Time-Space Synaesthesia

Is there a link between Time-Space synaesthesia and hyperthymestic syndrome?  Hypthymestic syndrome is usually attributed to autistic patients who have an enhanced autobiographical memory.  Perhaps they visualize their entire history in some large mental map.  Whatever the case, it’s quite fascinating, if anything.

“
On the other hand, when a man thinks for himself he follows his own impulse, which either his external surroundings or some kind of recollection has determined at the moment. His visible surroundings do not leave upon his mind one single definite thought as reading does, but merely supply him with material and occasion to think over what is in keeping with his nature and present mood. This is why much reading robs the mind of all elasticity; it is like keeping a spring under a continuous, heavy weight. If a man does not want to think, the safest plan is to take up a book directly he has a spare moment.
Arthur Schopenhauer from “Thinking for Oneself”

sounds in space or of space?

We Can't Handle the Truth?

Maybe.  If it’s true, that is.  Even if not entirely true, it could expose the baseless assumptions many have regarding recreational drug use.

“The government’s chief drug advisor David Nutt is “extremely disappointed” after being asked to leave for claims that cannabis, ecstasy and LSD are less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes.”


Are Negative Emotions more Valuable than Positive Ones?

Here is an interesting survey of recent findings in cognitive psychology about negative emotions.  It suggests that negative emotions may have a greater pay off than our positive ones.  I would like to revisit these studies in depth some day for actual study rather than viewing small blurbs about them.

chrbutler: Cool- Cities around the country are in da Vinci mode with shows about Leonardo da Vinci’s art and inventions. In New York, “Leonardo Da Vinci’s Workshop: Inventor + Artist + Dreamer,” opens Nov. 20 at the Discovery Times Square Exposition and runs through April 4. The show offers full-scale, interactive models of da Vinci’s inventions, including his ideas for the airplane, automobile, robot knight and mechanical lion. In Baltimore, “Da Vinci — The Genius: A Traveling Exhibit” at the Maryland Science Center through Jan. 31 features some of his inventions, anatomical drawings and writings, plus “secrets of ‘The Last Supper’ and the ‘Mona Lisa’ revealed in 3D animation. “ In Atlanta, an exhibit of sculptures and sketches by da Vinci and his contemporaries is at the High Museum, including some never before seen outside of Europe, borrowed from the Vatican’s art collection, the Louvre in Paris and the royal collection at Windsor Castle in England.

chrbutler:

Cool-

Cities around the country are in da Vinci mode with shows about Leonardo da Vinci’s art and inventions. In New York, “Leonardo Da Vinci’s Workshop: Inventor + Artist + Dreamer,” opens Nov. 20 at the Discovery Times Square Exposition and runs through April 4. The show offers full-scale, interactive models of da Vinci’s inventions, including his ideas for the airplane, automobile, robot knight and mechanical lion. In Baltimore, “Da Vinci — The Genius: A Traveling Exhibit” at the Maryland Science Center through Jan. 31 features some of his inventions, anatomical drawings and writings, plus “secrets of ‘The Last Supper’ and the ‘Mona Lisa’ revealed in 3D animation. “ 

In Atlanta, an exhibit of sculptures and sketches by da Vinci and his contemporaries is at the High Museum, including some never before seen outside of Europe, borrowed from the Vatican’s art collection, the Louvre in Paris and the royal collection at Windsor Castle in England.
(this post was reblogged from chrbutler)
chrbutler: These sculptures by Andy Huntington are renderings of actual sound: …instead of using code to generate complexity we turned our attention to capturing natural complexity. Taking sound frequencies within the range of human hearing over a short period of time we rendered them in a tangible and permanent manner, as sculptures representing a sample of time. (via Information Aesthetics)

chrbutler:

These sculptures by Andy Huntington are renderings of actual sound:

…instead of using code to generate complexity we turned our attention to capturing natural complexity. Taking sound frequencies within the range of human hearing over a short period of time we rendered them in a tangible and permanent manner, as sculptures representing a sample of time.

(via Information Aesthetics)

(this post was reblogged from chrbutler)

Juggling and the Brain

“University of Oxford researchers recruited 48 healthy young adults who were unable to juggle and put them in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to get a cross-section map of their brain….

Among the juggling group, imaging showed important changes in white matter, the bundle of long nerve fibres that carry electrical signals between nerve cells and connect different areas of the brain.”

Most people want to consider the brain as a static system, one that is seemingly impermeable to change after birth.  Studies like this and many others have all suggested otherwise.

How a Virus Invades Your Body

Dolphins - Deep Thinkers

I found a curious article from The Guardian that talks about the comprehension capacities of dolphins.  It’s an interesting read, and delves into some notable issues regarding intelligence.  What is intelligence?  Do animals think?  If the structure of an organism does not predicate its intelligence, what does?  Does anything?  How do we measure something that we’re not even sure is there?