As discussed in this week’s podcast, some scholars believe that “Interacting with Women Can Impair Men’s Cognitive Functioning.” That is the title and theme of a Dutch study published in 2009. The study is: “Interacting with Women Can Impair Men’s Cognitive Functioning,” Johan C. Karremans, Thijs Verwijmeren, Tila M. Pronk, and Meyke Reitsma, Journal of […]
Tag: brain
Finnish solution of the nude body / brain question
A team of Finnish researchers reached new partial understanding of how human brains react to nude bodies. They published a study about it: “Facilitated early cortical processing of nude human bodies,” Jussi Alho, Nelli Salminen, Mikko Sams, Jari K. Hietanen, Lauri Nummenma, Biological Psychology, epub May 7, 2015. (Thanks to Neil Martin for bringing this to […]
A complicated new way to try to measure complicated brain stuff
The human brain does complicated things in complicated ways that no one understands. You can think up complicated new ideas about how to do complicated tests to measure some of those complications. A new study seems to do exactly that. The study invents “a new form of logic, dual logic.” The study is: “Dual Logic and Cerebral Coordinates for Reciprocal Interaction […]
Bicycling (side-swapped, or upside-down) on the brain
This experimental attempt to ride a left-right-swapped bicycle raises a big fat question about how the human brain works. Destin, he of the Smarter Every Day video series, tells and shows what he did, and why he did it, and wonders about what it means: Is it the same big, fat question raised by the Erismann-Koehler […]
Writing About Thinking of Speaking with the Dead
This study speaks volumes, but in an unusual way: “Electrocortical activity associated with subjective communication with the deceased,” Arnaud Delorme, Julie Beischel, Leena Michel, Mark Boccuzzi, Dean Radin, and Paul J. Mills, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 4, 2013. (Thanks to investigator Estrella Burgos for bringing this to our attention.) The authors are at the Institute […]
The Specter of the Specter of Internet Pornography
The dire, horrible, brain-damaging effects of pornography may not exactly exist, suggests this study of a study that insists that yes, those effects do exist. The studies are: “Neuroscience research fails to support claims that excessive pornography consumption causes brain damage,” Rory C. Reid, Bruce N. Carpenter, and Timothy W. Fong, Surgical Neurology International, 2011; […]
Brain transplants : the implications [5 of n]
Professor Rebeka Rice of the Philosophy Department at Seattle Pacific University, US, examines the paradoxical implications of brain transplants. [see previous article in this series] The 2012 Winifred E. Weter Faculty Award Lecture for Meritorious Scholarship presents an entity called ‘Bob’ (pictured) Bob is a human being, albeit a hypothetical one. “Perhaps a better way […]
Brain transplants : the implications [4 of n]
Amongst the formidable complexities that would be involved in transplanting someone’s brain, lurks an enigmatic question – if it were yours, would ‘you’ go with your brain? Such questions have been examined by professor Fredrik Svenaeus, of Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden. The professor has a chapter in ‘The Body as Gift, Resource, and Commodity’, ( […]
Dr. Schwab explains why woodpeckers don’t get headaches
Dr. Ivan Schwab explains why woodpeckers don’t get headaches, in this Discovery Channel video: He explains it in more detail, in this TEDx Talk: Dr. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, were awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize for ornithology, for exploring […]
Riding the Incongruity Wave (30+ years of brainwave research)
Try reading the following sentences : ”He took a sip from the transmitter.” – “I take coffee with cream and dog.” – “He planted string beans in his car.” Did you experience anything unusual? Probably not, but if you had been hooked up to a set of scalp-electrodes and an electroencephalographic analyser which was recording […]