see Bat: Echolocation), birds, and shrews.

II. HOW ECHOLOCATION WORKS

Echolocation and Prey Detection

Bats use auditory stimuli to navigate and to locate and catch insect prey. High frequency pulses of sound emitted by the bat bounce off objects in its path and return as echoes. Various sensory cells in the bat’s brain interpret these echoes to determine the location and some physical properties of the objects, creating a spatial “map” that governs the bat’s behavior.

Sounds are vibrations that travel through air, water, or solid objects. The number of vibrations per second is known as the frequency, and it is measured in units of cycles per second, or hertz. Sounds with higher frequencies are heard as higher tones. Tones higher than the limits of human hearing, usually above 20,000 hertz, are called ultrasounds. When a sound strikes an object, the sound bounces back, or reflects. The returning sound is called an echo.

By careful interpretation of returning echoes, animals can gauge an object’s distance, size, and whether the object is moving away from or toward them. The length of time between when a sound is emitted and when it returns as an echo indicates how far away an object is—echoes take longer to return from objects that are farther away. The loudness of an echo is determined by the size of the object, its distance, and its texture. Echoes from an approaching object are compressed, returning at a higher frequency than when they were sent (see Doppler Effect). For an object moving away, the effect is the opposite. Echolocators create a very precise image from the echoes they hear. Studies have shown that killer whales can distinguish between cod and salmon, and bats can avoid very fine wires while flying at full speed.

Toothed whales and dolphins emit sounds for echolocation that span a wide frequency, from the lower tones used in human speech (around 250 hertz) to ultrasounds (around 220,000 hertz) that are way beyond the limit of human hearing. Other echolocating animals emit sounds within a narrower range.

Short bursts of high-pitched sounds are most effective for echolocation. The sounds are pulsed, leaving silent pauses during which the animal listens for echoes. As hunters close in on their prey, the sounds emitted increase from 1 to 5 pulses per second to as many as 200 per second in bats and 500 per second in killer whales. In order not to deafen itself while the pulse is produced, the hunter uses muscles to immobilize the small bones that transmit sound from the eardrum to the inner ear.

III. ANIMALS THAT USE ECHOLOCATION

Sperm Whale

The clicking sounds emitted by a sperm whale bounce off of underwater objects and reflect echoes back to the whale. Sperm whales use echolocation to find prey, and mother sperm whales interpret the echoes from their clicks to monitor the location of their young.

Encarta Encyclopedia

Most bats use their larynx to produce ultrasounds between 20,000 and 120,000 hertz. An exception is the rousette bat, the only type of Old World fruit bat that uses echolocation. These cave-dwelling bats click their tongues to make sounds that are audible to humans. The clicks bounce off cave walls to help the bats navigate in the dark confines of the cave. Some bats, like the American leaf-nosed bats, use elaborate nasal structures to amplify and focus sounds. Most bats have funnel-shaped ears with complex ridges, which presumably improve the accuracy with which echoes are received. The speed of hunting bats is extraordinary: Typically, less than half a second passes from detecting to capturing prey.

Oilbird

An oilbird peers out of its nearly inaccessible nest in a rocky cave in Trinidad’s Arima Valley. Oilbirds produce a steady clicking sound that acts as a sonarlike echolocation system, helping them to navigate within the dark caves in which they live.

Moths use a number of strategies to defend themselves from bats. Some moths have wings covered in soft scales that muffle the echo. Tiger moths emit clicks of their own to identify themselves to bats, and the bats quickly learn to associate the clicks with the foul-tasting moths. Many moths have sound receptors to detect the emitted sounds of an approaching bat; alerted, the moths take evasive action.

Greater Horseshoe Bat

Bats make a series of short, high-frequency sounds while flying, using the echoes to locate the direction and distance of prey. The horseshoe bat received its name from its unique nose leaf, which covers its upper lip and nostrils in a horseshoelike shape. Some scientists believe such bats may use their nose leaf to direct sound at their targets.

Encarta Encyclopedia

The echolocation sounds of toothed whales, produced in their nasal passages, are focused into a narrow beam as they pass through the melon, a waxy, lens-shaped body in the forehead. The echoes are received by the lower jaw and pass through oil-filled sinuses to the inner ear, which is insulated from the skull by a foamlike pad that cuts out irrelevant noise. Upon closing in on their prey, both sperm whales and killer whales can produce pulses strong enough to stun their prey.

Cave swiftlets and oilbirds, which roost and nest in caves, are the only birds that use echolocation. As they fly from daylight to darkness, their normal chirruping calls change to a buzzing sound that enables them to navigate inside dark caves. Shrews produce sounds at ultrasonic frequencies. These sounds may be used for echolocation, but with shrews this ability is crude compared with that of bats and whales.

IV. HUMAN USE OF ECHOLOCATION

Ultrasound Scanning

Ultrasound imaging—a technology that incorporates the principles of echolocation—helps physicians to diagnose a variety of medical conditions. Here, an ultrasound-emitting device called a transducer is placed against the abdomen of a pregnant woman. The resulting pattern of echoes will be detected by the transducer and converted into a moving image seen on a monitor, which in turn will provide clues to the age and health of the developing fetus.

