Mediacology

Though focus groups and test marketing of films is old news, a hybrid version with brainwave scans is truly bizarre. I think something that distinguishes a film as a kind of art versus a mere cultural commodity is the sensibility and aesthetics of the filmmaker. Granted, block busters require dollars and investments to recouped, but [...]

Angel Tech

Antero Alli, a fellow traveler in the realm of the DIY spiritual underground, has an interesting commentary about the impact of immersive media, something I had not thought about. He says, below, that the loss of dream memeory is an amputation of the imagination caused by allowing devices to imagine for us. This is [...]

We all knew reading Kafka made us cool, but smarter? The study quoted below says yes! If you read the whole article what it points out is that if one is exposed to nonsensical information, the brain seeks to find patterns in the environment to bring order to the confusion. This might explain the power [...]

What follows is scientific verification of McLuhan’s concept of media as extensions of the body. I highly recommend reading the whole article.

Brain Represents Tools As Temporary Body Parts, Study Confirms:

Researchers have what they say is the first direct proof of a very old idea: that when we use a tool—even for just a few minutes—it [...]

Don’t get me wrong, I think Nicholas Carr is doing us a great service by raising the alarm of how the Internet is ruining our minds. I don’t agree with him 100%, though, and the quote below from a recent interview explains why. The lament is that we cannot contain civilization in our heads anymore. [...]

Can You Guess a Person’s Politics by Their Personality? Psychologist Team Says Yes | Election 2008 | AlterNet

An interesting book, Brain Rules, covers 12 facets of brain health. Just don’t eat them!

One of the most intense things I learned from a brain expert is that TVs dream your brain. In reality, it’s more like an induced meditation. That’s because it puts you into a alpha state, which is the same brain wave as when you are half-awake, half-asleep. No wonder we find TV so relaxing. I’ve [...]

Deep inner peace circuitry. Yeah. Hey, if there is one thing you can do to improve your life this year, please take 18 minutes to watch this incredible lecture by neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor talk about her stroke and how it taught her the brain’s access point to inner peace.

Technorati Tags: TED

I Heart NY designer Milton Glaser has some heads-up advice about how to treat your brain. If you click the link below you can see the other nine things he’s learned about life.
Milton Glaser Inc.:
7 – HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.
The brain is the most responsive organ of the body. Actually it is the [...]

This year’s most stimulating Super Bowl ads competed for mirror neurons. And the winners are (all the ads are viewable here):
WHO REALLY WON THE SUPER BOWL? By Marco Iacoboni:
If a good indicator of a successful ad is activity in brain areas concerned with reward and empathy, two winners seem to be the ‘I am going [...]

Tool Use Is Just a Trick of the Mind — Balter 2008 (128): 2 — ScienceNOW:
Don’t take that hammer for granted. Using tools may seem like second nature, but only a few animals can master the coordination and mental sophistication required. So how did primates learn to use tools in the first place? A new [...]

More evidence that the right brain is the source of creativity and problem solving.
Right Brain Smarts: Creative People’s Brains Function Differently | The Daily Galaxy: News from Planet Earth & Beyond:
One of the several differences discovered was that the creative solvers exhibited greater activity in several regions of the right hemisphere. Previous research has indicated [...]

Continuing the thought from my previous post on oppositional defiant disorder, I came across this excellent new series of pharma ad deconstructions from Consumer Reports, AdWatch (What no embed? Come on guys, get on with the Web 2.0! At least put the videos up on YouTube to spread your meme). Just more evidence that [...]

A blast from the past (what’ya think of the punk/cholo crossover fashion?)
AlterNet: Health and Wellness: How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness:
Disruptive young people who are medicated with Ritalin, Adderall and other amphetamines routinely report that these drugs make them “care less” about their boredom, resentments and other negative emotions, thus making them more [...]

I’m fairly certain that the mindfulness technique that derives from Buddhist meditation practice is designed to deal with what our society cannot: the inability of our caveman brain to moderate itself in the midst of so much abundant materialism and prosperity. As cognitive anthropologists have noted, we have dispositions that are easily manipulatable. For example, [...]

Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad – Advertising Age – News:
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman’s voice right in her ear asking, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then [...]

The Simian Think Tank – STT Blogs » Psy-Ops and Coercion:
The secret of mind-control is simple–so simple that Rushkoff can sum it up in one sentence: “In whatever milieu coercion is practiced, the routine follows the same basic steps: Generate disorientation, induce regression, and then become the target’s transferred parent figure” (64). Hard-sell car salesmen, [...]

Look first, then read on.

If she goes clockwise, you’re right-brained, and if it goes counter clockwise you’re left-brained. Concentrate and make her change directions. Ack!
Via Souljerky.
The Right Brain vs Left Brain | The Daily Telegraph:
LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe
RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses [...]

Our Ancestral Mind in the Modern World: An Interview with Satoshi Kanazawa | Open Culture:
DC: Evolutionary psychology portrays us as having impulses that took form long ago, in a very pre-modern context (say, 10,000 years ago), and now these impulses are sometimes rather ill-adapted to our contemporary world. For example, in a food-scarce environment, we [...]