HOW NEUROSCIENCE SUPPORTS VIRGINIA WOOLF.

HOW NEUROSCIENCE SUPPORTS VIRGINIA WOOLF. Jonah Lehrer explains how neuroscience supports Virginia Woolf’s view that the mind is, as her character Mrs. Ramsay says, “always ‘merging and flowing and creating.’” Experiments show that short-term memory can hold an experience for about ten seconds. And the neurons which are activated are distributed all over the brain. Lehrer also explains how neuroscience supports Woolf’s view that the self emerges from paying attention. “Whenever we pay attention to a specific stimulus—like a pear on a dinner table—we increase the sensitivity of our own neurons.” When Mrs. Ramsay focuses on the fruit, “she is literally altering her own cells.” That which directs the attention can be considered the self.