March 31, 2006
2006-03-31 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Carl Zimmer tackles a common claim about the brain's fuel consumption.
Photographer David Maisel has created a touching project photographing unclaimed cannisters of ashes of ex-psychiatric patients found in an abandoned psychiatric hospital.
New breed of video games aim to keep the mind and brain sharp into middle-age and beyond.
Studies finds paradoxical effect - people with phobias who ingest a stress hormone seem to be less stressed during anxiety provoking episodes.
Get your cyber clichés at the ready: brain cells fused with computer chip.
New device can indicate the emotional state of a person you're having a conversation with via a spectacles mounted camera.
CrimePsychBlog reports that findings from the controversial 'replication' of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment are published.
Switching between different languages can alter your personality, new study suggests.
—Vaughan.
Posted at March 31, 2006 08:00 AM
Regarding the different personality when speaking a different language. That is indeed my case but I've always though that was normal.
In my case I am Cuban-born, raised in the US, learned Spanish at home, English everywhere else, and now live in Spain. I've always noticed that Americans and Cubans, for example, have a different sense of humor. I never had much luck telling others jokes across the cultural boundary; however, I could laugh at jokes in either language. I express myself differently, in the two languages, too; it's easier for me to write about emotional issues in Spanish, whereas I can be more objective in English.
Comment posted at March 31, 2006 08:37 AM
Personally, Maisel's project is not so much touching as it is macabre. It's a good setup for a horror flick.
Comment posted at March 31, 2006 06:56 PM
Pet peeve in the neurochip story: "They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip." The use of commas implies all brain cells are neurons, whereas glial cells far outnumber neurons in the brain. 10 to 1, last I checked.
Comment posted at March 31, 2006 07:02 PM
