mymedicalinquiries

saucefactory: ifbuteverythought: amandaonwriting: Bloodstain...

Mon, 20 May 2013 01:36:36 -0400

ifbuteverythought:

amandaonwriting:

Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) - Resource for Crime Writers

SOURCE

REBLOGGING THIS FOR ABSOLUTELY LEGAL AND NON-CREEPY REASONS

neurosciencestuff: Decoding ‘noisy’ language in daily...

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:22:06 -0400

neurosciencestuff:

Decoding ‘noisy’ language in daily life

Suppose you hear someone say, “The man gave the ice cream the child.” Does that sentence seem plausible? Or do you assume it is missing a word? Such as: “The man gave the ice cream to the child.”

A new study by MIT researchers indicates that when we process language, we often make these kinds of mental edits. Moreover, it suggests that we seem to use specific strategies for making sense of confusing information — the “noise” interfering with the signal conveyed in language, as researchers think of it.

“Even at the sentence level of language, there is a potential loss of information over a noisy channel,” says Edward Gibson, a professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) and Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Gibson and two co-authors detail the strategies at work in a new paper, “Rational integration of noisy evidence and prior semantic expectations in sentence interpretation,” published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“As people are perceiving language in everyday life, they’re proofreading, or proof-hearing, what they’re getting,” says Leon Bergen, a PhD student in BCS and a co-author of the study. “What we’re getting is quantitative evidence about how exactly people are doing this proofreading. It’s a well-calibrated process.”

Asymmetrical strategies

The paper is based on a series of experiments the researchers conducted, using the Amazon Mechanical Turk survey system, in which subjects were presented with a series of sentences — some evidently sensible, and others less so — and asked to judge what those sentences meant.

A key finding is that given a sentence with only one apparent problem, people are more likely to think something is amiss than when presented with a sentence where two edits may be needed. In the latter case, people seem to assume instead that the sentence is not more thoroughly flawed, but has an alternate meaning entirely.

“The more deletions and the more insertions you make, the less likely it will be you infer that they meant something else,” Gibson says. When readers have to make one such change to a sentence, as in the ice cream example above, they think the original version was correct about 50 percent of the time. But when people have to make two changes, they think the sentence is correct even more often, about 97 percent of the time.

Thus the sentence, “Onto the cat jumped a table,” which might seem to make no sense, can be made plausible with two changes — one deletion and one insertion — so that it reads, “The cat jumped onto a table.” And yet, almost all the time, people will not infer that those changes are needed, and assume the literal, surreal meaning is the one intended.

This finding interacts with another one from the study, that there is a systematic asymmetry between insertions and deletions on the part of listeners.

“People are much more likely to infer an alternative meaning based on a possible deletion than on a possible insertion,” Gibson says.

Suppose you hear or read a sentence that says, “The businessman benefitted the tax law.” Most people, it seems, will assume that sentence has a word missing from it — “from,” in this case — and fix the sentence so that it now reads, “The businessman benefitted from the tax law.” But people will less often think sentences containing an extra word, such as “The tax law benefitted from the businessman,” are incorrect, implausible as they may seem.

Another strategy people use, the researchers found, is that when presented with an increasing proportion of seemingly nonsensical sentences, they actually infer lower amounts of “noise” in the language. That means people adapt when processing language: If every sentence in a longer sequence seems silly, people are reluctant to think all the statements must be wrong, and hunt for a meaning in those sentences. By contrast, they perceive greater amounts of noise when only the occasional sentence seems obviously wrong, because the mistakes so clearly stand out.

“People seem to be taking into account statistical information about the input that they’re receiving to figure out what kinds of mistakes are most likely in different environments,” Bergen says.

Reverse-engineering the message

Other scholars say the work helps illuminate the strategies people may use when they interpret language.

“I’m excited about the paper,” says Roger Levy, a professor of linguistics at the University of California at San Diego who has done his own studies in the area of noise and language.

