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nypl: Here’s a bit of a kooky Caturday, courtesy of our Miriam...

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:23:14 -0500

Here’s a bit of a kooky Caturday, courtesy of our Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. This 1869 print called “Les chats” is just a touch Avant-garde - but then again, so are most cats. Enjoy, and stay tuned every week for a new Caturday feature!

how2beinteresting: The most interesting people are interested...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 07:47:09 -0500

how2beinteresting:

The most interesting people are interested in everything.

Drugs as likely to harm as help fibromyalgia

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 22:44:20 -0500

Drugs as likely to harm as help fibromyalgia

Brains

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 21:59:26 -0500

Brains

"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was..."

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 19:45:17 -0400

““I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.””

- Emo Philips

explore-blog: Neuroscientist David Eagleman, author of the...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 21:13:16 -0400

explore-blog:

Neuroscientist David Eagleman, author of the excellent Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, explains the curious neurological wire-crossing of synesthesia. Complement with a synesthetic person’s first-hand account of the experience.

Conscious Perception product of neural networks

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 20:11:55 -0400

Conscious Perception product of neural networks

"Neuroscience is uncovering a bracing view of what’s happening below the radar of our conscious..."

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 13:24:58 -0400

“Neuroscience is uncovering a bracing view of what’s happening below the radar of our conscious awareness, but that makes your life no more “helpless, ignorant, and zombie-like” than whatever your life is now. If you were to read a cardiology book to learn how your heart pumps, would you feel less alive and more despondently mechanical? I wouldn’t. Understanding the details of our own biological processes does not diminish the awe, it enhances it. Like flowers, brains are more beautiful when you can glimpse the vast, intricate, exotic mechanisms behind them.”

- David Eagleman, neuroscientist, in a conversation with Raymond Tallis about the unconscious workings of the brain and how we construe our sense of self. (via fetters)

"Dynamically recalibrating the temporal interpretation of motor and sensory signals is not merely a..."

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 13:24:18 -0400

“Dynamically recalibrating the temporal interpretation of motor and sensory signals is not merely a party trick of the brain”

- — it is crucial to solving the problem of causality.

David Eagleman

Human time perception and its illusions

Current Opinion in neurobiology, Volume 18, Issue 2, April 2008.
(via wordsindirt)

So the first lesson about trusting your senses is: don’t. Just because...

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 13:15:33 -0400

So the first lesson about trusting your senses is: don’t. Just because...:

So the first lesson about trusting your senses is: don’t. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it’s true, that doesn’t mean it is true.
The most important maxim for fighter pilots is “Trust your instruments.” This is because your senses will tell you the most…

Brain oscillations reveal that our senses do not experience the world continuously

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:34:14 -0400

Brain oscillations reveal that our senses do not experience the world continuously:

s33:

oneofthepaths:

Testing subsequent visual perception, by using transcranial magnetic stimulation of the visual cortex, revealed a cyclic pattern at the very rapid rate of brain oscillations, in time with the underlying brainwaves. Prof Thut said: “Rhythmicity therefore is indeed omnipresent not only in brain activity but also brain function. For perception, this means that despite experiencing the world as a continuum, we do not sample our world continuously but in discrete snapshots determined by the cycles of brain rhythms.” The research, ‘Sounds reset rhythms of visual cortex and corresponding human visual perception’ is published in the journal Current Biology. More information: Romei et al., Sounds Reset Rhythms of Visual Cortex and Corresponding Human Visual Perception, Current Biology (2012), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.03.025 Provided by University of Glasgow

This is more support for what I have been calling subtractive mechanics. The idea that subjectivity is not only built from the bottom up from meaningless parts and pixels but elided from the top down as well.

Just as our optical blindspot is erased through a filling in of high level perceptual expectations, our entire experience of life is a process of extracting signifying themes from many oscillating channels of sense. The realism we experience persists through time, within each moment accumulating the sense of the past and anticipating the intentions of our different sense-motive modalities. We are seeing through the oscillations, bridging each gap in sensation with ourselves - weaving ourselves into our experience .

