Category: Nonsense

A Slice of Life is a company that makes scarves and ties with bioscience prints on them, and two are likely to be particularly attractive to neuroscientists.

Pictured on the left is a satin scarf (named ‘Contacts‘) that is decorated with neuron endings especially rich in synaptic vesicles.

Also available is a bow tie that depicts synaptic vesicles massing on the edges of the synaptic gap.

While neuroscientists might immediately pick up on the significance, your non-neuroscience friends will probably think they’re just stylish additions to your wardrobe.

Link to A Slice of Life.

“You can tell a lot about a person by the way they are.”

I’ve heard this attributed to British comedian Harry Hill, but if anyone can verify exactly where it came from, please let me know!

Human the barricades! OpenCyc are unleashing self-aware software onto the internet.

The Onion has a funny neuroscience story that charts the struggles of a man in conflict with his troublesome hypothalamus over the need for an endorphin-based mood lift. As always it’s written in their usual laconic style.

TALLAHASSEE, FL—With tensions already at an all-time high, the nearly 96-hour standoff between area resident Anthony Shepard and his hypothalamus came to a head Monday when the 32-year-old called for the immediate release of all endorphins back into his bloodstream.

“Earlier this week, events took place between my cerebrum’s temporal lobes that can only be described as criminal,” said Shepard, who told reporters he was first saddened, then angered, abruptly overjoyed, and saddened again to hear about the complete deregulation of his emotions. “To the nefarious gland responsible for this cowardly act, I know you can hear me. I demand, in no uncertain terms, that you surrender and cease all hostilities at once.”

Link to article ‘Area Man Calls For Immediate Release Of His Endorphins’.

PBS has a fun flash game where you can recreate Wilder Penfield’s brain stimulation experiments from the safety of your own desktop on a virtual, er, human.

If the anyone actually looked like that, I suspect that having brain surgery to help alleviate epilepsy, or a neuroscientist poking round on the surface of your brain with an electrode, would be the least of your worries.

Link to brain probe game (thanks Annie!).

Omni Brain has found an hilarious spoof drug advert in the form of a marketing campaign for the fictional medication Proloxil.

Spoofing drugs and drug companies has now become a minor pastime on the internet, with a number of cutting satires available online.

The Onion has a brilliant news story ‘reporting’ on the launch of a new ‘Zoloft for everything’ ad campaign.

The Consumers Union produced a fantastically amusing video advert last year for the fake drug Progenitorivox, as part of their campaign to get drug companies to release all the data from their trials.

And who could possible resist wonder-drugs Panexa and Fukitol as a solution to your life problems?

There’s a wonderful collection of borderline-psychedelic drug adverts taken from the Spanish magazine Cl√≠nica Rural during the 1960s.

There’s now quite a collection of drug adverts on the net, giving an interesting historical and cultural insight into how mind altering medication has been pitched to consumers over the years.

The Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art is one of my favourites, which contains some equally kitsch artwork from 1956 to the present.

Alternatively, this gallery has a collection of American drug adverts including the surprising advert for the drug Thorazine captioned “Tyrant in the house? Thorazine can help control the agitated, belligerent senile”.

At the time of this advert, drugs like Thorazine (also known by its generic name chlorpromazine) were marketed as major tranquillisers.

One of its other trade-names was Largactil, intended to communicate the idea that it was ‘large acting’ and could be used to treat most forms of mental disorder.

This class of drug was then re-branded as ‘neuroleptics’, and now as ‘anti-psychotics’, showing the ongoing process of marketing and re-marketing that occurs as drug companies position themselves to best promote their wares.

Link to Spanish drug ads gallery (via BB).
Link to the Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art.
Link to vintage drug ads page.

Paint It Black are a hardcore punk band from Philidelphia, fronted by psychologist Dr Dan Yemin.

Yemin is a practising child psychologist who takes time out to tour and record with his band.

The band’s first album was entitled CVA, the medical abbreviation for cerebrovascular accident. This condition is better known as a stroke and is where the blood supply is interrupted to part of the brain.

The reason for this curious title was that Yemin suffered a stroke before recording the album and wrote the title track about the experience.

Yemin recovered from his stroke, recorded the second album, and is currently touring with the rest of the band.

Link to Paint It Black official website.
Link to Paint It Back myspace page.

Fashion designer Spicy Marigold has created this alluring ‘Freudian Slip‘ for the beautiful Cassandra in your life.

This is a silk slip layered with a purposely weathered image of Freud holding (of course) a cigar. Wearable for out and about under (or over!) layers, it’d also be nice for sleep, lounging about on the (analytical) couch. Floaty and very soft.

And if that’s not your thing, you could do far worse than celebrating Freud’s 150th birthday by putting your feet up in a pair of Freudian Slippers.

Both items are available to order over the internet.

Link to Spicy Marigold’s Freudian Slip (via BB).
Link to Freudian Slippers.

One of the most common questions faced by psychologists is answered on video by 11 year old Professor Henry A. Waldorf while he skillfully plays the cello and wears a hat.

