Last night, I caught the ending of Oliver Sacks’ Musical Minds on NOVA. According to the website here, it originally aired in 2009. Luckily, you and I can watch the complete episode online and we can learn how the brain processes music and how important music is to the human brain. There are also special features available on the Musical Minds website.
2 Comments | 
Television, The Brain | Tagged: brain, cognitivescience, music, oliversacks, postaday2011 | 
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Posted by Jason W Ellis
Originally spied on Lifehacker, Scientific American has a guest blog entry by Andrea Kuszewski on how, “You can increase your intelligence: 5 ways to maximize your cognitive potential.” Kuszewski brings together things that I have heard in different places into this one post. The main idea is that intelligence, like the brain itself, is plastic, and there are five ways to boost your intelligence over time through continual work:
1. Seek Novelty
2. Challenge Yourself
3. Think Creatively
4. Do Things The Hard Way
5. Network
For her complete explanation on how to achieve your own intelligence boost, read her original article here.
1 Comment | The Brain | Tagged: brain, cognitivism, intelligence, neuroscience, postaday2011 | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
Mind Hacks is one of my favorite brain and neuroscience blogs. Here are some recent links to things that I found interesting on their site.
The cool thing for me about reading blogs like Mind Hacks is that, as you see in second and third summaries below, they helped me generate new connections related to your research or teaching.
Burying your head in the sand
In this post, they link to a video of anatomically correct sand carvings on a beach. The event was organized by a neuroscientist.
Why the truth will out but doesn’t sink in
Vaughan Bell discusses a recent study that demonstrates how initial reports often cloud any subsequent corrections in the news media. For example, the reports of Bin Laden using his wife as a human shield while brandishing a pistol–two things initially reported by the White House, but later retracted. According to the research, even those people aware of the changing narrative may not remember or believe the updating information. It is possible that this effect is used on purpose by governments (I would say corporations might do this too–consider the recent PSN/Sony case and the changing stories).
The death of the mind
In this post, Bell discusses a Business Week article about corporations using large data sets of human behavior to model and influence outcomes in favor of their business models. Technology to anonymize or combat what I see as an eventual abuse of human behavior might be one solution. I am also envisioning a future course that raises student awareness of how their behavior is used, studied, and exploited by big corporations. It would be a theory course with several modules on application.
Leave a Comment » | The Brain | Tagged: blog, blogging, brainhacks, cognitivism, neuroscience, postaday2011 | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
CNN’s Elizabeth Landau covers zombies and the Dr. Steven Schlozman’s new book, The Zombie Autopsies. Schlozman is a child psychologist who explores the possibility of a zombie-inducing virus through its effects on the human brain in a fictional journal. It is a new kind of neuronovel that brings together the experience of a fictional neuroscientist with zombies. I haven’t read The Zombie Autopsies yet, but it sounds like a fascinating exploration of a deeply embedded cultural what-if through science. Read more here: Inside zombie brains: Sci-fi teaches science – CNN.com. Buy The Zombie Autopsies on Amazon here.
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Posted by Jason W Ellis
This afternoon I attended the last Kent State English Department Colloquium of the school year. Its neuroscientific subject matter was very interesting to me, because I am working on a similar problem to the ones highlighted in the talk, albeit from the trajectory of science fiction studies.
Today’s colloquium, presented by Professor Tammy Clewell and Lit MA Brittany Adams, was titled, “Literary Studies in the Age of Neuroscience.” Professor Clewell began the presentation by mapping out what has led to the new interdisciplinary approach that melds neuroscience with literary studies. It is in part a rearticulation of humanistic practices (as big as that term is), but it is perhaps more importantly a powerful rebuke to neuroscience as the arbiter of what makes us human. The claim is that there might be some parts of being human that cannot be understood or explored through a scientific framework. While pushing back against some claims of authority by neuroscientists over the humanities, the humanities may be able to learn some things from neuroscience, and in turn, enrich both fields of study. Ms. Adams then presented her findings on the neuronovel (novels in which the brain and its biology supplant the role in literature traditionally held by the psychological mind) and the presence of interpretive frames (in this case, Freudian and neuroscientific) beyond the novel itself. Most importantly, she questions how these interpretive frames define the human too restrictively as they appear to exclude certain persons with “deficits” from what is considered universally human traits. Afterwards, I enjoyed a vibrant discussion with Professor Clewell, Ms. Adams, and Caleb, an English Lit MA student.
