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The world is chock full of ear hurt that some people willingly refer to as music. The Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, Conway Twitty; they all produce high quality records and 8-tracks for our enjoyment whether we like it or not. But music--even terrible music--has a stunning amount of power over our bodies. For instance science says music can... Slapping neuroscience right across the face, music is able to take stroke, lesion or other brain-damaged patients who have lost the partial ability to see or speak and return it to them. As long as she's dancing to Kenny Rogers... Patients with left-side brain damage who can no longer speak can find they are able to sing words, often without trouble or training. How Does it Work? Melodic intonation therapy, or singing until you can talk, takes advantage of the fact that language functions are located in the left brain, but music lives over on the right side of the brain. Dopamine is your brain's natural crack Boost Your Immune System

47 General Psychology Facts I’ve decided to start a series called 100 Things You Should Know about People. As in: 100 things you should know if you are going to design an effective and persuasive website, web application or software application. Or maybe just 100 things that everyone should know about humans! The order that I’ll present these 100 things is going to be pretty random. Dr. <div class="slide-intro-bottom"><a href=" 8 Ways To Stay Positive About This Goddamn Stupid Recession Hey, did you read that awesome title? I love this recession! Exclamation point! Losing my job in 2008 was the best thing to happen to me since I lost my job in 2001. So allow me to inspire the fuck out of you. I Have All This Free Time! You never realize how much of your life you spend at work, until you're out of it. Paul Newman died?? My days are not planned out around the lunch breaks and tee-times of some higher up. I'm Making New Friends! Since I don't have an office to commute to anymore, I'm getting to know the people in my neighborhood. Doris requests that I give her privacy while she cooks. I've even found a local watering hole just like the bar on Cheers. I'm Investing in My Future! I'm not just hanging around, waiting to hear back from all the jobs I've applied for. Just because I'm unemployed, doesn't mean I don't care about our environment. I'm Dating an Awesome New Woman! When I had a stupid job, I'd spend all my time depressed. Can you believe I once did the Atkins diet?

6 Family Circus Cartoons Improved with Dick Jokes A year ago, I designed a robot whose only purpose was adding jokes to Family Circus cartoons. Most robotic engineers told me I was crazy. They said things like, "You're only taping a smile onto cancer," or "I knew this day would come -- my robots are penetrating me." But I didn't stop. Family Circus has been shitting in the mouth of comedy for 51 years and we need to fight back. That's where PG-13 comes in. PG-13 is a sophisticated and outrageous joke-writing A.I. leashed by the Motion Picture Association of America's PG-13 rating system. Grandma's Linguistic Misunderstanding A lot of people would save Abraham Lincoln if they had a time machine. The Family Circus goes after homophone comedy with all the likability and grace of a drowning sex offender. It's not only not funny, but it's a wild, wild stretch that children this stupid would be allowed anywhere near stamplers or sleeping tea. I told PG-13 to get these cartoons out of my sight. How One Word Can Change Everything

Discoveries - Perfecting Sound Quality In-Ear DiscoveryPerfecting Sound Quality In-ear An audio pioneer who has worked with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Bon Jovi and Pink Floyd continues to provide innovative devices to perfect sound quality and alleviate in-ear pressure and listener fatigue December 18, 2012 An audio pioneer who has worked with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Bon Jovi and Pink Floyd, Stephen Ambrose is on a quest to perfect sound quality. To better understand what led to this discovery, we must look back to Ambrose's musical career, which led to his founding of Asius Technologies. Micro Monitor His solution was to invent the Micro Monitor, the first in-ear sound monitor. "This circuit was an acoustic path that allowed the reverse pressures created in the back of the speaker to mitigate the harmful pressures caused in the ear canal," said Ambrose. Ambrose also developed Micro Mics--microphones that could be mounted on instruments, replacing mics that picked up superfluous sounds. Adverse effects Ear strain solution Safe sounds

DISCERN Artificial Neural Network - How to Build a Schizophrenic Computer Justin Ruckman/Flickr Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Schizophrenia is one of the most infamous and mysterious mental disorders. Attempting to get to the root of the problem, scientists recently came up with an extraordinary solution: They built a schizophrenic computer. In a study published in the online version of Biological Psychiatry in March, researchers altered an artificial neural network capable of learning language and stories, to the point where it started "acting" schizophrenic. People who suffer from schizophrenia often have difficulty thinking logically or discerning what is real or not real in their lives. To make a schizophrenic computer, they began with an artificial neural network called DISCERN that Miikkulainen has been working on intermittently since the 1990s. Hoffman and his colleagues then started to tell simple stories to the computer. In DISCERN, the process begins in a module called the sentence parser, which examines each sentence one word at a time.

6 Movie Monsters That Just Wouldn't Work Here at Cracked, we take science fiction movies very, very seriously. So when a creature flick comes along that is so preposterously ridiculous, so patently absurd, so monstrously unscientific ... well, we don't actually notice until years later when we need a premise for an article. But then we have no choice but to feel betrayed and scream "BULLSHIT!" at the top of our lungs. As seen in: Alien It latched on to a guy's mouth and pumped its offspring down his throat, which later burst out of the poor fool's chest. Why We Call Bullshit: What do aliens eat? Alien tries to bullshit its way around this by saying that the Alien's DNA merges with the host; this becomes totally ridiculous when you realize that, despite sharing a good 99.9 percent of our DNA with chimps, we're still genetically incompatible with the fuckers. Hello, ladies. As seen in: Return of the Jedi There's no way the Sarlacc could get enough sustenance to survive. Enjoy your sandwich, Sarlacc. As seen in: King Kong, duh Oh, it is.

