Amazing Everyday Things

Some of the most amazing things are everyday things. Such as bee anatomy:

[Sorry, I can no longer find the link to Mishka's Tweet]

Equally amazing: We can insert things like bananas, corn bread and butchered chickens into that big hole on the front of our head and it gives us the energy to do things like read Shakespeare, clean out our garages and create new human animals. If this happened only once, it would be the most amazing things ever, but it happens all the time, which means that we take it for granted and we turn our attention to far less amazing things.

Continue ReadingAmazing Everyday Things

Reminder: Your brain is stunningly amazing

At Edge.com, V.S. Ramachandran began his talk titled "Adventures in Behavioral Neurology with this description of the brain:

Let me tell you about the problem confronting us. The brain is a 1.5 kilogram mass of jelly, the consistency of tofu, you can hold it in the palm of your hand, yet it can contemplate the vastness of space and time, the meaning of infinity and the meaning of existence. It can ask questions about who am I, where do I come from, questions about love and beauty, aesthetics, and art, and all these questions arising from this lump of jelly. It is truly the greatest of mysteries. The question is how does it come about? When you look at the structure of the brain it's made up of neurons. Of course, everybody knows that these days. There are 100 billion of these nerve cells. Each of these cells makes about 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons. From this information people have calculated that the number of possible brain states, of permutations and combinations of brain activity, exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe.

Continue ReadingReminder: Your brain is stunningly amazing

Is living in a city damaging your brain?

If we are to believe the results of a new study from Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, the answer is "yes". These finding come at an interesting crossroads-- for the first time ever, more humans live in cities than in rural settings. The findings argue that the brain becomes confused and tired as it is forced to respond to the massive amounts of stimulii that are present in cities. The brain is constantly searching its surroundings, trying to anticipate threats. Not only does one have to negotiate traffic and constantly re-assess the changing visual landscape, but this is often done while carrying on a conversation or mentally planning a route through the city. Quoting from Boston.com:

The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception -- we are telling the mind what to pay attention to -- takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.
Interestingly, the researchers found that just showing people a picture of an urban environment was enough to cause substantial impairment to the test subject's levels of attention and working memory. Similarly, a different study quoted in the article shows that even very small amounts of exposure to nature were enough to confer significant improvement on subjects' cognitive abilities and sense of well-being. Additionally, the research indicates that living in cities may also have a harmful effect on one's level of self-control.

Continue ReadingIs living in a city damaging your brain?