Today’s presentation was very interesting, and it was refreshing to see public collaboration between faculty and students at the colloquium. At the University of Liverpool, I participated in their English department colloquium series, but I haven’t inquired about doing so here at Kent State. I will have to ask about this over the Summer for the next school year.
1 Comment | Kent State, Personal, The Brain | Tagged: cognition, culturewars, interdisciplinary, literarystudies, neuroscience, postaday2011 | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
Last night, Y and I walked down to Mack and Sue Hassler’s house for a visit. We have all been so busy–Y and I with dissertating and teaching, Sue with her music festival, and Mack with teaching and Faculty Senate–that we haven’t really spoken to one another since the beginning of the semester. Y and I enjoy our visits with the Hasslers, because we can engage in shoptalk as easily as anything not related to the academy.
Today, Dave and I met with a prospective Literature PhD student. We all went to the Ratskeller under the Kent State Student Center to talk about the program over coffee, tea, and a smoothie.
Since then, I have been in the Library working on my lesson plans for this week. My students are beginning the last phase of the semester during which time we will read Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances. Unlike Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker, the reader never learns definitively that Leo Liebenstein has Capgras Syndrome or not, but it is this uncertainly that drives home the point about neurological disorders. The person afflicted with a neurological deficit, illness, or damage has had his or her world shifted in a fundamental way, because it is with the brain that we make sense of the world. If its architecture or operation is impaired in some way, it is unlikely if not impossible for the person to fully grasp what has happened to him or herself. Of course, the person can be told and possibly convinced by someone else, but even this kind of explanation cannot change the fundamental feeling or understanding that the brain disallows due to its creation of our experience of the world. I am looking forward to the classroom discussions this week.
Leave a Comment » | Kent State, Personal, The Brain | Tagged: capgras, kenstate, postaday2011, teaching | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
While I was waiting in line at the post office this morning, I saw this post on slashdot.org: Cognitive Scientist David Rumelhart Dies At 68 – Slashdot. Rumelhart was on the forefront of modeling brain behavior with computers and developing the core concepts of neural net algorithms. There are obituaries of Rumelhart and remembrances of his work here and here. Also, check out his wikipedia article here.
Leave a Comment » | The Brain | Tagged: cognitivescience, obituary, postaday2011 | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
IMG_7109, originally uploaded by dynamicsubspace.
I tend to learn things better when I can pick them up, turn them around, and take them apart. Since the human brain is such a big part of my dissertation, I wanted to apply this hands-on approach to better learning and understanding brain anatomy.
If you click through the picture above, you will be taken to my set of photos on Flickr of my human skull and eight part brain model. It is approximately life-size, and it can be disassembled.
The skull’s jaw is hinged and restrained with two springs, and the skull cap or calvaria may be removed to expose the brain case and brain. The brain is made out of a transparent and soft plastic that can be taken apart into eight pieces representing the major externally noticeable features of the brain.
For less than $40 on ebay, this model serves its purpose at a great price.
In conjunction with the model, I have found PBS’s Secret Life of the Brain website to be very useful for studying brain anatomy. If you have Adobe Shockwave installed, you can access that site’s interactive 3D brain viewer: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/3d/
2 Comments | Science, The Brain | Tagged: anatomy, brain, dissertation, model, postaday2011 | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
While talking with my students today on the eve of their chapter presentations from Oliver Sacks’ An Anthropologist on Mars, I briefly discussed the fascinating case of Phineas P. Gage, who survived a terrible brain trauma in the 19th century. His unfortunate accident and case history following the event when an explosive tamping iron burst through his skull and severely damaged the frontal lobes of his brain provided the proof for a new paradigm in neurological investigation. There are many websites with information about Gage, but the Wikipedia page devoted to him is a good starting point: Phineas Gage – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Leave a Comment » | The Brain | Tagged: accident, neurology, phineasgage, postaday2011 | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
MindHacks.com pointed me towards an interesting interview with Dr. Emery Neal Brown focusing on anesthesia and the human brain in The New York Times. Read it here: Call It a Reversible Coma, Not Sleep – NYTimes.com.
Leave a Comment » | The Brain | Tagged: anesthesia, interview, nytimes, postaday2011 | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
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