This is Tech

As I get older, it seems that the weeks, months and years go by faster each year.  I think this is a fairly common experience and occasionally ponder why this is.

One theory is that as you get older, you settle into a more standard routine.  My months don’t vary as much from month to month as they did when I was younger.  As interesting as my job is, I spend most of my days in the same chair, in the same room in front of the same computer.  As a kid my days were a bit more unpredictable.  Do young people have more milestones to mark the passage of time?  More unique experiences to remember?

Perhaps at the end of each day, your mind compresses your memories for storage? If you have worked with video compression, you know that video that doesn’t change much from frame to frame compresses better than video with lots of motion.  Maybe when you look back the last year, your brain adds up your unique memories and estimates how much time has passed based on the amount of compressed data.

 Loading ...

If you have any alternative theories or disagree that time perception changes with age, let me know in the comments.

Thanks to Ted at Yaicha, for posting this article following up on the recent coverage by Yaicha and others of Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk. Taylor’s speech about her stroke and the vantage it gave her on the inner-workings of her mind is engaging. We posted an embedded video of her talk last month. I didn’t realize that Taylor had written a book, but based on her Ted Talk, I will be picking up a copy soon.

Yaicha article links to a New York Times Article expanding on the concepts discussed in Taylor’s TED Talk, and a link to her book, My Stroke of Insight, at Amazon. If you haven’t seen her original TED Talk, check it out here. And check out Yaicha for this and other interesting posts.

Photo by: Krischall

• Neuroscientist argues that today’s technology may be altering our brain chemistry for the worse
• Engineers at Caltech are developing a technique involving tiny robots inserting and arranging electrodes into our brain tissue to facilitate connecting our brains to computers. (Via Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends)
• The Brain Loop is a brain-to-computer interface device developed by the Graz Institute of Technology in Austria. Check out the demonstration video below, complete with wonderfully eerie computer generated narration. (Via InsideRIA)

The dancer in this optical illusion can be seen spinning clockwise or counterclockwise depending on the viewer’s perspective. Some say that the one you see is indicative of which side of your brain is dominant. I saw the dancer spinning clockwise, and it took me a while to get the direction to flip. The key to getting the picture to flip is focusing on the center foot. Once you see the rotation of the foot change the rest of the picture will follow.

The NYT article below discredits the theory that the picture can indicate whether you are right-brained and creative, or left-brained and logical. What do you think? (more…)

Last week Wired magazine published an in-depth article profiling the creator of a learning software application called SuperMemo. The concept for this software is that memorization and learning is achieved through repetition, but that the ideal time to refresh your memory about something is as close as possible to when you about to forget it. Apparently, research has shown that reviewing material at the right time significantly increases retention. This is referred to as the Spacing Effect.

(more…)

Wired.com is running an interesting set of articles on hacking your brain for maximum effect. One of the topics they cover is a list of potential brain enhancing drugs, some legal, some not. This topic has been getting some attention lately as the tech corollary to doping in sports. Check out an excerpt from the grid below, or the full grid at link # 5 below.

Here is a quick list of the twelve articles and links. Enjoy:

1) Max Your Mind’s Performance by Distracting Yourself;

2) Caffeinate With Care: Small Shots Do a Brain Better Than Big Blasts;

3) Feed Your Mind With Impressive Information;

4) Think Positive, and You Will Get Smarter;

5) Give Your Intellect a Boost - Just Say Yes to Doing the Right Drugs!;

6) How to Juice Your IQ Score;

7 ) Thalamus, Cortex, Amygdala … Pick Apart the Brain;

8 ) Don’t Panic. It Makes You Stupid;

9) Embracing Chaos Could Bring Order to Your Money;

10) Take on Any Map by Getting Visual;

11) Up Your Intelligence by Choosing Your Exercise Wisely;

12) Comprehension Climbs When You Sloooow Dooown.

Disclaimer: I don’t recommend faking an illness to get drugs.

I know this video has been making the rounds on the web, but if you haven’t watched it yet you should. Bolte’s talk is educational and inspiring.

The old saying that humans only use ten percent of their brains never seems to be all that useful, since we haven’t unlocked the secret to using the other ninety percent. An article today in the Daily Galaxy helps illustrate some recent clues that may help us tap in to that unused potential. The scientists featured in the article are working toward helping ordinary people unlock their mind’s latent super-abilities. Sounds a little like X-Men or the 4400.

The article highlights a handful of unique individuals that for a variety of reasons are able to achieve super human mental feats.

Stephen Wilshire is described as an autistic savant with the extraordinary ability to store and recall exact depictions of things that he sees. They call him the Human Camera, because Wilshire can draw exact replicas of intricate structures, buildings and landscapes after a short viewing (down to the number of windows on each of the buildings). Video Below.

More examples after the jump

(more…)

I am a big fan of science inspired art, so I was particularly interested in this neural network art project by Phil Stearns. Stearns has created an Artificial Neural Network using electronic components that produce sound and light in response to the stimulus in the sculpture’s environment. The piece is a complex mess of wires and components responding to nearby conversations and changes in lighting. The neurons also respond to each other, meaning that once it gets started, the sculpture converses with itself for a time.

(more…)

Sixty Minutes is running a feature on the Science of Sleep. They give an overview of the state of research related to sleep and sleep depravation. Median sleep levels are apparently around 6.7 hours per night, down from 8 hours a night in 1960. For those of us that consistently get less than the median level, this is an area of research to watch closely.

60 Minutes focuses first on the effect sleep has on cognitive function, highlighting a University of Pennsylvania study showing the link between sleep, learning and memory. Not surprisingly, subjects given memory tests remembered information better then next day than those without sleep. What was interesting, however, is that the subjects that underwent the memory tests late in the day followed by a good night sleep remembered the information they memorized better than they had when tested on the day they tried to memorize it. Tests similarly showed sleep’s positive effects on reaction time and ability to think quickly.

Besides making you slower and dumber, lack of sleep was shown to cause people to act less rationally and lose a degree of control over their emotional responses. The story also discusses a potential link between sleep and diabetes, indicating that lack of sleep effects production of a hormone called leptin that tells your brain when you are full. This is said to contribute to obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke.

So is the trade-off worth it? It never seems like there are enough hours in the day to get everything one wants accomplished, but are there hidden costs. We may not know the effect our generation’s lack of sleep will have until it is too late.

Embedded Video Below Courtesy of 60 Minutes:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Title Picture from Fofurasfelinas.