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The Man Whose Brain Borrowed Nearby Identities. The strange world of felt presences. On 20 May 1916, Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley, and Tom Crean reached Stromness, a whaling station on the north coast of South Georgia.

The strange world of felt presences

They had been walking for 36 hours, in life-threatening conditions, in an attempt to reach help for the rest of their party: three of their crew were stuck on the south side of the island, with the remainder stranded on Elephant Island. To reach the whaling station, the three men had to cross the island’s mountainous interior with just a rope and an axe, in a journey that few had attempted before or since.

Postcards From the Edge of Consciousness. Unexpected knowledge – Things I’ve learned since being sectioned. Graphic Anti-Smoking Warnings Change Cigarette Taste. In the months since graphic anti-smoking warnings have appeared on Australian cigarette packaging in smokers have complained that the cigarettes don’t taste as good as they did before the health warnings.

Graphic Anti-Smoking Warnings Change Cigarette Taste

According to The New York Times, “More than seven months have passed since Australia imposed one of the world’s toughest laws for tobacco warning labels, swapping iconic packaging for graphic images of mouth ulcers, cancerous lungs and gangrenous limbs. And though experts say it is too soon to know what impact the law has had on tobacco use, one thing is certain: Smokers think the cigarettes taste off. Complaints started to roll in about the flavor of cigarettes almost immediately after the law went into effect on December 1.” Neuroscience: Solving the brain. When neurobiologist Bill Newsome got a phone call from Francis Collins in March, his first reaction was one of dismay.

Neuroscience: Solving the brain

The director of the US National Institutes of Health had contacted him out of the blue to ask if he would co-chair a rapid planning effort for a ten-year assault on how the brain works. To Newsome, that sounded like the sort of thankless, amorphous and onerous task that would ruin a good summer. But after turning it over in his mind for 24 hours, his dismay gave way to enthusiasm. The Decline of Eye Contact. You're having a conversation with someone and suddenly his eyes drop to his smartphone or drift over your shoulder toward someone else.

The Decline of Eye Contact

It feels like this is happening more than ever—in meetings, at the dinner table, even at intimate cocktail parties—and there are signs that the decline of eye contact is a growing problem. Adults make eye contact between 30% and 60% of the time in an average conversation, says the communications-analytics company Quantified Impressions. But the Austin, Texas, company says people should be making eye contact 60% to 70% of the time to create a sense of emotional connection, according to its analysis of 3,000 people speaking to individuals and groups. Body integrity identity disorder. Body integrity identity disorder (BIID, also referred to as amputee identity disorder[1]) is a psychological disorder wherein sufferers feel they would be happier living as an amputee.

Body integrity identity disorder

Future - Health - How a movie changed one man’s vision forever. Brain Researchers Can Detect Who We Are Thinking About. Scientists scanning the human brain can now tell whom a person is thinking of, the first time researchers have been able to identify what people are imagining from imaging technologies.

Brain Researchers Can Detect Who We Are Thinking About

Work to visualize thought is starting to pile up successes. Recently, scientists have used brain scans to decode imagery directly from the brain, such as what number people have just seen and what memory a person is recalling. They can now even reconstruct videos of what a person has watched based on their brain activity alone.

World's most detailed scans will reveal how brain works. 5 March 2013Last updated at 13:27 ET By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News Continue reading the main story.

World's most detailed scans will reveal how brain works

Evidence from mice human hybrids shows that Glial support cells may enhance people’s thinking prowess. Transplanting human brain cells into mice makes the mice smarter, a new study shows.

Evidence from mice human hybrids shows that Glial support cells may enhance people’s thinking prowess

But the smart-making brain cells are not the nerve cells most people think of as controlling thoughts. Instead, they are part of the supporting cast of brain cells known as glia (Greek for “glue”). Scientists have long seen glia, including a subset known as astrocytes, as support cells that feed neurons, mop up excess neurotransmitters and generally help hold the brain together. The new study, published March 7 in Cell Stem Cell, shows that glial cells also influence memory formation and could change how scientists think the brain works, says R. Douglas Fields of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. In the new study, researchers led by neurologist and stem cell biologist Steven Goldman and neurobiologist Maiken Nedergaard of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York implanted human cells called glial progenitor cells into the brains of newborn mice.

Addiction Machines: How Slots are Designed for Compulsive Play. One rat brain 'talks' to another using electronic link. 28 February 2013Last updated at 10:33 ET By Jen Whyntie BBC Radio Science Unit Brain signals about completing a simple task were transmitted from one rat to another Scientists have connected the brains of lab rats, allowing one to communicate directly to another via cables.

One rat brain 'talks' to another using electronic link

The wired brain implants allowed sensory and motor signals to be sent from one rat to another, creating the first ever brain-to-brain interface.  Mapping the human brain connectivity. Memory.jpg (JPEG Image, 800 × 4345 pixels) - Scaled (15%) Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind. BERKELEY — Imagine tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching one’s own dream on YouTube.

Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind

With a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are bringing these futuristic scenarios within reach. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.

Untitled. ASMR videos: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response and whispering videos on YouTube. TheWaterwhispers/Youtube. We open with a close-up of a young woman’s face, shot from below. She gazes downward into the camera, her light brown hair hanging so low as to almost touch the lens. Her eyes are wide with what seems a kind of maternal solicitousness.