Clipmarks | adamc's Brain Clips collection

The Science of Siesta

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:03:51 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Research Finds That Napping Improves Brain Functioning..

Let’s hear it for siesta time. What better news than to hear that taking midday naps are good for your grey matter? Companies that want smarter employees should let them take 90 minute midday nap-time. Researchers at the University of Haifa in cooperation with the Sleep Laboratory at the Sheba Medical Center and researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Montreal recently concluded that a daytime nap changes the course of consolidation in the brain in several positive ways. This research mirrors several other recent studies with similar conclusions.

A ninety-minute daytime nap helps speed up the process of long term memory consolidation

"We still don't know the exact mechanism of the memory process that occurs during sleep, but the results of this research suggest the possibility that it is possible to speed up memory consolidation, and in the future, we may be able to do it artificially,"

What? Artificially? Why do scientist hate REAL sleep so much?

Tags: sleep, napping, health

Quality of Sleep = Memory storage

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:57:23 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: the Belgian study shows that getting a good night’s sleep the night after learning a new fact has a direct impact on the transfer process between the hippocampus and the medial prefrontal cortex.

Clip Source: physorg.com

Quality of Sleep Determines Where the Brain Stores Memories

As time passes, our memories are transferred to different parts of the brain in order to ideally store our past experiences. While scientists have known that sleep plays an important role in helping consolidate memories, a new study investigates the role of sleep a step further, and shows how one night of sleep can lead to changes in brain activity six months after an event has occurred.

Their research shows that a good night’s sleep after learning word pairs enhances memory processing in the hippocampus, and also induces information transfer between the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). This transfer serves to consolidate memories, helping new memories become stable and immune to interfering stimuli.

Our work shows how the development of a trace left by new memories depends on sleep

This is the first time we could confirm in humans a number of predictions based on animal research.

Tags: brain, mind, memory, sleep, science, health

Man Wakes up During His Own Autopsy

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:26:54 GMT

clipped by: behavioristgirl
clipper's remarks: I smell lawsuit!

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

CARACAS (Reuters) - A Venezuelan man who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy.

Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue, where examiners began an autopsy only to realize something was amiss when he started bleeding. They quickly sought to stitch up the incision on his face

"I woke up because the pain was unbearable," Camejo said, according to a report on Friday in leading local newspaper El Universal

His grieving wife turned up at the morgue to identify her husband's body only to find him moved into a corridor -- and alive

Tags: caracas, autopsy

Map of the Brain

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:53:06 GMT

clipped by: Wilhelmina
clipper's remarks: This is a cover from TIME magazine, I really loved it.

Clip Source: www.time.com

Tags: map, brain, time, speech, emotion, vision, balance, feelings, wires

What do you feel when you see the color red?

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 21:13:24 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: Clipette and I were reading "conversations about consciousness" and one interviewee referred to "qualia" every other sentence. Have to admit that I had to look it up.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Qualia (from the Latin, meaning "what sort" or "what kind"

most simply defined as qualities or feelings, like redness, as considered independently of their effects on behavior

In more philosophical terms, qualia are properties of sensory experiences.

Tags: science, brain, consciousness, qualia, redness, color, senses

Envisioning the world wide web in 1960

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 06:07:58 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: Brilliant thoughts ahead of their time.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

"Man-computer symbiosis is a subclass of man-machine systems. There are many man-machine systems. At present, however, there are no man-computer symbioses. The purposes of this paper are to present the concept and, hopefully, to foster the development of man-computer symbiosis by analyzing some problems of interaction between men and computing machines, calling attention to applicable principles of man-machine engineering, and pointing out a few questions to which research answers are needed. The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today."

— Man-Computer Symbiosis, J.C.R. Licklider, March 1960.

Tags: web, internet, computers, history, technology, licklider

Choiceless Awareness

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 20:07:57 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: I skimmed through a Krishnamurti book years ago and this idea has stuck with me since. I'd say obtaining a state of choiceless awareness is near the top of my new years resolution list.

Clip Source: www.midimusic.de

Krishnamurti maintains that excepting choiceless awareness, there is no other way of regenerating the human mind and the world irreversibly and instantaneously. Choiceless observation is the observation of 'what is', the fact or the actuality without the movement of thought which is knowledge or past. It is the observation devoid of the observer, the centre, the censor, the 'me' or the thinker which is thought. It is the awareness without the division as the observer and the observed. It is a holistic observation in which the observer 'is' the observed. In it there in no reaction, resistance, justification and condemnation. It is a pure observation sans remembrance, recollection, recognition and naming. It is free from ideas, ideals and opinions. It is observation without prejudice, likes and dislikes. It is without a motive and an end in view. ¹¹

Tags: choiceless, awareness, philosophy, thought, mind, brain, human, science

The Infinite Universe

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 02:11:18 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: My gut tells me there are an infinite number of dimensions.

Clip Source: www.howtolive.org

Our visible universe has about ten billion galaxies, and those galaxies have an average of about ten billion stars each. But according to theories gaining support from reputable cosmologists, this looks like just a vanishingly small fraction of what exists. If Andrei Linde is correct, the visible universe is just a tiny bubble within our overall universe, and it's even possible that subregions of inflating bubbles could themselves inflate, ad infinitum. If M Theory is correct, our universe has 10 spatial dimensions and our visible universe might be just a 3-D membrane in this meta-space. If Lee Smolin's cosmological natural selection theory is correct, our universe could be one member of an evolving and exponentially growing lineage of universes which proliferate through a process analogous to biological evolution through natural selection. If Hugh Everett's Many Worlds Hypothesis is correct, then reality continually branches, with every alternative allowed by quantum laws occurring in some branch or another, giving rise to an unimaginable plurality of worlds. As strange as it sounds, this is not science fiction, and I believe it's quite likely that at least one of the above theories, and possibly more than one, is true.