Bravo Professor Waldorf! I look forward to your forthcoming presentations to the Royal Society.

Link to ‘Is psychology a science?’ on YouTube.

Fox TV have just started a new reality TV show called ‘Solitary‘ where contestants are put into solitary confinement and stressed until their physical or mental health can’t take any more.

According to the website, “a test may include repetitive cycles of number games, conducted while being subjected to loud sirens and during times of sporadic sleep deprivation”.

When did psychological abuse become entertainment?

Link to Solitary website (via World of Psychology).

A motivation not yet mentioned in the extensive scientific literature on suicide was offered by the US Government for why three inmates killed themselves in Guantanamo Bay – apparently, it was a well-planned “act of asymmetric warfare“.

Perhaps, someone could email the organisors of the US Department of Defense 2006 Military Suicide Prevention Conference and let them know that their opening talk on the Theoretical Considerations of Suicide by Dr. David Jobes (powerpoint slides here) obviously missed out this important explanation in an otherwise comprehensive coverage of the medical literature?

UPDATE: Six hours after the first story, the suicides are now being explained as a ‘PR move‘. Doesn’t science move fast.

Link to BBC News Story (via MeFi).
Link to 2006 Military Suicide Prevention Conference homepage and slides.

I’ve just found this very impressive visual illusion linked from metafilter.com that relies on an afterimage to give the impression that you’re viewing a colour photo, when in fact it’s black and white. Really very striking.

I just read the recent New Sci article on mind reading with fMRI that Vaughan flagged up recently, and couldn’t help noticing two more neurologisms coined by the writer of the article, Douglas Fox.

Neuronaut: Fox describes getting ready to enter the brain scanner – “As they prepared the experiment this morning, I felt like an astronaut – a neuronaut you might say – getting ready for launch”. So a neuronaut is a virgin neurosi experimental subject.

Neuro-legible: The researchers had managed to read Fox’s brain with 90 per cent accuracy. “As I hang up, I’m strangely glad to know my brain is neuro-legible…”. So neuro-legibility describes how easily your brain can be read by brain scanning technologies.

Link to Vaughan on the New Sci article.
Link 1, 2, and 3 for Mind Hacks posts on the search for neurologisms.

Someone has an EBay auction about to close in which they’re selling a genuine set of surgical tools for trephination – the surgical practice of drilling holes through the skull.

The practice, also known as trepanation or trepanning, has been carried out since ancient times and has been thought to cure all sorts of conditions we would now know as mental or neurological disorders – such as epilepsy or psychosis.

It is thought that it was carried out to release ‘evil spirits’ or similar from the head, by creating a way for them to escape.

The practice hasn’t died out, however. It is occasionally practised by peoples outside the reach of modern medicine, and some people in industrialised countries do it as a form of body modification for its supposed consciousness modifying properties.

In fact, there’s a whole trepanning subculture on the internet.

For example, the Body Modification EZine has an article about someone who undertook a trepanning procedure (warning, if you’re a bit squeamish, the article and images are a bit icky):

I awoke the next morning still very much wanting to move forward with the operation. I thought to myself, “The key to more consciousness is sitting in the next room over. How can I know this and not unlock the door?” I explained my sincere desire to my girlfriend, and though she was still apprehensive, she agreed to try to be there for me if it was really what I wanted to do.

We had coated every wall of a room in plastic sheeting, had a placement tray ready (a sterilized tray to set the instruments on), had the drill sterilized and ready to go, autoclaved bits set out, etc and proceeded to trepan me. One person was to do the drilling and another was to help by passing instruments, turning the drill off and on, by holding a light in the right place at the right time, and by irrigating the wound every so often.

UPDATE: Grabbed from the comments page (thanks Anders!)…

Personally I need trepanation like I need a hole in my head (sorry,couldn’t resist), but there is actually a trepanation advocacy group called ITAG their site is at www.trepan.com (Warning: site uses excessive amounts of flash, a possible side effect of trepanation?) which has documents and videos on the procedure and it’s supposed benefits that are both enlightening and a little scary.

Link to auction on EBay (via BoingBoing).
Link to Wikipedia article on trepanation.
Link to BMEZine article on trepanation procedure.

Online science and humanities e-zine LabLit has an article about one guy’s experience of ‘luring the ladies’ with smooth talking neuroscience chit-chat (and presumably it works well for luring men too).

So, next thing I know, I’m actually chatting away with three beautiful young ladies in a bar in Baltimore. And we’re chatting about signal transduction mechanisms and the implications of cerebral ischemia! Not in strict scientific terminology of course, but in decent general terms. I explain about signal transduction by using the band as an example. The signal leaves the guitarist‚Äôs hand as he makes the strings vibrate. This is transmitted to the pick-ups in the guitar, and turned into a signal that travels along his cable to his amplifier (or amp, as we rock stars say). There the signal has to be transduced into a sound…

Link to article ‘How to lure in the ladies with your PhD’.
Link to LabLit (via MeFi).