Mind Opener

All our experience of the world, and ability to act on it, are channelled through our body. The pioneering computer scientist, Alan Turing, correctly realised the human mind is special not particularly because of its computing power, but because the body provides it with a unique interface to the world. Current research in psychology and neuroscience is probing how the brain represents the body. Recent advances have revealed that body representation is fundamentally multisensory, arising from the combination of many different sensory signals. These include classical “senses,” such as touch and vision, and also much more specific signals, such as the flexion or extension of each muscle, which define the body’s posture in space. This information is integrated to construct a multisensory representation of the current state of the body. Intriguingly, multisensory signals also affect what we perceive our body to be like, for example by making us feel like a rubber hand really is our hand! Our thoughts about what our body is are highly flexible, and track the multisensory inputs that the brain receives.

A common illustration of just how flexible the sense of our body is comes from changes in the brain’s representation of the body due to tool use. Humans, and some other animals, are able to use tools as additions to the body. When we use a long pole to retrieve an object we couldn’t otherwise reach, the pole becomes, in some sense, an extension of our body. Is this merely a poetic way of speaking, or does the brain actually incorporate the tool into its representation of the body? Studies of monkeys learning to use a rake to obtain distant objects show that this may be more than a mere metaphor. Multisensory brain cells respond both to touch on the hand or visual objects appearing near the hand. When the monkeys used the rake, these cells began to respond to objects appearing anywhere along the length of the tool, suggesting the brain represented the rake as actually being part of the hand.

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Psychology - Research - Alan Turing - Brain - Human

An interesting argument about UFOs is playing out in the Space section of MSNBC.

One of the signature discoveries of cognitive neuroscience is that a structure called the hippocampus, deep within the brain, is intimately involved in creating memories. This fact was dramatically illustrated by a singular patient, Henry Molaison, who experienced severe epileptic seizures. In 1953, when Molaison was 27, doctors removed his hip­pocampus and nearby areas on both sides of his brain. The operation controlled his epilepsy, but at a price--from that time on, he was unable to remember the things that happened to him. He could learn skills, such as mirror writing, but would be puzzled by his expertise, because he could not recall having acquired it.

H.M., as he was known during his lifetime to protect his privacy, taught scientists three lessons. First, certain brain structures--the hippocampus and the amygdala, the brain’s emotion center--specialize in remembering. Second, there are different kinds of memory--the ability to recall facts, or personal experiences, or physical skills like riding a bike--each with its own properties. Third, memory is distinct from the brain’s intellectual and perceptual abilities.

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Hippocampus - Brain - Epilepsy - Memory - Amygdala

Turning the clock back by half a century could be the key to solving one of science’s biggest puzzles: how to bring together gravity and particle physics. At least that is the hope of researchers advocating a back-to-basics approach in the search for a unified theory of physics.

In July mathematicians and physicists met at the Banff International Research Station in Alberta, Canada, to discuss a return to the golden age of particle physics. They were harking back to the 1960s, when physicist Murray Gell-Mann realized that elementary particles could be grouped according to their masses, charges and other properties, falling into patterns that matched complex symmetrical mathematical structures known as Lie (“lee”) groups. The power of this correspondence was cemented when Gell-Mann mapped known particles to the Lie group SU(3), exposing a vacant position indicating that a new particle, the soon to be discovered “Omega-minus,” must exist.

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Physics - Murray Gell-Mann - Elementary particle - Alberta - Canada

Forced positivity has always made me deeply uncomfortable. “Smile!” “Just look on the bright side!” “It’s not that bad.”

Unfortunately, when you are feeling badly, those apparently well-meaning phrases can feel like a jab in your side. Not only do you feel down, but now you feel guilty for feeling down!

For me, I appreciate practical approaches to feeling positive. One lesson I’ve learned over the years is finding bright spots, literally and figuratively.

Literally speaking, finding a bright spot means getting outdoors and being in the sunlight. Being outside is a natural mood lifter. A friend of mine swears by this simple technique: look up. Look up into the sky for a moment or two. He believes it “opens up your mind and frees your spirit. It reminds you that your problems are small in relation to the vastness of the sky.”

