This is Part II of the post from Wednesday regarding UNMC’s Science Café. Part I is here. Continuing below is the other half of Dr. Singh’s six astonishing examples of recent and mind-blowing developments in our understanding of the brain and the mind.

4 – Anosognosia or “denying your weakness” is a fascinating and disturbing revelation. A patient who was paralyzed on one side of his body denied that he was paralyzed. On being asked to clap his hands, the patient proceeded to wave one hand in the air, as if clapping both together. Subsequent enquiry led the patient to affirm that he did clap and heard it too! Another accidental discovery resulted, by way of a treatment that also produces rapid eye movement. While the patient experienced rapid eye movement, he stopped denying his paralysis! As soon as the rapid eye movement ceased, he reverted to a denial of his paralysis. (more…)

Imagine the power with just a thought to close or open doors, turn lights on and off, manipulate a thermostat or move a cursor across a computer screen. Or imagine the ability to delve willfully into your own subconscious and surface those hidden secrets. Science fiction, right. Right? Wrong.

Dr. Sanjay Singh last night presented six illustrations of huge advances in neuroscience discovery at a UNMC Science Café event hosted at Slowdown. In this Part I today, I will provide a brief snapshot of three of the wonders that he had to reveal. I will post the other three in Part II on Friday.

1 – What is art? Why are we attracted to some things and not others and why is art so subjective? Can science define it? Can it be defined through neuroscience? It is early days to answer this question, but Dr. Singh suggested an ancient Sanskrit text may hold one part of the answer, because it provided a definition of art that scientists could test against. The definition was that art is the defining characteristic of an object exaggerated.

Scientists have tested this using seagulls and rats. The rat experiment gave the rats the choice of a rectangle or a square. If they went to the rectangle, they got cheese. If they went to the square, they got nothing. (more…)

From the first time I was reprimanded for drawing Bart Simpson or a favorite logo during class, I have always said, “Yes, I am paying attention!”

You see, for me, doodling has always been my way of paying attention. It’s like this: If I had to sit through a lecture delivered by Ben Stein’s vocal protégé on the topic of igneous rocks and how they differ from metamorphic rocks – without some outlet to keep me sane – I’d still be in the 5th grade. It’s that simple.

Mindlessly doodling doesn’t mean I’m not listening, mind you. I stand by what I said earlier…I am paying attention, Helen! But instead of mentally fighting the painful drone with thoughts of being anywhere but in the present, doodling allows my brain to relax just enough to let the information flow in through my ears and settle into my brain cells.

Sketching has always kept me in the moment. Surely I’m not the only person on the planet who has developed the fine art of passive listening while doodling. So, why is it that some people think just because you’re not staring directly into their eyes, you must be a troublemaker who doesn’t pay attention to anything? On behalf of all doodling passive listeners, I’m here to say we are not all troublemakers. (more…)

Mother Nature astonishes me all the time. While dd|a’s designers make me look like I don’t know one end of a pencil from the other, it is reassuring to know that Mother Nature can trump everyone on occasion. Apparently, huge discharges of magnetic energy create an electrical frenzy in the planet’s ionosphere, resulting in the dazzling Northern Lights. A group of scientists at Astronomy North have captured these using time-lapse videos. Watch the one with this post and see more at their Web site here. They are mesmerizing.

Competition–any healthy competition–is good, right? It keeps us on our toes. It pushes us to our limits. It makes us faster thinkers, smarter, and a lot of times even makes us richer. Who doesn’t want all of those things? (more…)