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A study: birds recognized themselves in the mirror

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:25:49 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: Magpies are the first non-mammal to demonstrate a rudimentary affinity for self-recognition

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

BIRD IN THE MIRROR

A study of magpies showed that the birds recognized themselves in the mirror. This illustration shows signs of self-recognition: a magpie attempting to reach a paint mark on its chest, first with its beak and then with its foot. Full story.

Magpies sing a self-reflective tune to themselves that until now has gone unheard. When placed in front of a mirror, these songbirds realize that they’re looking at themselves, raising the possibility that they have independently evolved the brain power to support a basic form of self-recognition, a new study suggests.

Magpies are the first non-mammal to demonstrate a rudimentary affinity for self-recognition

Magpies and other social birds that possess large brains with expanded cortical-like areas should display at least some level of self-recognition, remarks Irene Pepperberg of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

Death Star over San Francisco

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:54:26 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: current.com

Death Star over San Francisco

http://current.com/items/89204971_deat...

Love is a memory tool :)

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:38:40 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: i believe that there can be love which is not based on survival mechanism. Though rare...

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Behavior: Nothing Says ‘Focus’ Like Memory of Love

In a new study, people shown images of attractive men and women paid less attention to them if they had just been reminded about the person they loved.

For the study, the researchers looked at more than 100 college students who said they were in committed relationships.

One group was asked to write short essays about “a time in which they experienced strong feelings of love for their current partner.” The other volunteers were asked to write about a time when they were extremely happy.

When attractive faces of the opposite sex appeared, the students were slower to identify the shapes. But those who had written about their loved ones were less distracted.

Long-term relationships, the researchers said, offer benefits for reproduction, in part because both parents can play a role in rearing the children.

Tags: behavior, love, evolution

Switching it up: How memory deals with a change in plans

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:12:13 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: The answer is "both," according to researchers at The Johns Hopkins University, who have learned that two different areas of the brain are responsible for the way human beings handle complex sets of "if-then" rules.

"This discovery may eventually lead to enhanced understanding of psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit disorder, all conditions in which a person's ability to remember and change such rules is impaired,"

"This indicates that different parts of our brains store different kinds of memories and information," Courtney said. That, she said, "provides clues about how the human brain accomplishes complex, goal-directed behaviors that require remembering and changing abstract rules, an ability that is disrupted in many mental illnesses."

Clip Source: dericbownds.net

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

You're about to leave work at the end of the day when your cell phone rings: it's your spouse, asking that you pick up a gallon of milk on the way home. Before you head out the door, though, your spouse calls again and asks you to stop by the hardware store too. Based on your knowledge of the area and rush-hour traffic, you decide to get the milk first and the toilet plunger second. But whoops! The phone rings again. This time, it's your boss, asking you to work late. That means another change of plans.

Adjusting our behavior to such changing circumstances enables us to achieve our goals.

But how, exactly, do our brains switch so elegantly and quickly from one well-entrenched plan to a newer one in reaction to a sudden change in circumstances?

do we simply remember a list of streets and turns, or do we remember a more abstract set of "rules" governing the web of relationships between the items

Tags: brain, complex behavior, decision making

To understand consciousness we need to ask the right questions.

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:22:45 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

To understand consciousness and its evolution, we need to ask the right questions.

No one doubts that our experience of phenomenal consciousness—the felt redness of fire, the felt sweetness of a peach, the felt pain of a bee sting—arises from the activity of our brains.

Yet the problem of explaining how this can be so seems to many theorists to be staggeringly hard. How can the wine of consciousness, the weird, ineffable, immaterial qualia that give such richness to subjective experience, conceivably arise from the water of the brain?

As the philosopher Colin McGinn has put it, it's like trying to explain how you can get "numbers from biscuits, or ethics from rhubarb." The philosopher Jerry Fodor recently claimed, "The revisions of our concepts and theories that imagining a solution will eventually require are likely to be very deep and very unsettling."

are the scientific answers really so far out of reach?

Modern Sports and Games of Ancient Greece

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:41:51 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.mlahanas.de

Modern Sports and Games of Ancient Greece

Greece, ancient but so modern...

Stamp with the "Ball Player Relief" from the National Museum of Archeology in Athens, 500 BC, See original in the next figure

History of Soccer and Ball Games of Ancient Greeks

The ancient Greek "Maradona", playing "Episkyros" with a pala (National Museum of Archeology in Athens)

Also See ancient Chinese playing Soccer (later than the image above ???)

Young Greeks playing Field Hockey (έφηβοι κερητίζοντες) 510-500 B.C, National Museum in Athens, probably adopted from Egypt. The game is called “keretizein”. Kouros base found in the Themistoclean Wall, Athens, Greece

A diver from a tall pedestal (From the Diver Tomb in Poseidonia – Paestum)

A large crowd stood around, enjoying the dancing magic,
as in the middle two acrobats led on the dance,
springing, and whirling, and tumbling.

Clip Source: pagead2.googlesyndication.com

Clip Source: www.mlahanas.de

Egypt around 1000 BC

Greek playing with a Yo-Yo

Young women playing ephedrismos

Ancient Greek Basketball ???

Animal fights

Keraelkeis athlete