The Mind Experience

jtotheizzoe: Explore The Wellcome Collection’s 360-Degree...

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:23:14 -0400

Explore The Wellcome Collection’s 360-Degree Brain

This interactive tool (go check it out, it spins and zooms and enfoldulates on their website) is like having a brain in a jar on your shelf to study for anatomy class, but much less creepy and less likely to lead to a misunderstood monster roaming the streets of the local village and terrorizing the dreams of young people everywhere.

(ᔥWellcome Collection)

Also: Explore the brain’s beautiful connectome at Cocktail Party Physics!

lickypickystickyfree: 25 Napping Facts Every College Student...

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 03:30:44 -0500

lickypickystickyfree:

25 Napping Facts Every College Student Should Know

It makes you smarter
According to Dr. Matthew Walker of the University of California, napping for as little as one hour resets your short-term memory and helps you learn facts more easily after you wake up.

Abandon all-nighters
Foregoing sleep by cramming all night reduces your ability to retain information by up to 40%. If you can, mix in a nap somewhere to refresh your hippocampus.

It doesn’t mean what you think
If you know you have to pull an all-nighter, try a “prophylactic nap.” It’s a short nap in advance of expected sleep deprivation that will help you stay alert for up to 10 hours afterwards.

You can’t avoid that down period after lunch by not eating
Human bodies naturally go through two phases of deep tiredness, one between 2-4 a.m. and between 1-3 p.m. Skipping lunch won’t help this period of diminished alertness and coordination.

Pick the right time
After lunch in the early afternoon your body naturally gets tired. This is the best time to take a brief nap, as it’s early enough to not mess with your nighttime sleep.

Hour naps are great
A 60-minute nap improves alertness for 10 hours, although with naps over 45 minutes you risk what’s known as “sleep inertia,” that groggy feeling that may last for half an hour or more.

But short naps are best
For healthy young adults, naps as short as 20, 10, or even 2 minutes can be all you need to get the mental benefits of sleep, without risking grogginess.

Drink coffee first
The way this works is you drink a cup of coffee right before taking your 20-minute or half-hour nap, which is precisely how long caffeine takes to kick in. That way when you wake up, you’re not only refreshed, but ready to go.

The NASA nap
A little group called NASA discovered that just a 26-minute nap increases performance by 34% and alertness by 54%. Pilots take advantage of NASA naps while planes are on autopilot.

Can’t sleep? Don’t stress
Even if you can’t fall asleep for a nap, just laying down and resting has benefits. Studies have found resting results in lowered blood pressure, which even some college kids have to worry about if they are genetically predisposed to high blood pressure.

Napping may save your life
A multi-year Greek study found napping at least three times per week for at least 30 minutes resulted in a 37% lower death rate due to heart problems.

More nap benefits for the brain
Not only will napping improve your alertness, it will also help your decision-making, creativity, and sensory perception.

But wait, there’s more
Studies have found napping raises your stamina 11%, increases ability to stay asleep all night by 12%, and lowers the time required to fall asleep by 14%.

The ultimate nap
According to Dr. Sara Mednick, the best nap occurs when REM sleep is in proportion to slow-wave sleep. Use her patented Take A Nap Nap Wheel to calculate what time of day you can nap to the max.

Fight the Freshman 15
Research shows that women who sleep five hours at night are 32% more likely to experience major weight gain than those sleeping seven hours. A two-hour nap isn’t feasible for many, but napping is a good way to make up for at least some lost night sleep.

If it was good enough for them…
Presidents JFK and Bill Clinton used to nap every day to help ease the heavy burden of ruling the free world. Of course, they also had other relaxation methods, but we won’t get into those.

Do like the Romans do
In ancient Rome, everyone, including children, retreated for a 2 or 3-hour nap after lunch. No doubt this is the reason the Roman empire lasted over 1,000 years

Don’t wait too long
The latest you want to wake up from a nap is five hours before bedtime, otherwise you risk not being able to fall asleep at night.

Sugar is not a good substitute for a nap
When we are tired, we instinctively reach for foods with a high glycemic index, but after the initial energy wears off, we’re left more tired than we were before.

It’s a good way to catch up
If it takes you less than five minutes to fall asleep at night, you are sleep deprived. If you never can seem to get to bed earlier at night, a mid-day nap is a great way to catch up on sleep.

