During my interview with Arthur Benjamin, he spoke briefly about the joy of discovering something in mathematics, even if one is relatively certain that the given relationship has been known for years, or even centuries. Along the same lines, I’ve been playing with right triangles of late. They are called Pythagorean triples—three numbers, a, b, …
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It doesn’t have to be true to be useful Today we talk about the placebo effect—when an inactive substance can mimic the action of medicine or other therapies. Here’s a review of many studies and experiments done on the placebo effect. How Placebos Change the Patient’s Brain And here’s a link to episode 25, which …
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Lost in the mountains, with no magic There doesn’t seem to be any one thing that could transform you into a genius, and the search is complicated by exaggeration and fabrication within the research. Here’s a paper on where your idea of your self, and where the circuits that let you regulate said self live. …
I just finished this morning’s session with the vOICe. My performance was less effective than the last few sessions, so far as reach and grab, or reach and get close. I only had visual qualia a few times. More than once, I “saw” it, and then reached for the wrong spot, only to find that …
It’s called, the Tetris effect. People who have played the game Tetris often find that they will start to see those falling blocks as they doze off, as they are just waking up, or even when they blink from time to time as they go about their lives. Though named after one rather addictive video …
I was chatting on Twitter back and forth with @seeingwithsound about the vOICe. My Twitter handle is @lobbyandlab if you’d like to join the conversation. I mentioned that my echo location seemed to have improved since I began working with the vOICe. @seeingwithsound replied that though it was only anecdotal evidence, he’d noticed that his …
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Which part of the brain, off on and when There is nothing simple about the brain. Wherein certain skills can be improved by shutting down one part, those same skills may require increasing activity in another. Here’s a collection of short videos on the flow state of consciousness. The Optimized Brain: A Workshop on FlowStates …
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As I was saying While it has been fun to talk about the vOICe and sensory substitution, it’s time to return to the brain, how it works, and how one might discover how best to use one of your very own. Here’s a blog post, with no podcast episode, about the vOICe, and my attempt …
Over the weekend, I did a good deal of research. I was trying to track down which parts of the brain may interfere with certain skills. But I wanted more than just which bit does what; I wanted to know the subjective feel. How does it feel when that part of the brain is active, …