This is the same thing I mean by the ‘Big Diffraction’; the presence of everythingness bleeding through the gap between itself and its own absence, seeking to re-member its wholeness.

"The mind, at its best, is a pattern-making machine, engaged in a perpetual attempt to impose order..."

Sun, 13 May 2012 16:19:42 -0400

“The mind, at its best, is a pattern-making machine, engaged in a perpetual attempt to impose order on to chaos; making links between disparate entities or ideas in order to better understand either or both. It is the ability to spot the potential in the product of connecting things that don’t ordinarily go together that marks out the person (or teacher) who is truly creative.”

- Dancing About Architecture: A Field Guide to Creativity | Brain Pickings (via greglinch)

"It turns out your conscious mind — the part you think of as you — is really the smallest part of..."

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 18:45:41 -0400

“It turns out your conscious mind — the part you think of as you — is really the smallest part of what’s happening in your brain, and usually the last one in line to find out any information.”

- David Eagleman, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Eagleman (via josecabs)

Neuroskeptic: The Wriggling Brain

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:52:53 -0500

Neuroskeptic: The Wriggling Brain

thisisgoodcoffee: This is pretty wild. David Eagleman talks...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:08:47 -0500

thisisgoodcoffee:

This is pretty wild. David Eagleman talks about how we perceive reality and the future of reality by adding plug-ins to our brain. Recommend checking out his other stuff.

New research distinguishes roles of conscious and sub-conscious awareness in information processing

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:18:52 -0500

New research distinguishes roles of conscious and sub-conscious awareness in information processing

"*Incidentally, the lobotomy lost favor not so much because of ethical concerns, but because..."

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:15:49 -0500

“*Incidentally, the lobotomy lost favor not so much because of ethical concerns, but because psychoactive drugs came on the market at the beginning in the 1950s, providing a more expedient approach to the problem.”

- David Eagleman
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
(via Jacob C. Sutton)

maryjackinthebox: Italy’s Style magazine (via Italy’s STYLE...

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:15:31 -0500

maryjackinthebox:

Italy’s Style magazine (via Italy’s STYLE magazine: Idea Guys for 2012)

Brainy, brilliant, and stylish. David Eagleman is my hero.

Tumbl Fish: Harris vs. Harris

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:31:51 -0500

Tumbl Fish: Harris vs. Harris:

kevcole21:

Just got done reading Sam Harris’ letter to David Eagleman on what Harris calls the “intellectually dishonest” position of possibilianism, a philosophy developed by Eagleman related to spiritual, well, possbilities. Harris sort of attempts to apologize for the harsh phrase, but sort of not…

Your Brain Knows a Lot More Than You Realize | Discover

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:21:57 -0500

Your Brain Knows a Lot More Than You Realize | Discover:

fuckyeahneuroscience:

Neuroscientist David Eagleman explores the processes and skills of the subconscious mind, which our conscious selves rarely consider.

Only a tiny fraction of the brain is dedicated to conscious behavior. The rest works feverishly behind the scenes regulating everything from breathing to mate selection. In fact, neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine argues that the unconscious workings of the brain are so crucial to everyday functioning that their influence often trumps conscious thought. To prove it, he explores little-known historical episodes, the latest psychological research, and enduring medical mysteries, revealing the bizarre and often inexplicable mechanisms underlying daily life.

There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing. Consider the simple act of changing lanes while driving a car. Try this: Close your eyes, grip an imaginary steering wheel, and go through the motions of a lane change. Imagine that you are driving in the left lane and you would like to move over to the right lane. Before reading on, actually try it. I’ll give you 100 points if you can do it correctly.

It’s a fairly easy task, right? I’m guessing that you held the steering wheel straight, then banked it over to the right for a moment, and then straightened it out again. No problem.

Like almost everyone else, you got it completely wrong.