Underclassmen need more sleep
Freshmen and sophomores who are still in your teens: you need up to 10 hours of sleep to feel rested. So odds are, you are sleep-deprived.

You’ll have to leave the party sooner
After one school-week of not getting enough sleep, three alcoholic drinks will affect you the same way six would when you are fully rested.

Don’t drive drowsy
Don’t be afraid to take advantage of an “emergency nap” on the side of the road in your car. Every year, as many as 100,000 traffic fatalities are caused by sleepy people behind the wheel.

The Einstein Method
If you are concerned about sleeping too long, do what Albert Einstein regularly did: hold a pencil while you’re drifting off, so when you fall asleep, the pencil dropping will wake you up. (We do not guarantee you will wake up with a 180 IQ.)

Missing sleep is worse at your age
For people ages 18 to 24, sleep deprivation impairs performance more significantly than in other age brackets.

Photo

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 03:21:07 -0500

jtotheizzoe: scipsy: Variability of brain size and external...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:38:39 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

scipsy:

Variability of brain size and external topography.

Photographs and weights of the brains of different species. Primates: human (Homo sapiens, 1.176 kg), chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes, 273 g), baboon (Papio cynocephalus, 151 g), mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx, 123 g), macaque (Macaca tonkeana, 110 g). Carnivores: bear (Ursus arctos, 289 g), lion (Panthera leo, 165 g), cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus, 119 g), dog (Canis familiaris, 95 g), cat (Felis catus, 32 g). Artiodactyls: giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis, 700 g), kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros, 166 g), mouflon (Ovis musimon, 118 g), ibex (Capra pyrenaica, 115 g); peccary (Tayassu pecari, 41 g). Marsupials: wallaby (Protemnodon rufogrisea, 28 g). Lagomorphs: rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus, 5.2 g). Rodents: rat (Rattus rattus, 2.6 g), mouse (Mus musculus, 0.5 g). (via Frontiers)

What the hell is going on with that rabbit brain? Huge olfactory bulb on the left (as in the rat and mouse, big smellers) and an inverted cerebellum on the right hanging off like a couple “brain eyes”.

‘In this talk, Social Media strategists and developers...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:01:44 -0500

‘In this talk, Social Media strategists and developers Rome Viharo and Maf Lewis reveal the likelihood that Google’s search algorithm may already be sentient, what it means, and what it represents as a metaphor for collective problem solving.’

Watch this! Please.

jtotheizzoe: The Forgetting Pill: Can We Erase Painful...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:00:17 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

The Forgetting Pill: Can We Erase Painful Memories?

If you could take a pill that would erase any memory, would you take it? Traumatic memories can be painful, debilitating baggage, persisting for decades and often difficult to control. Previous therapies involved discussing traumatic memories in detail, but new models of the elastic and networked basis of memory have demonstrated that this isn’t effective. Jonah Lehrer writes in Wired:

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, people have imagined memories to be a stable form of information that persists reliably. The metaphors for this persistence have changed over time—Plato compared our recollections to impressions in a wax tablet, and the idea of a biological hard drive is popular today—but the basic model has not. Once a memory is formed, we assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.

None of this is true. In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don’t remain constant. Even though every memory feels like an honest representation, that sense of authenticity is the biggest lie of all.

However, a “memory” is not a “thing”, in the usual sense of the word. It is an experience, in our brain, that we replay.

We have new understanding that the formation of memories is utterly dependent on biological processes, on proteins that help write new connections in our neural network. When we “re-fire” this network, we “recall” a memory. What if we could block the proteins that write the connections? Could we truly forget?

New research is getting close to just that. In rats, drugs can block the function of a key protein (PKMzeta) involved in strengthening memory synapses. The effect is preventing experiences from being reinforced. In a sense, one can forget that small neural web, and the memory that it encodes.

When we begin to view memory as relative, as dependent on a constant flux of neural networks, it calls into question what is “true”. And the ethics of taking a “forgetting” pill are just as murky. It turns out that our assumption that we can’t choose what to remember or forget is wrong, and soon we might have the power to make that choice. Would you?

For more, check out Jonah Lehrer’s full article, and this series on PKMzeta from Ed Yong.

(via Wired Magazine, image by Dwight Eschliman)

jtotheizzoe: scipsy: A timeline of the study of the...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:39:46 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

scipsy:

A timeline of the study of the brain [Interactive]

I highly recommend clicking through to play around.

jtotheizzoe: The Cranial Network Your neurons have been social...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:18:33 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

The Cranial Network

Your neurons have been social networking since long before Zuckerberg.

