Omni Brain

Good bye Omni Brain...

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:16:40 -0500

On Monday morning Shelley of Retrospectacle and I will be opening up the brand spankin' new blog over in a slightly new location. So come on over and check us out first thing in the morning, a couple hours later, a couple hours after that, and then rinse & repeat. We have some great posts lined up for your reading pleasure.

Bye Bye! See you on Monday in our new location.

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Reading personality by measuring the face & why CNN is stupid

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 09:59:05 -0500

I haven't been blogging lately because Shelley and I have been getting the new blog ready to go public on March 1st. However... I read this crap on CNN and got so irritated that I had to post it.

Evidently CNN feels that people who measure peoples facial features and predict personality characteristics is both legitimate science and worth reporting to the unknowing populace. This is some of the most ridiculous and irresponsible reporting I have ever seen. It's nearly as bad as a reporter writing that mercury in vaccines causes Autism.

Here's the basic gist:

If the "personology" believers had their way, they'd want you to judge every book by its cover. Well, actually, they'd want you to judge every person by his or her facial features. Because practitioners of personology, which is a form of face reading, believe the features on our face tell, literally, the inside story of what kind of person we are.

The theory of reading personality traits in facial features dates back to Aristotle.

Nobody is more passionate about this facial fact-finding than the president of Face Language International, Naomi Tickle (her real name). Tickle has devoted her life to the study of personology, and she informs us in a lovely British accent that this is no fleeting New-Age fad.

Ms. Tickle is correct that this is no new age fad. It is a full blown scam that has persisted since the beginning of recorded history. It is as bad as phrenology, hand writing analysis, or anything that measures body features that have no direct influence on personality. Of course if you're morbidly obese and/or horrendously ugly that is going to affect your personality because of the way the public will treat you... but give me a break! This stuff needs to go the way of phrenology and die...quickly. CNN should be ashamed to report this kind of crap.

Well wait up Steve... let's see whether her constructs make any sense. Maybe she has something going?

So what are there traits that Tickle is talking about?
Well, for example, she says "Somebody who has very close-set eyes is very good with detail. They don't like being interrupted, and they don't like people being late. They like people to be on time.

"The flip side of that," she adds, "is they can focus on things that aren't working till it becomes bigger than life.

A person with wide-set eyes is much more laid back, she continued. "They are the multi-task people. They're the ones that say, 'Oh I can do this and I can do that and I can do that as well,' and because of this behavior, they have a tendency to run late."

Nope. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. What kind of mechanism could possibly link these things? On the other hand maybe there actually is some evidence.

...the theory goes back much further than the 1920s. In fact, it dates back to Aristotle, who wrote a treatise on physiognomy, or the idea that one's temperament can be discerned from his or her outward features.
This later morphed into an odder head-reading trend known as the criminal head bump indicator, or phrenology. But don't lump (ahem) these items in with personology.

Tickle says her method goes by the numbers. "We actually measure the eye to determine the distance," she says. "We measure the width of the eye, and we measure the space between them to see which is the bigger of the two. And so if the eye is bigger than the space between the eyes, this person is very tolerant and very good with details."

She asserts that "thousands and thousands of people" report 100 percent accuracy on the personology analysis.

100% Accuracy and a long history!? Wow! She must be totally right then. Alright first lets throw out the history thing. There was a long history of slave trade and lynching - that's certainly not legitimate. And now for that 100% accuracy. Have any of you scientists encountered any sort of manipulation at all that has given rise to 100% success rate? My toilet doesn't even flush at 100%

So Ms. Tickle and CNN... go away and stop leading poor people on.

-CNN source-

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Why writing journal articles is hard

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:13:35 -0500

I'm supposed to be editing a journal article for submission. It's been sitting on my desk for a long time. I've even finished the experiments for the follow up paper! I really need to stop looking at garbage on the internet - Including this comic defining my exact situation.

Via this place

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Brain Transplant Joke

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:26:51 -0500

Enjoy!

