January 2012
48 posts
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Body location plays part in scratching pleasure →
brainscience:
Wake Forest Baptist research shows all itches are not equal WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Jan. 27, 2012 – An itch is just an itch. Or is it?
New research from Gil Yosipovitch, M.D., Ph.D., professor of dermatology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and a world-renowned itch expert, shows that how good scratching an itch feels is related to the itch’s location.
While previous studies...
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Why Did Consciousness Evolve, and How Can We... →
[…] In my twelve minutes, I shared a theory of how consciousness evolved. My point was that if we understand the evolutionary basis of consciousness, maybe this will help us envision new ways our consciousness might evolve further in the future. That could be fun in terms of dreaming up new stories. I also believe that part of what inhibits us from taking effective action against long-term...
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Take Your Placebos, Or Die →
People who take their medication as directed are less likely to die - even when that “medication” is just a sugar pill.
This is the surprising finding of a paper just published, Adherence to placebo and mortality in the Beta Blocker Evaluation of Survival Trial (BEST). BEST was a clinical trial of beta blockers, drugs used in certain kinds of heart disease. The patients were aged...
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Optical Illusion experiment shows higher brain... →
We all know that our pupils contract when our eyes are exposed to increases in the brightness of light. The reason is to both protect the delicate inner workings of our eyes and to help provide for optimum viewing based on available light. But we also know that our pupils dilate, or become larger when we are aroused, regardless of the reason, which means that pupil size is not always just a...
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Creative people daydream more, even while...
section5:
In 1966, my mentor and colleague, Jerome L. Singer , published his seminal book, Daydreaming: An Introduction to the Experimental Study of Inner Experience . Since then, the scientific study of daydreaming has taken off. A key theme that has emerged is the striking continuity between nightdreaming and daydreaming and the ability of creative people to harness this continuity....
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The Hidden Face Within →
One of these two images contains a hidden picture of a face. Which one?
This was the question faced by participants in a remarkable psychology experiment just published, Measuring Internal Representations from Behavioral and Brain Data. Five healthy volunteers were presented with a series of random black and white grid patterns. Each grid square was either black or white, and this was...
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What your mind really looks like on shrooms,... →
Here’s a nice review of the recent research on these drugs - starting with the recently published article on psilocybin.
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Artistic style changes due to interference with... →
How is it possible that two artists in different fields of art, born in different centuries in different countries have a change of style in their late creative period, leading to the same aesthetic phenomena in their work? We are talking about Lovis Corinth, the German painter (1858-1925) and the famous Italian film director Luchino Visconti (1906-1975). It is a fact that both of them suffered...
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The Rise of the New Groupthink. ‘Without great... →
I recommend reading the whole thing, I’ve shortened the post a bit to post here.
“Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills...
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Mind can control allergic response →
A team of neuroscientists have found that if someone has a lesser sense of ownership over a part of their body, their immune system also responds differently to that body part, treating it as ‘non-self’ rather than ‘self’.
In two different experiments, Prof Lorimer Moseley and his team from Neuroscience Research Australia and the University of South Australia delivered...
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You Accept Your Reality as it's Presented to You.
brainscience:
“Ask yourself what it would be like to have been blind from birth. Really think about this for a moment. If your guess is “it would be something like blackness” or “something like a dark hole where vision should be,” you’re wrong. To understand why, imagine you’re a scent dog such as a bloodhound. Your long nose houses two hundred million scent receptors. On the outside, your wet...
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How Emotional Memories Change Over Time →
Mental simulations of future experiences are often concerned with emotionally arousing events. Although it is widely believed that mental simulations enhance future behavior, virtually nothing is known about how memory for these simulations changes over time or whether simulations of emotional experiences are especially well remembered. We used a novel paradigm that combined recently developed...
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How does our brain see Jesus’ face on a tortilla?
braincubix:
Objects that resemble faces are everywhere. Whether it’s New Hampshire’s erstwhile granite “Old Man of the Mountain,” or a face on Mars, our brains are adept at locating images that look like faces.
However, the normal human brain is almost never fooled into thinking such objects actually are human faces.
“You can tell that it has some ‘faceness’ to it, but on the other hand,...
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I happened to see this headline on the August 12th addition of Asian Reporter when I was in Portland. I meant to post it ever since then but have only recently been able to scan it (sorry for the poor quality). This rehabilitation program mixes zen meditation and music to help inmates get a fresh start. I expect many more stories like this to start popping up, especially through organizations like...
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Anesthesia May Leave Patients Conscious →
Rather than researching patients undergoing surgery, they asked for healthy volunteers to be “put under” specifically for the purposes of investigating consciousness during anesthesia. The researchers recruited 40 healthy student volunteers and anesthetized each of them using one of four common drugs (dexmedetomidine, propofol, sevoflurane, or xenon) while recording a simple electrical brain...
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configurate asked: Could you please explain to me what neuropsychology is?
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Dolphins who Dream of Whales →
Once in a while you come across a paper that can only be described as lovely. This is one: Do dolphins rehearse show-stimuli when at rest? Five dolphins lived in a certain aquarium in France. Every day, they put on shows for people - jumping around, that kind of thing. One day the aquarium started playing a 20-minute clip of “intro music” for the show. This consisted of various...
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Imprisoned by the past: Unhappy moods lead to a... →
psychotherapy:
Evidence suggests that mind wandering is a frequent accompaniment to an unhappy mood. Building on such work, two laboratory experiments used mood induction to assess whether the greater frequency of mind wandering in a low mood is also accompanied by a shift towards a focus on events from the past. Experiment 1 induced moods via video and induction of an unhappy mood was associated...