Tags: universe, world, model, theory, infinite

30 second exercise/trick that will freak you out

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 04:43:01 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: Very interesting -- enough to warp the mind a little.

Clip Source: www.vsg.edu.au

Check out the following exercise, guaranteed to freak you out. There's no trick or surprise, but, trust me: just follow these
instructions, and answer the questions one at a time and as quickly as you can! Again, as quickly as you can but don't advance
until you've done each of them... really.

What is:

1+5 ?
2+4 ?
3+3 ?
4+2 ?
5+1 ?

Now repeat saying the number 6 to yourself as fast as you can for 15 seconds. Then click here...

Tags: interesting, fun, trick

Out-of-Body Experience? Your Brain Is to Blame

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 21:34:00 GMT

clipped by: rmowery
clipper's remarks: Makes sense if all "we" really are is electric signals stuffed into our biological transports devices(our bodies).

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Out-of-Body Experience? Your Brain Is to Blame

They are eerie sensations, more common than one might think: A man describes feeling a shadowy figure standing behind him, then turning around to find no one there. A woman feels herself leaving her body and floating in space, looking down on her corporeal self.

Such experiences are often attributed by those who have them to paranormal forces.

But according to recent work by neuroscientists, they can be induced by delivering mild electric current to specific spots in the brain. In one woman, for example, a zap to a brain region called the angular gyrus resulted in a sensation that she was hanging from the ceiling, looking down at her body. In another woman, electrical current delivered to the angular gyrus produced an uncanny feeling that someone was behind her, intent on interfering with her actions.

Tags: out of body, paranormal, electric, brain, neuroscience, psychology

Wikipedia and the Global Brain

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 04:42:48 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: The global brain market is in its early stage and the "keeper of knowledge" - Wikipedia - is in a remarkable position to play a major role.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Today, we have only pieces of prototypes: information aggregating markets, collaborative filtering systems, social networking systems, (etc.), so the market is best characterized as "early stage".

Wikipedia is the dominant online volunteer community collaborating on a shared knowledge base.

Tags: wikipedia, global brain, web, internet, social media, knowledge

Tongue-o-vision

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:35:53 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: "The same system can be used to give blind people a coarse image of the outside world, without the need for eye implants." Fascinating.

Clip Source: www.newscientisttech.com

Stimulating the tongue could help people with brain damage relearn how to ride a bike, or even to walk again, according to US company Wicab.

A false palate with a square grid of 160 gold-plated electrodes is placed on the tongue and wirelessly connected to the output of a motion sensor and camera fitted on the patient’s head. The sensors deliver a coarse image of the scene ahead to the grid, which the tongue’s nerve cells send to the brain.

Wicab’s say that with less than an hour’s training, the brain learns to correlate the input from the tongue with whatever other sensory signals it is getting from the eyes, inner ear and other parts of the body. As patients recover their balance they are weaned off the tongue-based assistance.

The same system can be used to give blind people a coarse image of the outside world, without the need for eye implants. With only half an hour’s training a blind person can use tongue signals to catch a rolling ball, Wicab claims.

Tags: science, tongue, vision, senses, brain damage, brain, wicab

Man Moves Things with Mind Power

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:50:19 GMT

clipped by: knslyr

Clip Source: www.webmd.com

Brain-to-Computer Devices Promise World of Motion for People With Paralysis

July 12, 2006 -- A new device lets people move objects using nothing but their imagination.

It is not a magic act, although magic it appears to be. In a graphic demonstration, a totally paralyzed man with a "BrainGate" implant was able to work a computer, play a game of Pong, open and close a prosthetic hand, and pick up hard candy with a robotic arm. He did these things with his thoughts -- without moving a muscle.

Tags: technology, medicine, health, brain, mind, paralyzed

Women's brains react surprisingly fast to erotic images

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:20:50 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks:

"We believed both pleasant and disturbing images would evoke a rapid response, but erotic scenes always elicited the strongest response."

I knew it ladies! Mind in the gutter

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Erotic images elicit faster and stronger electrical responses in a woman's brain than other images ranging from pleasant to disturbing.

The finding might not sound surprising, but researches did not expect responses to erotic images to emerge so quickly, apparently involving different circuits than the processing of other images.

"That surprised us," said study leader Andrey Anokhin of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "We believed both pleasant and disturbing images would evoke a rapid response, but erotic scenes always elicited the strongest response."

Erotic images elicited neuron firing within 160 milliseconds—about 20 percent faster than occurred with any of the other pictures. The stimulation then branched out to different brain regions for erotic images compared to the others.

Tags: women, erotic, brain, brains, sex, andrey anokhin, washington university, images

The Global Brain

Fri, 26 May 2006 00:23:29 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: Fits so nicely! I'm telling you, in 100 years, all of our brains will be connected via the web -- bodies will be so 21st century.

Clip Source: www.trendwatching.com

Tags: global brain, web, earth, brain