Rebuilding the brain on a poster

Feminine Spirituality is the title of a poster I will present at the Ninth International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women in Seoul, Korea, June 2005.
To construct a cohesive educational set of illustrations and text, the need for examples that describe brain development led me on a quest for answers to: “What is spirit?” I picked the minds of casual acquaintances, close friends, and relatives for concepts of their spirits. Then I searched studies by neuroscientists to find what is most recently learned about the brain by trained scientists using modern technological tools.
What became clear is that the spirit is the essence of who an individual is and that individuality resides in thought. The brain is contained and protected inside the human skull. The brain is the essential element that controls actions and responses of the individual through reflections of, and reactions to, those experiences.
Experiences of comfort, love, companionship, and acceptance are positive. Experiences of fear, hunger, pain, and isolation are negative. These experiences are caused or influenced by family, by government, by law, by religion, and by social customs.
The effects of those experiences are documented by neuroscientists, using modern technology. Also documented is the fact that when individuals have new experiences, their spirit - who they are - also changes. When individuals bond with other like-minded people they can change social structure or political action for better or worse.
History recorded times when positive changes were made. History also recorded changes that slowed the progress of civilization or even reversed positive advances. The thinking of individuals is critical to the equality, peace, and survival of our species but can only have an effective outcome if action is taken by a goal-oriented group.
Naomi Sherer