omnibrain | March 14, 2007Note from Sandra: Steve posted this as a joke, for being so outrageous as to be self-parody. It's hard to convey irony in text, and Question Technology revealed that some people took it seriously. Omni Brain doesn't endorse the views of the revealed source, psychologist/racist Linda Gottfredson. It is indeed a "snippet of junk floating around the web" (76 Google search results); I'm not sure where Steve found it but he's not espousing racism, classism, sexism, or any other ism evident in this chart.
Or more appropriately... Why socio-economic status matters.
omnibrain | March 13, 2007I've always wondered how to bend spoons with my mind (ok I lie...it's never even occurred to me...but whatever). Here are step by step directions on how to accomplish this great feat of mind:
1. Go in your drawer and pick out 10 or so spoons. And lay them out on the table. Use your feeling and let them tell you which spoon will bend. (I know it sounds funny but this is what I did the first time).
2. When you feel you have the right spoon and mind you pick one that is fairly thin to start out with.
3. Hold the spoon vertical and look at it and ask it to bend. Or say you will bend for…
omnibrain | March 13, 2007There is an article by John Tierney in the NYT and a post on his blog about the science of humor. Here's a little sampler of the artcle:
So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, "Wow, it's hot in here!"
And the other muffin replies: "Holy cow! A talking muffin!"
Did that alleged joke make you laugh? I would guess (and hope) not. But under different circumstances, you would be chuckling softly, maybe giggling, possibly guffawing. I know that's hard to believe, but trust me. The results are just in on a laboratory test of the muffin joke.
Laughter, a topic that…
omnibrain | March 12, 2007Grunt pant exhale grunt uugh grunt exhale. Pump that iron!
That's all you really need to know.
So get with it! Get to the gym and start exercising!
Actually, it seems that aerobic exercise was the beneficial form of physical activity. The researchers next step is to determine what forms of activity are the best for avoiding memory loss.
Here's some details from the CNN article:
Exercise boosts brainpower by building new brain cells in a brain region linked with memory and memory loss, U.S. researchers reported Monday.
Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called…
omnibrain | March 12, 2007
Chris of Mixing Memory fame has started a bit of a meme with this post and this post. The basic idea is that with just a few pieces of music you can tell what kind of personality (or lack thereof) a person has.
Here's my contribution of some things I listen to a good amount. Links go to examples of either the song or the band.
Enjoy!
What does this list say about my personality? What's on your list? Let us know in the comments.
Antonin Dvorak - American Quartet.
Bob Marley - Kinky Reggae.
Deltron 3030 - 3030
The Quintet of the Hot Club of France (aka Django Reinhardt & Stephane…
omnibrain | March 12, 2007It looks like under very controlled circumstances, with rats, you can pick and choose which memory stays and which memory goes with a new drug. Don't worry though - the CIA won't be implanting and removing memories of last Tuesday any time soon. I'm not saying they can't wipe out most of last January, but they've always been able to do that with a whole lot of electric shocks and crazy drugs ;) Now, aliens on the other hand, they have a decent success rate with people. At last it seems that way since some people don't recover the memories of their anal probes until years later.
In any case…
omnibrain | March 11, 2007This might just be the closest drug free way of experiencing a hallucination.
Check it out here
If you are epileptic you may not want to click the link.
So what causes this effect?
Here's what Wikipedia has to say on the subject.
Neurons coding a particular movement reduce their responses with time of exposure to a constantly moving stimulus; this is neural adaptation. Neural adaptation also reduces the responses of these same neurons when responding to a stationary stimulus (see, for example, Barlow & Hill, 1963; Srinivasan & Dvorak, 1979). One theory is that perception of stationary…
omnibrain | March 11, 2007Would you like to join the ScienceBlogs NCAA pool?
Do you want to try to beat your favorite bloggers?!
Email dave--at--wordmunger--dot--com for the login and password.
I don't know if there are any prizes - but perhaps we'll come up with something.
omnibrain | March 11, 2007There is a great article today in the NYT about the impact neuroscience is having on the field of law. Here's a little snippit:
Carter Snead, a law professor at Notre Dame, drafted a staff working paper on the impact of neuroscientific evidence in criminal law for President Bush's Council on Bioethics. The report concludes that neuroimaging evidence is of mixed reliability but "the large number of cases in which such evidence is presented is striking." That number will no doubt increase substantially. Proponents of neurolaw say that neuroscientific evidence will have a large impact not only…
omnibrain | March 8, 2007Uhh... a Nova episode where Einstein's brain 'speaks' - a bit weird.
