Dexter Morgan, Showtime’s serial killer: Could neuroscience save him if he were caught? Photo by -/AFP/Getty Images On Monday, Oct. 22, Future Tense—a partnership of Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate—will host “My Brain Made Me Do It,” an event examining how neuroscience is affecting the legal system, in Washington, D.C. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America Foundation website. Katy Waldman is a Slate assistant editor. Follow her on Twitter. Follow It is the moment every Dexter lover fears: Our green-eyed antihero comes home after a tiring day at the blood spatter lab. Even typing this imaginary scene makes my throat tighten. We should start by thumbing through the accused’s profile. Should the legal system get its hooks into Dexter, though, he’d be in serious trouble. U.S. courts once used a test called the M’Naghten Rule to determine criminal insanity. But judges found the Durham Rule too permissive. So what if—as seems likely—the insanity defense failed? Would the fact that Dexter only kills murderers make any difference?
0:02 Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect Abstract Although it is generally accepted that humans cannot perceive sounds in the frequency range above 20 kHz, the question of whether the existence of such “inaudible” high-frequency components may affect the acoustic perception of audible sounds remains unanswered. In this study, we used noninvasive physiological measurements of brain responses to provide evidence that sounds containing high-frequency components (HFCs) above the audible range significantly affect the brain activity of listeners. We used the gamelan music of Bali, which is extremely rich in HFCs with a nonstationary structure, as a natural sound source, dividing it into two components: an audible low-frequency component (LFC) below 22 kHz and an HFC above 22 kHz. Brain electrical activity and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) were measured as markers of neuronal activity while subjects were exposed to sounds with various combinations of LFCs and HFCs. Subjects Sound materials and presentation systems Fig. 1. Fig. 2.
Ketamine for Depression: The Most Important Advance in Field in 50 Years? In any given year, 7% of adults suffer from major depression, and at least 1 in 10 youth will reckon with the disorder at some point during their teenage years. But about 20% of these cases will not respond to current treatments; for those that do, relief may take weeks to months to come. There is one treatment, however, that works much faster: the anesthetic and “club drug” ketamine. It takes effect within hours. Ketamine doesn’t work the way traditional antidepressants do. Another theory is that depression is caused not by neurotransmitter problems per se, but by damage to brain cells themselves in key regions critical to controlling mood. At first, ketamine seemed to throw a monkey wrench into that neat idea, however. Unfortunately, the hallucinogenic and often outright unpleasant effects of ketamine mean that it can’t be used in the same way typical antidepressants are, and fears about its potential for misuse also hamper its development.
0:00 Binaural beats Binaural beats To experience the binaural beats perception, it is best to listen to this file with headphones on moderate to weak volume – the sound should be easily heard, but not loud. Note that the sound appears to pulsate. Now remove one earphone. The brain produces a phenomenon resulting in low-frequency pulsations in the amplitude and sound localization of a perceived sound when two tones at slightly different frequencies are presented separately, one to each of a subject's ears, using stereo headphones. Binaural beats reportedly influence the brain in more subtle ways through the entrainment of brainwaves[3][8][9] and provide other health benefits such as control over pain.[10][11] Acoustical background[edit] Interaural time differences (ITD) of binaural beats For sound localization, the human auditory system analyses interaural time differences between both ears inside small frequency ranges, called critical bands. History[edit] Unverified claims[edit] Physiology[edit] Overview[edit]
A Lively Mind: Your Brain On Jane Austen : Shots - Health Blog hide captionMatt Langione, a subject in the study, reads Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. Results from the study suggest that blood flow in the brain differs during leisurely and critical reading activities. L.A. At a recent academic conference, Michigan State University professor Natalie Phillips stole a glance around the room. Phillips, who studies 18th- and 19th-century literature, says the distracted audience made something pop in her head. "I love reading, and I am someone who can actually become so absorbed in a novel that I really think the house could possibly burn down around me and I wouldn't notice," she said. For Phillips, Jane Austen became both a literary and a neuroscientific puzzle. Could modern cognitive theories explain character development in one of Austen's most famous heroines — Pride and Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennett? If neuroscience could inform literature, Phillips asked, could literature inform neuroscience?