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Brain ‘hears’ voices when reading direct speech
braincubix:
When reading direct quotations, the brain “hears” the voice of the speaker, researchers at the University of Glasgow have found, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
This shows that readers are likely to engage in perceptual simulations, or spontaneous imagery, of the reported speaker’s voice when reading direct speech, the researchers said.
Click here to read more.
...
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Ultrasound for Mind Reading
Ultrasound transducers could make a better brain-computer interface
21 September 2011—Ultrasound is good for more than monitoring fetuses and identifying heart defects. According to engineers in Canada, it can help tell what people are thinking as well. Their research suggests that ultrasound-based devices could lead to a new kind of brain-computer interface.
Read more Here
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How the Brain Routes Traffic for Maximum Alertness →
“In order to behave efficiently, you want to process relevant sensory information as fast as possible, but relevance is determined by your current situation,” said Joy Geng, assistant professor of psychology at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain.
For example, a flashing road sign alerts us to traffic merging ahead; or a startled animal might cue you to look out for a hidden...
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Possible Functions of Consciousness →
If you haven’t heard of it, Janet Kwaziak has a great consciousness blog. She recently finished a series called Possible Functions of Consciousness - all of which is worth reading, but here is her summary:
The previous 10 posts in this series outline some possible functions that this construct, and our experience of it, provides. (1) The nature of the construction matches the nature of...
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Sharper, deeper, faster optical imaging of live...
braincubix:
Researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a novel approach that could redefine optical imaging of live biological samples, simultaneously achieving high resolution, high penetration depth (for seeing deep inside 3D samples), and high imaging speed.
The research team employed an unconventional imaging method called light-sheet microscopy: a...
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What Determines the Capacity of Short-Term Memory? →
oldowan:
Short-term memory plays a crucial role in how our consciousness operates. Several years ago a hypothesis has been formulated, according to which capacity of short-term memory depends in a special way on two cycles of brain electric activity. Scientists from the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw have now demonstrated this experimentally...
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What You Should Know About Chemo Brain
cognifit:
Cancer survivors can go through an indescribably amount of pain, suffering and changes over the years. One of the many aspects that can be affected is the brain as some face thinking and memory problems following treatment.
It is this fog, dysfunction and cognitive dysfunction that has become known by cancer survivors as chemo brain. Although it is a widely used term, it can be...
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The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers: Andre... →
houseofmind:
Andre Fenton is a faculty member at the NYU Center for Neural Science that was recruited recently. He has published very interesting work on the neurobiology of memory and the role of a powerful protein kinase inhibitor- PKMzeta- on memory formation and recall. You will be able to see multiple video interviews in which he explains what he does, while also learning some of his lesser...
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Dynamics of improvising together. →
Abstract:
Joint improvisation is the creative action of two or more people without a script or designated leader. Examples include improvisational theater and music, and day-to-day activities such as conversations. In joint improvisation, novel action is created, emerging from the interaction between people. Although central to creative processes and social interaction, joint improvisation...
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Mind Over Motor: Controlling Robots With Your... →
Over recent months, in José del R. Millán’s computer science lab in Switzerland, a little round robot, similar to a Roomba with a laptop mounted on it [above], bumped its way through an office space filled with furniture and people. Nothing special, except the robot was being controlled from a clinic more than 60 miles away—and not with a joystick or keyboard, but with the brain waves of a...
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How crossword puzzles mess with your mind | New... →
fuckyeahneuroscience:
The agony and the ecstasy of solving a crossword puzzle can reflect a surprising amount about the subconscious mind
TACKLING a crossword can crowd the tip of your tongue. You know that you know the answers to 3 down and 5 across, but the words just won’t come out. Then, when you’ve given up and moved on to another clue, comes blessed relief. The elusive answer suddenly...
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Traumatic Experiences May Make You Tough (APS) →
psychotherapy:
via The Association for Psychological Science:
“Your parents were right: Hard experiences may indeed make you tough. Psychological scientists have found that, while going through many experiences like assault, hurricanes, and bereavement can be psychologically damaging, small amounts of trauma may help people develop resilience.
“Of course, everybody’s heard the aphorism,...
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Neuroscience & Creativity
sarahthespacecadet:
Recent advances in neuroscience, driven by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that lets scientists watch brain activity as never before, have changed what we know about key attributes of creativity. These advances, for example, have swept away the idea that there is a pleasure center in the brain that somehow acts as an accelerator to the engine of human...
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What're You Lookin' At (When You Dream)? →
In a new paper, French sleep researcher Isabelle Arnulf sets out the case for the “scanning hypothesis”. The idea is that REMs represent the dreamer “looking at” things in the dream, just like waking eye movements - at least much of the time. Some say that REMs are nothing to do with dreams, and it’s just a coincidence that they tend to occur together. They may...
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Out-of-Body Experiences Linked with Poor Sense of... →
oldowan:
Many individuals report having an out-of-body experience at some point in their life, and now scientists are homing in on the cause. A study published in Cortex in July hints that these strange perceptual illusions may arise from a less cohesive sense of one’s own body. The researchers surveyed a group of psychologically healthy people and found that one in four had had an out-of-body...
Artificial neural network created from DNA
braincubix:
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have made an artificial neural network out of DNA, creating a circuit of interacting molecules that can recall memories based on incomplete patterns, just as a brain can.
The research demonstrates how molecular systems can exhibit autonomous brain-like behaviors.
How it works
Using a simple DNA gate architecture...
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Alcohol Blackout →
A definitive review of the phenomenon by Rose and Grant (2010)explains that there are two different types of blackout: en bloc, a complete loss of memory for the affected time period; and fragmentary, where bits and pieces of memories remain. The en bloc blackout is more likely to occur when a large quantity of alcohol is ingested within a small time period. What causes an alcohol blackout? A...
