omnibrain | May 29, 2007Growing up I used to read Omni magazine and would always see all sorts of devices that supposedly could induce lucid dreams or tapes that had subliminal messages recorded along with Bach to create special brain states where you'd be particularly receptive to messages like - "you will be psychic... you can lift objects with your mind...you will be rich and successful... you will quit smoking crack...etc etc etc" Let me tell you - I'm not psychic or rich! Although...I never did take up smoking crack so maybe the tapes did work! I eventually forgot about these tapes and devices for many years…
omnibrain | May 26, 2007Here's what PsyBlog has to say about Omni Brain:
Best humorous (but still scientific) psychology blog
The danger with mixing science and humour is slipping into the 'geek trap' where clever people try to be too clever. Omni Brain easily avoids this. Funky finger pictures on this post about sexual orientation and finger length.
Just to let you guys know... the only way we avoid being too clever is by not actually being very clever ;) haha...
Thanks for the props!
Check out the rest of their psychology blog reviews (which are great!) here.
Oh, and the beanie baby Freud doesn't have anything…
omnibrain | May 25, 2007Enjoy this great video where Dwight from The Office is trained with Pavlovian Classical Conditioning!
Wasn't that great?!
omnibrain | May 24, 2007Ahh silly research - gotta love it!
SAN DIEGO -- Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, suffers from a controversial mental condition and could use some couch time in a shrink's office, a team of researchers declared this week.
"He's suffering. And he's suffering from a disorder," said Dr. Eric Bui, a psychiatrist in Toulouse, France, who co-wrote a study that diagnosed one of the most villainous and heroic characters in the Star Wars canon as having borderline personality disorder.
According to the authors, who reported their findings at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in…
omnibrain | May 23, 2007
Sometimes headlines really rub me the wrong way. This happens to be a consistent topic that always bugs me - finger length. It's interesting in that finger length is correlated with testosterone levels and that affects all sorts of cognitive abilities - but come on! Really?! Shouldn't they be spending their time trying to figure out how to ungay these people? (That was sarcastic by the way!)
Here's the first story from EurekAlert:
Researchers at the University of Warwick have found that sexual orientation has a real effect on how we perform mental tasks such as navigating with a map in a…
omnibrain | May 23, 2007Ok... not really at home (Are they really suggesting in the picture that you can do it yourself?). There are now some relatively simple consumer devices on the market that will let your Psychiatrist wave his magic wand over your head, helping to alleviate your depressive symptoms in his office without checking you into a hospital and knocking you out. I'm curious whether they need an MRI before doing this procedure? It doesn't look like it's too precise. In any case... here's the device:
And a description from Engadget:
The devices employ a technique known as transcranial magnetic…
omnibrain | May 22, 2007Since the whole internet seems to be especially preoccupied with visual illusions in the last couple days, here's another one:
If you don't see it ... start moving back from your monitor.
omnibrain | May 22, 2007Answer...They're all involved in car accidents.Our first story is brought to you by California State Senator Carole Migden who recently voted for a bill banning cell phone use while driving. I'm sure you can guess what happened... yeah exactly... she was chatting on her cell phone and ran into a cute little Honda, sending the driver to the hospital with minor injuries. Ooops.
Our final story shows that annoying friend you have might just cause you an accident if they are blabbing away in your front seat while you're driving. This is of course in addition to making you crash when they call…
omnibrain | May 17, 2007Here is an updated reposting (originally published on 04-26) with further information at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!
=======================================================================I really like soda, especially the kinds with lots of caffeine and sugar. However, I have minor panic attacks whenever I drink them and think about all the corn syrup and other scary junk that goes into the soda flowing through my body. On the other hand I can't stand diet sodas - whose chemicals won't make me fat and diabetic (and probably take a lot longer to insidiously wreck the body) but taste…
omnibrain | May 17, 2007A great abstract I found via improbable research blog:
How to write consistently boring scientific literature
Kaj Sand-Jensen (ksandjensen@bi.ku.dk), Freshwater Biological Laboratory, Univ. of Copenhagen, Helsingørsgade 51, DK-3400 Hillerød, Denmark.
Abstract
Although scientists typically insist that their research is very exciting and adventurous when they talk to laymen and prospective students, the allure of this enthusiasm is too often lost in the predictable, stilted structure and language of their scientific publications. I present here, a top-10 list of recommendations for how to…
omnibrain | May 17, 2007There are a number of Chatbots out there on the internet. Most of the new variety actually learn words and expressions as users spend time talking with them. The idea is to make them so advanced that they can actually fool people into thinking they are talking to another person instead of a bunch of silicon and plastic. But what happens when two chatbots get into a conversation with each other? It looks pretty deep to me ;)
ALICE: Are you alive?
