Neuroscience
Today, trepanation, or drilling a hole in the head, is commonly used to release the pressure of swelling inside the skull.
Throughout history, it's been used to treat epilepsy, migraines, mood disorders and pretty much any other head condition that seemed to surgeons of the time as if it could be improved by seeing the light of day. But even more interesting than holding someone down and punching a hole through his/her skull is doing it yourself.
In the autobiographical book Bore Hole, Joey Mellen describes his attempts at self-trepanation. Attempts numbers one and two are unsuccessful,…
A new system published in The Visual Computer uses sensors and wireless devices to measure three physiological parameters in real time, heart rate, respiration, and the galvanic (electric) skin response, processes that data using software, and is then used to control the behavior of a virtual character who is sitting in a waiting room.
The heart rate was reflected in the movement of the character's feet, respiration in the rising of the chest (exaggerated movements so that it can be noticed) and the galvanic skin response in the more or less reddish color of the face.
Human unconscious…
As promised, here's part three of the nails-in-the-brain trilogy. Only, while nails may be the brain-poking standby, they're not the only foreign bodies to be shot, shoved or stabbed into the human brain.
For example, after getting into a fistfight a man reported to his local emergency room with a headache, black eye and a cut on his cheek. Imaging found a 10.5-centimeter paintbrush embedded in the man's brain. Surgery removed the paintbrush and the man experienced no lasting effects. The paintbrush had entered bristles-first.
Or take the case of a man who drilled a hole in his head and…
It's counter-intuitive that hurting oneself could make a person feel better but, based on the assumption that no one truly wants to hurt themselves without a benefit, researchers have taken reports from people who compulsively harm themselves and sought a way where cutting or burning could provide relief from emotional distress.
Individuals with borderline personality disorder experience intense emotions and often show a deficiency of emotion regulation skills. This group also displays high prevalence rates of self-injurious behavior, which they claim helps them to reduce negative…
Yesterday I posted a couple splendid instances of people driving nails into their brains. And here, for those of you that think (as I do) that the only thing better than nails-in-the-brain stories is MORE nails-in-the-brain stories, are a couple more. Stay tuned tomorrow for things other than nails that've been surgically removed from brains of the unfortunate.
• In 2007 a man wearing a baseball cap complained of headaches at the emergency room of St. George's Hospital in London. Doctors removed the baseball cap to find 11 nails penetrating the man's brain, one of which was a spike at least…
Here are a couple wonderful instances of people accidentally or intentionally driving nails deep into their gray matter. Can't get enough nails in the brain? Don't worry—I'll post another couple tomorrow.
• On January 12, 2005, 23-year-old construction worker Patrick Lawler went to the dentist complaining of a toothache. After six days of eating ice cream to help the swelling, Lawler felt it was finally time to seek help. The dentist found a four-inch nail embedded in Lawler's brain, next to his right eye. Apparently, Lawler had fired a nail gun through a piece of rotten wood but didn't…
antunes |
We all avoid different things. I avoid polyester clothing. They avoid talking about death. (Lisa Daxer)
Projects on SETI projects look for extraterrestrial signals from space. Work with dolphins, elephants, even chickens seeks to see if these animals are intelligent communicators. In all this, we take for granted that we understand how we humans, as social creatures, think and react. But our understanding of communications and social interaction relies on some unusual assumptions.
It turns out thinking like 'an alien' has its advantages for studying humanity. …
There has been much debate surrounding Ray Kurzweil and his talk at the Singularity Summit on August 14th 2010, where he discussed reverse engineering the brain, among other things. He was criticized quite harshly by science blogger and biologist PZ Myers (of ScienceBlogs), based mainly on a second-hand account of the presentation by a journalist who covered the event. Ray has since responded to these criticisms, and I have collected the links to those arguments/responses here.To be fair, Kurzweil should be judged on his actual words and theories, not the summary or interpretation of a…
Well, you knew this day was coming. Ray Kurzweil, futurist and author, was attacked for his supposed lack of understanding of how the brain functions, by popular biologist and ScienceBlogs blogger PZ Myers earlier this week.
Image courtesy of Singularity Hub
This attack came following a presentation that Ray gave at the Singularity Summit this past weekend, titled, The Mind And How To Build One. You can read the article by PZ in the link above, so I won't get into that here. A few other responses came out of this controversy, including a piece written by Leo Parker Dirac on his website,…
A word is vague if it has borderline cases. Yul Brynner (the lead in "The King and I") is definitely bald, I am (at the time of this writing) definitely not, and there are many people who seem to be neither. These people are in the “borderline region” of ‘bald’, and this phenomenon is central to vagueness. Nearly every word in natural language is vague, from ‘person’and ‘coercion’ in ethics, ‘object’ and ‘red’ in physical science, ‘dog’ and ‘male’ in biology, to ‘chair’ and ‘plaid’ in interior decorating. Vagueness is the rule, not the exception. Pick any natural language word you like, and…