Maybe dogs and kids are a key, arriving at last, to understanding how the brain thinks thoughts and feels emotions. Maybe. It’s still essentially a mystery how the brain (which has been called “the most complex object in the universe“) does most of what it does. The mystery is especially deep about how — specifically — […]
Tag: brain
When a neuroscientist uses the term “firing”…
What does a neuroscientist mean when he or she uses the term “firing?” In October 2013 Peter N Steinmetz, director of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, published this study: “Testing for effects of different stimuli on neuronal firing relative to background activity,” Peter N Steinmetz and Chris Thorp, Journal of Neural Engineering, vol. 10, no. 5, October […]
Jiggling and scanning the brains of cadavers
How does one compare what doesn’t happen in the jiggled brains of dead persons with what does happen in the jiggling brains of living persons? This study is an attempt to answer that question: “SimPACE: Generating simulated motion corrupted BOLD data with synthetic-navigated acquisition for the development and evaluation of SLOMOCO: A new, highly effective […]
OM, OM on the brain
Two Indian scientists wielded sophisticated mathematics to dissect and analyse the traditional meditation chanting sound “OM”. The OM team published a series of monographs in academic journals. These plumb certain acoustic subtleties of Om, which these researchers say is “the divine sound”. For a little about that, see our small report, in 2010, on the repetitive physics of OM. Now, […]
Profiling Professor Persinger – part 3
Can ‘Reality’ be ‘Bifurcated’? If so, what would be the energy required to do so? Could a human brain bifurcate reality? And, if one brain had managed to achieve the critical threshold energy to do so, would other observers existing within the same space-time frame also perceive related phenomena? All these questions are examined by […]
Profiling Professor Persinger – part 2
Can one’s brain become entangled? Einstein called quantum entanglement ‘spooky’, but he was nevertheless obliged to grapple with the puzzles and possibilities of Verschränkung – which were first fully described by Erwin Schrödinger, circa 1935. Since then, a series of experimental studies have convincingly demonstrated entanglement behaviour at the quantum level – but few theorists […]
Profiling Professor Persinger – part 1
Human brains and lightning-discharges – what might they have in common? Could there be potentially congruent scale-invariant quantitative properties connecting the two? These questions have been examined by professor Michael A. Persinger of the psychology dept. at Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada. The professor presents his findings in the May 2012 edition of the scholarly journal […]
Other-name calling by scientists
Scientists are a fractious lot. Near the end of a long discussion (in his study “Retinal ganglion cells responding selectively to direction and speed of image motion in the rabbit,” Horace B. Barlow, R.M. Hill, and W.R. Levick, The Journal of Physiology, vol. 173, no. 3, 1964, pp. 377-407.), Horace Barlow writes: “Much of this discussion […]
A most emotionally colorful study (plus eye blinks & nude bodies)
This study appears to combine the brightest aspects of phrenology, Jungian psychology, painting-by-numbers, and numerous other disciplines: “Bodily maps of emotions,” Lauri Nummenmaa [pictured here], Enrico Glerean, Riitta Hari and Jari K. Hietanen, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 111 no. 2, January 14, 2014, pp. 646–651. The authors, at Aalto University, the […]
Winter/Summer Suggestion that Contagious Yawners are Cooling Their Brains
Another attempt to explain the mystery of why people yawn: “A thermal window for yawning in humans: Yawning as a brain cooling mechanism,” Jorg J.M. Massen [pictured here], Kim Dusch, Omar Tonsi Eldakar, Andrew C. Gallup, Physiology & Behavior, epub 2014. (Thanks to @ThatNeilMartin for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University […]