Do musicians have different brains?
In the last twenty years, brain imaging studies have revealed that musical training has dramatic effects on the brain. Increases in gray matter (size and number of nerve cells) are seen, for example, in the auditory, motor, and visual spatial areas of the cerebral cortex of musicians. As Dr. Oliver Sacks writes in his book , "Anatomists would be hard put to identify the brain of a visual artist, a writer, or a mathematician - but they could recognize the brain of a professional musician without a moment's hesitation." Perhaps it is not so surprising that brain areas involved in singing and instrument playing, such as auditory and motor cortices, change following extensive musical training, but a recent paper in the journal suggests yet another way that music reshapes the brain. Musicians may not only have better musical memory but they may have enhanced verbal memory as well. In the experiment, all the students listened to and attempted to remember a set of 20 words.
Khan Academy
How the Brain Stops Time
One of the strangest side-effects of intense fear is time dilation, the apparent slowing-down of time. It's a common trope in movies and TV shows, like the memorable scene from The Matrix in which time slows down so dramatically that bullets fired at the hero seem to move at a walking pace. In real life, our perceptions aren't keyed up quite that dramatically, but survivors of life-and-death situations often report that things seem to take longer to happen, objects fall more slowly, and they're capable of complex thoughts in what would normally be the blink of an eye. Now a research team from Israel reports that not only does time slow down, but that it slows down more for some than for others. An intriguing result, and one that raises a more fundamental question: how, exactly, does the brain carry out this remarkable feat? Researcher David Eagleman has tackled his very issue in a very clever way . Was it scary enough to generate a sense of time dilation?
Zen Habits | Simple Productivity
Workplace Psychology
Brain Teasers: selection of best adult brain games for attention, memory, planning, visual, logic, corporate, math, and more
Here you can enjoy the Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games & Illusions that SharpBrains readers (primarily adults, but some younger minds too) have enjoyed the most. It is always good to learn more about our brains and to exercise them!. Fun experiments on how our brains and minds work 1. 2. 3. 4. Challenge your attention and memory 5. 6. 7. Optical illusions 8. 9. 10. 11. Language and logic puzzles 12. 13. 14. 15. A few visual workouts 16. 17. 18. Teasing your pattern recognition and thinking 19. 20. 21. 22. Brain teasers for job interviews 23. 24. 25.
Brain Games & Brain Training
List Of 8 Best Documentary & Infotainment Torrent Trackers And DDL Forums
Are there torrent sites or direct download link forums that specialize in documentaries and infotainment content? This is a question we see all too often in our E-mail inbox. The answer is yes, there are quite a few of those sites. Although we have featured them on this blog from time to time, it seems there are still folks out there who have missed out on these invaluable file sharing resources. This article features 8 best torrent sites and DDL forums where you can find premium video content from renowned publishers such as Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Animal Planet, BBC, PBS, HBO, Frontline, Imax, Channel 4 and lots more. Apart from documentaries, these trackers and forums usually index talk shows, Sci Fi and other infotainment content which are not usually found on your average private torrent tracker. Note that most of the forums mentioned in this post require you to sign up and log in before you can see download links, torrents or certain forum categories. Docs4You
Rosenhan experiment
Experiment to determine the validity of psychiatric diagnosis Rosenhan's study was done in eight parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" (three women and five men, including Rosenhan himself) who briefly feigned auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 psychiatric hospitals in five states in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had no longer experienced any additional hallucinations. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and had to agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release. The second part of his study involved an offended hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whom its staff would then detect. While listening to a lecture by R. Pseudopatient experiment[edit] Non-existent impostor experiment[edit] See also[edit]
Ten Psychology Studies from 2009 Worth Knowing About - David DiSalvo - Brainspin
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife Several great psychology and neuroscience studies were published in 2009. Below I’ve chosen 10 that I think are among the most noteworthy, not just because they’re interesting, but useful as well. 1. If you have to choose between buying something or spending the money on a memorable experience, go with the experience. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Why Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol
Drinking alcohol is evolutionarily novel, so the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent people drink more alcohol than less intelligent people. The human consumption of alcohol probably originates from frugivory (consumption of fruits). Fermentation of sugars by yeast naturally present in overripe and decaying fruits produces ethanol, known to intoxicate birds and mammals. However, the amount of ethanol alcohol in such fruits ranges from trace to 5%, roughly comparable to light beer. (And you can't really get drunk on light beer.) It is nothing compared to the amount of alcohol present in regular beer (4-6%), wine (12-15%), and distilled spirits (20-95%). Human consumption of alcohol, however, was unintentional, accidental, and haphazard until about 10,000 years ago. Human experience with concentrations of ethanol higher than 5% that is attained by decaying fruits is therefore very recent.
Intelligence: The Evolution of Night Owls
IQs and Zs Night owls are smarter than other people, and now we may know why. The modern world contains many features our slow-to-evolve brains still find unfamiliar—cars, TVs, hot dogs on a stick. But the world has always thrown new stuff at us, and brighter humans may adapt more ably. Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at The London School of Economics and Political Science, argues that, while we have specialized mental modules for navigation, social interaction, and other age-old tasks, general intelligence is its own module handling only evolutionarily novel circumstances. A previous study found that evening people are smarter than morning people. Night Lights
