Thinking of the past or future causes us to sway backward or forward. “University of Aberdeen psychological scientists Lynden Miles, Louise Nind and Neil Macrae conducted a study to measure this in the lab. They fitted participants with a motion sensor while they imagined either future or past events. The researchers found that thinking about past or future events can literally move us: Engaging in mental time travel (a.k.a. chronesthesia) resulted in physical movements corresponding to the metaphorical direction of time. Those who thought of the past swayed backward while those who thought of the future moved forward.”
Jonah Lehrer on the Picasso quote “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”: “From the perspective of the brain, Picasso is on to something, as the frontal lobes (and the DPLFC in particular) are the last brain areas to fully develop. And so the super-ego settles in, and we become too self-conscious to create. Obviously, we need the frontal lobes to function – just look at the tragic life of SB – but every talent comes with a tradeoff. When we repress our urge to confabulate we also repress the urge to create. To quote Picasso once again: ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.’ But it’s still a lie.” Related: Ken Robinson’s TED talk on how education is restraining the creativity of children.
As a teen, did you jump start cars, deal hash, runaway from home, threaten to kill yourself when your boyfriend took another girl to the prom? Good news! You might be brilliant now! “The brains of teens who behave dangerously are more like adult brains than are those of their more cautious peers.” (via.)
The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist. (via.)
Abstract art’s emotional resonance can be measured. Neuroscientists in Liverpool study how shapes in art like Malevich’s Supremus No. 50 and Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow activate the part of the brain linked to visual information. Say a researcher: “[The] artists start with a blank canvas and arrange shapes and colours in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, using their own brain to monitor the effect. We like to look at the human body or parts of the body like the face and hands, stylised representations like stick figures and organic forms of the kind incorporated into the work of Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon. Certain landscapes and horizontal and vertical lines are also popular because they resonate with our visual systems, which have been tuned by evolution and experience to respond particularly to these biologically and socially important stimuli.”
Soldiers Who Have Taken a Life More Likely to Defend Iraq War
“We flinch when someone else receives a blow, and neurologists have started to talk about “mirror neurones” in the brain, which make spontaneous representations of what is happening with other people, so you then feel these yourself. And it’s thought that the basis of sympathy – and, to some extent, imitation and incarnation – is partly due to these mirror neurones,” says Oliver Sacks. He explains how this might relate to exceptional acting in a conversation with RSC’S Michael Boyd. (via.)
A drug in clinical trials could potentially grow new neurons in the brain. BrainCells “hopes the compounds will provide an alternative to existing antidepressants and says they may also prove effective in treating cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s.”
Fruit and Colors
This week the New York Times wrote about miracle fruit, the West Africa berry thats been dazzling foodies by radically altering their taste buds. It’s set to revolutionize dieting (although we’ve heard that one before,) but for now it’s a cool party trick.
After eating a berry, bitter and sour foods taste sweet. Cheeses, Brussels sprouts, mustard, vinegars, pickles, dark beers all tasted chocolate-y or fruity to the “40 or so people who were tasting under the influence of a small red berry called miracle fruit at a rooftop party in Long Island City, Queens, last Friday night.” Even Tabasco sauce tasted like “doughnut glaze.”
The language “under the influence” is intentional. Many have compared the experience to tripping. But there’s something so darned virginal about it. The hippies had acid, Montmartre had absinthe. Making food taste radically different is awesome, but it isn’t transgressive. No one’s ever going to paint Starry Night or write Naked Lunch after trying it. Plus, there’s no known danger in taking it — it’s a fruit after all.
Jacob Grier, food blogger, magician, and think tanker, has written quite a lot about miracle fruit over the past few years. There’s more at the blog where he contributes, EatFoo. One EatFoo writers says, “If you have the choice, go for the magic mushrooms, but otherwise miracle fruit is one of the weirdest food-induced experiences one can have. It’s like some weird new experiment from Willy Wonka’s factory, only Willy Wonka is some shady horticulturist from Fort Lauderdale known to the world only through his cryptic messages on obscure gardening blogs. But he came through.” (The “shady horticulturist” is Curtis Mozie, who charges $1 per fruit.)
What’s most really amazing about it, is our sense of taste is so influenced by visual stimulus. Most of us have a little bit of synesthesia. John Stosell once had his 20/20 interns take a blind taste test, arranged by Brian Wansink, author of the book Mindless Eating. Wansink, a Cornell food science professor, asked them which of two cups of yoghurt “had more strawberry.” Everyone answered one or the other.
It turns out it was vanilla yoghurt mixed with chocolate syrup of varying concentrations. Nobody noticed it wasn’t “strawberry” at all (well, partly because out unnatural “fruit” flavors are pretty arbitrary.)
Around the same time I was reading the article on miracle fruit, I was reviewing some of my delicio.us bookmarks on color theory. Every stoner has wondered, “is my orange, your blue?” But few people realize the answer — sort of — exists. People have a varying number of color-sensitive cones in the human retina, yet the brain tends to perceive them all the same way. Medical Optics researchers viewed the cones the pick up specific colors and found for the tests individuals, they all asked similarly depending on the color they were given to look at. (Of course, if you’re stoned you can debate whether this is the chicken or the egg for eternity.)
This isn’t a total digression from miracle fruit. Another experiment from the same researchers, involved several several people wearing colored contacts. After a little while adjusting, they reported they were seeing colors normally, as their eyes had adjusted. But researchers found that wasn’t the case. Under scrutiny, “even when not wearing the contacts, they all began to select a pure yellow that was a different wavelength than they had before wearing the contacts.” The researcher explained, “Over time, we were able to shift their natural perception of yellow in one direction, and then the other…This is direct evidence for an internal, automatic calibrator of color perception. These experiments show that color is defined by our experience in the world, and since we all share the same world, we arrive at the same definition of colors.”
So, I wonder if it’s not that the effect of miracle fruit really wears off after an hour, so much as our perception adjusts? I’d love to see a scientific study of it. In any case, I’m really astonished that it exists and works…. and can’t wait to try it myself.
- Christopher Williams, Untitled 2000
- John Baldessari, Six Colorful Inside Jobs
- Jim Dine, The Studio
- Dan Flavin, Untitled 1987
These images are taken from MoMA’s exhibit, Color Chart: Reinventing Color from 1950 to Today. It closed, but you can buy the really beautiful book.
“[The] team created a computer model that uses picture elements such as angles and brightness to predict the neural activity elicited by a novel black-and-white photograph. Then the researchers scanned subjects while showing them new snapshots. Most of the time Kay’s model could single out which image the subject was viewing.” – Scientific American. The researcher believes his algorithm might perform “at least some degree of [image] reconstruction” based on fMRI data.
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