LIKE.

(via Scientific American, By Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham)

Cover photo for The Journal of Neuroscience, 15 January...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:25:34 -0500

Cover photo for The Journal of Neuroscience, 15 January 2012

Cover legend: A summary of the effects of polysialic acid (PSA) and its predominant carrier, the neural cell adhesion molecule NCAM. Deficits in expression of these molecules impair hippocampal long-term potentiation and depression (LTP and LTD) in mice, and are linked to schizophrenia and aging in humans. Accumulating evidence suggests that PSA-NCAM regulates the balance in signaling through synaptic GluN2A versus extrasynaptic GluN2B, and that pathological conditions related to deficiency in PSA or NCAM can be pharmacologically compensated by modulation of GluN receptors. Cover design by Oleg Senkov and Alexander Dityatev. ©NejroN/Bigstockphoto.com—the image of young man; ©Nejron Photo/Fotolia.com—the image of old man. For more information, see the article by Kochlamazashvili et al. (pages 2263–2275).

Don’t worry. I didn’t understand it either…I just like the photo.

bitesizedpsych: Phrenology is a pseudoscience or false science...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:10:13 -0500

bitesizedpsych:

Phrenology is a pseudoscience or false science which dates back to the late 18th Century and posits that personalities correspond with bumps on the skull - for example, a particularly friendly person would have a distinguished bump where “friendship” was thought to be processed in the brain. Although since proven false, phrenology started the mainstream neurological rather than philosophical approach to the human mind.

staceythinx: Selections from the Wellcome Image Awards 2011.

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:29:12 -0500

Foreleg of a male diving beetle

Cell division & gene expression in plant

Wheat infected with ergot fungus

Moth wing scales

Pyramidal neurons

Honeybee

Periodontal bacteria

Blood clot on a plaster

Blastocyst embryo

Ruby-tailed wasp

staceythinx:

Selections from the Wellcome Image Awards 2011.

Excerpt from Psychiatric Tales by Darryl Cunningham

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:17:37 -0500

Excerpt from Psychiatric Tales by Darryl Cunningham

ikenbot: Do Animals Dream? Yes. Many pet owners have seen their...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:13:33 -0500

ikenbot:

Do Animals Dream?

Yes. Many pet owners have seen their sleeping dog or cat twitch or paw the air, as if dreaming of bones to bury or mice to chase.

Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and author of the book The Intelligence of Dogs, says that canines go through the same sleep stages as we do, only faster.

After about 20 minutes, a dog enters REM sleep, the stage in which most vivid dreams occur. Big dogs dream longer, Coren says, and little dogs dream quickly and frequently.

He doesn’t know why, and neither does anyone else. Insects and fish don’t experience REM sleep, but some birds and all mammals do. Reptiles might also experience REM, and some scientists argue that our mammalian dreaming might be a holdover from our reptilian brains.

The purpose of dreaming remains a mystery, but infants (of all species) dream more often. This is probably because the sensory stimulation helps form new neural connections.

In adults, the best working theory is that dreams stimulate the regions of the brain associated with memory. Finches replay the melody of their birdsong in their dreams, and lab rats retrace the mazes they have run.

For more on dreams..

Mostly, I reblogged this because of the photo.

"Let me propose a thought experiment. Imagine, if you will, that there’s a certain clump of..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:32:54 -0500

“Let me propose a thought experiment. Imagine, if you will, that there’s a certain clump of nerve cells in the brain that’s essential for conscious awareness. Now suppose that a certain drug suppresses neural activity in just this nucleus, with no effect on the rest of the brain. Subjects who take this drug do things as usual, but they experience nothing. The drug converts them into sleepwalkers. Finally, imagine that I’ve developed a new form of this drug, which has permanent effects. It abolishes consciousness forever, with no effect on behavior. I want to test it on you. How much will you charge to take it?
I think the question answers itself. Spending your life as a sleepwalker is equivalent to being dead, and so you will charge me whatever price you would charge to commit suicide.
I offer this thought experiment to dispel the notion that conscious awareness is too metaphysical and subjective a phenomenon for science to concern itself with. The phenomenon of consciousness is the source of all value in our lives. As such, it should be at the top of the scientific agenda.”