In the hospital the relatives gathered in the waiting room, where their family member lay gravely ill.
Finally, the doctor came in looking tired and somber.
"I'm afraid I'm the bearer of bad news," he said as he surveyed the worried faces.

"The only hope left for your loved one at this time is a brain transplant. It's an experimental procedure, very risky but it is the only hope. Insurance will cover the procedure, but you will have to pay for the brain yourselves."

The family members sat silent as they absorbed the news. After a great length of time, someone asked, "Well, how much does a brain cost?"

The doctor quickly responded, "$5,000 for a male brain, and $200 for a female brain."

The moment turned awkward. Men in the room tried not to smile, avoiding eye contact with the women, but some actually smirked.

A man unable to control his curiosity, blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, "Why is the male brain so much more?"

The doctor smiled at the childish innocence and explained to the entire group, "It's just standard pricing procedure. We have to mark down the price of the female brains, ecause they've actually been used."

As Ginny says... har har.... or something like that.

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Coming Soon ... Of Two Minds

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:57:07 -0500

Are you excited?! A new blog! Coming soon!

Watch out! Of Two Minds is going live on March 1st.

Shelley and I are hard at work behind the scenes getting the blog ready to launch. More info coming in the next couple weeks.

The Life of a Split Brain Patient

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:01:33 -0500

To reduce the severity of his seizures, Joe had the bridge between his left and right cerebral hemispheres (the corpus callosum) severed. As a result, his left and right brains no longer communicate through that pathway. Here's what happens as a result:

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The hardest DUI test ever - Multimedia Friday

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:06:43 -0500

From The Man With Two Brains.

"God damn your drunk tests are hard!"

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Psychology quote of the day

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:50:00 -0500

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."

- William James, American psychologist and philosopher (1842 - 1910)

-via Neatorama-

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And the winner of the name the new Sb's blog contest is....

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:06:16 -0500

Of Two Minds!

Thanks to a commenter named Speedwell we have a new name for the unholy alliance of Retrospectacle and Omni Brain. She will be receiving a Seed subscription, some sciencey books, and some other paraphernalia in the mail (like Sb Stickers). We had many many many wonderful suggestions and we had a hard time picking just one. We almost had to start a bunch of new blogs.

The new blog should be up and running sometime around March 1st. We need to get some banners, create the page, have a powwow on how to take over the world, figure out our first posts, etc etc etc. We'll both be continuing to post on our regular blogs until then so don't worry - we're not really going anywhere.

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Frightening Diseases of the Mind : Multimedia Friday

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:13:42 -0500

Here's a wonderful spoof of .. well... I'm not really sure what. Perhaps an old Documentary focusing on the diseases of the mind? In any case it's terribly entertaining.

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Events of the Mind at the Exploratorium

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:23:42 -0500

Check out the newest events at the Exploratorium. They Sound Great!

Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow/Optimal Experience Researcher)
Among Renowned Speakers To Appear
Mind Lecture Series Continues
February 2, 9, and 23, 2008

"Flow" (Optimal Experience) researcher Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (February 9) is among the renowned speakers featured in the Exploratorium's continuing Mind Lecture Series in February 2008. The series is presented in conjunction with the opening of Mind, a major new Exploratorium collection, four years in the making, made possible by the National Science Foundation. At the exhibition, visitors experience their own thoughts, feelings and actions in provocative and unexpected ways. Lectures (and the exhibition) are included in the price of admission. Advance lecture reservations are required. To reserve tickets, go to www.ticketweb.com. The Mind Lecture Series schedule for February is as follows:

Saturday, February 2, 2008
Art, Emotion and the Brain
Prize-Winning Documentary War Photographer Smith Patrick and
Assistant Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company Rob Clare
Featured in Panel Discussion Hosted by Pireeni Sundaralingam
McBean Theater, 2pm
How do artists affect our emotions? How do our emotional reactions inform art? Join prize-winning war photographer Smith Patrick, Royal Shakespeare Company director Rob Clare, film composer William Susman, and neuroscientist Pireeni Sundaralingam in a symposium on the mood-altering powers of music, drama, and visual art.

