More Brain Fun

Post by **Holbytla** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:53 pm

Just because a word is in a dictionary, doesn't mean you should use it.

And I looked it up before I posted so there.

Post by **yovargas** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 9:51 pm

You're stil wrong, Ax!

Post by **axordil** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 2:44 pm

I believe all I have to do is quote that esteemed life philosopher, Sir Mick Jagger:

Time is on my side

Post by **WampusCat** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:40 pm

baby tuckoo wrote:In The New Yorker of July 23, an article by Oliver Sacks tells the neurological story of a surgeon from upstate New York who is hit by lightning while making a phone call.

He has an out-of-body experience: "I was flying forwards. Beweildered. I looked around. I saw my own body on the ground. I said to myself, 'Oh shit, I'm dead.' I saw people converging on my body. I saw my kids, had the realization that they'd be O.K. Then I was surrounded by a bluish-white light, and enormous feeling of well-being and peace. I was being drawn up. There was both speed and direction. Then, slam, I was back."

An intensive-care nurse who was next in line to use the phone had performed top-notch CPR on him.

And that's not the wierd part. He regained his mental and physical abilities and continues to be a top surgeon. He has unexpectedly, at the age of 43, developed a transcendent love of music, one that absolutely did not exist before the bolt hit him. He quickly developed an insatiable desire to listen to piano music, especially Chopin. He began to buy sheet music and began to teach himself to play it.

That's not the wierdest part either.

He began to hear music in his head. The first time was in a dream. He was in a tux, onstage, playing something he had written. Unlike in most dreams, the intense involvement in the moment did not go away. He remembered the music precisely and he set about learning how to annotate it properly.

Twelve years after the "accident" he has done so. He is now writing and performing for public consumption.

This story is also told in Sacks' book "Musicophilia," which I'm reading now with great interest. It has fascinating tales of the brain's reaction to music.

Highly recommended.

Post by **axordil** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:31 pm

I am fond of the notion myself that music is the most serindipitous of all the side effects of our brain structure.

The extraordinary range of emotional and cognitive reactions to it speaks to how well wired we are to both produce and appreciate it.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:01 pm

We can be so immersed in music now that it's easy to take it for granted. Think of the power it must have had when it was something you only heard on special occasions, or in church. I almost feel a twinge of regret that it's so easy; sitting at my computer I can click the mouse a few times and be listening to Mozart's Mass in C minor, or Bach's St. Matthew Passion, or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, any instant of the day I choose. That makes life richer, but does it trivialize the music?

Post by **axordil** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 5:15 pm

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23blin.html

Another example of "subconscious awareness" as a non-oxymoron.

Post by **Lidless** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 12:56 pm

Would repeatedly being hit on the side of the head make one an oxymoron?

Post by **axordil** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 3:52 pm

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/healt ... ef=science

The Imp of the Perverse at work.

Post by **JewelSong** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 2:18 am

WampusCat wrote: This story is also told in Sacks' book "Musicophilia," which I'm reading now with great interest. It has fascinating tales of the brain's reaction to music.

Highly recommended.

I just bought this book; will probably read it on the plane back to the UK on Monday! Glad to have the recommendation!

Post by **axordil** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 3:54 pm

Not quite brain stuff--but irresistible:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... uries.html

Post by **Maria** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 4:11 pm

The Joys of Brain Scrubbing
http://www.reason.com/news/show/133859.html

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/n ... here-i-was

I don't know about the sources, but the concept is disturbing to say the least!

Post by **Maria** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 7:01 pm

The Defense Intelligence Agency has been looking into ways that neuroscience can enhance our soldiers or degrade enemy soldiers' cognitive abilities.

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpin ... rdID=12177

Post by **Lidless** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:53 pm

Maria wrote:Defense Intelligence Agency...

It writes its own punchline, doesn't it.

Post by **ToshoftheWuffingas** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 12:08 am

Ah, fond memories of The Navy Lark

(obscure Brit reference)

Post by **Lidless** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 1:38 pm

Everybody down!

Them's childhhod memories...

http://www.navylark.0catch.com/

Post by **axordil** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 6:41 pm

The source of my new sig:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/scien ... r.html?hpw

Post by **Maria** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 7:54 pm

Yet left on its own, the mouse will not rouse itself for dinner. The mere thought of walking across the cage and lifting food pellets from the bowl fills it with overwhelming apathy. What is the point, really, of all this ingesting and excreting? Why bother? Days pass, the mouse doesn’t eat, it hardly moves, and within a couple of weeks, it has starved itself to death.

Serenity, the movie wrote:It's the Pax.

The G- Paxilon Hydroclorate that we added to the air processors.

It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression.

Well, it works.

The people here stopped fighting.

And then they stopped everything else.

They stopped going to work... they stopped breeding, talking, eating.

There's a million people here, and they all just let themselves die.

Post by **yovargas** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 7:58 pm

Post by **axordil** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 8:06 pm

Obviously Pax blocked dopamine receptors.