- Do Horses Gallop in Their Sleep, by Matt Cartmill

CNN: "N.Y. town still baffled by teens' mysterious tics"

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:49:36 -0500

“In the tiny New York town of LeRoy, one thing is for sure; since October, 16 people suddenly have developed uncontrollable twitching and verbal tics.

Three months later, they — and the rest of the town — are still wondering why.

Doctors have diagnosed most of them with conversion disorder, saying that stress is the likely root of their physical problems.

“What happens is there traditionally some kind of stress or multiple stressors that provoke a physical reaction within the body,” said Dr. Jennifer McVige, a neurologist who has evaluated several of the teens. “This is unconscious, it is not done purposefully and it’s almost like … the stress wells up in your body has to come out in some way shape or form.”“

For the full article, click here.

Conversion disorder (first recognized by the famous Freud) “is a condition in which a person has blindness, paralysis, or other nervous system (neurologic) symptoms that cannot be explained by medical evaluation.” (Read more about this disorder here.) It is thought be caused by psychological stress, which when stored in the unconscious manifests itself in an array of unexplainable symptoms. The basal ganglia, a region in the brain responsible for motor movements, could be a likely culprit in this case.

But a ‘outbreak’ of conversion disorder? How does something like this happen?

Hey! I was wondering if you could write at all about the vagus nerve? I want to know more about it! Thankss

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:16:17 -0500

Hurray…my first question! This answer is made possible from last semester’s Biopsychology class…
Alright, so you have twelve cranial nerves which travel from your brain to elsewhere in your body. Each nerve has its own unique function, and they often interact to relay information (like in the case of motion sickness). The vagus nerve, specifically, is responsible for many parasympathetic systems in your body. That is, it controls unconscious pathways in our body, like our heart rate, sexual arousal, urination, digestion, etc.

duct-tape-roses: Hahaha oh psychology…. I WANT THIS T-SHIRT.

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:55:15 -0500

duct-tape-roses:

Hahaha oh psychology….

I WANT THIS T-SHIRT.

On Being Sane in Insane Places

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:51:36 -0500

a study by David L. Rosenhan

What does it mean to be labelled as ‘insane’?

The Rosenhan Experiment was a highly controversial study conducted in 1973—a time where the diagnostic criteria was under much criticism, and psychiatry was meeting a strong opposition. By its opponents, psychiatry was viewed, as a whole, to be invested in quarantining individuals based on the how ‘normal’ (or in this case, ‘abnormal’) we perceived their thoughts and/or behaviors to be.

In Rosenhan’s study, twelve individuals (in the midst were psychologists, a psychiatrist, an actor, and a painter) to separate psychiatric hospitals across the US. They were admitted under the pretense of experiencing auditory hallucinations; consequently, eleven of the twelve were diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the other manic-depressive psychosis. The moment they were to be admitted into the psychiatry hospital, they were instructed to report that the hallucinations to be totally gone, and to act as normally and cooperatively as possible. To their surprise, it took five months before the last participant was released, and all were forced to take anti-psychotics (which, thankfully, they were able to flush down the toilet). If the participants lacked any illness at all, why is it that they were forced to stay so long, and to take medication?

But this study didn’t go without criticism: one hospital challenged Rosenhan to send more pseudopatients their way, and they claimed they’d be able to identify every one. The psychiatric hospital claimed at the end of the agreed time period to have identified 41 impostors. However, in reality, Rosenhan hadn’t sent a single pseudopatient to the hospital.

What does this mean? Once labelled with a mental illness, stigma follows. Doctors and nurses saw the actions of the pseudopatients in terms of their supposed illness. Furthermore, participants reported accounts of dehumanization during their stay.

For a full account of the story, read Rosenhan’s paper here.

poptech: The Human Connectome Project Navigate the brain in a...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:52:09 -0500

poptech:

The Human Connectome Project

Navigate the brain in a way that was never before possible; fly through major brain pathways, compare essential circuits, zoom into a region to explore the cells that comprise it, and the functions that depend on it.

The Human Connectome Project aims to provide an unparalleled compilation of neural data, an interface to graphically navigate this data and the opportunity to achieve never before realized conclusions about the living human brain.

jtotheizzoe: The State of State Science Standards The Fordham...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:10:46 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

The State of State Science Standards

The Fordham Institute released grades on how states’ science education standards stack up. We know that students need to do better when it comes to STEM education. But when states are undermining science education, how can we even begin to improve?

What grade did your state get?

(via Greg Laden’s Blog)