Psychology
omnibrain | December 16, 2006Another classic...So I was watching Mythbusters the other night and they were testing a number of "mind contol" devices - they used EEG, etc. They even decided that a couple methods were "plausible."I decided what I could find out there on the internet...
The first place I looked was EBay - they really do sell everything (I once almost got an antique proctologists uhh.."probe" - it was going to be a gift .. i promise), but anyway - this picture popped up. Only $799.99!
Control people's minds with this amazingly simple technology. The Mind Control Machine converts your voice into something…
omnibrain | December 16, 2006
A number of people have noticed that after getting transplants their personality changes - and not only that- their personality changes to reflect the donors personality.
...though she was born and raised in Tucson, she never liked Mexican food. She craved Italian and was a pasta junkie. But three years ago, all that changed for Jaime Sherman, 28, when she underwent a heart transplant at University Medical Center, after battling a heart defect since birth. "Now I love football, baseball, basketball. You name it, I follow it," said Sherman, a psychology student at Arizona State University. "…
omnibrain | December 14, 2006The mind is the most amazing, lying, cheating, charlatan televangelist ever imagined. It is so good at its job though that one 'part' of the mind can construct a completely false reality and then convince other parts that what it has just constructed is the absolute truth. Not only do other parts of the mind believe this information, they make up extra-information just to justify the original reality constructed. The most important questions though are: Why in the world does the mind have to be such a great con artist? And how does it accomplish this?
In a more formal sense, When a world…
omnibrain | December 13, 2006
Psychology as a science is very new and has had roughly less than 150 years to fill up the shelves of libraries with results. A good number of those shelves have to be filled with wacky ridiculous experiments of all sorts - from Harlow's monkey mother studies to Dan Simons' Inattentional blindness studies (the gorilla walking across the room experiments). So my question to everyone is...
What is the most ridiculous, wacky, or fun study you've ever run into?
clock | December 13, 2006Let me state up front that this is not a topic I know anything about, but I have always had a curiosity for it, so let me just throw some thoughts out into the Internets and see if commenters or other bloggers can enlighten me or point me to the most informative sources on the topic. This is really a smorgarsbord of seemingly disparate topics that I always felt had more in common with each other than just the fact that they have something or other to do with traffic. I am trying to put those things together and I hope you can help me (under the fold).
1. Models of Traffic Flow
There are two…
omnibrain | December 12, 2006
I was reading this great post from Shrink Rap about sex with fish:
Being close to our nation's capitol we also sometimes get folks with politician-related delusions. They get arrested while traveling to Washington to confront the "devil-worshipers" controlling the government, or to get in touch with their "relatives" who happen to live in the White House. (Bush and Clinton would be surprised to learn how many patients they've fathered.) Presidential threateners are rare, but do show up occasionally. I understand the Secret Service even has a team that functions as something of an assertive…
omnibrain | December 12, 2006Lonely at dinner?
Give this new product from a Dutch art company a try, it includes a DVD which "will allow a lonesome dinner to become one full of holiday fun and good cheer with dinner companions eating, drinking, and engaging in conversation.
The DVD will feature actors reading out different scripts in other for people to pick out which type of people they would want best."
-via engadget and some other news site
Of course there isn't a video to help you to not feel like an idiot after having a made up conversation with a TV screen.
neurontic | December 11, 2006Because I am a sucker for the bizarre case study, I can't help but use The Frontal Cortex's recent entry on false pregnancy as an excuse to share an extreme example of the phenomenon with the readers. In Phantoms In The Brain, V.S. Ramachandran relates a tale set down by Philadelphia physician Silas Weir Mitchell in the 1930s.
One day in 1932, a 32-year-old woman named Mary Knight walked into the office of her local physician, Dr. Monroe. She was nine months pregnant, but money was tight and she'd waited until the last possible moment to consult a doctor. The pregnancy had gone off without a…
omnibrain | December 8, 2006
Meet Bill,
He was born prosopagnosic and he has an online "book" all about his condition.
I haven't had a chance to read much of it but it seems pretty interesting.
I was born with a condition that makes it difficult for me to recognize faces. There is a small part of the brain that is dedicated to that job, and though it is small, when it comes to recognizing faces, it is very very good. In me, that part doesn't work, making me blind to all but the most familiar of faces. To help you understand this, let me compare it to two conditions you are probably more familiar with.
