RelentlesslyOptimistic

"Why not do the thing that’s the coolest thing in the world to do?”

The New Yorker profiles David Eagleman, a neuroscientist who "has spent the past decade tracing the neural and psychological circuitry of the brain’s biological clocks."

David Eagleman has a talent for testing the untestable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness. “There are an infinite number of boring things to do in science,” he told me. “But we live these short life spans. Why not do the thing that’s the coolest thing in the world to do?”

In other words, as long as you are doing it you may as well have fun at the same time.

via www.newyorker.com

Daniel Kish — The blind man who taught himself to see

Short version: blind people can be taught to echolocate well enough to ride bicycles, hike in the wilderness, and more!

via www.bookofjoe.com

Bad fundraiser ideas, episode 2

via www.aboutcolonblank.com

More likely to be eaten by cats

 

The New York Times Magazine reports that:

"...more than 60 million people in the United States are infected with a parasite that may migrate into their brains and alter their behavior in a way that -- among other things -- may leave them more likely to be eaten by cats. " The parasite "causes rats to become attracted to the smell of cat urine."

One researcher found that people infected by the parasite have "have slower reflexes and are 2.5 times as likely to get into car accidents." Some suggest that infection with the parasite might explain the "Crazy Cat Lady" syndrome.

Via callalillie. Image from ratterrell

What are we doing when we look away during a conversation?

Cognitive Daily reports on a fascinating study testing the theory that at least one reason we look away from faces in conversations is to free up cognitive resources. The commenters point out that there are many variables, and suggest that testing this on adults might dramatically change the results.

Via elearningpost.

I'm in big trouble: Study Links Daydreaming, Alzheimer's

Yahoo! News reported on this Journal of Neuroscience paper that found a correlation between the areas of the brain used in daydreaming and the areas that show the earliest buildup of the plaques associated with Alzheimer's.

Tap your heels together as you say it with me: correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation.

Photo from Eide Neurolearning Blog, which has a great article on the brain while daydreaming, with links to far more than you wanted to know if you're not a neuroscientist.

Thinking and Paper

A thread at "Ask Edward Tufte" led to this quote from a review by Malcolm Gladwell of "The Myth of the Paperless Office" originally published in the New Yorker :

"The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven't yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head. Kidd writes that many of the people she talked to use the papers on their desks as contextual cues to "recover a complex set of threads without difficulty and delay"

Anyone who knows me understands why I like that. Still, I often describe my work as "surfing the chaos," so the complexity and uncertainty certainly fit with the quote. I wonder (hopefully) if my problem with traditional organizing models haven't worked for me because they were heirarchical rather than spatial? I'll have to think about that one, and see if I can find or devise a more spatially-based organizing system. Anyone have suggestions?

Seeing In Stereotypes

As Soon as You Know It’s There, You Know What It Is," the authors report on their research into how the brain recognizes things that we see. Their theory is that our visual system classifies objects before identifying them: first we see that there is an object in our visual field, then we recognize the category that the object belongs to, such as bird or car. Then we identify what it is: a pigeon or a Volkswagon.

To me that implies that we see in stereotypes: we see a category before we see a person. That would explain why stereotypes are so pernicious, and why they are so hard to change. Think about racism, for example. Knowing a person of another race isn't enough to overcome or to change all your beliefs about that race.

I am making an assumption that the categories used in visual processing are linked in some way to the categories we used in thinking about the objects and people we see, and another leap from there to the feelings we have in response to those categories, but it feels right to me.

From  American Psychological Society via elearningpost

Nature vs Nurture In Language Development

The New York Times > Science > A New Language Arises, and Scientists Watch It Evolve.
Scientists who study language argue whether its structure arises from the culture or from the way the brain is wired. This article discusses research that studies two relatively new languages which indicates that the subject-object distinction and word order may be hard wired.

Emotions create decisions

Caterina.net: Emotions create decisions.

The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.

-- Donald Calne, author of Within Reason

People whose brains are damaged in their emotional centres are not only unable to express joy or sadness, they are unable to make decisions and they are unable to choose. Because you make decisions based on what you would like, what you fear would happen if you chose to do another thing instead, what you fear would happen if you don't do this particular thing in time, or what you desire the outcome to be. As it says in Lovemarks, which I have been reading since this morning, "emotion and reason are intertwined, but when they are in conflict, emotion wins every time. Without the fleeting and intense stimulus of emotion, rational thought winds down and disintegrates." As much as we'd like to believe we make decisions based on a dispassionate and unswerving adherence to the facts, it's just not true.[emphasis added]

It's so good to see science backing up something that I've long believed to be true. Of course, there's a little irony in appealing to science (read: rationality) to support my belief about what I feel is true.

Via bTang reBlog

New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim Damaged Senses

The New York Times > Science > New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim Damaged Senses.

Amazing, incredible, etc. Researchers are using electronics to re-map the brain's processing of signals. Balance was recovered by one person's daily use of a device that provided signals to her tongue to inform her brain of movement and position. It has applications in vision, touch, and hearing, at a minimum. And since it can be used to enhance video games and by pilots and divers, it'll be developed commercially fairly quickly. It reminds me of some of the "body suit" technology in the science fiction of Melissa Scott.
A couple of great quotes:

Dr. Yuri Danilov, a neuroscientist and engineer...said the research team had thought of dozens of applications for the BrainPort, which he called a "USB port to the brain."

Dr. Raj said the tongue unit had already been tried out in a game that involved shooting villains. "In two minutes you stop feeling the buzz on your tongue and get a visual representation of the bad guy," he said. "You feel like you have X-ray vision. Unfortunately it makes the game boring."