homeaboutarchivenewslettermembership!
aboutarchivemembership!
aboutarchivemembers!

kottke.org posts about neuroscience

The sex of my brain is neither

posted by Jason Kottke   Jan 02, 2007

The sex of my brain is neither male nor female...I'm right in the middle.

A contestant on Who Wants to Be

posted by Jason Kottke   Nov 10, 2006

A contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? uses his knowledge of cognitive neuroscience to advance to the late stages of the game.

Scott Adams hacks brain, restores speech

posted by Jason Kottke   Oct 25, 2006

I know it's only 8am, but this is the best link of the day. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, lost his voice 18 months ago due to a strange condition called spasmodic dysphonia. He wasn't ever supposed to get it back, but he did what any good nerd would do: he figured out how to hack his brain to route around the problem and, voila, his voice returned. Awesome. (thx, eric)

Update: In November 2004, Adams also lost the ability to draw because of a condition called focal dystonia. As with his voice problems, he routed around the problem by learning to draw in a different way. (thx, martin)

Update: Wired has an update on Adams' condition. Apparently a few days after he wrote the blog post above, Adams had a relapse and waited almost two more years for a surgical procedure that helped him.

Gamers show a "similar pattern of high

posted by Jason Kottke   Feb 13, 2006

Gamers show a "similar pattern of high performance in resisting irrelevant impulses" as bilingual people. "Maybe those kids who play video games and who are also bilingual will be the best of older adults at filtering out distractions." (via sjb)

The human brain may have undergone "substantial

posted by Jason Kottke   Sep 13, 2005

The human brain may have undergone "substantial evolution" in the past 60,000 years.

Poetry takes more brain power to read than prose

posted by Jason Kottke   Apr 07, 2005

Poetry takes more brain power to read than prose. "Subjects were found to read poems slowly, concentrating and re-reading individual lines more than they did with prose."