The 18th century Italian physiologist Lazzaro Spallanzani first noticed that bats with covered eyes could avoid obstacles in flight, while those with plugged ears could not. However, he could offer no explanation. It was not until 1938 that American scientist Donald Griffin, using microphones sensitive to ultrasounds, discovered that bats use ultrasound for echolocation.

Humans use echolocation in sonar, a technology that monitors the echoes of underwater sound pulses. Originally proposed for detecting icebergs, sonar was developed to track submarines during World War I (1914-1918). Since then, it has been used for depth sounding and fish tracking, as well as for mapping the ocean floors.

With the development of computers, ultrasound imaging became possible. In this medical technology, ultrasounds are directed into a body, and the waves that reflect off internal organs are converted into detailed images by a computer. Another medical procedure, called ultrasonic lithotripsy, mimics the whale’s attack pulse of intense bursts of focused sound, enabling surgeons to break up kidney stones without surgery.

Among the more important Babylonian deities, in addition to Marduk, were Ea, the god of wisdom, spells, and incantations; Sin, the moon god, who had his main temples at Ur and Harran, two cities associated in the Bible with the Hebrew patriarch Abraham; Shamash, the sun god and the god of justice, who is depicted on the stele, or tablet, inscribed with the code of Hammurabi (see Hammurabi, Code of); Ishtar, the ambitious, dynamic, and cruel goddess of love and war; Adad, the god of wind, storm, and flood; and Marduk's son Nabu, the scribe and herald of the gods, whose cult eventually rivaled that of his father in popularity. In addition to the sky gods were the netherworld deities, as well as a large variety of demons, devils, and monsters, who were a constant threat to humanity and its well-being, and a few good, angelic spirits.

Babylonian documents indicate that the ethical and moral beliefs of the people stressed goodness and truth, law and order, justice and freedom, wisdom and learning, and courage and loyalty. Mercy and compassion were espoused, and special protection was accorded widows, orphans, refugees, the poor, and the oppressed. Immoral and unethical acts were considered transgressions against the gods and the divine order and were believed to be punished by the gods accordingly. No one was considered to be without sin, and therefore all suffering was held to be deserved. The proper course for Babylonians unhappy with their condition in life was not to argue and complain but to plead and wail, to lament and confess their inevitable sins and failings before their personal god, who acted as their mediator in the assembly of the great gods.

According to the Babylonian mythological poem known in world literature as Enuma elish (“When above,” its initial two words), Marduk was granted the leadership of the pantheon as well as the “kingship over the universe entire” as a reward for avenging the gods by defeating Tiamat, the savage and defiant goddess of chaos, and her monstrous host. Following his victory, Marduk fashioned heaven and earth, arranged and regulated the planets and stars, and created the human race.

Marduk, in Babylonian religion, the supreme god. Originally, he was a god of thunderstorms. According to Enuma elish, an ancient epic poem of creation, Marduk defeated Tiamat and Kingu, the dragons of chaos, and thereby gained supreme power. Acknowledged as the creator of the universe and of humankind, the god of light and life, and the ruler of destinies, he rose to such eminence that he claimed 50 titles. Eventually, he was called simply Bel, meaning “Lord.”

Bel, supreme god of the Babylonians (see Isaiah 46). Bel is the Chaldaic form of Baal and is believed by some to be identical with that god. Like the equivalent Hebrew Baal, the name Bel was used also in the sense of “lord” or “owner.” Bel presided over the air. His consort was Belit. Bel was identified with the Greek god Zeus by the Greek historian Herodotus and was believed by the British Orientalist George Rawlinson to have been different from the Syrian Baal. As Bel-Merodach the god was connected with the planet Jupiter, associated in astral mythology with the productive power of nature.

Zeus, in Greek mythology, the god of the sky and ruler of the Olympian gods. Zeus corresponds to the Roman god Jupiter.

Zeus was considered, according to Homer, the father of the gods and of mortals. He did not create either gods or mortals; he was their father in the sense of being the protector and ruler both of the Olympian family and of the human race. He was lord of the sky, the rain god, and the cloud gatherer, who wielded the terrible thunderbolt. His breastplate was the aegis, his bird the eagle, his tree the oak. Zeus presided over the gods on Mount Olympus in Thessaly (Thessalia). His principal shrines were at Dodona, in Epirus, the land of the oak trees and the most ancient shrine, famous for its oracle, and at Olympia, where the Olympic Games were celebrated in his honor every fourth year. The Nemean games, held at Nemea, northwest of ?rgos, were also dedicated to Zeus.

Logic (Greek logos, “word,” “speech,” “reason”), science dealing with the principles of valid reasoning and argument. The study of logic is the effort to determine the conditions under which one is justified in passing from given statements, called premises, to a conclusion that is claimed to follow from them. Logical validity is a relationship between the premises and the conclusion such that if the premises are true then the conclusion is true.

