Live Below the Line
https://www.livebelowtheline.com.au/me/luke_m
A friend of mine is taking on the Live Below the Line challenge, beginning Monday of this week. He’ll be feeding himself on $2 a day for 5 days, the poverty line for about a billion people on the world.
I didn’t have the money to donate myself, so I get that it’s hard to give, at times. Anything you give or do is welcome, and if you can’t - I think highly enough of you anyway, being into psych and following me. Thank you to all those who do.
Neurons growing in a cell culture
These time lapse animations use phase contrast microscopy to show neural stem cells in a nutrient medium for 4 hours. They reveal the dynamic growth and recycling of dendrites and synapses as neurons establish relationships with each other. The social behavior of these cells creates the incredible properties of the mind and brain.
Credit: University of Victoria Medical Sciences
Your brain is doing this RIGHT NOW. Re-wiring as you remember something or learn something, constantly changing.
Anonymity increases transgression
as demonstrated by research on Halloween. An adult would instruct trick-or-treaters to take only a single treat, then leave. Children were most likely to transgress when they had not provided their name and were in a group, both reducing self-awareness. The study proposes that self-awareness encourages moral behaviour.
Von Restorff effect
The Von Restorff effect, also called the isolation effect, predicts that an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” (called distinctive encoding) is more likely to be remembered than other items. A bias in favour of remembering the unusual.
Chronostasis
is the experience in which the first impression seen after a single movement of the eyes, or a saccade, appears to be extended backwards in time. This is believed to be caused by the brain ‘filling in’ experience backwards after a saccade and accounts for the Stopped Clock illusion, in which the second hand seems to be frozen on first looking at a clock.
The Third Man factor
is the occurrence of support from an invisible person or spirit during stressful or traumatic events. Climbers, solo sailors and shipwreck survivors are reported to experience the Third Man factor the most.
Brain activity showing the reaction of a zebrafish to food. Found out more here.
Chilling Brain Scans Show the Impact of a Mother’s Love on a Child’s Brain Size
A shocking comparison of brain scans from two three-year-old children reveals new evidence of the remarkable impact a mother’s love has on a child’s brain development.
The chilling images reveal that the left brain, which belongs to a normal 3-year-old, is significantly larger and contains fewer spots and dark “fuzzy” areas than the right brain, which belongs to that of a 3-year-old who has suffered extreme neglect.
This article has come under fire on the original site for its less-than-rigorous science, so take the comparison with a pinch of salt. One commenter points out that a comparison between two singular samples is not evidence at all, and another that the brain on the right belongs to a smaller head, either from microcephaly or simply age.
I would appreciate a link or reference to the original paper.
The Rosenhan experiment
refers to a study in which healthy individuals were admitted to psychiatric hospitals while claiming to have briefly experienced auditory hallucinations. All but one were diagnosed with schizophrenia in remission, were forced to admit to having a mental illness and to take antipsychotic drugs. In a follow-up study, an offended hospital challenged Rosenhan to repeat the experiment to allow them the opportunity to detect the pseudopatients - of 41 patients accused, none were Rosenhan’s confederates as no pseudopatients were admitted to the hospital.
The Martha Mitchell Effect
refers to the misdiagnosis by a mental health clinician of a patient due to the misinterpretation of real events as delusional. It refers to Martha Mitchell, the wife of John Mitchell, Attorney-General in the Nixon administration. Her claims of White House officials engaging in illicit activities were attributed to mental illness but were given some, if not complete, credence by the Watergate scandal.