According to Levy, the paper posits “an elegant set of principles” explaining how humans edit the language they receive. “People are trying to reverse-engineer what the message is, to make sense of what they’ve heard or read,” Levy says.

“Our sentence-comprehension mechanism is always involved in error correction, and most of the time we don’t even notice it,” he adds. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to operate effectively in the world. We’d get messed up every time anybody makes a mistake.”

ikenbot: Giant Super-Magnetic Star Has Scientists Buzzing The...

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:16:30 -0400

ikenbot:

Giant Super-Magnetic Star Has Scientists Buzzing

The most magnetic massive star seen yet is dragging a giant cloak of trapped charged particles around it.

Image: An artist’s interpretation of a magnetar. Credit: ESA - Christophe Carreau

This newly discovered star, NGC 1624-2, could help shed light on what role the magnetism of stars plays in the evolution of stars and their galaxies.

NGC 1624-2, which lies about 20,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus, has about 35 times the sun’s mass. Its hefty mass gives it plenty of fuel, making it bright and hot and thus likely to burn out relatively quickly after a lifetime of about 5 million years, or one-tenth of 1 percent of the sun’s current age at midlife.

Neuroscience: Rats take high-speed multisensory snapshots

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:07:31 -0400

Neuroscience: Rats take high-speed multisensory snapshots:

neurosciencestuff:

When animals are on the hunt for food they likely use many senses, and scientists have wondered how the different senses work together.

New research from the laboratory of CSHL neuroscientist and Assistant Professor Adam Kepecs shows that when rats actively use the senses of smell (sniffing)…

meanassmoses: Scanned from something, can’t recall the title....

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

meanassmoses:

Scanned from something, can’t recall the title. Wish I knew. Getcher enormous .tiff here.

scienceisbeauty: The connectivity of fiber tracks in alumnus...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:36:59 -0400

scienceisbeauty:

The connectivity of fiber tracks in alumnus Chris Gaiteri’s brain based on an imaging technique he created - a self-portrait of sorts.

Art in Science on Display at W&L’s Kamen Gallery (Washington and Lee University).

Neurolove.me: Ways To Train Your Brain

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:51:10 -0400

Neurolove.me: Ways To Train Your Brain :

psych-facts:

#10 Play brain games

Your cognitive abilities can be maintained or improved by exercising the brain. Playing chess, bridge, sudoku and other brain training games will help improve your memory and brain abilities.

These games rely on logic, word skills, math and more. These games are also…

neurosciencestuff: How ‘free will’ is implemented in the brain...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:36:08 -0400

neurosciencestuff:

How ‘free will’ is implemented in the brain and is it possible to intervene in the process?

Researchers have been able to identify the precise moment when a network of nerve cells (neurons) in the brain creates the signal to perform an action, before a person is even aware of deciding to take that action. Now they are building on this work to make initial attempts to interfere with consciously made decisions by decoding the pattern of brain activity in real time before an action is taken.

Professor Gabriel Kreiman will tell the British Neuroscience Association Festival of Neuroscience (BNA2013) today (Tuesday): “This could be useful to help elucidate the mechanistic basis by which neuronal circuits orchestrate ‘free’ will.”

Normally it is difficult to research the activity of neurons in the brain because it involves implanting electrodes – an invasive procedure that would not be ethical to do simply for scientific curiosity alone. However, Prof Kreiman, who is an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, together with neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried from University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), had a rare opportunity to record the activity of over 1,000 neurons in two areas of the brain, the frontal and temporal lobes, when patients with epilepsy had had electrodes implanted to try to identify the source of their seizures.

“These patients have epilepsy that does not respond to drug treatment; Itzhak Fried implanted their brains with very thin electrodes (microwires) of about 40 micrometres in diameter in order to localise the focus of a seizure onset for a potential surgical procedure to alleviate the seizures. The microwires capture the extracellular electrical activity of neurons. Patients stay in the hospital for about a week. During this time, we have a unique opportunity to interrogate the activity of neurons and neural ensembles in the human brain at high spatial and temporal resolution,” explains Prof Kreiman.