The validity of an argument should be distinguished from the truth of the conclusion. If one or more of the premises is false, the conclusion of a valid argument may be false. For example, “All mammals are four-footed animals; all people are mammals; therefore, all people are four-footed animals” is a valid argument with a false conclusion. On the other hand, an invalid argument may by chance have a true conclusion. “Some animals are two-footed; all people are animals; therefore, all people are two-footed” happens to have a true conclusion, but the argument is not valid. Logical validity depends on the form of the argument, not on its content. If the argument were valid, some other term could be substituted for all occurrences of any one of those used and validity would not be affected. By substituting “four-footed” for “two-footed,” it can be seen that the premises could both be true and the conclusion false. Thus the argument is invalid, even though it has a true conclusion.

Scholastic thought was less interested in discovering new facts and principles than in demonstrating the truth of existing beliefs. Its method was therefore dialectical (based upon logical argument), and its intense concern with the logic of argument led to important developments in logic as well as theology. The Scholastic philosopher Saint Anselm of Canterbury adopted Augustine’s view of the complementary relation between faith and reason and combined Platonism with Christian theology. Supporting the Platonic theory of Ideas, Anselm argued in favor of the separate existence of universals, or common properties of things—the properties Avicenna had called essences. He thus established the position of logical realism—an assertion that universals and other ideas exist independently of our awareness of them—on one of the most vigorously disputed issues of medieval philosophy.

Money of the World

Most nations have their own system of money and print their own currency. Made of paper, these pieces of currency have very little intrinsic value. As fiat money, however, the paper notes represent a specific monetary value decreed by the government and accepted by the people. The notes pictured here are examples of fiat money from all over the world.

, any medium of exchange that is widely accepted in payment for goods and services and in settlement of debts. Money also serves as a standard of value for measuring the relative worth of different goods and services. The number of units of money required to buy a commodity is the price of the commodity. The monetary unit chosen as a measure of value need not, however, be used widely, or even at all, as a medium of exchange. During the colonial period in America, for example, Spanish currency was an important medium of exchange, while the British pound served as the standard of value.

The functions of money as a medium of exchange and a measure of value greatly facilitate the exchange of goods and services and the specialization of production. Without the use of money, trade would be reduced to barter, or the direct exchange of one commodity for another; this was the means used in primitive societies, and barter is still practiced in some parts of the world. In a barter economy, a person having something to trade must find another who wants it and has something acceptable to offer in exchange. In a money economy, the owner of a commodity may sell it for money, which is acceptable in payment for goods, thus avoiding the time and effort that would be required to find someone who could make an acceptable trade. Money may thus be regarded as a keystone of modern economic life.

The basic money of a country, into which other forms of money may be converted and which determines the value of other kinds of money, is called the money of redemption or standard money. The monetary standard of a nation refers to the type of standard money used in the monetary system. Modern standards have been either commodity standards, in which either gold or silver has been chiefly used as standard money, or fiat standards, consisting of inconvertible currency paper units. The principal types of gold standard are the gold-coin standard, the standard in the United States until 1933; the gold-bullion standard consisting of a specified quantity of gold; and the gold-exchange standard, under which the currency is convertible into the currency of some other country on the gold standard. The gold-bullion standard was used in the United Kingdom from 1925 to 1931, while a number of Latin American countries have used the dollar-exchange standard. Silver standards have been used in modern times chiefly in Asia. Also, a bimetallic standard (see Bimetallism) has been used in some countries, under which either gold or silver coins were the standard currency. Such systems were rarely successful, largely because of Gresham’s law, which describes the tendency for cheaper money to drive more valuable money out of circulation.

Most monetary systems of the world at the present time, including those in Canada and the United States, are fiat systems; they do not allow free convertibility of the currency into a metallic standard, and money is given value by government fiat or edict rather than by its nominal gold or silver content. Modern systems are also described as managed currencies, because the value of the currency units depends to a considerable extent on government management and policies. Internally, the monetary systems of Canada and the United States contain many elements of managed currency; although gold coinage is no longer permitted, gold may be owned, traded, or used for industrial purposes.

Federal Reserve System

The next important change in the currency system was introduced by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which authorized the establishment of 12 regional Federal Reserve banks, with power to issue two types of currency (see Federal Reserve System). The first, and most important, was the Federal Reserve note, which is issued under conditions consistent with economic stability and the needs of trade and industry. As member banks require more currency, they can obtain it from the Federal Reserve banks by drawing on their deposits or borrowing or rediscounting commercial paper if their deposit balances with the Federal Reserve banks are insufficient. The second type of Federal Reserve currency, the Federal Reserve Bank note, was originally intended to replace the national bank notes, but never became a permanent part of the currency because the Federal Reserve notes proved adequate. The national bank notes were retired in 1935, but greenbacks are still part of U.S. paper currency.

The economic depression and the epidemic of bank failures in the early 1930s led to sweeping reforms in the nation’s monetary structure. Executive proclamations issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in March and April 1933 prohibited gold exports except under government license, and called in all gold and gold certificates from general circulation, thus ending the gold standard. Under the Gold Reserve Act of January 30, 1934, the country returned to a modified gold standard with a devalued dollar. The act gave the president authority to lower the weight of the gold dollar to between 50 and 60 percent of its former gold content. The following day the president issued a proclamation reducing the gold content of the dollar to 59 percent of that established by the Gold Standard Act of 1900, or from 23.22 to 13.71 grains of fine gold.

