Giant letters as landmarks.

-Via ScienceBlog-
"In a new study forthcoming in the May 2006 issue of The American Naturalist, Mark A. Changizi and his coauthors, Qiang Zhang, Hao Ye, and Shinsuke Shimojo, from the California Institute of Technology explore the hypothesis that human visual signs have been cross-culturally selected to reflect common contours in natural scenes that humans have evolved to be good at seeing."

I'm looking forward to reading this article - I would love to know what natural scene contours are like letters.

The seven deadly sins of scientific bullshit.

Here's a great article on how to spot bullshit science. It was originally written for judges to help filter through the B.S. testimony of "expert" witnesses and lawyers.
"1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media."
"2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work."

Do people tell you you're annoying, but you don't believe them?

Point this device at yourself and find out. No it's not a mirror... well maybe sorta it is.
This device was created for Autistic individuals to help them decide "if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed."
Perhaps some professors should use this ;)

The eyes don't really give up lies in an informative way.

According to this article and cited in this article "these notions about the
informativeness of gaze in deception turn out to be misplaced."

More Lies...

Here is an article from Wired about not specifically eyemovements and lying but general mechanisms of lie detections - including facial heat, polygraph, erp, etc.
"Success remains elusive, however, and no newfangled lie-detection machines appear ready for prime time. Skeptics, meanwhile, doubt that any technology will improve much on the mixed record of polygraph machines, which are often used in the United States to screen employees and test the truthfulness of criminal suspects."

There has been a decent amount of success with ERP and fMRI but that may still be a little way off from completely replacing the polygraph. You would think if eyemovements were at all reliable that would be one of the topics which was high up on the investigation scale - doesn't seem to be mentioned much though except on "entertainment" or popular press sites.

Eyemovements and Lying - Crappy i believe anything on the internet style.

This is another example of I've heard about this before but I don't know where the hell it's coming from! Maybe one day the mythbusters will take this on - then the subject will be at rest - haha... really though.. those guys rock.

"Let's say your child ask's you for a cookie, and you ask them "well, what did your mother say?" As they reply "Mom said... yes." they look to the left. This would indicate a made up answer as their eyes are showing a "constructed image or sound. Looking to the right would indicated a "remembered" voice or image, and thus would be telling the truth."

"Many critics believe the above is a bunch of bull***t. In my own experiments I have found these techniques to be more true than not. But, why not find out for yourself? Make up a list of questions that like the sample ones, and give them to your friends/family anyone who would be your guinea pig, observe their eye movements and record the results."

Ohh in the authors own experiments ;)

Review of three pound enigma

-Via Developing Intelligence-
Seems like a decent review... someone should buy me a copy!
There may be an Amazon link over to the right... it's there sometimes ;)

"How does "the mind" emerge from the brain? We are closer to a coherent answer than ever before, thanks to accumulating evidence from a variety of fields - including cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychology, internal medicine, somnology, and even modern philosophy. In "The Three Pound Enigma", Shannon Moffett explores the cutting-edge of these disciplines, literally: from a risky operation by neurosurgeon Roberta Glick, to penetrating theoretical discussions with the sharpest researchers around (including vision scientist Christof Koch and philosopher Daniel Dennett), this book provides a cross-section of current brain research."

The resurgence of the IQ.

IQ went out of vogue for a little while, especially following the response to the Bell Curve. It looks like it's back in the most recent issue of Nature, where scientists from the NIMH correlated IQ with structural differences in the brains of developing children.

"When the researchers split the children into three groups according to their initial IQ scores, they noticed a characteristic pattern of changes in the brains of the group with the highest scores. The thickness of the cortex — the outer layer of the brain that controls high-level functions such as memory — started off thinner than that of the other groups, but rapidly gained depth until it was thicker than normal during the early teens. All three groups converged, with the children having cortexes of roughly equal thickness by age 19. The strongest effect was seen in the prefrontal cortex, which controls planning and reasoning."

Silicon to Neuron update -via neurofuture-

Neurofuture has some interesting followup, etc. info about silicon to cell interfaces.

