Mind Hacks

I’ve just found another video of the Lazarus sign, the spinal reflex that triggers an arm raising and crossing movement in recently brain dead patients. We’ve covered the mechanism behind the somewhat disconcerting movement before, and have noted an earlier video, but this one seems to have been uploaded quite recently. The movement is triggered [...]

A brief yet intriguing description of a talk on pointing, by the ever versatile neuroscientist and philosopher Ray Tallis at the recent Hay Literary Festival. A spellbinding hour with philosopher and self-confessed “many-layered anorak” Raymond Tallis on the subject of pointing. Yes, sticking your finger in the air and directing it at an object. It [...]

Last night, I walked past a bus stop adorned with a poster advertising the new BBC science programme Bang Goes the Theory asking “Is it possible to tickle yourself?” and giving a number to text for an explanation. Fantastic, I thought. Neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore’s work on the role of action prediction in the sensory attenuation [...]

Damn this is cool. The New York Times has an article on an innovative technology that allows people to naturally use mechanical prosthetic arms. While most of the media attention has been focused on implanting electrodes directly into the brain as a form of ‘neuroprosthetics’, this technology takes a novel and remarkably ingenious approach with [...]

Wired Science covers an elegant study that suggests that spontaneous expressions of pride and shame are innate behaviours that are not significantly influenced by culture. The researchers came up with the ingenious idea of comparing how judo wrestlers from the 2004 Olympics and blind judo wrestlers from the 2004 Paralympics celebrated and commiserated their matches. [...]

BBC Radio 4′s All in the Mind just broadcast a wonderfully eclectic edition with pieces on parapsychology and why people hold paranormal beliefs, the psychology of laughter, and the military applications of neuroscience. Dr Caroline Watt and Prof Chris French discuss both the current boom in scientific parapsychology research and the psychology of paranormal belief. [...]

The first verse of the beautiful and evocative I Fellowed Sleep by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain, Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper’s eye, Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon. So, planing-heeled, I flew along my man And dropped on dreaming and [...]