The researchers asked the patients to move their index finger to click a computer mouse and to report when they made that decision. “Based on the activity of small groups of neurons, we could predict this decision several hundreds of milliseconds and, in some cases, seconds before the action. In a variant of the main experiment, the patients were allowed to choose whether to use their left hand or right hand and we showed that we could also predict this decision.”

The researchers found that an increasing number of neurons in two specific brain regions started to become active before the person was aware of their decision to move their finger. The two regions were the supplementary motor area, which is thought to be the area for preparing to perform motor actions, and the anterior cingulate cortex, which has a number of roles including the signalling processes associated with reward.

Prof Kreiman believes that these results provide initial steps to elucidate the mechanism for the emergence of conscious will in humans. “The activity of multiple neurons in extremely simple neural circuits precedes volition – in this case the decision to make a simple movement – until a threshold is crossed and the action is taken,” he will say.

Knowing when this threshold will be reached could enable researchers to see whether it is possible to interfere and maybe change the decision before any action is taken. “We are now making initial attempts to interfere with volition by decoding the neural responses in real time and asking whether there is a ‘point of no return’ in the hierarchical chain of command from unconscious decisions to volition to action,” says Prof Kreiman.

How these findings fit into the concept of “free will” is more complicated. “The concept of free will has been debated for millennia. Ultimately, current scientific understanding strongly suggests that ‘will’ has to be orchestrated by neurons in our brains (as opposed to magic or religious beliefs or other notions). We have provided initial steps to try to disentangle which neurons are involved, to show where and how ‘will’ or ‘volition’ could be implemented in the brain.

“Our work does not say that life is predetermined, that we can predict the future and that we can, for instance, determine what you are going to eat for lunch two weeks from now, or who you are going to marry.

“We are saying that volition (like other aspects of consciousness) is a brain phenomenon that is instantiated by physical hardware, i.e. neurons. We are making claims about volition for very simple tasks, such as moving an index finger or choosing which hand to use, over scales of hundreds of milliseconds to seconds. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“Ultimately, our actions depend on multiple variables, several of which are external (for instance, it rains, hence, I will take my umbrella) and cannot be decoded or predicted from neurons. However, our volitional decision of whether to take the red umbrella or the blue one today – ultimately perhaps the real core of free will – is dictated by neurons,” Prof Kreiman will conclude.

neurosciencestuff: In Alzheimer’s Disease, Maintaining...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:01:06 -0400

neurosciencestuff:

In Alzheimer’s Disease, Maintaining Connection and ‘Saving Face’

I’ve decided that all older men with gray beards must look alike, because each week I am mistaken for someone else. But, if I were to shave my beard - which I have worn for over 40 years - I believe that my friends and colleagues would fail to recognize me. I would be a different person to them because of this small, physical change.

If such a small change affects the way people see me, then the larger mental changes that Alzheimer’s patients experience must truly and deeply change the way their loved ones see them. Dr. Daniel Potts, a neurologist at the University of Alabama, has begun studying the concept of “saving face” and preserving the “person” in people with dementia.

Dr. Potts’ father, Lester Potts, became an acclaimed watercolor artist after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. He had lost his verbal abilities but could express his feelings through his art. This bolstered his retention of self-worth and dignity. His paintbrush let him bypass the part of his brain that Alzheimer’s blocked, and communicate in a new way.

But before we find out more about art and Alzheimer’s patients, let’s go back to the “face” part of saving face for just a moment.

Read more

Top 10 Common Dreams and Their Meanings

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:56:45 -0400

psych-facts:

Car Troubles
In these types of dreams you are usually in or near a car or some other type of vehicle which is out of control or has other problems that seem insurmountable. For example, the brakes may have failed, you may have lost control of the steering, or be heading over a cliff or crashing. You can either be the driver or the passenger. This is a very common type of nightmare and it occurs in all people – not just those who can drive. This dream usually means that you are feeling powerless over something in your life – or that you are heading for a crash (metaphorically speaking).