The years 1933 and 1934 were also marked by important legislation regarding silver. Under the Thomas Amendment to the Emergency Farm Relief Act of May 12, 1933 (commonly known as the Inflation Act), the president was given the power to restore unlimited coinage of silver under a bimetallic system. The Silver Purchase Act, which was signed by the president on June 19, 1934, authorized the nationalization of silver and declared it to be the policy of the United States to have the silver holdings of the U.S. Treasury ultimately make up a maximum of one quarter of the value of the nation’s combined monetary gold and silver stocks. On August 9, 1934, the president issued an executive order requiring that all silver in the United States, with the exception of certain categories such as silver coins, fabricated silver, and silver owned by foreign governments, be delivered to the mints to be coined or held as bullion for later coinage. Under the Silver Purchase Act and subsequent legislation the Treasury purchased large quantities of silver abroad and from domestic producers, which tended to raise the price of the metal and curtail the monetary use of silver abroad, especially in China and India.

During much of the 20th century, countries around the world used the gold standard, which tied the value of currencies to the value of gold. The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference established a modified gold standard under which the exchange rates of most currencies were fixed against the gold-based United States dollar. Although the system inspired economic confidence, by the late 1960s the United States became unable to maintain the system and gradually abandoned the Bretton Woods agreement during the 1970s. This 1968 Collier’s Year Book article by economist Eliot Janeway explores the history of the gold standard and the Bretton Woods agreement.

Earth Day was first observed on April 22, 1970. The idea for a nationwide demonstration in support of Earth’s environment came from Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Nelson is considered the founder of Earth Day. On the first Earth Day in 1970 as many as 20 million Americans in schools and communities across the country participated in rallies and demonstrations on behalf of Earth. In New York City, Mayor John Lindsay closed

Fifth Avenue

to automobile traffic, and thousands of people attended a fair on ecology in Central Park.

III. ACTIVITIES ON EARTH DAY

Classroom in Washington, D.C.

A teacher in a Washington, D.C., classroom leads students in a project to measure how much garbage each class produces in a week. Educational activities like this take place around the world on Earth Day. They draw attention to human threats to Earth's environment.

Encarta Encyclopedia

Annie Griffiths Belt/Corbis

By 1990 Earth Day had become an international event, with more than 200 million people in 141 countries participating. Environmental groups use Earth Day as an occasion to draw attention to current local and global environmental problems and to discuss commonsense solutions. At fairs, festivals, and talks, people learn about air pollution, water pollution, and soil pollution; the destruction of habitats (see Ecosystem); the devastation of hundreds of thousands of plant and animal species (see Endangered Species); the depletion of nonrenewable resources (see Conservation); and global warming. They explore exhibits on such topics as conserving energy, recycling, renewing natural habitats, leading healthier lives, making their backyards friendly to wildlife, and protecting endangered species. Volunteers gather to pick up litter; clean up streams, reservoirs, and other water supplies; restore parks; plant trees; and participate in other environmental activities.

An organization called Earth Day Network coordinates Earth Day activities around the world. The organization estimated that 1,000 groups and 500 million people were participating in Earth Day observances by the early 2000s.

What is a human? What is the origin? From Adam & Eve! Or from Apes an sisters? From sperm a human came. Children represents their parents! DNA shows the origin of structure from which different structures came from! Read below.

Emotion, term frequently and familiarly used as synonymous with feeling. In psychology it signifies a reaction involving certain physiological changes, such as an accelerated or retarded pulse rate, the diminished or increased activities of certain glands, or a change in body temperature, which stimulate the individual, or some component part of his or her body, to further activity. The three primary reactions of this type are anger, love, and fear, which occur either as an immediate response to external stimuli or are the result of an indirect subjective process, such as memory, association, or introspection. The American psychologist John Watson proved in a series of experiments that infants are capable of these three emotions; he also demonstrated that emotional reactions may be conditioned.

The external stimuli diminish in importance, as a direct cause of the individual's emotional reaction, in proportion to the individual's maturity, and the stimuli that elicit these emotions develop more complexity. Thus, the same environmental condition that inspires anger in a child may cause fear in an adult. As the emotional degree of the reaction rises, however, the resemblance between the various kinds of reaction increases as well; thus, extreme anger, fear, or resentment have more in common than the same reactions in less exaggerated phases. Momentary physiological change or distortion accompanies all emotional reactions, as in the instance of the accelerated heart action during a fit of anger. Fear, for example, may result in a violent physical manifestation such as the quaking of the limbs or a momentary loss of voice. It may also, by way of contrast, result in an attempt to disguise itself by means of an assumed coolness or even bravado.

Limbic System

The limbic system is a group of brain structures that play a role in emotion, memory, and motivation. For example, electrical stimulation of the amygdala in laboratory animals can provoke fear, anger, and aggression. The hypothalamus regulates hunger, thirst, sleep, body temperature, sexual drive, and other functions.

