While I can’t couch for either the providor or the instructors I can’t think of any good reason not to at least listen in on these seminars presented by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Heck, the mp3s might make good drive time listening.
Go ahead, try it:
1. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles with it.
2. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction!
Same thing happens with the left foot. Can you keep your foot going clockwise?
Can anyone explain the mechanisms in play here?
Via Its a Mad Mad Mad Life!
Cats, Dogs, Spiders and ? every Friday.
We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?
We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:
Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.
Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings.
Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 75th edition will be hosted this week by Annoying Little Twerp.
Bird folks: Remember to submit your links to I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers. The 5th edition will be hosted 9/1 by A DC Birding Blog.
And, check out Laurence’s fine graphical analysis of Friday Ark boardings.
Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.
Cats
How could we have been so credulous? so ignorant? It seems that once you decide to believe, your faith becomes more precious than truth, more real than reality.
Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under A Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968
Does too much daydreaming or, if you will, too much unfocused time contribute to Alzheimer’s?
The researchers compared PET scans, MRI images, and other data from 764 participants with dementia, mild dementia, or no dementia. The images revealed that posterior cortical regions of the brain, including the posterior cingulated, retrosplenial, and lateral parietal cortex, were active in the “default state” of young adults without dementia. They were also the regions attacked by amyloid plaques in older adults with Alzheimer’s.
The “default state” is the term Dr. Buckner and colleagues use to describe the brain’s activity when it is not concentrating on a particular task but musing, daydreaming, or retrieving pleasant memories.
The study also found that metabolic abnormalities and atrophy emerged in these daydreaming areas of the brain during the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
Even the brain’s relatively inactive daydreaming mode requires considerable energy, and the researchers speculated that an accumulated lifetime of metabolic activity might lead to wear and tear that disposes default areas of the brain of the brain to amyloid deposition, metabolic disruption, and atrophy.
Let me, then, suggest an alternate hypothesis: amyloid plaque invasion represents an atrophy of the posterior cortical regions. In other words it is an underuse phenomena that has as its proximal cause radio, television, stereos, mp3 players, etc. Time folks once spent in the default state has been preempted by the always on sounds of these devices. It should be fairly easy to determine whether default state activity is turned off when listening/watching these devices.
Another unintended consequence of the always on society may be an overall reduction in creativity, even overall cultural intelligence. Test this yourself. If you always have something on, even just for background when you are cooking, doing the dishes, jogging, etc., turn it off for 30 minutes a day. Over the course of a week observe the difference in the quality of your mental activity during the off time. Some of you may not be able to handle the intensity of the change. But that’s part of the point.
Update 8/26: Lindsay Beyerstein comments on this as do her commentors.