Faulty Machinery
In the faulty machinery dream you are trying to operate mechanical equipment which either fails to work, or fails to work in the way that you expect it to. The vast majority of these dreams involve a telephone – either trouble dialing, losing a connection, or dialing a wrong number. It can involve a lost Internet connection, or something manual like a jammed or broken machine. This dream often means that you feel you are losing touch with reality, or that a part of your body or mind is not functioning as it should. It can also occur when you are feeling anxious about making a connection with another person in real life.

Lost or Trapped
Dreaming about being lost is very common and will usually occur when you are having conflict in deciding how to react in a situation in real life. In the dream you are trying to find your way out of an area – such as a forest, city streets, a large building, or other maze-like structure. Another way this dream plays out involves you being trapped, buried alive, caught in a web, or unable to move for some other reason. This is often accompanied by a feeling of terror. This dream usually means that you are trapped in real life – unable to make the right choice.

Read More

Neuroscience: Researchers successfully destroy brain tumor cells

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 23:38:39 -0400

Neuroscience: Researchers successfully destroy brain tumor cells:

neurosciencestuff:

(Image Credit: Stanford University)

A team of brain cancer researchers at Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center has effectively treated brain tumor cells using a unique combination of diet and radiation therapy. The study, “The Ketogenic Diet Is an…

dancequeen1284: herbs that heal, via First Magazine. see more @...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 23:53:51 -0400

dancequeen1284:

herbs that heal, via First Magazine. see more @ www.januarysunshine.blogspot.com

indigoshmindigo: The famous Fibonacci sequence has captivated...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:02:37 -0400

indigoshmindigo:

The famous Fibonacci sequence has captivated mathematicians, artists, designers, and scientists for centuries. Also known as the Golden Ratio, its ubiquity and astounding functionality in nature suggests its importance as a fundamental characteristic of the Universe.

Here’s more about the Golden Ratio from a mathematical and architectural standpoint: http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~demo5337/s97b/art.htm

Here’s more about the Golden ratio found in nature: http://io9.com/5985588/15-uncanny-examples-of-the-golden-ratio-in-nature

And another one for good luck: http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/7-9-17/59853.html

Psychology and Handwriting Analysis: Margins

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:51:05 -0400

psych-facts:

spiritualseeker:

Psychology and Handwriting Analysis: Margins

A blank piece of paper represents life itself, and what you do on that blank paper represents how you interact with other people and with life around you.

Figure 1: Because we write from left to right as we move across the page, the left represents the past, while the right represents the future.

Figure 2: The ideal adult margins, based on graphology, would be to have the left margin a little wider than the right margin. This would be a healthy left/right balance, meaning you have a healthy relation to the past & future.

Read More

neurosciencestuff: Mindfulness Improves Reading Ability,...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:34:52 -0400

neurosciencestuff:

Mindfulness Improves Reading Ability, Working Memory, and Task-Focus

If you think your inability to concentrate is a hopeless condition, think again –– and breathe, and focus. According to a study by researchers at the UC Santa Barbara, as little as two weeks of mindfulness training can significantly improve one’s reading comprehension, working memory capacity, and ability to focus.

Their findings were recently published online in the empirical psychology journal Psychological Science.

“What surprised me the most was actually the clarity of the results,” said Michael Mrazek, graduate student researcher in psychology and the lead and corresponding author of the paper, “Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering.” “Even with a rigorous design and effective training program, it wouldn’t be unusual to find mixed results. But we found reduced mind-wandering in every way we measured it.”

Many psychologists define mindfulness as a state of non-distraction characterized by full engagement with our current task or situation. For much of our waking hours, however, we are anything but mindful. We tend to replay past events –– like the fight we just had or the person who just cut us off on the freeway –– or we think ahead to future circumstances, such as our plans for the weekend.

Mind-wandering may not be a serious issue in many circumstances, but in tasks requiring attention, the ability to stay focused is crucial.

