April 14, 2015
Road rage is aggressive or angry behavior by a driver of an automobile or other road vehicle. Such behavior might include rude gestures, verbal insults, deliberately driving in an unsafe or threatening manner, or making threats. Road rage can lead to altercations, assaults, and collisions that result in injuries and even deaths. It can be thought of as an extreme case of aggressive driving. The term originated in 1987 at KTLA, a Los Angeles television station, during a rash of freeway shootings. These shooting sprees even spawned a response from the AAA Motor Club to its members on how to respond to drivers with road rage or aggressive maneuvers and gestures.
Road rage levels and laws vary from country to country. In Germany, mere insults and rude gestures in traffic can lead to fines and even prison sentences. Australia also has rather stringent laws against malicious motoring. In the US, a 2007 study concluded that the cities with the least courteous drivers (most road rage) are Miami, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston. The cities with the most courteous drivers (least road rage) are Minneapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, Seattle, and Atlanta. In spite of this, in 2009, New York, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit, Atlanta and Minneapolis/St. Paul were rated the top five ‘Road Rage Capitals’ of the United States.
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April 13, 2015
Monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A), is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the MAO-A gene, a version of which has been popularly referred to as the Warrior Gene. Several different versions of the gene are found in different individuals, although a functional gene is present in most humans (with the exception of a few individuals with Brunner syndrome, a rare genetic disorder). MAO aids in the breakdown of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine and are, therefore, capable of influencing the feelings, moods, and behaviors of individuals.
According to this, if there was a mutation to the gene that is involved in the process of promoting or inhibiting MAO enzymes, it could affect a person’s personality and could therefore make them more prone to aggression. A deficiency in the MAO-A gene has been linked to higher levels of aggression in males. In a 2009 criminal trial in the US, an argument based on a combination of ‘warrior gene’ and history of child abuse was successfully used to avoid a conviction of first-degree murder and the death penalty; however, the convicted murderer was sentenced to 32 years in prison.
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April 9, 2015
Coprolalia [kop-ruh-ley-lee-uh] is involuntary swearing or the involuntary utterance of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks. Coprolalia comes from the Greek ‘kopros’ meaning ‘feces’ and ‘lalia,’ ‘to talk.’ The term is often used as a clinomorphism (a simplification or amplification of the term for a medical condition), with ‘compulsive profanity’ inaccurately referred to as being Tourette syndrome (an inherited neurological disorder characterized by involuntary speech and movements). Related terms are ‘copropraxia,’ performing obscene or forbidden gestures, and ‘coprographia,’ making obscene writings or drawings.
Coprolalia encompasses words and phrases that are culturally taboo or generally unsuitable for acceptable social use, when used out of context. The term is not used to describe contextual swearing. It is usually expressed out of social or emotional context, and may be spoken in a louder tone or different cadence or pitch than normal conversation. It can be a single word, or complex phrases. A person with coprolalia may repeat the word mentally rather than saying it out loud; these subvocalizations can be very distressing.
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April 6, 2015
Goose bumps (‘cutis anserina,’ also called ‘goose pimples’ or ‘goose flesh’) are bumps that develop on human skin at the base of body hairs in response to cold. They can also occur involuntarily as the result of strong emotions such as fear, nostalgia, pleasure, euphoria, awe, admiration, or sexual arousal. The same effect is manifested in the root word ‘horror’ in English, which is derived from Latin ‘horrere,’ which means ‘to bristle,’ and ‘be horrified,’ because of the accompanying hair reaction.
The reflex of producing goose bumps is known as ‘arasing,’ ‘piloerection,’ or the ‘pilomotor reflex.’ It occurs in many mammals besides humans; a prominent example is porcupines, which raise their quills when threatened, or sea otters when they encounter sharks or other predators. Small muscles at the follicles raise the body’s hair to make the animal appear larger and more imposing when facing predators. The formation of goose bumps in humans under stress is considered by some to be a vestigial reflex. In furred animals, the cold response erects hairs to trap air, creating a layer of insulation.
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April 1, 2015
Perceptual learning is the process of learning improved skills of perception from simple sensory discriminations (e.g., distinguishing two musical tones from one another) to complex categorizations of spatial and temporal patterns relevant to real-world expertise (e.g., reading, seeing relations among chess pieces, knowing whether or not an X-ray image shows a tumor). Perceptual learning forms important foundations of complex cognitive processes (i.e., language).
In visual Vernier acuity tasks, observers judge whether one line is displaced above or below a second line. Untrained observers are often already very good with this task, but after training, observers’ threshold has been shown to improve as much as six fold. Similar improvements have been found for visual motion discrimination and orientation sensitivity.
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March 26, 2015
The Truman Show delusion, informally known as Truman Syndrome, is a type of persecutory/grandiose delusion in which patients believe their lives are staged plays or reality television shows. The term was coined in 2008 by brothers Joel and Ian Gold, a psychiatrist and a neurophilosopher, respectively, after the 1998 film ‘The Truman Show,’ about a man who discovers he is living in a constructed reality televised globally around the clock. Since he was in the womb, all the people in Burbank’s life have been paid actors.
The concept predates this particular film. It was based on a 1989 episode of the ‘Twilight Zone,’ ‘Special Service,’ which begins with the protagonist discovering a camera in his bathroom mirror. This man soon learns that his life is being broadcast 24/7 on TV. Author Philip K. Dick has also written short stories and, most notably, a novel, ‘Time Out of Joint’ (1959), in which the protagonist lives in a created world in which his ‘family’ and ‘friends’ are paid to maintain the delusions.
