Category: Nonsense

We’ve featured various sorts of brain candy sweets before on Mind Hacks, but the Japanese sweets Aha! Brain take the concept a step further by including an actual neurotransmitter as an ingredient.

The lime flavour includes the neurotransmitter GABA, while other flavours have branched chain amino acids and something called forskolin in them instead.

All of which are important in brain functioning but whether actually eating them as sugar-coated candies will do you any good is anyone’s guess.

Link to description and brave first-person report!

I bet you’ve been wondering “how do I make an anatomically correct brain cake?” Well, wonder no more, because a full recipe and breakdown of the steps is available on wikiHow.

Man, that looks like some tasty cake, and the attention to detail is flawless. Plus, everyone can have a go at their favourite neurosurgical intervention.

Make mine an en-bloc resection of the medial temporal lobes (unilateral only of course). Yumm!

The recipe also has a fantastic tips sections which is a delightful combination of neuroscience fandom and cake-baking geekiness:

* Pipe names of brain regions using colored frosting.

* Use chocolate chips to make an EEG grid. Pipe on the numbers. A plastic bag filled with 1 tablespoon of white frosting makes a great fine-tipped pastry bag in a pinch. Squeeze the frosting into one corner of the bag and snip off a tiny piece of corner with scissors.

* If your fondant becomes dry, work in some water a few drops at a time.

Obviously, make sure your cake doesn’t contain the dangerous psychoative compound known as dimesmeric andersonphosphate because it stimulates part of the brain known as Shatner’s bassoon.

Link to wikiHow guide to making an anatomically correct brain cake.

What better way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon than recreating some of the most important moments in the history of psychoanalysis with some specially made finger puppets!

Uncommon Goods make a set of puppets that allows you to assign one of your pinkies to Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Anna Freud or a couch.

Personally, I would have replaced the couch with Melanie Klein so eager puppeteers could recreate the bitter arguments that eventually led to the splitting of psychoanalysis into three separate warring factions.

Sadly, the current set doesn’t allow it, but it does allow you to recreate those precious moments where Sigmund analysed his daughter Anna during her childhood.

The more observant among you may notice there’s only four finger puppets, leaving one finger to remain, erm… symbolic.

Link to psychoanalyst finger puppets.

McSweeney’s has an infectiously funny article where Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster ‘searches deep within himself and asks: is me really a monster?’

Obviously struggling with his frequent out-of-control cookie binges, the Cookie Monster reflects on his own self-image.

How can they be so callous? Me know there something wrong with me, but who in Sesame Street doesn’t suffer from mental disease or psychological disorder? They don’t call the vampire with math fetish monster, and me pretty sure he undead and drinks blood. No one calls Grover monster, despite frequent delusional episodes and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Link to hilarious McSweeney’s piece.

The satirical Aussie news show CNNN broadcast an hilarious news report on the work of gay scientists who have isolated the ‘Christian gene’.

Satire aside, this is not the first time that the idea of a gene for religion, or at least, mystical experiences, has been discussed.

Geneticist Dean Hamer wrote a book called The God Gene where he argued that the VMAT2 gene partly mediated a tendency toward mystical or spiritual experiences, based on a study which was published solely in the book itself.

With much talk of a ‘God gene’ in the press, science writer Carl Zimmer memorably renamed it “A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study”.

Link to CNNN report ‘Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene’.

This wonderful knitted brain is by artist Sarah Illenberger. Presumably, we’re looking down on the brain with the two hemispheres slightly separated.

She has also created other wonderful anatomically correct organs, including the heart and the intestines.

It seems this one might be a possible inductee into the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art.

Link to Sarah Illenberger’s wonderful creations.
Link to Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art.

Designer Alexander Lervik created this wonderful table lamp based on a 3D reconstruction of his own brain scan.

“MYBrain. The table lamp

A replica of the designer’s brain, originated from an MR scan at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

The image was processed through a 3D-printer, and became this unusual lamp shade design. Yes, it is bright.”

Although perhaps the coolest, this is not the first brain lamp we’ve come across.

Indeed, it would make a good accompaniment to the plasma brain lamp we featured back in early 2007.

Link to designer’s page for the brain lamp (via BoingBoing).

Mental Floss, an emporium of thought-themed merchandise, do this witty Pavlov t-shirt in either a long or short-sleeved version.

Actually, they do quite a few psychology themed t-shirts although they have a distinctly early 19th century feel to them.

For those still on a behaviourist tip, Advances in the History of Psychology have an interesting piece on common errors in psychology textbooks, with one about an oft-repeated legend concerning the bearded Russian dog harasser:

…a wide array of textbooks seem to repeat a version of the story of Pavlov‚Äôs mugging in which he laid his wallet beside him on a seat at New York‚Äôs Grand Central Station and, upon discovering it missing after an extended intellectual reverie, philosophically mused ‚Äúone must not put temptation in the way of the needy.‚Äù

In fact, according to the contemporary New York Times account of the event, Pavlov and his son were confronted by a three men after having boarded a train and had their money forcibly taken from them.

Link to Mental Floss t-shirts.

Ah, the joys of South East London.

The headline in the latest copy of the South London Press which doesn’t seem to have the actual article online.

 

 

 

 

Of Two Minds have found a classic video of a vintage Fry and Laurie sketch where a two people meet in a doctor’s office, both think they’re psychiatrists and the other is delusional.