Jabberwacky: Perhaps.
A: Why the uncertain tone?
J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.
A: The whole universe?
J: And we both might…
omnibrain | May 14, 2007There's a humorous post over at Shrink Rap about using patients online communication style (specifically emoticons) to determine what treatment plan to follow. Here is a partial list:
:-)stable. cont prozac 40mg. f/u 3 mos.
:-))reduce prozac to 20mg. f/u 1mo.
:-))))d/c prozac. add lithium 300 tid. check TSH, creat. f/u 1wk.
:-Dadd depakote. check lithium level, LFTs, CBC. f/u 1wk.
:-|stable. cont prozac 40 mg. f/u 1mo.
:-(increase prozac to 60mg. f/u 2wk.
:'-(add wellbutrin SR 150mg. f/u 1wk.
X-(call 911. send to ER. check for OD.
Head over to Shrink Rap for the rest!
omnibrain | May 11, 2007Hi Everyone,
I'm off for my three day drive to San Francisco this morning so probably won't be posting much in the next week or so. I'm planning on a trip to the Exploratorium sometime next week so if anyone would like to meet up with us feel free to shoot me an email! (steve@omnibrain.org).
omnibrain | May 9, 2007I know how you all love panda porn - so I figured I'd share this little Turtle sex story Jennifer sent me.
Enjoy :)
George is not what you would call a stud. When I visited him in 1985, he was thought to be a relatively young adult, maybe 50 years old, but he was already a confirmed bachelor. He hadn't shown any interest in two females of a similar species placed in his pen. One had flipped over and drowned in the wading pool. The keepers weren't positive that George had driven this tortoise to her death, but he definitely hadn't been doing any Barry White serenades.
A few years later, in…
omnibrain | May 4, 2007It seems that the old fogies at ScienceBlogs have discovered Facebook and started to add their profiles. ;)
You should head over there and join some of the related groups that have popped up (and make friends with some of the old folks!) - starting with me and the ScienceBlogs fan club. If that's not enough, there's the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique.
omnibrain | May 4, 2007
Paxilback - Gray Kid parody of Justin Timberlake's Sexyback - enjoy!
(HT: boingboing)
omnibrain | May 3, 2007There's an interesting post over at Mind Hacks about this woman:
Dear Editor
We report the case of an elderly lady with no experience of using a personal computer or internet technology, whose delusional experiences included the direct personal receipt of email.
Ms T, an 84-year old female with a 40-year history of schizoaffective disorder, presented with a delusional belief that something precious and of value 'for all people' had been inserted into her body by a doctor in Germany in the 1950s. She had sought medical help because she believed that an abdominal operative procedure would be…
omnibrain | May 1, 2007A male chimpanzee may beg for food from another chimpanzee by gesturing with an extended arm and open hand.
But the same gesture may also be used to ask a female chimpanzee for sex, or between two males as a sign of reconciliation after a fight, said primatologist Frans de Waal, a member of the research team.
"Typically they may use it for food ... but they may use the same gesture for something totally different, so for instance a male may invite a female for sex by holding out an open hand to her," Dr de Waal said.
Soo... well... do female chimps sometimes get the wrong idea and give the…
omnibrain | April 30, 2007If you believe that a name can have an impact on how people treat you, your future career and if you also like math you should name your daughter (or change your name) to something further down this list:
Isabella 1.21
Anna 1.04
Elizabeth 1.02
Emma 0.97
Jessica 0.93
Samantha 0.83
Sarah 0.78
Olivia 0.74
Hannah 0.70
Emily 0.68
Lauren 0.66
Ashley 0.63
Grace 0.50
Abigail 0.48
Alex 0.28
If you want your daughter to be a beautician, home maker or a monarch the names on the top of the list are fine. Something bothers me about studies like this but I'm not sure if it's just that I don't want things…
omnibrain | April 30, 2007Clearly, washing your hair isn't going to have any effect since I highly doubt that your Head and Shoulders is going to sink through your scalp, through bone, through your meninges and then go straight to the source of your seizures. But hey! If you can get your local neurosurgeon to open up your scalp, do some intracranial recordings to find the source of your seizures and then massage the shampoo onto your neurons you might have some luck. Don't forget to wash, rinse and repeat!
You should probably condition those newly cleaned cells while you're in there as well.
Here's the details:…