Category Archives: Integrating

Inner visions of seven dimensional space

August 6, 2011 – 1:51 pm

I’ve just found an amazing 2002 article [pdf] from the American Mathematical Society about blind mathematicians. I was surprised to learn that the majority work in geometry, supposedly the most ‘visual’ discipline, and fascinated to learn that they generally believe the experience of sight puts people at a disadvantage because it locks us into a […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Reasoning, Seeing | Comments (11)

The scent of the past

July 24, 2011 – 6:14 pm

The Boston Globe has a fascinating piece on the growing movement to incorporate smells into the historical record and the technology that is allowing us to ‘record’ scents. To put smells in a historical context is to add a whole dimension to how we understand the world. Boston’s Back Bay, for instance, has at different […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Remembering | Comments (4)

The psychology of expert predictions

June 18, 2011 – 6:48 pm

This week’s edition of BBC Radio 4 All in the Mind has a fantastic section on the psychology of knowledgeable predictions that bursts lots of bubbles about the power of experts but also discusses how to make more accurate predictions. You can listen to the whole programme online but it seems the crucial section has […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Reasoning | Comments (3)

Psychometric schooling snark

June 14, 2011 – 11:58 pm

A sarcastic comment on the horrors of school, unexpectedly hidden away in the 1986 book A handbook of test construction: introduction to psychometric design by Paul Kline. A test is said to be face valid if it appears to measure what it purports to measure, especially to subjects. Face validity bears no relation to true […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (3)

Alice through the crooked glass

June 2, 2011 – 11:39 pm

Not Exactly Rocket Science covers a fascinating study where participants felt they were the size of a doll or had expanded to giant proportions simply by using a headset, a camera and a bit of foot stroking. In a typical experiment, a volunteer is being stroked while wearing a virtual reality headset. She’s lyng down […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Seeing | Comments (1)

Human nature is a moving target

May 29, 2011 – 8:14 pm

I just caught up with a fascinating discussion on ABC Radio’s Future Tense on what artificial intelligence showdowns like the Turing Test tell us about the evolution of human nature. It sounds like a bit of clichéd subject but the interview with author Brian Christian is full of novel, thoughtful insights into how human nature […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Theory, Togetherness | Comments (3)

Is free will spent by a knock-out drug?

May 14, 2011 – 6:23 pm

I’ve got a brief article in Wired UK about whether the knock-out drug burundanga could help us understand the neuroscience of free will. The drug is actually an extract of plants from the brugmansia family with the active ingredient being scopolamine. The urban legend goes that when you’ve been spiked with the drug you do […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (2)

Diamond in the rough

May 11, 2011 – 1:49 am

We’ve covered a few cases of people swallowing unusual things before, although this is probably one of the strangest cases we’ve yet come across in the medical literature. A diamond thief was caught by a security guard during a burglary and needed a free hand to fight him off, so he swallowed the precious stone. […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (5)

Total information war

May 6, 2011 – 1:45 am

Perhaps one of the most important articles yet published on military infowar, propaganda, media influence and PSYOPs has appeared online. Called ‘Military Social Influence in the Global Information Environment: A Civilian Primer’ – the piece is written by psychologist Sarah King who outlines the theory and practice of US information warfare as it stands today. […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (7)

The death of the mind

April 30, 2011 – 3:20 pm

Business Week has an important article on how internet companies are using the massive data sets collected from the minutia of users’ behaviour to influence customer choices. The article is a useful insight into how tech companies are basing their entire profit model on the ability to model and manipulate human behaviour but the implication […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Learning, Theory | Comments (7)

Time flies when you’re having fun

April 18, 2011 – 9:54 pm

The New Yorker has a fantastic profile of neuroscientist David Eagleman that captures both his playful approach to science and his intriguing work on how we perceive time. Eagleman is one of the most engaging thinkers in neuroscience – equally at home tackling fascinating areas of cognitive science and writing playful books about the afterlife. […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Other People | Comments (1)

Arresting suicide by cop

April 17, 2011 – 4:43 am

‘Suicide by cop‘ is a fairly recent concept that has come to light after cases of people who seemingly provoked police shootings in an attempt to end their own lives. Miller-McCune magazine has an excellent article on how the police are increasingly recognising this as a problem and are working towards diverting these situations to […]

By vaughanbell | Leave a Comment

How to jail the innocent

April 14, 2011 – 2:22 am

The Innocence Project has used DNA technology to overturn hundreds of wrongful convictions. Slate has an excellent two part series on the two main reasons why these people were falsely jailed: eyewitness misidentifications and false confessions. The series is by law professor Brandon Garrett who has analysed the first overturned 250 cases to examine the […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Reasoning | Comments (2)

Hearing the voices of colours

April 12, 2011 – 11:06 pm

A spectacular case of psychosis, rather oddly described as ‘Methamphetamine Induced Synesthesia’, in a case report just published in The American Journal on Addictions. The report concerns a 30-year-old gentleman from the Iranian city of Shiraz with a long-standing history of drug use who recently started smoking crystal: Six months PTA [prior to admission] (October […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Hearing and Language, Seeing | Comments (3)

Not in your wildest dreams

April 12, 2011 – 3:08 am

Scientific American has just started a new series where scientists describe questions which fascinate them but which they don’t think can be answered by science. The first article is by sleep and dream neuroscientist Robert Stickgold who wonders whether we could ever understand the significance of dreams. The idea: Dreams often feel profoundly meaningful, bizarre […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Theory | Comments (11)

Hungry judges less likely to grant parole

April 12, 2011 – 1:36 am

Not Exactly Rocket Science covers a study that is in equal parts delightful and terrifying: it found that judges are much less likely to grant parole when they’re hungry. It’s the work of Shai Denzeger from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and summarises the results of 1,112 parole board hearings in Israeli prisons, over […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Reasoning | Comments (2)
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