Especially b/c Einstein admits to being a Bears fan.
The next video is the
Story of Kenji Sugimoto, professor in Math and Science history at Kinki university in Japan on a pilgrimage to find Einstein's brain.
Kenji Sugimoto is a professor in mathematics and science history at the Kinki university in Japan.
He has spent thirty years documenting einstein's life and person. To complete his life's work, the professor travelled to America in search of the key to the mind of the great thinker.
Part 1:
Part 2:
The rest below the…
omnibrain | March 8, 2007Well, since everyone else is doing it I guess I'll jump as well.
Do you want to be on the blog roll?? Let us know in the comments section and we might add you if you f'n rock!
One thing I won't add - personal blogs with stuff like, "I met Tommy's family today and boy was I scared at first but by the end of the day his parents were like part of my family and stuff blah blah blah" [edit by Sandra - unless you also write about the cutting edge neuroscience research Tommy and his family are doing].
Also, do you have any thoughts about this blog? Any comments? Suggestions?
omnibrain | March 8, 2007This weekend is visiting weekend for the accepted graduate students in the Cognitive, Brain and Cognition and Visual Cognition and Human Performance divisions of the Psych department at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. This is where a whole bunch of awkward prospective graduate students come out to Champaign and we try to convince them that even though there are no buildings over a few stories, no trees outside of campus (only soy and corn), no hills over 10 feet and the town smells a little funny when the Kraft plant is cooking up something or other, that they should come here…
omnibrain | March 8, 2007If you remember from the Simpson's episode, Brother can you spare two dimes, Homer's brother Herb invents a device to translate baby language. Now it looks like some Australian mother is claiming to have figured out baby speech. Shouldn't the Simpson's get a patent or something? Perhaps get a cut of the profits here!?
A newly discovered baby language is helping infants sleep through the night and mothers bond with their babies. After eight years of research, Australian mother Priscilla Dunstan says she has discovered a universal baby language, comprised of five distinct sounds. Dunstan…
omnibrain | March 7, 2007This picture demonstrates how viewpoint matters in perceiving impossible 3d objects.
Check out this site for an explanation on how it is done, the history of and the psychological mechanisms responsible.
And here are some more 3-d impossible structures and animated java demonstrations on how the illusions are possible.
Go here for the demos
There is a demo of the original impossible 3D object from the post a couple days ago at this site as well.
omnibrain | March 7, 2007
From the YouTube description:
Back in April of 2006, there were two not-to-be-missed activities in Pensacola, Florida: a visit to the United States Navy's supremely cool naval aviation museum and watch the Blue Angels practice their high-G maneuvers over the airfield, or a visit to Kent Hovind's back-yard creationist theme park, Dinosaur Adventure Land, to film a documentary using the video feature on a Canon digital stills camera and a Creative MP3 player for the voice overs. Both, we found, were equally rewarding...
Addendum: Turns out that Kent Hovind is dealing with some rather more…
omnibrain | March 7, 2007
This guys brain is sorta having an out of body experience...
In any case, The March 6 issue of the journal Neurology has an article in it entitled, Out-of-body experience and arousal. where they found
that some people's brains already may be predisposed to these sorts of experiences. They found that an out-of-body experience is statistically as likely to occur during a near death experience as it is to occur during the transition between wakefulness and sleep. Nelson suggests that phenomena in the brain's arousal system, which regulates different states of consciousness including REM sleep…
omnibrain | March 7, 2007Since yesterday I talked about blinking I figured that today I would re-post something from the old blog about another important eye movement that impacts our day to day life as much or more than blinking - The Saccade. Without further ado, here's the old post (with some edits including a definition of a saccade):
So as per my usual laziness I'm not even going to read the source article and make wide sweeping generalization about the conclusions presented in this news article (which may very well ignore whats in the actual journal article).
I think this stuff is actually pretty cool - there…
omnibrain | March 6, 2007Do you want to read Omni Brain on your cellphone?!?!?!?!?
Yeah I knew you did.
Go to this website for the mobile version:
http://winksite.com/omnibrain/blog
Every mobile site also has a Winksite ID. They are the quickest way to navigate
to a site before you have bookmarked it on your mobile phone.
Launch your mobile Web Browser and enter the URL "winksite.com".
Once at Winksite, click "Direct Access", then enter the Winksite ID
for the site you wish to visit. The Winksite ID for
"Omni Brain" is #19733.
I'm not so sure this guy gets web access on his phone - but if you have one a couple years…