Are you autistic? A Wired Quiz (sorta)

So I'm a quiz junkie... Here's one that tells you if you're autistic. Its from "Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge's Autism Research Centre"

Change Blindness for 3D space

This I guess doesn't really surprise me. Researchers from Oxford found that they could make "..the room grow in size as people walked through it, but subjects failed to notice when the scene around them quadrupled in size. As a consequence, they made gross errors when asked to estimate the size of objects in that room."

Other change blindness demos/articles/etc. can be found on Dan Simons website. I encourage everyone to look at some of these demos - they're great.

Cellphones = mindcontrol?

Well at least when your sleeping - maybe.
An Australian study suggests that cell phones by your bedside table may have an effect on your sleeping patterns - specifically by heightening alpha waves and reducing amounts of melatonin. The brain wave results were observed in the first stage of sleep. These results "don't seem to influence how well you sleep, unless the phones ring at all hours or you've had a particularly exciting conversation. " says Andrew wood the studies lead author.

Smelling with your mouth and with your nose

"Researchers have presented the first clear evidence that olfaction is uniquely a "dual" sense, in that the brain perceives the same odorant molecule differently if it arrives through the nose rather than the mouth. In the August 18, 2005, issue of Neuron, researchers report that the smell of chocolate activated different brain regions according to whether the odor was introduced into the olfactory system through the mouth or through the nose."
This is pretty interesting. I guess that whole holding your nose while you eat gross food thing is partially explaned by this newsrelease.

Brain scan nails accused rapist.

I can't tell at all if this was an fMRI lie detector test or not. I'm working on that now. If so, I don't believe I've ever actually seen this technique used in an actual criminal case.

"The brain-mapping and polygraph lie detector tests conducted on rape accused Abhishek Kasliwal has come out in favour of the prosecution.

The Mumbai Police had conducted the tests on March 19 at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Bangalore."

Sad shapes.

-Via Cognitive Daily-
You know, I'm not quite sure what to make of this.
"If you're like most people, the shapes that appear to be less stable ... are also more fearful. Those that are rotated more from the vertical position ... are more suffering and less angry."
I could understand certain shaps making us nervous since they could imply danger in some way - i.e. sharp or unstable objects. But what about the other emotions? Do they approximate some sort of body or face expressions? I suppose I should really read the original article.

Dating for people with Aspergers.

Via Minkhacks.

Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome A User Guide to Adolescence.

"If the person asks something like 'Does my bum look fat?' or even 'I am not sure I like this dress' then that is called 'fishing for compliments'. These are very hard things to understand, but I am told that instead of being completely honest and saying that yes their bum does look fat, it is politer to answer with something like 'Don't be daft, you look great'. You are not lying, simply evading an awkward question and complimenting them at the same time. Be economical with the truth!"

This book seems to apply to just about every teenage guy ;)

Green tea = nicotine, but in a good way

Nicotine has been shown to benefit hippocampal based learning. Now green tea appears to have the same benefits. All of this research is in mice but suggests some target sites for alzheimers therapy, etc.

Hacking your brain... with an IPOD

Ugh.. sounds like the mozart effect to me. I can't be bothered to even read the site very closely - feel free to post opinions and let us all know what you think though.
"It's called entrainment. It sounds like mumbo jumbo, and the web page makes it look like mumbo jumbo, but there are some real scientific principles behind it, ... inasmuch as you can generate definite physiological effects using it that cannot be explained with a placebo effect. What is it? Well, basically, the idea is that you can modify the electrical activity in your brain (the stuff that's picked up by EEG readings) by hearing sounds that mimic those waves."

Brain Art by Leonardo da Vinci.

"(ANSA) - Florence, March 27 - A famed study of the brain by Leonardo da Vinci is the star of a new show exploring the workings of the Renaissance genius' own mind . "
Is there a decent web repository of this art?

The Future...CNN style

Via KurzweilAI.net

"CNN explores realities the future might bring in the areas of technology, health, entertainment and more. The Sunday March 26 show featured a discussion with Ray Kurzweil and others."

Drugs for spiders... well for the fear of at least.