Emotion, Memory and the Brain:

The neural routes underlying the formation of memories about primitive emotional experiences, such as fear, have been traced

By Joseph E. LeDoux

Despite millennia of preoccupation with every facet of human emotion, we are still far from explaining in a rigorous physiological sense this part of our mental experience. Neuroscientists have, in modern times, been especially concerned with the neural basis of such cognitive processes as perception and memory. They have for the most part ignored the brain's role in emotion. Yet in recent years, interest in this mysterious mental terrain has surged. Catalyzed by breakthroughs in understanding the neural basis of cognition and by an increasingly sophisticated knowledge of the anatomical organization and physiology of the brain, investigators have begun to tackle the problem of emotion.

One quite rewarding area of research has been the inquiry into the relation between memory and emotion. Much of this examination has involved studies of one particular emotion—fear—and the manner in which specific events or stimuli come, through individual learning experiences, to evoke this state. Scientists, myself included, have been able to determine the way in which the brain shapes how we form memories about this basic, but significant, emotional event. We call this process 'emotional memory.'

By uncovering the neural pathways through which a situation causes a creature to learn about fear, we hope to elucidate the general mechanisms of this form of memory. Because many human mental disorders—including anxiety, phobia, post-traumatic stress syndrome and panic attack—involve malfunctions in the brain's ability to control fear, studies of the neural basis of this emotion may help us further understand and treat these disturbances.

Most of our knowledge about how the brain links memory and emotion has been gleaned through the study of so-called classical fear conditioning. In this process the subject, usually a rat, hears a noise or sees a flashing light that is paired with a brief, mild electric shock to its feet. After a few such experiences, the rat responds automatically to the sound or light, even in the absence of the shock. Its reactions are typical to any threatening situation: the animal freezes, its blood pressure and heart rate increase, and it startles easily. In the language of such experiments, the noise or flash is a conditioned stimulus, the foot shock is an unconditioned stimulus, and the rat's reaction is a conditioned response, which consists of readily measured behavioral and physiological changes.

Conditioning of this kind happens quickly in rats—indeed, it takes place as rapidly as it does in humans. A single pairing of the shock to the sound or sight can bring on the conditioned effect. Once established, the fearful reaction is relatively permanent. If the noise or light is administered many times without an accompanying electric shock, the rat's response diminishes. This change is called extinction. But considerable evidence suggests that this behavioral alteration is the result of the brain's controlling the fear response rather than the elimination of the emotional memory. For example, an apparently extinguished fear response can recover spontaneously or can be reinstated by an irrelevant stressful experience. Similarly, stress can cause the reappearance of phobias in people who have been successfully treated. This resurrection demonstrates that the emotional memory underlying the phobia was rendered dormant rather than erased by treatment.

Fear and Emotional Memory:

Fear conditioning has proved an ideal starting point for studies of emotional memory for several reasons. First, it occurs in nearly every animal group in which it has been examined: fruit flies, snails, birds, lizards, fish, rabbits, rats, monkeys and people. Although no one claims that the mechanisms are precisely the same in all these creatures, it seems clear from studies to date that the pathways are very similar in mammals and possibly in all vertebrates. We therefore are confident in believing that many of the findings in animals apply to humans. In addition, the kinds of stimuli most commonly used in this type of conditioning are not signals that rats—or humans, for that matter—encounter in their daily lives. The novelty and irrelevance of these lights and sounds help to ensure that the animals have not already developed strong emotional reactions to them. So researchers are clearly observing learning and memory at work. At the same time, such cues do not require complicated cognitive processing from the brain. Consequently, the stimuli permit us to study emotional mechanisms relatively directly. Finally, our extensive knowledge of the neural pathways involved in processing acoustic and visual information serves as an excellent starting point for examining the neurological foundations of fear elicited by such stimuli.

My work has focused on the cerebral roots of learning fear, specifically fear that has been induced in the rat by associating sounds with foot shock. As do most other investigators in the field, I assume that fear conditioning occurs because the shock modifies the way in which neurons in certain important regions of the brain interpret the sound stimulus. These critical neurons are thought to be located in the neural pathway through which the sound elicits the conditioned response.

During the past 10 years, researchers in my laboratory, as well as in others, have identified major components of this system. Our study began at Cornell University Medical College, where I worked several years ago, when my colleagues and I asked a simple question: Is the auditory cortex required for auditory fear conditioning?

In the auditory pathway, as in other sensory systems, the cortex is the highest level of processing; it is the culmination of a sequence of neural steps that starts with the peripheral sensory receptors, located, in this case, in the ear. If lesions in (or surgical removal of) parts of the auditory cortex interfered with fear conditioning, we could conclude that the region is indeed necessary for this activity. We could also deduce that the next step in the conditioning pathway would be an output from the auditory cortex. But our lesion experiments in rats confirmed what a series of other studies had already suggested: the auditory cortex is not needed in order to learn many things about simple acoustic stimuli.