Figuratively, finding a bright spot means noticing the smallest of things that lifts your spirits. Today, I saw a mimosa tree in bloom. The pink was so vibrant and eye-catching. Staring at it for a moment was like looking at a work of art.

Or perhaps its a positive interaction, albeit brief, with a person throughout your day; like a cashier or a passerby who smiles. If you take that moment in, for all it’s worth, you’ll be surprised at how much power a simple and seemingly meaningless interaction holds.

So find some bright spots today. They aren’t hard to find - they’re everywhere. But more importantly, take one moment to recognize that it lifted your spirits, even slightly.

by Beth Mann

Tekapo, NZ - a village among the stars

I suffer from eschatological obsession. That is, I spend lots of time brooding about ends. So the cover of the September Scientific American --which reads simply "the end."--made me all shivery, like when I hear the spooky sitar opening of The Doors' apocalyptic rock poem "The End." (I'm never more Freudian than when I hear Morrison's Oedipal yowl.) [More]



Doors - Rock music - Oedipus complex - Math - September Scientific American

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Arts - Television - Programs - Game Shows - Deal or No Deal

Most of us might think we are fairly good at spotting the one who has had a few too many. Slurred speech, red eyes, stumbling. Telltale signs obvious right?

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Podcast - Directories - Web Design and Development - Business - United States

How martial arts is used to break boards or concrete with bare hands. The truth: practice, power, and follow through.

A great piece about the power of a little generosity and ingenuity. Check out the Facebook page at the end to see how you can pay it forward too!

It all started with a trip to Trader Joe’s. Jenni Ware had just rung up her groceries, which came to a total of $207. But as she reached into her purse, she discovered that she’d left her wallet at home.

Ware was about to go home grocery-less when she received a kind offer from the stranger in line behind her, a woman named Carolee Hazard. Hazard offered to pay Ware’s entire bill, simply asking her to send her a check to cover the cost.

The next day, Hazard received a check for $300—$93 more than she’d lent to Ware.

“I didn’t know what to do with the money,” Hazard told USA Today. “I’d thought to mail a check back to Jenni, but in the day and age of Facebook, I turned to my friends to decide what to do with the money instead,”

A friend suggested donating the cash to charity. Hazard thought that was a great idea, and selected the Second Harvest Food Bank, matching the $93 with an additional $93 of her own.

Several of Hazard’s friends were so inspired by her actions that they decided to make their own $93 donations. Soon, their friends were following suit. The group of philanthropists created “the 93 Dollar Club,” and a Facebook page to go along with it. A year since that fateful day at Trader Joe’s, the club has raised more than $100,000 to fight hunger in America.

Now that their story is getting so much attention, Hazard has a bold new goal: doubling donations to $200,000. Want to help? Check out the Facebook page for more info.

Source: Gimundo

Diseases can spread quickly. Someone with a cold infects a few casual contacts, who in turn infect others. Ideas can also spread that way, along so-called random networks. But Damon Centola at MIT says that ideas and beliefs spread faster and more efficiently when they’re reinforced in clustered networks, with overlapping connections among the members.

Centola recruited more than 1,500 participants for what was billed as a Web-based health community. Each had an anonymous profile and was matched with health buddies. In one group, a minimal number of links connected the participants. The other group was denser, with redundant links.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Social network - Social sciences - Damon Centola - Psychology

The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar. Hachette Book Group, 2010

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Sheena Iyengar - Arts - Literature - TED - Coca-Cola

Digital Revolution Pathologists are traditionally seen as being detached from everyday clinical practice, which explains why we were so pleasantly surprised when we came across the interesting article “ A Better Lens on Disease ,” by Mike May. Even before the digital revolution, pathologists had developed rudimentary ways (mainly photographs) to capture histological images and submit them to one another for a second opinion. Nowadays such a procedure is adopted usefully at small hospitals in developing countries to refer unusual or difficult cases to internationally recognized European or U.S. pathology departments.

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Pathology - Medicine - Histology - Health - Second opinion

As a moose charged from the forest in Colorado, a toddler playing with his older brother was trampled beneath its hooves.