Host Pireeni Sundaralingam likes hiking around on the Nabokovian ridge where "scientific knowledge meets artistic imagination." Educated at Oxford, she has held national fellowships in both cognitive science and poetry, and was the founding director of the Number Perception Laboratory at California State University, Los Angeles.

Saturday, February 9, 2008
The Creative Person and The Creative Context
A Talk with Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
McBean Theater, 2pm
When do you feel creative? Where does creativity come from? From inkling to invention, follow the course of imagination with the foremost authority on positive psychology and flow, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He'll review the common traits of creative people and introduce the "Systems Model" of creativity, which describes the types of environments that foster innovation.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is C.S. and D.J. Davidson Professor of Psychology and Management and Director of The Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University. He has written several books, including the best-selling Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. He is a member of the American Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Leisure Sciences.

Saturday, February 23, 2008
21st Century Brain: How Neuroscience is Changing the Way We Shop, Vote, and Pay Taxes With Joshua Freedman -- UCLA Psychiatry Professor
Panel Discussion Hosted by Pireeni Sundaralingam
McBean Theater, 2pm
What makes us choose one beauty product over another, or one presidential candidate over another? How free is our free will in the 21st century? Dr. Joshua Freedman of FKF Applied Research and Hans Lee of EmSense join neuroscientist Pireeni Sundaralingam to examine how retail companies, economic think tanks, and political campaign organizers use neuroscience to change the ways we think and feel.

# # #

Name the new ScienceBlogs blog - Contest ends tomorrow Feb. 1st 2008

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:58:04 -0500

Friday February 1st is the final day for you to submit your wonderful ideas for the name of the news ScienceBlogs super blog started by Shelley of Retrospectacle and Steve Higgins of Omni Brain (me!). So get out those thinking caps and submit some great ideas right here.

Here's some guidelines from Shelley:

We're holding a contest to Name That Blog, with the winner receiving a slew of recent science books, a subscription to SEED, and a host of other sciency prizes. Plus my eternal love and adoration! The blog will be general wonderful science stuff with a neuroscience slant, so feel free to be creative as hell with the naming. Leave ideas in the comments here, or email them to me. Since there is a prize please be sure to let me know how to contact you in case you win. Multiple entries are fine! Thanks and good luck!

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Staying healthy during the Super Bowl - Don't double dip!

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:03:13 -0500

The Super Bowl is all about chips and dip - so be careful. It could kill you if you're not!

If you're a Seinfeld watcher you probably remember this scene:

TIMMY: What are you doing?

GEORGE: What?

TIMMY: Did...did you just double-dip that chip?

GEORGE: Excuse me?

TIMMY: You double-dipped the chip!

GEORGE: "Double-dipped"? What are you talking about?

TIMMY: You dipped the chip. You took a bite. And you dipped again.

GEORGE: So...?

TIMMY: That's like putting your whole mouth right in the dip! From now on, when you take a chip - just take one dip and end it!

GEORGE: Well, I'm sorry, Timmy...but I don't dip that way.

TIMMY: Oh, you don't, huh?

GEORGE: No. You dip the way you want to dip... I'll dip the way I want to dip.

TIMMY: Gimme the chip! Gimme the chip!

And the video:

Timmy is clearly onto something with this. According to research by Judith Trevino, Brad Ballieu, Rachel Yost, Samantha Danna, Genevieve Harris, Jacklyn Dejonckheere , Danielle Dimitroff, Mark Philips from the Deptartment of Food Science & Human Nutrition at Clemson University, "Double-dipping does transfer bacteria: George was wrong!"

I'm imagining doing this experiment right now and giggling to myself. Basically the bacteria levels of each students mouth were measured and then

Each student in the CI team conducted four treatments. For the dipping treatments, a cracker was bitten, dipped in the sterile water then discarded (Figure 1). The control treatments consisted of dipping a cracker without biting. The four treatments were: 3 dips without biting, 6 dips without biting, 3 dips with biting, and 6 dips with biting.

After all the dipping and letting stuff sit around for a while they measured the bacteria levels in the sterile water.