We then went on to make lesions in the auditory thalamus and the auditory midbrain, sites lying immediately below the auditory cortex. Both these areas process auditory signals: the midbrain provides the major input to the thalamus; the thalamus supplies the major input to the cortex. Lesions in both regions completely eliminated the rat's susceptibility to conditioning. This discovery suggested that a sound stimulus is transmitted through the auditory system to the level of the auditory thalamus but that it does not have to reach the cortex for fear conditioning to occur.

This possibility was somewhat puzzling. We knew that the primary nerve fibers that carry signals from the auditory thalamus extend to the auditory cortex. So David A. Ruggiero, Donald J. Reis and I looked again and found that, in fact, cells in some regions of the auditory thalamus also give rise to fibers that reach several subcortical locations. Could these neural projections be the connections through which the stimulus elicits the response we identify with fear? We tested this hypothesis by making lesions in each one of the subcortical regions with which these fibers connect. The damage had an effect in only one area: the amygdala.

Filling in the Picture:

That observation suddenly created a place for our findings in an already accepted picture of emotional processing. For a long time, the amygdala has been considered an important brain region in various forms of emotional behavior. In 1979 Bruce S. Kapp and his colleagues at the University of Vermont reported that lesions in the amygdala's central nucleus interfered with a rabbit's conditioned heart rate response once the animal had been given a shock paired with a sound. The central nucleus connects with areas in the brain stem involved in the control of heart rate, respiration and vasodilation. Kapp's work suggested that the central nucleus was a crucial part of the system through which autonomic conditioned responses are expressed.

In a similar vein, we found that lesions of this nucleus prevented a rat's blood pressure from rising and limited its ability to freeze in the presence of a fearcausing stimulus. We also demonstrated, in turn, that lesions of areas to which the central nucleus connects eliminated one or the other of the two responses. Michael Davis and his associates at Yale University determined that lesions of the central nucleus, as well as lesions of another brain stem area to which the central nucleus projects, diminished yet another conditioned response: the increased startle reaction that occurs when an animal is afraid.

The findings from various laboratories studying different species and measuring fear in different ways all implicated the central nucleus as a pivotal component of fear-conditioning circuitry. It provides connections to the various brain stem areas involved in the control of a spectrum of responses.

Despite our deeper understanding of this site in the amygdala, many details of the pathway remained hidden. Does sound, for example, reach the central nucleus directly from the auditory thalamus? We found that it does not. The central nucleus receives projections from thalamic areas next to, but not in, the auditory part of the thalamus. Indeed, an entirely different area of the amygdala, the lateral nucleus, receives inputs from the auditory thalamus. Lesions of the lateral nucleus prevented fear conditioning. Because this site gets information directly from the sensory system, we have come to think of it as the sensory interface of the amygdala in fear conditioning. In contrast, the central nucleus appears to be the interface with the systems that control responses.

Mapping the Mechanism:

These findings seemed to place us on the threshold of being able to map the entire stimulus response pathway. But we still did not know how information received by the lateral nucleus arrived at the central nucleus. Earlier studies had suggested that the lateral nucleus projects directly to the central nucleus, but the connections were fairly sparse. Working with monkeys, David Amaral and Asla Pitkanen of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego demonstrated that the lateral nucleus extends directly to an adjacent site, called the basal or basolateral nucleus, which, in turn, projects to the central nucleus.

Collaborating with Lisa Stefanacci and other members of the Salk team, Claudia R. Farb and C. Genevieve Go in my laboratory at New York University found the same connections in the rat. We then showed that these connections form synaptic contacts—in other words, they communicate directly, neuron to neuron. Such contacts indicate that information reaching the lateral nucleus can influence the central nucleus via the basolateral nucleus. The lateral nucleus can also influence the central nucleus by way of the accessory basal or basomedial nucleus. Clearly, ample opportunities exist for the lateral nucleus to communicate with the central nucleus once a stimulus has been received.

The emotional significance of such a stimulus is determined not only by the sound itself but by the environment in which it occurs. Rats must therefore learn not only that a sound or visual cue is dangerous, but under what conditions it is so. Russell G. Phillips and I examined the response of rats to the chamber, or context, in which they had been conditioned. We found that lesions of the amygdala interfered with the animals' response to both the tone and the chamber. But lesions of the hippocampus—a region of the brain involved in declarative memory—interfered only with response to the chamber, not the tone. (Declarative memory involves explicit, consciously accessible information, as well as spatial memory.) At about the same time, Michael S. Fanselow and Jeansok J. Kim of the University of California at Los Angeles discovered that hippocampal lesions made after fear conditioning had taken place also prevented the expression of responses to the surroundings.

These findings were consistent with the generally accepted view that the hippocampus plays an important role in processing complex information, such as details about the spatial environment where activity is taking place. Phillips and I also demonstrated that the subiculum, a region of the hippocampus that projects to other areas of the brain, communicated with the lateral nucleus of the amygdala. This connection suggests that contextual information may acquire emotional significance in the same way that other events do—via transmission to the lateral nucleus.

