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Stand in line at the local sandwich shop and you’ll endure a barrage of choices on what you want between the buns. Will that be whole wheat or white? Swiss or cheddar? Pickles? Tomatoes? Mayo? As insignificant as these choices are in the grand scheme of thing, are they decreasing your effectiveness at decision making later in the day?
Blow Your Mind: The Procrastinating Brain
by Robert Lamb | September 6, 2011
No matter how on top of your to-do list you happen to be, there’s a task or two you’re putting off. Why do we procrastinate? Why do we put off both dreaded tasks and long-held ambitions for short-term pleasures?
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and I breakdown procrastination as the temporal, human planning phenomenon that it is.
Listen in and you’ll gain a better understanding of why you haven’t taken the garbage out yet, and what you can do to cut down on procrastination in your life.
Blow Your Mind: The Science of False Memories
by Robert Lamb | September 1, 2011
Each of us is a collection of memories. We’re the recorded information of all the experiences, lessons and feelings that came before the present moment. So how are we to square away the knowledge that some of the memories that compose us are fraudulent? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and I examine the world of false memories and misattribution. How do false memories form and how can we carry them around without realizing there’s something wrong?
Blow Your Mind: The Science of Brain Wiping
by Robert Lamb | August 18, 2011
Recreational drug use is bad and we here at Stuff to Blow Your Mind advice you give a firm “no” the next time someone offers to inject something called “ZIP” into your brain’s hippocampus. That’s because this amazing drug actually wipes the memory clean. It doesn’t damage the brain. It just scrubs out everything you ever knew.
During the Conscious after Decapitation episode on SYSK, we all closed our eyes and counted off four seconds, since that’s about how long it’s been determined a person can stay conscious after being decapitated. We thought about all of the sights and sounds and sensations that can be experienced in four seconds and we were all thrilled with the horror and dread of it all.
Blow Your Mind: Defeat Your Doppelgängers
by Robert Lamb | February 22, 2011
I’ve devoted several recent posts to the doppelgangers in your life and how best to defeat them. You know what I’m talking about: the unexplainable twin you keep running into on the train or that stranger who looks just like your mother but doesn’t know how to cook a pot roast.
This is no conspiracy, however. It’s all in that brain of yours.
Let’s Put the ‘Slut Gene’ to Bed Already
by Cristen Conger | December 16, 2010
Science doesn’t get much sexier than this. Researchers at Binghamton University in New York have supposedly identified a ‘slut gene’. People with a particular genetic variation of dopamine receptor DRD4 may be more inclined to hop into the sack with a stranger or cheat on a partner. Scandalous!
Sort of.
There’s nothing like a good infectious beat, especially if you’re Carl Jung in Africa, fearful that an atmosphere thick with shamanistic African drumming will literally drive you insane. This little chapter from the famous psychiatrist’s life also inspired this excellent Peter Gabriel track, “The Rhythm of the Heat.” This is exactly some of the ground Julie and I tackle in this week’s episodes of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast.
Croatian Girl Wakes from Coma Fluent German Speaker
by Josh Clark | December 1, 2010
This is fairly unusual. A 13-year-old girl in Croatia fell into a coma for 24 hours and when she came to, she was able to speak fluent German. Only slightly dampening the mystery, she had begun to study the language in school, reports the Telegraph, but was by no means a fluent German speaker as she appears to be now.
Separating Neuroscience from Neurosexism
by Cristen Conger | September 30, 2010
I might have to even trade out my current book for Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender*, if only because it deals with something that Molly and I regularly run into while researching for Stuff Mom Never Told You. Since we spend so much time dissecting the wonderful and confusing differences between boys and girls, men and women, we probably have a lot of lessons to learn from Fine’s reexamination of the academic studies that we often pull from.
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