The 6 Most Disturbingly Evil Birds Birds are the most majestic creatures on Earth -- we plaster them on our cars, flags and coins. You see them soaring up there, and think they're above all the petty savagery down here on the ground. Well, it turns out they're dicks. Golden Eagles Will Drop Your Ass The golden eagle is perhaps the most revered bird in the entire world. It is the national bird of five countries and has been featured on the coat of arms of nearly a dozen others. GettyOrnithologists consider the golden eagle to be the "guido" of the Animal Kingdom. Why? Getty"It's about damn time, evolution." Ah, but now, you are dropping to the ground, your slow turtle brain barely able to register the horror as the rocks rush up at you from hundreds of feet below. Rather than bothering to pry the tender tortoise meat from the shell, the eagle simply grabs the whole creature, soars as high as it can and drops it, letting gravity and the rocks below do the shell-shattering work. Getty"Turtles are small fry, Earl.

Chronic fatigue syndrome Although there is agreement that CFS poses genuine threats to health, happiness and productivity, various physicians' groups, researchers and patient advocates promote differing nomenclatures, diagnostic criteria, etiologic hypotheses and treatments, resulting in controversy about many aspects of the disorder. The name "chronic fatigue syndrome" is controversial; many patients and advocacy groups, as well as some experts, believe the name trivializes the medical condition and they promote a name change.[15] Classification[edit] Notable definitions include:[7] The different case definitions used to research the illness may influence the types of patients selected for studies,[20] and research also suggests subtypes of patients exist within the heterogeneous illness.[21][22][23][24] Clinical practice guidelines are generally based on case descriptions with the aim of improving diagnosis, management, and treatment. Naming[edit] Signs and symptoms[edit] Onset[edit] Symptoms[edit] Functioning[edit]

What's He Saying? 'Bahh' Or 'Fahh'? A Brain Mystery : Krulwich Wonders... I love illusions, where your brain makes weird things happen. Those of you who come here often have seen some doozies, but this one ... oooh, this is one of the strangest. The question is: Which is more powerful, your eyes or your ears? Watch this clip and experience "The McGurk Effect." Your ears will feel ashamed. The McGurk Effect is named for a psychologist from Scotland, Harry McGurk, working with John MacDonald. Not only that, even if your brain knows this is an illusion, you still can't hear the truth unless you close your eyes. Why Does This Happen? Does sight always beat sound? Does anybody know?

The 6 Stupidest Internet Reactions To Shocking News Stories Back in the old days, any shocking news stories would hit the public's consciousness first when a paperboy would shout the lurid headlines at them as they walked to work or tried to get their shoes shined, if old gangster movies are accurate documentaries of early 20th century life. Nowadays they hit the Internet first, and the Internet reacts, as you might expect, stupidly. Here are a few of the most predictable and annoying reactions you'll get on any big story. #6. "I Don't Understand Why You're All So Shocked By This." "This is just another case of ____. Fill in the blank with "someone from X group doing Y stereotypical behavior." Sure, sometimes stories are obviously slow news day stories that deserve the "Why is this news?" Sometimes this comes from well-intentioned people who aren't observant enough to notice what's unusual about the story. That might be a bit extreme, but a lot of simple people can oversimplify a story so that in summary, of course it sounds like a cliche. #5.

4 Cliché Movie Moments Explained by Psychology There are certain rules that extend across nearly every movie universe which we as an audience have to accept. Bad guys will always attack one at time, high school girls will always date a guy they fundamentally hate and pedestrians will never end up in wheel wells during car chases. While the rules may seem completely divorced from reality, some of the more staggering clichés actually have science on their side. "Mmmm, I'm full off of all your collective disappointment." One of the most ubiquitous clichés in film, the slow clap shows up so often and across so many genres of movies that entire compilations have been created in its honor. Its power lies in the slow clap's ability to sway the opinion of an entire crowd, not with words or ideas, but with the sound of two pieces of flesh slamming against each other. The psychology behind it: Even the most opinionated and judgmental people in the world are susceptible to the power of group mentality. Getting Moral in the Mirror

6 Bodily Tissues That Can Be Regenerated Through Nutrition Sayer JiWaking Times It may come as a surprise to some, especially those with conventional medical training, but the default state of the body is one of ceaseless regeneration. Without the flame-like process of continual cell turnover within the body – life and death ceaselessly intertwined – the miracle of the human body would not exist. In times of illness, however, regenerative processes are overcome by degenerative ones. Despite the outright heretical nature of things which stimulate healing and regeneration vis-à-vis the conventional medical system which frowns upon, or is incredulous towards, spontaneous remission in favor of symptom suppression and disease management, over the course of the past few years of trolling MEDLINE we have collected a series of remarkable studies on the topic… Nerve Regeneration – There are actually a broad range of natural compounds with proven nerve-regenerative effects. Carvacrol (a volatile compound in oregano)CurcuminKorean GinsengRooibosVitamin E

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