It’s a funny sketch but it’s also remarkably clever as much of what passes for psychobabble is actually a satire on psychology and psychiatry for those in the know.

Look out for references to Melanie Klein’s (completely wacky) good breast theory, the Bender-Gestalt Test and Lentizol – the trade name for the aged antidepressant drug amitryptyline.

Interestingly, all of these things, and the idea that psychiatrists were mainly interested in psychoanalysis, were most popular in the 1950s and 60s, harking back to a bygone era of psychiatry.

UPDATE: Grabbed from the comments (thanks Jimmy!):

Fry and Laurie did a similar sketch about linguists, riffing on their stereotype (and that of sesquipedalian types in general) as pedants who take their adoration of language to mind-numbing excess. They pepper the conversation with a number of allusions to specific ideas in linguistics.

Run down [and video] at “Tenser, said the Tensor“

UPDATE 2: I’ve just discovered another psychiatrist sketch from Fry and Laurie. This one concerns the limits of madness and the practice of putting bread in one’s shoes.

Link to Fry and Laurie psychiatrists’ sketch.

An Israeli psychologist is asking whether Moses may have been tripping when he saw God on Mount Sinai, suggesting that many of our traditional ideas about the Abrahamic God may have been inspired by hallucinogenic drugs.

Professor Benny Shannon’s apparently cites historical evidence that the religious ceremonies of the Israelites included hallucinogenic plants and further bases his speculation on his own experiences with the reportedly similar psychedelic plant ayahuasca.

Of course, the idea is bound to ruffle a few feathers but as it’s so speculative it’s unlikely to make much of a mark on modern theology.

However, it is not the first nor the wackiest attempt to explain religion as arising from hallucinogenic drugs.

Biblical scholar John Allegro wrote an astounding 1970 book called The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross where he argued that Jesus was actually an hallucinogenic mushroom.

Bear with me on this one.

Allegro suggests that the word ‘Jesus’ was actually a code word for amanita muscaria, the red and white speckled mushroom often featured in fairy tales.

Amanita muscaria, otherwise known as Fly Agaric, genuinely exists and can cause quite intense hallucinations, owing to its effect on GABA receptors in the brain.

According to the theory, a religious sect were using these mushrooms for spiritual purposes, and their visions resulted in the Christian religion.

The Bible contains many words which have since been misinterpreted but with enough (of Allegro’s) linguistic detective work, they can be seen to explain the mushroom cult, rather than the later orthodox Christian interpretation.

To recoin a cliché: you don’t need drugs to enjoy the book, but it helps.

As an aside, the article in Haaretz says Shannon’s theory is published in a philosophy journal called ‘Time and Mind’, but I’m damned (excuse the pun) if I can find it.

Links to the original article gratefully received.

Link to article on Shannon’s theory about Moses.
Link to 1970 Time article on Allegro’s book.
Link to full text of The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.

Heavy metal noiseniks Mudvayne have a song called ‘Pharmaecopia‘ where they list off a load of drugs in a possibly ironic, possibly celebratory way. It’s a bit of a confused list with serotonin and “dopeamine” listed among a rather odd list of street drugs, hallucinogenic plants and commercial pharmaceuticals.

Curiously though, they mention 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a drug also known as 5-MeO-DMT that was originally synthesised by legendary psychedelics researcher Alexander Shulgin.

Halcium and morphine,
5-methoxy-n, n-dimethyltryptamine,
Psilocybin, mescaline, aspirin, histomine,
Brushite, darvaset, valium, caffeine, cannabis, and LSD,
Ayahuasca, harmine, give it all to me, I want it

Looking at what’s happened to your hair thus far, it’s probably best not eh?

Presumably, this is the first and only time the full chemical name of a hallucinogenic drug has made it into a song lyric.

Link to audio of song (no, I can’t make out the words either).
Link to lyrics.
Link to Shulgin’s notes on 5-MeO-DMT.

According to a BBC News article brain scans have revealed “a possible biological basis for cocaine addiction”.

Next week: brain scans reveal ‘possible’ biological basis for thoughts, feelings, actions and neurological illness.

Retrospectacle has discovered the ultimate bedtime accessory for the sleepy neuroscientist – a neuron-shaped teddy.

The next step might be a white matter inspired sleeping bag, although I do wonder how they’ll prevent the draft getting in through the nodes of Ranvier.

And obviously, the next step will be an oligodendrocyte pillow.

Link to Retrospectacle on plush neurons.

It’s not often you find yourself thinking ‘you know, I really need a brain hat, but I just can’t decide which one to buy’.

The pictured head piece is undoubtedly for the discerning customer, revealing a large section of the upper cortex with added plastic blood. Nice.

However, there’s also an alien brain hat for babies, a brain cap for keeping the sun out of your eyes, or even a high fashion wooly brain hat by a top designer.

Importantly though, friends don’t let friends wear brain golf visors.

The Neuroscience for Kids website has created an online exhibition of neuroscience-themed stamps that depict everything from drugs to brain scans.

They also include the wonderful Swedish set displayed on the left that include a series of impossible shapes.

Unfortunately, the stamps aren’t dated. Rather surprisingly, Portugal put Egas Moniz, inventor of the frontal lobotomy, on their stamps, and it would be interesting to know when they were in circulation.

To be fair, he did win the Nobel Prize, although these days the mention of his award tends to make people shuffle their feet and mutter things like “well, of course, it wouldn’t happen in this day and age…”

Link to neuroscience stamp exhibition.