Category: ideas

“For all the fun we have with them, illusions do serious work in illuminating how our brains work, and in particular how perception works. They may also help us understand how consciousness developed, and tell us about our ‘neuro-archaeology’.”

“We might call a fickle, changeable acquaintance a chameleon, but the true champions of camouflage turn out to be cephalopods – octopuses, cuttlefish and squid. Unlike a chameleon, an octopus can duplicate the colour and texture of almost anything.”

“[B]eyond the entertainment value, there’s growing evidence that listening to music can also help stimulate seemingly lost memories and even help restore some cognitive function.” As neuroscientists begin to understand how that happens, “they are starting to work hand in hand with music therapists to develop new therapeutic programs.”

“Public goods situations crop up all over the place, including decisions on maintaining roads, funding the police and whether or not to shirk at work. This leads us to an important question: is it possible to make people care enough about such problems to do their bit?”

“We have seen much hand-wringing over the fact that dominant languages like English seem to invade smaller countries and displace their languages – and languages are indeed dying out faster under the pressures of globalism. But nobody seems to ask, What harm is this doing to English?”

“A new rodent study shows that newborn neurons destabilize established connections among existing brain cells in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory. Clearing old memories from the hippocampus makes way for new learning, researchers from Japan suggest.”

“Researchers asked 16 lifelong musicians and 15 non-musicians to listen to speech in a quiet or noisy environment while they were wearing scalp electrodes to monitor their brain activity. Background noise delayed the brain’s response, but this delay was much shorter in the musicians. What’s more, in the noisy environment, the musicians’ brainwaves were more similar to the sound waves of the speech than in non-musicians.”

“Now the Japanese language is being transformed by blogs, e-mail and keitai shosetsu, or cellphone novels. … So what do these changes mean for a language long defined by indirect locutions and long, leisurely sentences that drift from the top of the page? Is Japanese getting simpler, easier or just worse?”

Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats, the founder of the bank, is issuing anti-money backed by anti-matter, which he defines as “the physical opposite of anything made with atoms, from luxury condos to private jets.” He adds, “Like all banks, The First Bank of Antimatter will issue more currency than we have assets.”

“Religious sacrifice, the giving up of temporary gratification in return (perhaps) for future blessings, has existed in rituals since before the dawn of history. And while the notion of human sacrifice has faded, modern sacrifices can still be incredibly profound.” And they are “most visibly demonstrated among the devoutly religious – especially in youth.”