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March 13, 2015
‘Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers‘ is a 1994 (2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2004) book by Stanford University biologist Robert M. Sapolsky. The book proclaims itself as a ‘Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping’ on the front cover of its third and most recent edition. The title derives from Sapolsky’s idea that for animals such as zebras, stress is generally episodic (e.g., running away from a lion), while for humans, stress is often chronic (e.g., worrying about financial burdens). Therefore, many wild animals are less susceptible than humans to chronic stress-related disorders such asulcers, hypertension, decreased neurogenesis and increased hippocampal neuronal atrophy. However, chronic stress occurs in some social primates (Sapolsky studies baboons) for individuals on the lower side of the social dominance hierarchy.
Sapolsky focuses on the effects of glucocorticoids (a class of steroid hormones) on the human body, stating that they may be useful to animals in the wild escaping their predators during the fight-or-flight response, but the effects on humans, when secreted at high quantities or over long periods of time, are much less desirable. He relates the history of endocrinology, how the field reacted at times of discovery, and how it has changed through the years. While most of the book focuses on the biological machinery of the body, the last chapter of the book focuses on self-help. He also explains how social phenomena such as child abuse and the chronic stress of poverty affect biological stress, leading to increased risk of disease and disability.
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March 9, 2015
Reverse psychology is a technique involving the advocacy of a belief or behavior that is opposite to the one desired, with the expectation that this approach will encourage the subject of the persuasion to do what actually is desired: the opposite of what is suggested. This technique relies on the psychological phenomenon of reactance, in which a person has a negative emotional reaction to being persuaded, and thus chooses the option which is being advocated against. The one being manipulated is usually unaware of what is really going on.
Reverse psychology is often used on children due to their high tendency to respond with reactance, a desire to restore threatened freedom of action (e.g. telling children to stay in the house when you really want them to choose to go outside and play). Questions have however been raised about such an approach when it is more than merely instrumental, in the sense that ‘reverse psychology implies a clever manipulation of the misbehaving child’ and nothing more. With respect to ’emotional intelligence,’ the advice has been given: ‘don’t try to use reverse psychology….such strategies are confusing, manipulative, dishonest, and they rarely work’. In addition, consistently allowing a child to do the opposite of what he/she is being advised, undermines the authority of the parent.
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March 5, 2015
Neural oscillation is rhythmic or repetitive neural activity in the central nervous system. For example Delta waves (0-4 Hz on an EEG) is the lowest frequency neural oscillation and is associated with deep sleep. Gamma waves are the highest frequency pattern at 25-100 Hz (though 40 Hz is typical), and according to a popular theory, they may be related to subjective awareness.
Gamma waves were initially ignored before the development of digital electroencephalography as analog electroencephalography is restricted to recording and measuring rhythms that are usually less than 25 Hz. One of the earliest reports on them was in 1964 using recordings of the electrical activity of electrodes implanted in the visual cortex of awake monkeys.
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March 4, 2015
Sleep inertia is a physiological state characterized by a decline in motor dexterity and a subjective feeling of grogginess immediately following an abrupt awakening. The impaired alertness may interfere with the ability to perform mental or physical tasks. Sleep inertia can also refer to the tendency of a person wanting to return to sleep.
Sleep inertia occurs normally after awakening. Upon awakening in the morning, subjective alertness and mental performance are significantly impaired. Morning sleep inertia takes two to four hours to dissipate completely, though some people require less time.
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February 21, 2015
Wim Delvoye (b. 1965 ) is a Belgian neo-conceptual artist known for his inventive and often shocking projects. Much of his work is focused on the body, and he is perhaps best known for his digestive machine, Cloaca, which he unveiled at the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, after eight years of consultation with experts in fields ranging from plumbing to gastroenterology. In a comment on the Belgians’ love of fine dining, Cloaca is a large installation that turns food into feces, allowing Delvoye to explore the digestive process. The food begins at a long, transparent mouth, travels through a number of enzyme filled, machine-like assembly stations, and ends in hard matter which is separated from liquid through a cylinder. Delvoye collects and sells the realistically smelling output, suspended in small jars of resin at his Ghent studio.
When asked about his inspiration, Delvoye stated that everything in modern life is pointless. The most useless object he could create was a machine that serves no purpose at all, besides the reduction of food to waste. Previously, Delvoye claimed that he would never sell a Cloaca machine to a museum as he could never trust that the curator would maintain the installation properly. However after two years of discussion with David Walsh, Delvoye agreed to construct a custom Cloaca built specifically for the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania. The new installation is suspended from the museum ceiling in a room custom-built for it.
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February 11, 2015
Transcendental [tran-sen-den-tl] Meditation (TM) refers to a specific form of mantra meditation (consciousness training aided by inner chanting) first introduced in India in the mid-1950s by Hindu spiritual teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918–2008). The Maharishi taught thousands of people during a series of world tours from 1958 to 1965, expressing his teachings in spiritual and religious terms.
TM became more popular in the 1960s and 1970s, as he shifted to a more technical presentation and his meditation technique was practiced by celebrities (notably the Beatles). At this time, he began training TM teachers and created specialized organizations to present TM to specific segments of the population such as business people and students. By the late 2000s, TM had been taught to millions of people, and the worldwide TM organization had grown to include educational programs, health products, and related services.
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