Schizophrenia sufferers aren’t fooled by an optical illusion known as the “hollow mask” that the rest of us fall for because connections between the sensory and conceptual areas of their brains might be on the fritz.
In the hollow mask illusion, viewers perceive a concave face (like the back side of a hollow mask) as a normal convex face. The illusion exploits our brain’s strategy for making sense of the visual world: uniting what it actually sees — known as bottom-up processing — with what it expects to see based on prior experience — known as top-down processing.
Turns out…I’m not a schizophrenic. Good to know. Test yourself:
Awhile back, there was a video on the interbutts of a guy doing the robot that blew my mind. I think this guy may actually be better. He must have some incredibly strong abs to do some of these moves:
If love could be made to a shoe, this is the one I'd take to bed.
The Colorado Marathon. It will be my first marathon, and training has begun. I’m sporting the Asics Kayano 14’s, and feel like mentioning this fact only because of how much they have changed my running. I’ve been running better this year than ever before, and I truly believe that it is mostly thanks to these shoes. To those of you who haven’t found “the one” yet, all I can say is keep searching. Fit Right Northwest up in Portland is a good place to start. Back in high school I ran track in Nike Boerman Series running shoes, and although they succeeded at preventing injury and helped with my form, they caused a lot of strain on the muscles in my lower legs, which I’m now convinced limited my speed. Not only do I run much faster, but all of the pain is gone, so I actually look forward to runs.
I recently watched Synedoche, New York. The other day a lyric popped into my mind of unknown origin:
Everyone’s a building burning,
with no one to put the fire out.
How relevant and inspiring. And as I was trying to figure out what this line was from, I realized that it’s a pretty good one line synopsis of Synedoche, New York. I may not know why my mind puts a lyric into my thoughts, but luckily Google does:
Everyone’s a building burning,
with no one to put the fire out.
Standing at the window looking out,
waiting for time to burn us down.
Everyone’s an ocean drowning,
with no one really to show how.
They might get a little better air,
if they turned themselves into a cloud.
~ Modest Mouse, Blame it on the Tetons
The moral of both this verse and the movie have been rather inspirational to me lately. We all have our problems, we all feel like we’re at the center of some great Greek tragedy. Yes, you can dwell on that, but it won’t make you feel any better. If getting resolution depends on other people, you are in for a long wait. Accept that it will never come, and focus on the things that move you closer to where you want to be.
I don’t really know where my career will guide me, but lately I have been feeling not only lost in my research, but I’m just having trouble seeing how it will make me happy. Without a greater human element to what I do, I just have trouble seeing the point. The sort of thing that this group down at UCLA is working on is exactly the theme of project that I have had in mind for my future job. Working towards something more altruistic than excessive pay is the only thing that is going to keep me sane. As I’m realizing how much working on an engineering team inherently pigeonholes people, I keep questioning if I can be happy doing it. If I’m going to toil away in anonymity, why not work on a farm or something? I’d get more sunlight, anyway.
I think really what I’m dealing with is a desire to fill my life with diverse people and experiences, and then not seeing how I’ll be able to find a job that allows me that. For the last 6.5 years, I’ve lived in a town and gone to a school where I just don’t feel like I belong, and frankly, I’m beyond sick of feeling that way.
The following article has some interesting comparisons of inter-species killing amongst chimpanzees and human modes of warfare. Perhpas it’s an oversimplification, but I think that the authors being interviewed hit on some important traits that seem to lie in all of us scruffy man beasts.
A while back, I was reading about the role of certain beta-blockers in the formation of memory, and how it is being used to treat PTSD victims. The following study appears to be about a protein involved in memory formation, not adrenaline, so this seems to be a new development in our understanding of how memory works. The results are quite impressive.
Targeted memory erasure is no longer limited to the realm of science fiction. A new study describes a method through which a selected set of memories can be rapidly and specifically erased from the mouse brain in a controlled and inducible manner. New and old memories have been selectively and safely removed from mice by scientists.
Where do we draw the line? PTSD can be debilitating. But our memories, the good and bad, define who we are. This technology should be pursued to some limited extent – how can you deny a rape victim the opportunity to erase that from their life? It was not their choice, it does not make them a better person; it just shouldn’t be there. But outside of specific clinical cases, the ability to erase memory should not be distributed to the public. There is no such thing as an Eternal Sunshine.
All of a sudden, getting hypnotized sounds pretty kickass.
The researchers, led by Roi Kadosh of University College, London and Luis Fuentes of Spain’s University of Murcia, put three women and one man under hypnosis, then instructed them to perceive digits in color: one as red, two as yellow, three as green, and so on.
Upon waking, the subjects found it difficult to find numbers printed in black ink against correspondingly colored backgrounds. The numbers seemed to blend in — a telltale sign of synesthesia. When the hypnosis was removed, the ability vanished.