People who are "…
clock | November 29, 2006You know that Bush-apologists say crazy things. They get cited, chastized and mocked for it every day on the liberal blogs, after all. You may have also wandered, by mistake, onto comment threads on Little Green Foodballs, or The Corner, or other nasty Right-wing blogs and suspected that those people are not really 'all there'. And you may be aware that there is actually quite a large body of scientific evidence that Conservatives are Crazy and Dangerous, er, that conservative/authoritarian ideology correlates strongly with a number of (environmentally induced, i.e., through upbringing and…
clock | November 17, 2006Another one on psychology of political ideology (form April 08, 2005):
------------------------------------------Ezra Klein, Majikthise and Revere of Effect Measure are having another round of discussion of the Lakoff's scheme.
One of the problems in this discussion, I think, is the confusion between Conservatism Vs. Liberalism as Systems of Government on one hand, and Conservatism vs. Liberalism as Personality Traits on the other.
Going back in history and arguing for or against the two archetypes by invoking Nixon, Reagan, McCarthy, Stalin, Hitler, Clinton, Carter, whoever...misses the…
neurontic | November 16, 2006The dark days of winter are upon us, folks, and as you know, wintertime has been shown to make many of us SAD. Luckily, experts in a variety of disciplines have been working feverishly to come up with strategies to stave off the blues and enhance happiness. Below, you'll find a sampling of some of theories currently in vogue.
*Not long ago, a multidisciplinary team of experts in the UK compiled a list of 10 behaviors they claim have been statistically proven to promote happiness:
1) Plant something and nurture it2) Count your Blessings - at least five - at the end of everyday3) Take time to…
clock | November 3, 2006Earlier today I was listening to The Story with Dick Gordon on WUNC91.5FM and it was about the persuasive power of the human voice. This is something I was always interested in.
The guest was Anne Karpf, author of Human Voice. It was one of those extra-long driveway moments because the topic was so interesting, she is so insightful (and has a great sense of humor), and had several clips of people like FDR, Churchill, Reagan, Bush and Blair with added analysis of their voices, as well as some cultural comparisons, the development of language, etc.
I am about to put the book on my wish…
clock | October 31, 2006Humans do it, great apes do it, dolphins do it, now elephants (also here) have also been shown to do it - recognize themselves in the mirror, i.e., realize that the image in the mirror is the image of themselves and not a strange animal. That's a biggie in the world of cognitive science and the study of evolution of consciousness:
When the mirror was unveiled in their yard, they immediately walked over and began poking and prodding and inspecting and playing. They used their trunks to inspect it and then themselves. Two got on their hind legs to look on top of the mirror. One got on the…
clock | October 23, 2006NOTE: Bumped to top to draw attention to added links:
Provocative and excellent post by Sara Robinson: There's Something About The Men. Most definitely read the comments as well. Then come back here in half an hour and read an old post of mine that I have scheduled for republishing at 11am.
I know Sara likes Steven Ducat, so she may agree with my position, or perhaps not.
I am expecting responses by Amanda, Melissa, Lindsay, Jill and Echidne among others. This may become an interesting discussion over the next couple of days on feminist blogs and beyond.
Update: Shakespeare's Sister…
clock | October 11, 2006Meandering Musings on evolutionary psychology and many other things (from February 15, 2005)...
I remember when PZ Myers posted this exercise on his blog. The point was to show how much all of modern biology is based on and dependent on evolutionary theory because of oft-repeated bizzare claim by Creationists that this is not so.
Now Josh Rosenau has embarked on expanding this project and has started a pair of blogs just for this purpose. One blog, The Evolution Project will track recently published scientific papers that more or less explicitely are based on evolutionary theory, while its…
razib | October 7, 2006Update: OK, a pro is in the house. Chris of Mixing Memory starts:
I don't really know where to start on this. Lakoff's reply is one of the most intellectually dishonest pieces of writing I've seen from a cognitive scientist, and if anyone other than Lakoff had written it, I'd probably just ignore it. But Lakoff is not only famous, he's influential, and more than a few liberal bloggers take him seriously. So I feel compelled to say something. I guess the best way to go about this is to detail their disagreements, and show where Lakoff sinks to all new lows in defense of his position.
Read the…