“Absurdist literature, it appears, stimulates our brains. That's the conclusion of a study recently published in the journal Psychological Science. Psychologists Travis Proulx of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Steven Heine of the University of British Columbia report our ability to find patterns is stimulated when we are faced with the task of making sense of an absurd tale. What's more, this heightened capability carries over to unrelated tasks.” (Miller-McCune Online Magazine)
Tag Archives: Cognition
The Neuroenhancement Underground
Every era has its defining drug. Neuroenhancers are perfectly suited for our efficiency-obsessed, BlackBerry-equipped office culture. (The New Yorker)
Campus use appears to be greatest at the most competitive institutions, but not among the highest achievers. It seems that stimulant use can compensate for partying and not being that motivated for your schoolwork. Is the use of neuroenhancers like cheating? Or, to turn the ethical question on its head, could it one day be considered unethical not to dose oneself in certain professions — neurosurgery, for instance.
Déjà vu again
“Surprisingly, not only is déjà vu proving an interesting window on the peculiar ways that our memory works, it is also providing a few clues about how we tell the difference between what is real, imagined, dreamed and remembered – one of the true mysteries of consciousness.” via New Scientist
The takeaway message is that deja vu is composed of distinct but related elements — recognition, the sense of familiarity, the sense of the weirdness or bizarreness of the experience, and the recognition of its impossibility — each of which has its own circuitry and neurocognitive machinery.
The human brain is on the edge of chaos
“Cambridge-based researchers provide new evidence that the human brain lives “on the edge of chaos”, at a critical transition point between randomness and order. The study, published March 20 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, provides experimental data on an idea previously fraught with theoretical speculation.
Self-organized criticality (where systems spontaneously organize themselves to operate at a critical point between order and randomness), can emerge from complex interactions in many different physical systems, including avalanches, forest fires, earthquakes, and heartbeat rhythms.
According to this study, conducted by a team from the University of Cambridge, the Medical Research Council Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, and the GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Unit Cambridge, the dynamics of human brain networks have something important in common with some superficially very different systems in nature. Computational networks showing these characteristics have also been shown to have optimal memory (data storage) and information-processing capacity. In particular, critical systems are able to respond very rapidly and extensively to minor changes in their inputs.” via PhysOrg.
Scientists identify the neural circuitry of first impressions
Amygdala
‘The neuroimaging results showed significant activity in two regions of the brain during the encoding of impression-relevant information. The first, the amygdala, is a small structure in the medial temporal lobe that previously has been linked to emotional learning about inanimate objects, as well as social evaluations based on trust or race group. The second, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), has been linked to economic decision-making and assigning subjective value to rewards. In the Nature Neuroscience study, these parts of the brain, which are implicated in value processing in a number of domains, showed increased activity when encoding information that was consistent with the impression.
“Even when we only briefly encounter others, brain regions that are important in forming evaluations are engaged, resulting in a quick first impression,” commented NYU’s Phelps.
NYU’s Schiller, the study’s lead author, concluded, “When encoding everyday social information during a social encounter, these regions sort information based on its personal and subjective significance, and summarize it into an ultimate score–a first impression.” ‘ via physorg.com.
Related:
- Sad Brain, Happy Brain (samharris.org)
- How do You Make Snap Decisions? (abcnews.go.com)
The Cognition and Language Laboratory
“The twin research foci of this lab are cognition and language. That is, our primarily interest is in how 
language is implemented in the human mind. However, as understanding and using language probably involves many mental activities that aren’t strictly linguistic, many experiments delve into other aspects of thinking or cognition.
language is implemented in the human mind. However, as understanding and using language probably involves many mental activities that aren’t strictly linguistic, many experiments delve into other aspects of thinking or cognition.
The CLL conducts experiments via the Web. You may participate by clicking here, see results from previous experiments by clicking here. The experiments are short — some take as little as 2-3 minutes to complete. All are anonymous.”