A man tried to dazzle pilots with a laser beam as they were landing at a Paris airport.

Marine worms might seem like lowly, slow-witted creatures, but new gene mapping shows that we might share an ancient brainy ancestor with them. [More]



Gene - Annelid - Cerebral cortex - Common descent - Worms

Scientists have long sought to understand the biological basis of thought. In the second century A.D., physician and philosopher Claudius Galen held that the brain was a gland that secreted fluids to the body via the nerves--a view that went unchallenged for centuries. In the late 1800s clinical researchers tied specific brain areas to dedicated functions by correlating anatomical abnormalities in the brain after death with behavioral or cognitive impairments. French surgeon Pierre Paul Broca, for example, found that a region on the brain’s left side controls speech. In the first half of the 20th century, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield mapped the brain’s functions by electrically stimulating different places in conscious patients during neurosurgery, triggering vivid memories, localized body sensations, or movement of an arm or toe.

In recent years new noninvasive ways of viewing the human brain in action have helped neuroscientists trace the anatomy of thought and behavior. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, for instance, researchers can see which areas of the brain “light up” when people perform simple movements such as lifting a finger or more complex mental leaps such as recognizing someone or making a moral judgment. These images reveal not only how the brain is divided functionally but also how the different areas work together while people go about their daily activities. Some investigators are using the technology in an attempt to detect lies and even to predict what kinds of items people will buy; others are seeking to understand the brain alterations that occur in disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, autism and dementia.

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Brain - Functional magnetic resonance imaging - Neurosurgery - Health - Human brain

The adage “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” does not quite capture the following pair of situations. It’s more like “damned if you could (but you can’t), damned if you couldn’t (but you kind of did).”

First, the “damned if you could (but you can’t)”. On April 4 at 3:40 p.m.,  a magnitude 7.2 earthquake rocked Baja, Mexico, and was felt well north. The event elicited the following post on Twitter 16 minutes later from New Age lifemeister Dee­pak Chopra: “Had a powerful meditation just now--caused an earthquake in Southern California.” (Lawrence Krauss, too, lays into Deepak on page 36 for his lack of understanding of quantum physics. There’s plenty to bust Chopra about.)

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Mexico - Southern California - Earthquake - New Age - California

Last night, a friend stopped over. We talked to the wee hours of the morning, sipping some great wine. While it was all worth it, today I’d prefer to do nothing rather than…something. Ah, laziness. It gets such a bad rap, doesn’t it? Here’s some quotes to NOT inspire you!

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.  ~Jules Renard

I like the word “indolence.” It makes my laziness seem classy.  ~Bern Williams

All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.  ~Mark Kennedy

Efficiency is intelligent laziness.  ~David Dunham

People who throw kisses are mighty hopelessly lazy.  ~Bob Hope

Tomorrow is the only day in the year that appeals to a lazy man.  ~Jimmy Lyons

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?  ~Ronald Reagan

What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.  ~Bodie Thoene, Warsaw Requiem

There is no cure for laziness but a large family helps.  ~Herbert Prochnov

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.  ~Charlie McCarthy

We have produced a world of contented bodies and discontented minds.  ~Adam Clayton Powell, Keep the Faith, Baby!, 1967

The time will come when winter will ask you what you were doing all summer.  ~Henry Clay

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?  ~Paul Sweeney

The present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete indolence.  Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for remaining in bed.  ~Søren Kierkegaard

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.
Sam Keen

With this final column I will transition Sustainable Developments from Scientific American to the home page of the Earth Institute ( www.earth.columbia.edu ). Although I will continue to contribute occasional essays to the magazine, I will use this last regular column to say thank you and take stock of the deepening crisis of sustainable development.

During the four years of this column, the world’s inability to face up to the reality of the growing environmental crisis has become even more palpable. Every major goal that international bodies have established for global environmental policy as of 2010 has been postponed, ignored or defeated. Sadly, this year will quite possibly become the warmest on record, yet another testimony to human-induced environmental catastrophes running out of control.

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Sustainable development - Environment - Earth - The Earth Institute - Environmental policy