Unsurprisingly they found that

For the "double dipping" experiment, a higher population of bacteria ( P≤0.05)was found in solutions dipped with crackers after biting compared to solutions dipped without biting (Figure 3). There was no difference between the 3 and 6 dips (P>0.05) as far a bacteria transferred to the dipping solution. Bacterial populations found in the solution after crackers were dipped without biting were less than 10 cfu per ml of the dipping solution. The results of our research proved that bacteria can be transferred from the mouth to the dip.

If you're interested in more details you can Download the poster right here. Or if you want more information about this and other exciting food safety research like how to properly wash your hands and the five second rule head over to Paul Dawson's webpage.

Have a happy and healthy Super Bowl - and don't forget to only dip once!

HT:Brian L

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The End of Omni Brain - The Beginning of Something New

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:56:42 -0500

I started Omni Brain over two years ago on Blogger and eventually gained a number of co-bloggers that have come and gone, most notably Sandra. About a year ago we were invited to blog at ScienceBlogs which is really the ideal place to be for a science blogger. I've had a great run here on Omni Brain but I believe it is time to move on to bigger and better things. So a couple weeks from now a new blog is going to appear - a super blog ;)

Shelley Batts from Retrospectacle is going to join me in this wonderful new adventure in blogging. We'll still be here at ScienceBlogs but just under a new name. But that's actually the catch - We need a new name! Which is where you come in...

In the words of Shelley:

We're holding a contest to Name That Blog, with the winner receiving a slew of recent science books, a subscription to SEED, and a host of other sciency prizes. Plus my eternal love and adoration! The blog will be general wonderful science stuff with a neuroscience slant, so feel free to be creative as hell with the naming. Leave ideas in the comments here, or email them to me. Since there is a prize please be sure to let me know how to contact you in case you win. Multiple entries are fine! Thanks and good luck!

Any good ideas?

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Connect your Wii to Mine!

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:01:33 -0500

Do it! In the address book: 4971 9184 7926 5393

We can share Mii's and stuff!

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Links for 2007-06-22 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Wired News - AP News
Forget the clicker: A new technology in Japan could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity. The "brain-machine interface" developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain's blood flow and

Links for 2007-06-07 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

ScienceDaily: New Interview Technique Could Help Police Spot Deception
Shifting uncomfortably in your seat? Stumbling over your words? Can't hold your questioner's gaze? Police interviewing strategies place great emphasis on such visual and speech-related cues, although new research funded by the Economic and Social Research
'Cultured' chimpanzees pass on novel traditions
The local customs that define human cultures in important ways also exist in the ape world, suggests a study reported online June 7th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. Indeed, captive chimpanzees, like people, can readily acquire new tradition

Links for 2007-06-04 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

ScienceDaily: Harboring Hostility May Be Linked To Unhealthy Lungs
Young adults with a short temper or mean disposition also tend to have compromised lung function, says a recent study published in the journal Health Psychology, by the American Psychological Association (APA). This occurred even when asthma and smoking w

Links for 2007-05-28 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 29 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Medical experiments to be done without patients' consent | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting the patients' permission. The $50 million, fi

Links for 2007-05-24 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 25 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500

New adult brain cells may be central to lifelong learning | Science Blog
The steady formation of new brain cells in adults may represent more than merely a patching up of aging brains, a new study has shown. The new adult brain cells may serve to give the adult brain the same kind of learning ability that young brains have whi

Links for 2007-05-23 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 24 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Brain 'Pacemaker' Tickles Your Happy Nerve
In vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS, a two-inch diameter, .25 inch thick disk is surgically tucked under the skin near the left collarbone, then wired upward to the vagus nerve in the neck. The battery-operated disk delivers intermittent, rhythmic pulses t

Links for 2007-05-18 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 19 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500

'Might Have Been' Key In Evaluating Behavior
"What might have been" or fictive learning affects the brain and plays an important role in the choices individuals make - and may play a role in addiction, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers and others in a report that appears online in the Proc