Although our experiments had identified a subcortical sensory pathway that gave rise to fear conditioning, we did not dismiss the importance of the cortex. The interaction of subcortical and cortical mechanisms in emotion remains a hotly debated topic. Some researchers believe cognition is a vital precursor to emotional experience; others think that cognition—which is presumably a cortical function—is necessary to initiate emotion or that emotional processing is a type of cognitive processing. Still others question whether cognition is necessary for emotional processing.

It became apparent to us that the auditory cortex is involved in, though not crucial to, establishing the fear response, at least when simple auditory stimuli are applied. Norman M. Weinberger and his colleagues at the University of California at Irvine have performed elegant studies showing that neurons in the auditory cortex undergo specific physiological changes in their reaction to sounds as a result of conditioning. This finding indicates that the cortex is establishing its own record of the event.

Experiments by Lizabeth M. Romanski in my laboratory have determined that in the absence of the auditory cortex, rats can learn to respond fearfully to a single tone. If, however, projections from the thalamus to the amygdala are removed, projections from the thalamus to the cortex and then to the amygdala are sufficient. Romanski went on to establish that the lateral nucleus can receive input from both the thalamus and the cortex. Her work in the rat complements earlier research in primates.

Once we had a clear understanding of the mechanism through which fear conditioning is learned, we attempted to find out how emotional memories are established and stored on a molecular level. Farb and I showed that the excitatory amino acid transmitter glutamate is present in the thalamic cells that reach the lateral nucleus. Together with Chiye J. Aoki, we showed that it is also present at synapses in the lateral nucleus. Because glutamate transmission is implicated in memory formation, we seemed to be on the right track.

Long-Term Potentiation:

Glutamate has been observed in a process called long-term potentiation, or LTP, that has emerged as a model for the creation of memories. This process, which is most frequently studied in the hippocampus, involves a change in the efficiency of synaptic transmission along a neural pathway—in other words, signals travel more readily along this pathway once LTP has taken place. The mechanism seems to involve glutamate transmission and a class of postsynaptic excitatory amino acid receptors known as NMDA receptors.

Various studies have found LTP in the fear-conditioning pathway. Marie-Christine Clugnet and I noted that LTP could be induced in the thalamo-amygdala pathway. Thomas H. Brown and Paul Chapman and their colleagues at Yale discovered LTP in a cortical projection to the amygdala. Other researchers, including Davis and Fanselow, have been able to block fear conditioning by blocking NMDA receptors in the amygdala. And Michael T. Rogan in my laboratory found that the processing of sounds by the thalamo-amygdala pathway is amplified after LTP has been induced. The fact that LTP can be demonstrated in a conditioning pathway offers new hope for understanding how LTP might relate to emotional memory.

In addition, recent studies by Fabio Bordi, also in my laboratory, have suggested hypotheses about what could be going on in the neurons of the lateral nucleus during learning. Bordi monitored the electrical state of individual neurons in this area when a rat was listening to the sound and receiving the shock. He and Romanski found that essentially every cell responding to the auditory stimuli also responded to the shock. The basic ingredient of conditioning is thus present in the lateral nucleus.

Bordi was able to divide the acoustically stimulated cells into two classes: habituating and consistently responsive. Habituating cells eventually stopped responding to the repeated sound, suggesting that they might serve to detect any sound that was unusual or different. They could permit the amygdala to ignore a stimulus once it became familiar. Sound and shock pairing at these cells might reduce habituation, thereby allowing the cells to respond to, rather than ignore, significant stimuli.

The consistently responsive cells had high-intensity thresholds: only loud sounds could activate them. That finding is interesting because of the role loudness plays in judging distance. Nearby sources of sound are presumably more dangerous than those that are far away. Sound coupled with shock might act on these cells to lower their threshold, increasing the cells' sensitivity to the same stimulus. Consistently responsive cells were also broadly tuned. The joining of a sound and a shock could make the cells responsive to a narrower range of frequencies, or it could shift the tuning toward the frequency of the stimulus. In fact, Weinberger has recently shown that cells in the auditory system do alter their tuning to approximate the conditioned stimulus. Bordi and I have detected this effect in lateral nucleus cells as well.

The apparent permanence of these memories raises an important clinical question: Can emotional learning be eliminated, and, if not, how can it be toned down? As noted earlier, it is actually quite difficult to get rid of emotional memories, and at best we can hope only to keep them under wraps. Studies by Maria A. Morgan in my laboratory have begun to illuminate how the brain regulates emotional expressions. Morgan has shown that when part of the prefrontal cortex is damaged, emotional memory is very hard to extinguish. This discovery indicates that the prefrontal areas—possibly by way of the amygdala—normally control expression of emotional memory and prevent emotional responses once they are no longer useful. A similar conclusion was proposed by Edmund T. Rolls and his colleagues at the University of Oxford during studies of primates. The researchers studied the electrical activity of neurons in the frontal cortex of the animals.

Functional variation in the pathway between this region of the cortex and the amygdala may make it more difficult for some people to change their emotional behavior. Davis and his colleagues have found that blocking NMDA receptors in the amygdala interferes with extinction. Those results hint that extinction is an active learning process. At the same time, such learning could be situated in connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. More experiments should disclose the answer.

