Category: ideas

“In recent years, neuroscience has begun to solve the mystery of overeating. It turns out to have little to do with our taste buds, or even with our conscious desire for certain foods. Instead, the impulse to overeat depends on the pleasures of the stomach and intestines, which have an uncanny ability to detect the presence of calories.”

Adam Frank: “Science, when practiced with an authentic intention, is a way of honoring the cosmos we find ourselves inhabiting. … Taking notice of the world as it is and of itself, for even just a single moment, is a fundamental act of being human and therefore being a scientist and therefore being grateful.”

“As retailers’ ‘Black Friday’ approaches, research shows that commerce and Christmas have a long history of coexistence, and the psychological effect may be generally positive.”

“New quantitative psychological research suggests a considerable percentage of the population can’t be bothered by these ambitious if ambiguous questions, and when pressed don’t really care that they feel their lives, in the big picture, are meaningless.”

“Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.”

“At the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Digital Media Program, we are researching newsgames, the application of games to journalism. Newsgames reinvent journalistic principles through their design, using current events, infographics, puzzles, community action and more.”

“Those who used spatial navigation strategy — the non-GPS method — had increased activity in a part of the brain responsible for memory and navigation called the hippocampus. The study indicated that who used GPS-like stimulus-reponse could be at risk for showing atrophy of the hippocampus over time.”

“Many of the ethical norms of the previous century were loosened significantly, and folks tended to have a sense that they were operating in greater freedom” – and with a greater social conscience – “than their ancestors.” Social reform movements arose, parenting became less strict (and violent), politics became polarized, and many people were “spiritual but not religious” (e.g., Deism).

“We all know the aphorism that one can see a glass filled to the middle with water as half-full or half-empty, the optimistic versus the pessimistic views. What about an empty glass? Of course, everyone knows that it’s filled with air. Can we, however, contemplate total emptiness?”

In several studies, brain scans indicated that “pain led to decreased activity in the areas of the brain associated with negative emotion.” And you really do feel better when the pain stops: “it turns out that both general negative emotion and pain-induced negative emotion are processed in the same brain areas. This means that pain relief and emotional relief are essentially the same thing.”