After growing for millions of years, why has the human brain been shrinking over the last 10,000 years?

An infographic.

Read More

"Psychopaths do not lack empathy, rather they can switch it on at will..."

"... according to new research."

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterised by superficial charm, pathological lying and a diminished capacity for remorse. Now scientists have found that only when asked to empathise did the criminals' empathy reaction, also known as the mirror system, fire up the same way as it did for the controls. Without instruction, they show reduced activity in the regions of the brain associated with pain.

I'll remember this next time I'm contemplating whether it's worth the effort to beg for mercy. I've always assumed that asking for empathy would only heighten whatever thrill the monster was obtaining from the attack.

Read More

"There are also large numbers of people with pseudodementia."

"These people may seem to be demented, but the brain is normal."

Noted.

And: Just as I'd thought.

Read More

"On Obamacare, Republicans test the definition of insanity"/"Buyer’s Remorse from ObamaCare Backers?"

Headlines paired at Real Clear Politics.

The first one is from Dana Milbank at The Washington Post. The second one is from Seth Mandel at Commentary.

I figure I can move on, they cancel each other out/I don't need get my head scrambled up and my brain dragged about.

“It’s all been designed,” he said, “to make you lose your mind
And when you go back to find it, there’s nothing there to find
Every time you look at it, your situation’s worse
If you feel it grabbing out for you, send for the nurse"

It = TV, in that old Dylan song, but let's interpret it to include the internet, there being no Dylan song about the internet. Not explicitly, anyway.

Read More

"The news of the day is on all the time/All the latest gossip, all the latest rhyme..."

"Your mind is your temple, keep it beautiful and free/Don’t let an egg get laid in it by something you can’t see..."

That's Bob Dylan talking about television. Any eggs laid in your beautiful mind lately by some invisible insectoid politico?

"It will lead you into some strange pursuits
Lead you to the land of forbidden fruits
It will scramble up your head and drag your brain about
Sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out"

He means the TV, which is what Elvis shot out, not the brain. That's a lyric you must take care not to misread.

Having taken a break in the middle of writing this post to scramble some eggs — chicken eggs, not insect eggs — I take delight in the appearance of "scramble" (in "scramble up your head") so soon after "Don't let an egg get laid" (in your head).

Read More

"We have become a world of squares."

David emails, answering my question "What has rectilinearity done to our minds?" (My question was based on an article about how modern life is beset by rectangles — buildings, rooms, tables, beds — unlike ancient human life which was full of circles.)

Read More

"A kind of madness is pushing us to the future, in a good way."

"This is a book of the future, now. I didn’t know that until it was done. People say that this new generation is so used to the Internet that their heads are already different. They can’t read a book from beginning to end. That is not a tragedy. The book changes form.... It is short enough that you don’t have to think about reading a whole page, because there is no whole page."

Said Yoko Ono, promoting her new book "Acorn," which is like "Grapefruit," a book I think is quite wonderful.

Read More

"Vision is a form of cognition: the kinds of things we see shape the ways we think."

"That is why it is so hard to imagine the visual experience of our prehistoric ancestors, or, for that matter, the girls of nineteenth-century Malawi, who lived in a world without right angles. Inhabitants of, say, late Neolithic Orkney would only have seen a handful of perpendicular lines a day: tools, shaped stones, perhaps some simple geometric decoration on a pot. For the most part, their world was curved: circular buildings, round tombs, stone circles, rounded clay vessels."

What has rectilinearity done to our minds?

Read More