Beep, beep, oops, what was I doing?

“That blasted siren. I can’t focus.” That reaction to undesired distraction may signal a person’s low working-memory capacity, according to a new study.

Based on a study of 84 students divided into four separate experiments, University of Oregon researchers found that students with high memory storage capacity were clearly better able to ignore distractions and stay focused on their assigned tasks.

By University of Oregon (Lab Spaces)

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Can a machine change your mind?

There are in fact even more extreme examples than those in the Times article of how neuro-science and social science increasingly overlap. Alan Sanfey, of the Neural Decision Science Laboratory at the University of Arizona, for example, describes a neuro-economic analysis of an Ultimatum Game in which one person is given the power over another to make an offer to split £100. If the other rejects the offer, no one gets anything. So far so familiar — to other behavioural economics experiments that study the norms of fairness. One neuro-twist to the story, though, is that experimenters can make subjects more or less willing to accept unfair offers by subjecting their brains to Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), non-invasive and painless stimulation of the brain.

By Jane O’Grady (Open Democracy)

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One of the greatest mind’s of all time: Aldous Huxley

Watch the videos to get a glimpse into the mind of one of the greatest thinkers in history, Aldous Huxley talks about freedom:

Amputee feels limb in chest

Amputees could ‘feel’ their lost arms and hands after scientists reconnected the nerves to their chests, according to a report released today.

The researchers say the experiment holds promise for providing sensation in artificial limbs.

By ABC Science

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Why Are Some Scientists Doubtful About Subliminal Influence?

Does subliminal perception really occur? Can anyone be able to observe something involuntarily without being conscious about it? These questions were raised to challenge the scientific validity of such claims. Experiments were conducted to prove that subliminal perception was indeed a fact.

Messages were flashed briefly and fast to the test subjects by the researchers. The subjects did not report seeing any of these. The subjects were asked whether they ‘saw’ the material that they did not ‘see’. The subjects appeared to ‘see’ what they actually did not ‘see’. But then this could neither be confirmed, nor could it be verified whether the subjects were either mistaken or even lying about seeing the flashed messages.

By Evgheny Stivenson (Self Growth)

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Scientists extract images directly from brain

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

By Pink Tentacle

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Mind May Affect Machines

For 26 years, strange conversations have been taking place in a basement lab at Princeton University.

No one can hear them, but they can see their apparent effect: balls that go in certain directions on command, water fountains that seem to rise higher with a wish and drums that quicken their beat.

Yet no one hears the conversations because they occur between the minds of experimenters and the machines they will to action.

Wired Website

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Mind over Matter Experiments (Psychokinesis, Telekinesis)

Part 1

Part 2