Posts filed in ‘NEUROSCIENCE’
The neurons that shaped civilization
This short and stunning TED talk has neuroscientist VS Ramachandran tell us about recently discovered mirror neurons, or as he calls them Gandhian neurons, which allow us to learn complex social behaviours.
He claims that the Great Leap Forward was a Lamarckian evolution of a motoroneuron system which allowed emulation and imitation of another person’s actions. He suggests these mirror neurons supported the development of language and the understanding and interpreting of human behaviour.
Ramachandran has investigated motorneurons related to touch using electrodes to record the activity of specific nerve cells in the brain and has illustrated how 20% of motorneurons in the brain, relating to a specific area of the body, will fire when watching another person being touched in that same part of the body. This form of empathy is managed by touch and pain receptors which provide a feedback signal to veto the motorneuron signal so the brain knows that it isn’t your body being touched and you don’t get confused. However if you anesthesia that part of the body this feedback system is disabled thus dissolving the barrier between you and other human beings.
This suggests that all that separates you from other people is the organ of skin. We are all effectively connected by neurons so in fact there is no distinction between your consciousness and the consciousness of others just as the eastern philosophies has been telling us for millenia.
Spectre - “endocrine art”
The building of the stairs constitutes a significant component of the total impression of the work, on both visual and kinesthetic levels. The design is quite particular as is the embodied experience of the climbing. As with much of my work, the aesthetic manipulation of the users subjective sense of embodiment is central, The play of vertigo, and the associated adrenalin, the lying in a vulnerable position on a dark space, the head hole, like a stocks or a guillotine, all intentionally move the user out of a complacent quasi-objective art viewing mode into a complicit bodily engagement. This is not unlike the interrogation/torture techniques currently condoned by the US military. The play of adrenaline and endorphins in the user is a crucial part of the work.
Cocaine Basement
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Anahata International
The Century Of The Self
Russian Anti-Coca Cola Calendar
Clever Images of Human Consumption
This image depicts 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed every month in the US in 2006.
In 2005, 291,000 American women had bags implanted in their breasts, 324,000 Americans had fat vacuumed out of their bodies, and 231,000 had fat, skin and muscle cut from around their eyes.
If you include less common operations such as buttock lifts, pectoral implants and vaginal rejuvenations, as well as "minimally invasive" procedures such as Botox injections, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons estimates that Americans underwent at least 10.2 million cosmetic surgery procedures in 2006.
Findings from epidemiological studies indicate a link between cosmetic surgery and suicide. Five studies, including a US study of over 13,000 women who received breast implants and another of 24,000 from Canada (American Journal of Epidemiology, vol 164, p 334), set out to investigate the alleged link between silicone breast implants and cancers, autoimmune diseases and other disorders. Though they failed to confirm any such connection, another striking link did emerge: women who have received breast implants are two to three times as likely to kill themselves as those who have not.
Designing the Optimal Nap
Naps make you brainier, healthier, safer. But to understand how you can nap best, you need to understand your body. During sleep, your brain’s electrical activity goes through a five-phase cycle.