Swiss researchers report in PNAS that giving people cortisol before stressful situations, such as facing a spider, alleviates the stress. It was previously reported that cortisol helped people blank out painful memories and emotions. "Traditionally, severe phobias are treated using behavioural therapy, in which a patient gradually embraces their fear. An arachnophobe, for example, might begin by looking at pictures of spiders, before graduating to seeing or handling the real thing."
Aren't people on enough medicines? I'm imaging someone taking a drug before they go to work so they can drive over a bridge, then taking an upper when they get to work to be at the top of their game, and then sleeping drugs when they get home to counter the effects of the uppers. Ohh and don't forget about the feel-good SSRI's!

Wired article on all those new brain speed/improvement programs

A few days ago I mentioned that there seemed, all of a sudden, to be a huge number of websites/programs/video games dedicated to improving your mental abilities. Here is an interesting article by Clive Thompson of Wired magazine about this.

Silicon to Neuron interface.

Ray Kurzweil must be happy to see his predictions coming true. It is only a matter of time before there is cosmetic neurological use of silicon to brain interfaces. Of course one would expect therapeutic uses first. Will there be a new medical specialty - Cosmetic Neurosurgeon?

Handheld brain scanner.

"From the scene of the accident to the treatment room, doctors treating patients with severe head trauma have only 60 minutes -- the golden hour -- to have the best chance of a successful outcome. Now, a new handheld device, will shave valuable minutes off the time it takes to diagnose bleeding in the brain."

Redbull and Vodka

Redbull seems like it helps...Guesss what, it doesn't.
"Results show a considerable disconnect between subjects' perceptions and objective measures of their abilities: although combined use reduces the sensation of tiredness and sleepiness, actual capabilities are significantly impaired."
Well at least when we're talking about mixing it with alcohol - I love the stuff. Actually, I've found something much better than Redbull - Zipfizz (more natural - less caffeine)

Brain Opera

"Created by acclaimed composer Tod Machover and his team at the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, the BRAIN OPERA was a first-of-its-kind musical experience that included contributions from both on-line participants and live audiences. Anyone who wanted to express ideas, experiences, and feelings in music and sounds was able help create the Brain Opera and participate in the live performances. People of all backgrounds were welcome -- we wanted musical inspiration and input from Mozart buffs, grunge rock fans, John Cage devotees, rappers, Verdi lovers, Deadheads...anyone who enjoys music. The Brain Opera toured worldwide from 1996-1998 (Europe, Asia, United States, South America), and has since been updated and expanded, including the addition of an entirely new culminating experience, the Future Music Blender. This definitive version of the Brain Opera will be permanently installed in Vienna, Austria in July 2000, at the new House of Music."

The worlds longest lecture

"Mangalore University Applied Botany Professor Annaiah Ramesh is all set to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as he successfully completed a marathon lecture, running to 96 hours and 40 minutes, here on Sunday."

The Lecture was on the "Molecular Logic of Life," I wonder how interesting it was. I wonder if anyone actually attended? I can't imagine anything interesting enough to listen to for that long. Actually... I think I may require my students to attend my world record attempt at the worlds longest AND most boring lecture. Any suggestions on topics?

Stock Exchange for Ideas. Can this work for science?

"Instead, they focus on an internal market where any employee can propose that the company acquire a new technology, enter a new business or make an efficiency improvement. These proposals become stocks, complete with ticker symbols, discussion lists and e-mail alerts. Employees buy or sell the stocks, and prices change to reflect the sentiments of the company's engineers, computer scientists and project managers — as well as its marketers, accountants and even the receptionist."
What would the model be for science? Anyone want to program it?
Anyone? Anyone?

Bad at math?

From ScienceDaily:
"Scientists now have discovered the area of the brain linked to dyscalculia, demonstrating that there is a specific part of the brain essential for counting properly. In a report published in the March 13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers explain that the area of the brain known as the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), located toward the top and back of the brain and across both lobes, is crucial for the proper processing of numerical information."

