April 23, 2012
In William Gibson’s fiction, the Sprawl is a colloquial name for the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis (BAMA), an urban sprawl environment on a massive scale, and a fictional extension of the real Northeast Megalopolis. The novels ‘Neuromancer’ (1984), ‘Count Zero’ (1986), and ‘Mona Lisa Overdrive’ (1988) (collectively known as the Sprawl trilogy) take place in this environment, as do the short stories ‘Johnny Mnemonic,’ ‘New Rose Hotel,’ ‘Burning Chrome,’ and ‘Fragments of a Hologram Rose.’
The Sprawl is a visualization of a future where virtually the entire East Coast of the United States, from Boston to Atlanta, has melded into a single mass of urban sprawl. It has been enclosed in several geodesic domes and merged into one megacity. The city has become a separate world with its own climate, no real night/day cycle, and an artificial sky that is always grey. It is said of the Sprawl that ‘the actors change but the play remains the same.’
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February 3, 2012
Hyperthymesia [hi-per-thy-mee-zee-uh], also known as piking, is a condition in which the individual possesses a superior autobiographical memory, meaning they can recall the vast majority of personal experiences and events in their lives.
The term ‘hyperthymesia’ is derived from the Greek words thymesis, meaning ‘remembering’ and hyper meaning ‘excessive.’ As first described in a 2006 ‘Neurocase’ article, the two defining characteristics of hyperthymesia are ‘the person spends an abnormally large amount of time thinking about his or her personal past, and the person has an extraordinary capacity to recall specific events from his or her personal past.’
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November 23, 2011
Savant syndrome, sometimes referred to as savantism [sa-vahnt-iz-uhm], is a rare condition in which people with developmental disorders have one or more areas of expertise, ability, or brilliance that are in contrast with the individual’s overall limitations. Although not a recognized medical diagnosis, researcher Darold Treffert says the condition may be either genetic or acquired. Though it is even rarer than the savant condition itself, some savants have no apparent abnormalities other than their unique abilities. This does not mean that these abilities weren’t triggered by a brain dysfunction of some sort but does temper the theory that all savants are disabled and that some sort of trade-off is required.
According to Treffert, something that almost all savants have in common is a prodigious memory of a special type, a memory that he describes as ‘very deep, but exceedingly narrow.’ It is wide in the sense that they can recall but have a hard time putting it to use. Also, many savants are found to have superior artistic or musical ability. One in ten autistic people have savant skills. 50% of savants are autistic; the other 50% often have psychological disorders or mental illnesses.
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August 1, 2011
Stephen LaBerge (born 1947) is a psychophysiologist and a leader in the scientific study of lucid dreaming. In 1967 he received his Bachelor’s Degree in mathematics. He received his Ph.D. in Psychophysiology at Stanford University in 1980.
He developed a technique to enable himself and other researchers to enter a lucid dream state at will, MILD (mnemonic induction of lucid dreams), which was necessary for many forms of dream experimentation. In 1987, he founded The Lucidity Institute, an organization that promotes research into lucid dreaming, as well as running courses for the general public on how to achieve a lucid dream.
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February 2, 2011
Ironic processing is the psychological process whereby an individual’s deliberate attempts to suppress or avoid certain thoughts (thought suppression) render those thoughts more persistent.
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