To investigate whether mindfulness training can reduce mind-wandering and thereby improve performance, the scientists randomly assigned 48 undergraduate students to either a class that taught the practice of mindfulness or a class that covered fundamental topics in nutrition. Both classes were taught by professionals with extensive teaching experience in their fields. Within a week before the classes, the students were given two tests: a modified verbal reasoning test from the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) and a working memory capacity (WMC) test. Mind-wandering during both tests was also measured.

The mindfulness classes provided a conceptual introduction along with practical instruction on how to practice mindfulness in both targeted exercises and daily life. Meanwhile, the nutrition class taught nutrition science and strategies for healthy eating, and required students to log their daily food intake.

Within a week after the classes ended, the students were tested again. Their scores indicated that the mindfulness group significantly improved on both the verbal GRE test and the working memory capacity test. They also mind-wandered less during testing. None of these changes were true of the nutrition group.

“This is the most complete and rigorous demonstration that mindfulness can reduce mind-wandering, one of the clearest demonstrations that mindfulness can improve working memory and reading, and the first study to tie all this together to show that mind-wandering mediates the improvements in performance,” said Mrazek. He added that the research establishes with greater certainty that some cognitive abilities often seen as immutable, such as working memory capacity, can be improved through mindfulness training.

Mrazek and the rest of the research team –– which includes Michael S. Franklin, project scientist; mindfulness teacher and research specialist Dawa Tarchin Phillips; graduate student Benjamin Baird; and senior investigator Jonathan Schooler, professor of psychological and brain sciences –– are extending their work by investigating whether similar results can be achieved with younger populations, or with web-based mindfulness interventions. They are also examining whether or not the benefits of mindfulness can be compounded by a program of personal development that also targets nutrition, exercise, sleep, and personal relationships.

(Image: fotopakismo)

Psych-Quotes: 40 Interesting Dream Facts

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:12:05 -0400

Psych-Quotes: 40 Interesting Dream Facts:

psych-facts:

Every human dreams. There are tons of people who can’t remember their dreams when they wake up, but they still get them

Human beings spend roughly around 6 years of their lifetime dreaming

Sometimes we dream outside of our REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement)

Thousands of years ago, the Egyptians were the first to create a dream dictionary in 4000 B.C.E

We roughly spend around 1/3 of our lives sleeping

People who suffer from a personality disorder lack dream activity

Our brains tend to be way more active when we sleep, than when we’re awake

Humans tend to have around 3 to 7 dreams a night. We dream around 2 to 3 hours in a whole night

90% of the dream is lost the first minute we wake up

Men tend to dream about men more than women, and women dream about people of both genders

Drug withdrawal can cause more intense dreams. People who also quit alcohol and smoking experience heavier dreams and nightmares

You can lucid dream for up to 30 minutes if trained properly

It’s impossible to dream when you’re snoring

Babies don’t dream of themselves until they reach the age of 3

More women than men experience deja-vu in their dreams (eg. you have been in the dream before)

Read More

Neuroscience: Study identifies genetic connections in 15q Duplication Syndrome

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 23:31:51 -0400

Neuroscience: Study identifies genetic connections in 15q Duplication Syndrome:

neurosciencestuff:

A new study published in the March issue of Autism Research from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and Le Bonheur researchers is making the genetic connections between autism and Chromosome 15q Duplication Syndrome (Dup15q).

The Memphis researchers determined that the…

Photo

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:46:53 -0400

serotonin - happiness, satisfactiondopamine - love, passion,...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:44:32 -0400

serotonin - happiness, satisfaction
dopamine - love, passion, pleasure
acetylcholine - learning, memory, dreaming

Neuroscience: Researchers form new nerve cells – directly in the brain

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:16:52 -0400

Neuroscience: Researchers form new nerve cells – directly in the brain:

neurosciencestuff:

The field of cell therapy, which aims to form new cells in the body in order to cure disease, has taken another important step in the development towards new treatments. A new report from researchers at Lund University in Sweden shows that it is possible to re-programme other cells to become nerve…