Medical Hypotheses - a non-peer review journal for radical ideas

This is a relatively interesting idea, a journal that publishes "radical ideas, so long as they are coherent and clearly expressed." One recent article suggests that "Moses, Mohammed, and Jesus all experienced revelations on mountains, but they were probably just suffering a form of altitude sickness, say a group of Swiss and Israeli neurologists, casting doubt in the process on the very existence of God."

Military Science, Sharks with lasers.

You know It pretty cool what the military does with science and technology. -albeit a little scary sometimes. In this case its mind control of animals to serve a military purpose. Spy sharks, radar camels, assassin guinea pigs, the possibilities are endless! On a more positive note... The military seems like it takes some ridiculous ideas that no one else will touch in academia since they would be mocked. Anyone have any examples of successful ridiculous military ideas?

The missing link found?

"ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- Scientists in northeastern Ethiopia said Saturday that they have discovered the skull of a small human ancestor that could be a missing link between the extinct Homo erectus and modern man."

Reverse brain drain - to India

I previously reported that the brains are draining out of, well, everywhere. I have discovered where they are going, India!

Subvocal speech recognition

If any of you have used speed recognition software you know how shakey it can be. You also know how useful it can be when it is working well. NASA and researchers at Carnegie Mellon are working on a similar technology but designed to read subvocalizations. According to this article it is drastically worse than present speech recognition. If they get this up and running well (which no doubt they will) we may be seeing a new peripheral for our cellphones. Or perhaps IPOD's since word on the street is that they may be hitting the cell phone market soon enough.

Is your date going to end well? Body Signals

"Your date's gestures can send you silent signals of desire—or communicate a complete lack of interest. Do you know how to read the message in these moves? "

You know, I really wish I knew where information like this comes from. I think journalists (or in this case phd's) should do a better job of citing things in their articles. While I'm sure there is some published evidence (that is... published in a peer reviewed journal) that these "signs" are what the author suggests they are, I would really like to know whether this is just referring to mice or what.

Sex begets sex....with mice at least

After a male mouse is "with" a female mouse, other female mice are more likely to choose him than another male mouse who didn't "hang out" with a female. And women complain about players...I think they are actually more atracted to them and now we know why! other womens scents! OK maybe thats pushing it a bit.

Sleeping more = smoking cigs?

"A six-year study Kripke headed up of more than a million adults ages 30 to 102 showed that people who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep. The risk from taking sleeping pills 30 times or more a month was not much less than the risk of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, he says."

I don't know what to think of this study. I've heard this before and wasn't sure about it then either. Is this causal?

""There is really no evidence that the average 8-hour sleeper functions better than the average 6- or 7-hour sleeper," Kripke says, on the basis of his ongoing psychiatric practice with patients along with research, including the large study of a million adults (called the Cancer Prevention Study II). And he suspects that people who sleep less than average make more money and are more successful."

Not that I can cite it... but what about all the research showing declining cognitive abilities with less sleep? I do believe his last statement though - work more = more money = more success (at least thats what I'm hoping for).

The Sixth Sense (not ESP silly)

"To sense where the various parts of our body are, we sometimes rely on signals that originate in our brain rather than in our fingers or toes, a new study shows."
"...Things changed when their forearm and hand were paralyzed by a restriction of blood flow and anaesthetized by injection. Volunteers then could not say where their hand had been moved to when it was re-positioned by an experimenter. But they still felt they could move their hand when directed to do so. In fact they were adamant that they had moved their hand even when it was prevented from moving..."
Interesting article, helps explain the phantom limb syndrome. This post reminded me of a great article title: Botvinick, M. & Cohen, J. D. (1998). Rubber hand 'feels' what eyes see. Nature,391, 756.

NeuroWiki

I would love to see something like this work:

"NeuroWiki is a wiki discussion forum about neuroscience research, especially systems, theoretical, and cognitive neuroscience. Neuroscience is an exploding field and it’s hard to keep track of. NeuroWiki will provide short, collaboratively written summaries of current research trends and ideas, with links to related papers and researchers – this will aid neuroscientists in keeping up with areas outside their specialty, and will allow researchers to learn about things related to their work that they would not have heard of otherwise. However, the best part of NeuroWiki will be the discussions spawned by these topics."

