5 Superpowers We All Had as Babies (According to Science)
To many of us, kids are just a squishy bundle of preciousness that can't even take a decent punch. If there's anything super about them it's their ability to produce a seemingly infinite amount of poop. But you only think this because, like most super geniuses, babies revel in deception because they answer to no god. Not unlike Clark Kent, babies everywhere managed to fool the world with their mild-mannered public persona, masking the amazing superpowers nearly all of them possess.
5 Mind-Blowing Ways Your Senses Lie to You Every Day
We are so completely dependent on our five senses every moment of the day that we totally forget how full of shit they can be. Your reality is cobbled together from a bunch of different parts of your brain working in conjunction, and often it's like a bickering conference room full of uncooperative co-workers. In fact, we're pretty sure the thing your brain does best is convince you that it works. But it doesn't take much to spot the bizarre little flaws in your gray matter.
Does the head remain briefly conscious after decapitation (revisited)?
A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's Storehouse of Human Knowledge June 12, 1998 Dear Cecil: In the answer about the guillotine in your online archive, you say that "the fatal blow induces immediate unconsciousness."
3D map of human brain is the most detailed ever - health - 20 June 2013
The folds, creases and intricate internal structures that make up the human brain are being revealed in unprecedented detail. A new three-dimensional map called BigBrain is the most detailed ever constructed, and should lead to a more accurate picture of how the brain's different regions function and interact. Until now, the precise placement of the neurons that make up our brain circuitry has been difficult to map, largely because the human brain's surface is covered with folds and creases. Slicing a brain exposes only two dimensions, so it is often unclear where and how the cells within these folds are organised in three-dimensional space. To make the new map, Katrin Amunts of the Jülich Research Centre in Germany and her colleagues embedded a 65-year old woman's brain in wax, sliced it into more than 7400 sections each 20 micrometres thick – one-fifth of the width of a human hair – and made digital images of the slices, also at a resolution of 20 micrometres.
5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Become Instantly Smarter
There might not be a worse feeling than when you have some kind of huge project due and the creative part of your brain just slowly grinds to a halt. Some people have little rituals they go through to try to jump-start their muse, from "take a relaxing walk" to "steal someone else's idea and then secretly murder them." But why not look to science to figure out what actually works? Well, we don't guarantee that any of the below will work for you -- all we can say is that smarter people than us have gotten them to work under scientifically controlled conditions.
5 Mind-Blowing Ways Your Senses Lie to You Every Day
#2. Your Brain Changes the Size of Objects Around You Yuliya Chsherbakova/Photos.com Your eyes are lying to you right now about something as basic as the size of the stuff you're looking at. Don't believe us? Take a look at the photograph below, and tell us which of the two vertical red lines is longer in your monitor:
Mind-reading monkey brains look similar to ours - life - 15 June 2013
MONKEYS may have a primitive version of the human ability to put ourselves in another's shoes. Intelligent animals such as apes can intuit others' intentions, suggesting they have some theory of mind capability. But only humans can reason that others may not hold their own beliefs. To study this difference, Rogier Mars of the University of Oxford and colleagues scanned 36 people's brains. Using an algorithm, they created a map of how an area associated with theory of mind is connected to brain regions linked to abilities such as face recognition and interpretation.
BREAKTHROUGH: DMT Found in the Pineal Gland of Live Rats
In a major breakthrough in consciousness and psychedelic studies, Cottonwood Research Foundation has published a paper (soon to appear in the Journal Biomedical Chromatography) documenting the presence of DMT in the brains of living rats. For decades researchers have hypothesized that DMT may be one of the neurochemicals responsible for consciousness, dreams and visionary experiences. It’s certainly responsible for these and ever weirder experiences for those who have smoked it or taken Ayahuasca. DMT has been documented as naturally occurring in human blood, but this was not conclusive evidence that it is produced in the brain. DMT is structurally related to Serotonin, Melatonin and Pinoline, so the small traces in human blood could be an enzymatic breakdown product of these precursor molecules. Now we have clear proof of DMT being manufactured in the living Pineal Glands of rats, and that the genes responsible for this exist in the Pineal Gland and Retina!
3D map of human brain is the most detailed ever - health - 20 June 2013
The folds, creases and intricate internal structures that make up the human brain are being revealed in unprecedented detail. A new three-dimensional map called BigBrain is the most detailed ever constructed, and should lead to a more accurate picture of how the brain's different regions function and interact. Until now, the precise placement of the neurons that make up our brain circuitry has been difficult to map, largely because the human brain's surface is covered with folds and creases. Slicing a brain exposes only two dimensions, so it is often unclear where and how the cells within these folds are organised in three-dimensional space. To make the new map, Katrin Amunts of the Jülich Research Centre in Germany and her colleagues embedded a 65-year old woman's brain in wax, sliced it into more than 7400 sections each 20 micrometres thick – one-fifth of the width of a human hair – and made digital images of the slices, also at a resolution of 20 micrometres.