Placing a basic emotional memory process in the amygdalic pathway yields obvious benefits. The amygdala is a critical site of learning because of its central location between input and output stations. Each route that leads to the amygdala—sensory thalamus, sensory cortex and hippocampus—delivers unique information to the organ. Pathways originating in the sensory thalamus provide only a crude perception of the external world, but because they involve only one neural link, they are quite fast. In contrast, pathways from the cortex offer detailed and accurate representations, allowing us to recognize an object by sight or sound. But these pathways, which run from the thalamus to the sensory cortex to the amygdala, involve several neural links. And each link in the chain adds time.

Conserving time may be the reason there are two routes—one cortical and one subcortical—for emotional learning. Animals, and humans, need a quick-and-dirty reaction mechanism. The thalamus activates the amygdala at about the same time as it activates the cortex. The arrangement may enable emotional responses to begin in the amygdala before we completely recognize what it is we are reacting to or what we are feeling.

The thalamic pathway may be particularly useful in situations requiring a rapid response. Failing to respond to danger is more costly than responding inappropriately to a benign stimulus. For instance, the sound of rustling leaves is enough to alert us when we are walking in the woods without our having first to identify what is causing the sound. Similarly, the sight of a slender curved shape lying flat on the path ahead of us is sufficient to elicit defensive fear responses. We do not need to go through a detailed analysis of whether or not what we are seeing is a snake. Nor do we need to think about the fact that snakes are reptiles and that their skins can be used to make belts and boots. All these details are irrelevant and, in fact, detrimental to an efficient, speedy and potentially lifesaving reaction. The brain simply needs to be able to store primitive cues and detect them. Later, coordination of this basic information with the cortex permits verification (yes, this is a snake) or brings the response (screaming, sprinting) to a stop.

Storing Emotional Memory:

Although the amygdala stores primitive information, we should not consider it the only learning center. The establishment of memories is a function of the entire network, not just of one component. The amygdala is certainly crucial, but we must not lose sight of the fact that its functions exist only by virtue of the system to which it belongs.

Memory is generally thought to be the process by which we bring back to mind some earlier conscious experience. The original learning and the remembering, in this case, are both conscious events. Workers have determined that declarative memory is mediated by the hippocampus and the cortex. But removal of the hippocampus has little effect on fear conditioning—except conditioning to context.

In contrast, emotional learning that comes about through fear conditioning is not declarative learning. Rather it is mediated by a different system, which in all likelihood operates independently of our conscious awareness. Emotional information may be stored within declarative memory, but it is kept there as a cold declarative fact. For example, if a person is injured in an automobile accident in which the horn gets stuck in the on position, he or she may later have a reaction when hearing the blare of car horns. The person may remember the details of the accident, such as where and when it occurred, who else was involved and how awful it was. These are declarative memories that are dependent on the hippocampus. The individual may also become tense, anxious and depressed, as the emotional memory is reactivated through the amygdalic system. The declarative system has stored the emotional content of the experience, but it has done so as a fact.

Emotional and declarative memories are stored and retrieved in parallel, and their activities are joined seamlessly in our conscious experience. That does not mean that we have direct conscious access to our emotional memory; it means instead that we have access to the consequences—such as the way we behave, the way our bodies feel. These consequences combine with current declarative memory to form a new declarative memory. Emotion is not just unconscious memory: it exerts a powerful influence on declarative memory and other thought processes. As James L. McGaugh and his colleagues at the University of California at Irvine have convincingly shown, the amygdala plays an essential part in modulating the storage and strength of memories.

The distinction between declarative memory and emotional memory is an important one. W. J. Jacobs of the University of British Columbia and Lynn Nadel of the University of Arizona have argued that we are unable to remember traumatic events that take place early in life because the hippocampus has not yet matured to the point of forming consciously accessible memories. The emotional memory system, which may develop earlier, clearly forms and stores its unconscious memories of these events. And for this reason, the trauma may affect mental and behavioral functions in later life, albeit through processes that remain inaccessible to consciousness.

Because pairing a tone and a shock can bring about conditioned responses in animals throughout the phyla, it is clear that fear conditioning cannot be dependent on consciousness. Fruit flies and snails, for example, are not creatures known for their conscious mental processes. My way of interpreting this phenomenon is to consider fear a subjective state of awareness brought about when brain systems react to danger. Only if the organism possesses a sufficiently advanced neural mechanism does conscious fear accompany bodily response. This is not to say that only humans experience fear but, rather, that consciousness is a prerequisite to subjective emotional states.

Thus, emotions or feelings are conscious products of unconscious processes. It is crucial to remember that the subjective experiences we call feelings are not the primary business of the system that generates them. Emotional experiences are the result of triggering systems of behavioral adaptation that have been preserved by evolution. Subjective experience of any variety is challenging turf for scientists. We have, however, gone a long way toward understanding the neural system that underlies fear responses, and this same system may in fact give rise to subjective feelings of fear. If so, studies of the neural control of emotional responses may hold the key to understanding subjective emotion as well.