Brains, Rewards and Addiction

Another lecture from the grey matters series from UCSD. This time Prof. Terrence Sejnowski discuses how the the reward centre of the brain becomes hijacked by addicitve drugs. There's also a video that shows how manipulations in the the social behaviour of monkeys can arise simply by changing the balance of serotonin between the alpha male and those lower down.

You're looking at the shape of anger

In an interesting art/neuroscience project, participnats were hypnotised and asked to recall traumatic events and to emote primary emotions such as anger. Each participant was wired to EEG, and EKG sensors and monitored. The resulting ingormation was visualized as still images using Iris Explorer and visualized in realtime, interactive space using specialy develop data acuisition modules in EonReality.
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Downloadable podcasts and videocasts update

I'm uploading some downloadable podcasts and videocasts over the next few days. I've had a butt load of links emailed to me from kind neuroscience students from around the place but if you have more, please, keep sending them.

Vittorio Gallese - Eye of the Beholder

Vittorio Gallese, the scientist who discovered mirror neurons, engages in a roundtable discussion with artists and art historians about how neuroscientific discoveries can influence our understanding of how we perceive art.

Decisions: How Do We Animals Decide What To Do?

What causes different people to make such different decisions each day and over the course of their lifetimes? Professor William Kristan of the University of San Diago gives a lecture based on the premise that since all animals make decisions, one way to gain some insight into this question is to begin by trying to understand the decision-making process in the brains of simpler animals.

The neuroscience of Rock, Paper Scissors.

In RPS circles a common mantra is “Rock is for Rookies” because males have a tendency to lead with Rock on their opening throw. If you're playing a ventren, it pays to play scissors on the first throw. This and a host of other good advice courtesy of the RPS Society as they prepare for the World RPS Championships this year in Toronto, Canada. See, it's not all nerd herding at Mind head. Sometimes we even photocopy our ties.

Martin Klimas - Smash Photography

Photographer Martin Klimas uses a kind of strobe lit photography to capture the moment of impact. Catch his exhibition at the Foley Gallery in New York, along with all the other great works from past exhibitions.

Billy Collins - Animated poetry

I knew if I looked hard enough, I'd find some good word stuff and here it is. Billy Collins. You just can't not like Billy Collins. It's impossible. His poetry makes you feel good and now some nifty genius has animated it. If all around you are worn out faces, go here. Life is good.

For my mum.

Dan Havel and Dean Ruck - Inversion

Artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck of the Houston Art League created this amazing sculpture.

Seeqpod - wow

Oh, this is just all kinds of good. A podcrawler that searches for your music selection over the entire internet. It's like Napster on anabolic steroids.