Project ARTEMIS Project ARTEMIS was a project undertaken by the United States Navy in the 1960s, which produced a Low Frequency Active Sonar system that could detect submarines at long range. Robert A. Frosch, in his capacity as Technical Director of Hudson Laboratories (Columbia University), was Technical Director of the project.[1] Dr. Frosch later went on to be the 5th administrator of NASA. The project was named in honor of Frederick Vinton Hunt. Ship modifications[edit] A 500-shaft horsepower, controllable-pitch screw propeller was installed in a transverse tunnel through the forefoot of the USNS Mission Capistrano. Active array specifications[edit] The active portion of the Artemis array was 50 ft (15 m) by 33 ft (10 m) and weighed 400 tons. Receive system and monitoring[edit] The passive receive array consisted of ten strings of hydrophones mounted on 200 eighty-foot towers laid down the side of Plantagenet Bank[Note 1] in Bermuda. WikiMiniAtlas Feasibility of permanent installation[edit]
Is Willpower a Limited Resource Which Can be Cultivated with Exercise? Picture: Robbin Cresswell (PD) “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” – Aiwass New developments in biological science suggest your willpower is drawn from a limited supply of chemicals which accumulate in the brain over time. According to Wired willpower is: a measurable form of mental energy that runs out as you use it, much like the gas in your car.Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University, calls this “ego depletion,” and he proved its existence by sitting students next to a plate of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies. If willpower is thought of as a chemical produced by the brain using specific ingredients (such as glucose) it provides a number of insights into its practical use: As Tierney explains, “People with the best self-control aren’t the ones who use it all day long. For the moment these findings are probably best used as an insightful metaphor as opposed to concrete reality. The focus upon glucose is in my opinion a red herring.
Brain Stimulation Gives Tics to Those Without Tourette’s Jennifer Finis of Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, and her colleagues suspected that a type of Tourette’s tic called echophenomena, which involves mimicking other’s movements, may be caused by over-excitation of the supplementary motor area (SMA) – a brain region involved in the initiation of movement.To investigate further, her team used a non-invasive technique called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which involves delivering brief but strong magnetic pulses to the scalp. By changing the frequency of rTMS, the stimulation could either inhibit or excite the SMA.Thirty seconds after rTMS, 30 volunteers were shown video clips of someone making a spontaneous movement. Those who’d had their SMA excited were three times as likely to imitate the kind of behaviour they saw in the clips than those who’d had it suppressed.
'Psychopaths' have an impaired sense of smell, study suggests A new study suggests that a poor sense of smell may be a marker for psychopathic traits. People with psychopathic tendencies have an impaired sense of smell, which points to inefficient processing in the front part of the brain. These findings by Mehmet Mahmut and Richard Stevenson, from Macquarie University in Australia, are published online in Springer's journal Chemosensory Perception. Psychopathy is a broad term that covers a severe personality disorder characterized by callousness, manipulation, sensation-seeking and antisocial behaviors, traits which may also be found in otherwise healthy and functional people. Studies have shown that people with psychopathic traits have impaired functioning in the front part of the brain - the area largely responsible for functions such as planning, impulse control and acting in accordance with social norms.
New font designed to help dyslexic people read OpenDyslexic features a weighted bottom, which is intended to lend 'gravity' to every letter Image Gallery (4 images) Developer Abelardo Gonzalez has created an open-source font designed to help people with dyslexia read more easily. Dubbed OpenDyslexic, the font is currently available as a free download, in the form of a Safari and Chrome extension, a bookmarklet, and a free iOS web-browsing app. OpenDyslexic has also been incorporated into several third-party apps, including popular read-it-later service Instapaper. Each OpenDyslexic letter features a heavy-weighted bottom, intended to lend "gravity" to text displayed with the font. The new font includes regular, bold, italic and bold-italic styles, and Gonzalez states that OpenDyslexic’s handling of italics in particular is a significant improvement over most other fonts, as it can highlight emphasis while maintaining readability, by not slanting the text too much. Viewing a web page in Safari for Mac with the OpenDyslexic extension
Are neuroscientists the next great architects? ARCHITECTS HAVE BEEN talking for years about “biophilic” design, “evidence based” design, design informed by the work of psychologists. But last May, at the profession’s annual convention, John Zeisel and fellow panelists were trying to explain neuroscience to a packed ballroom. The late-afternoon session pushed well past the end of the day; questions just kept coming. It was a scene, Zeisel marveled—all this interest in neuroscience—that would not have taken place just a few years earlier. Zeisel is a sociologist and architect who has researched the design of facilities for Alzheimer’s patients. Architects, he explains, “understand about aesthetics; they know about psychology. This is an admittedly abstract concept. “He really thought there was something to this,” says the architect Alison Whitelaw, “that the quality of the built environment could affect the performance of the brain.”