Performance enhancing drugs...for classical musicians

I worry that at some point I'm going to run out of things to talk about here.. but people never cease to amaze. Evidently classical musicians (1 in 4!) are taking beta blocks (hypertension medicine) to quell their stage fright. The question is though... is this ok while performance enhancing drugs for sports are not? and what about kids getting ritalin for studying? at what point is the line drawn. If you read this blog you know what I think.

Brain fitness - reversing old age.

Another item I've noticed a lot of over the past couple weeks is all the websites dedicated to excercising your brain through speeded tasks. Some of these sites are straight up fraud, some are well meaning people who don't quite "get it", while others are run by scientists trying to make a quick buck, ohh I guess there are some run by people who really care and know what they're doing - but I haven't really found one yet. A lot of these sites take tasks that psychologists have been using for years (see nintendo stroop tasks below) to study various cognitive systems and repackaging them as brain stimulators. There is more and more research out there that suggests that these kind of tasks do help elderly folks perform better on.. wait.. more cognitive tasks in the labratory. haha. Ok some of these tasks actually do help "exercise" our brain but I think the most effective brain "exercise" is actual physical exercise. See Art Kramer's research at UIUC.

Lots of brain drain.

I reported on the African "brain drain" earlier and you know... I've been noticing a trend on google news, there seems now to be brain drain in Africa, Canada, San Francisco, and Iraq. I wonder where all the brains are going?

Smoking pot and watching rambo causes schizophrenia.

No seriously...panic!
These stories really piss me off sometimes. Surprise surprise, watching a violent movie puts your brain in a "different" state. This doesn't mean that it stays that way.

"Several studies of adolescent marijuana smokers suggest that they are two to four times more likely to develop schizophrenia than non-smokers, she said." So what does this tell us? pot causes schizophrenia like the author suggests? or perhaps kids are smoking more pot who have emotional problems to begin with.

On another note... this picture is pretty damn funny. It came from some crazy site in Russian, so I can't tell you anything about it.

The Harvard Brain Bank -Watch-

edgeio-key: f6c28ef582264208b1d0bad8c59a8c4ec4b06041
YouTube.com is hosting a neat feature on the Harvard Brain Bank. This video shows the process of dissecting and storing one of the thirty thousand specimens housed at the bank. The differences between a diseased and healthy brain is shown. All in all... a pretty cool video.

Lefties are better fighters...

"Contrary to traditional wisdom, being a leftie promotes survival from attacks, at least in the world of snails and crabs, according to a report by researchers at Yale and Cornell in the Biology Letters of the Royal Society, UK."
Maybe thats why this guy kicks some serious ass, whoever he is. I think he's Jamaican since I stole the image from some Jamaican boxing site featuring pre WWII fighters. He looks tough though.

Wow.. thats all I can say...

I don't think this has anything do with brains... well besides the need to have one to watch this.

"The thinking part of their brains"

"When I read something that stupid in an article in the mainstream media, an article linked and quoted by many bloggers, I am at a loss for words."
This is an pretty indepth rant about the abuses that the press (and some scientists) perpetrate on the general public in the name of notoriety. This is specifically about political cognitive neuroscience one of the hot, new, "newsworthy", topics in neuroscience.

Visual cortex does a lot more than see.

"A new study by researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory shows that visual cortical activity can serve another purpose--connecting visual experience with non-visual events."

Googoo gaa gaa (oooo....shiny)

"Though they are learning words at 10 months old, infants tend to grasp the names of objects that interest them rather than whatever the speaker thinks is important..." This is some pretty interesting research coming from the infant lab at Temple University.

My friends are little particles.

"By comparing people to mobile particles randomly bouncing off each other, scientists have developed a new model for social networks. The model fits with empirical data to naturally reproduce the community structure, clustering and evolution of general acquaintances and even sexual contacts." - From Physorg.com

OMNI Magazine

Here's a source for all the old OMNI articles. I used to love that magazine. It's pretty funny that the creator of hustler magazine's wife created OMNI.