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thinkahol *

Evolution of human 'super-brain' tied to development of bipedalism, tool-making - 0 views

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    CU-Boulder Research Associate John Hoffecker said there is abundant fossil and archaeological evidence for the evolution of the human mind, including its unique power to create a potentially infinite variety of thoughts expressed in the form of sentences, art and technologies. He attributes the evolving power of the mind to the formation of what he calls the "super-brain," or collective mind, an event that took place in Africa no later than 75,000 years ago.
thinkahol *

The Case For Rebound Relationships | Psychology Today - 0 views

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    Entering a new relationship when you are still feeling emotionally connected to your previous partner is a complicated affair, and most self-help books, newspaper articles and blog posts strictly advise against entering such rebound relationships. Indeed, the average advice column will ordinarily contend that rebound relationships distract us from dealing with lingering emotional ties and are unhealthy in that they keep us from achieving resolution. However, in the July edition of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin we find a study that begs to differ from this popular notion by demonstrating possible merits of rebound relationships. In particular the study shows that rebound relationships might actually help anxiously attached individuals let go of their former partners and achieve closure.
Sue Frantz

Robert Zajonc, Who Looked at Mind's Ties to Actions, Is Dead at 85 - Obituary (Obit) - ... - 0 views

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    Robert B. Zajonc, a distinguished psychologist who illuminated the mental processes that underpin social behavior and in so doing helped create the modern field of social psychology, died on Wednesday at his home in Stanford, Calif. He was 85.
Sarah Eeee

Hey interwebs! Can I have my brain back? | Ask MetaFilter - 0 views

  • What is it that makes the Internet so compelling to so many? Aside from the obvious fun and entertainment, educational and business opportunities, and show-offism; I think it boils down to a slogan taken from the eighties. No fear! The playing field is level. Size doesn't matter, really. Inhibitions and reservations are out the window. Internet life is people with diseases and addictions, exposing souls and sharing their recoveries. It's about overviews of history warning future generations not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. Sure there are a few kooks to throw us off guard, but mostly the Net is just us being ourselves without fear of reprisal. How refreshing. The Internet is people talking and sharing ideas. Our best and brightest, wallflowers and flower children, the girl next door and the Doc who delivered your kids. It's about you and me. We are all using our own cognizant voices, and we're listening too. We're challenging the status quo, and we're offering alternatives. Collaboration on a global scale all tied together by that simplest of cyber friendships, the hyperlink. Communication has never seen anything like it. I first considered all this ten years ago when that sociology study came out. Another ten years later, my life is even more enriched by the Internet. So to answer your question, I don't think it's the Internet that has whacked your brain, I think you might want to be looking elsewhere. If anything, the Internet is keeping you stimulated.
    • Sarah Eeee
       
      Some Metafilter users opinions on the Internet and attention span. Netbros takes a very optimistic approach, highlighting the wonderful communication realities & possibilities of the Internet. Still, I can't help but be convinced that my attention span has decreased as social networking has taken up an increasing proportion of my Internet use. When I was 10-11 years old (got my first computer with Internet access), I spent most of my time reading relatively long websites about all sorts of things. (Granted, I had been the kind of kid who read the encyclopedia and lots of non-fiction before we got a computer.) I'm 23 now, and my desktop is usually awash with tabs of news, blog posts, social networking sites, and an array of links I found from these aforementioned places. I hate to blame Twitter, Facebook, email, or any other social networking application. But still - I feel like my attention span has decreased, at a developmental stage when it should likely have increased (going from 10 years old to 23). What are your thoughts?
Sarah Eeee

*A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing*: What Mirror Images and Foreign Scripts Tell Us A... - 0 views

  • For most adults in literate countries, reading is so well practiced that it’s reflexive. If the words are there, it's impossible not to read.
  • If you raise a child on a desert island, he'll learn to eat, walk, and sleep, but odds are he won't spontaneously pick up a stick and start writing. For most of human history, written language didn't even exist. Reading as a cultural invention has only been around for a few thousand years, a snap of a finger in evolutionary terms.
  • we’re very good at seeing, and the trick is just to retune that machinery to the demands of reading.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • But even on a basic visual level, we have to somewhat reprogram our visual systems.
  • Mirror invariance, the idea that something flipped sideways is still the same object, is a core property of our visual systems, and for good reason.
  • What's the mirror image of b? Now it's a completely different letter: d.
  • Mirror reversal is overwhelmingly common in beginning writers, from the occasional flipped letter to whole words written as a mirror image. Kids do this spontaneously. They never actually see flipped letters in the world around them. It's as if their brains are too powerful for the task.
  • With practice however, we do retrain our brains to read
  • Does the brain of a reader look different from that of a nonreader?
  • Since blood flow is tied to brain activity, fMRI allows us to see the patches of brain involved in different tasks.
    • Sarah Eeee
       
      Bit of an oversimplification, no?
  • They found that most participants did indeed have a brain region that responded more to words than objects.
  • This is rather remarkable, that the brain would develop a specialized area for an artificial category of images.
  • need more proof that this region developed as a result of learning to read.
  • If reading experience does alter the brain, you would expect English readers and English/Hebrew readers to have different brain responses to Hebrew. And this is indeed what Baker found. The bilingual readers had high activation for both Hebrew and English in their word region, while monolingual English readers only had high activation for English.
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    Interesting & quick post on research into the neurological basis of reading.
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