I'm a designer/engineer. I'm also a cofounder at Posterous.
Remarkable. A brain researcher experiences a stroke. Eight years later, she has recovered completely and shares an incredible set of insights about left brain / right brain, nirvana, perception, and cognition.
After 10 hours of being awake, the early birds showed reduced activity in brain areas linked to attention span, compared with the night owls. The early risers also felt sleepier and tended to perform tasks more slowly, compared with the night owls, when their level of alertness was measured.
“The results suggest that night owls generally outlast early birds in the length of time they can be awake without becoming mentally fatigued,” the study concluded.
Just kidding. But interesting research nonetheless! I think this makes sense, though -- I tend to a waking-up-at-noon / sleeping at 4am to 6am sort of schedule, and it seems to be my most natural schedule.
I find that around 2am or so, often I'm so engaged in something that I have no interest in sleeping. Part of the beauty of working on a startup is being able to work at your most optimal hours. If i'm on a roll, I can keep going til dawn. If I'm not, I'll turn in, and wake up refreshed and ready to rock.
If I was an early riser, I have to go to sleep even when I might have something left in the tank. And I just don't feel like that's a good use of my limited time on this planet.
Hat tip Kenshi Arasaki
[Researchers have] found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals' ability to remember objects they had seen. Mice with the RGS-14 boost could remember objects they had seen for up to two months. Ordinarily the same mice would only be able to remember these objects for about an hour.
via io9.com
That's absurd. and in the comments, someone has highlighted fodder for some unhappy horror sci fi: What if you were taking this drug and saw something you desperately wanted to forget?
Imagine what this would mean for rote memorization for test taking! Maybe this would be awesome. Primary and secondary education could finally expand beyond mechanical drudgery.
Wild -- a computer can create an copy of the image you're seeing with your eyes using only fMRI brain scan data. For now, it's only for directly viewed images, but what if it could work for recalled memories and images?
Thought crime might not be science fiction after all.
From How to Hack Your Brain, Part 1: Sleep by my friend Dustin, who's one of the best designers I know. And soon to be most famous design blogger.
You're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something, but you hold the opposite view. Do you say something? Or do you just go along with the others?Neuroscientists have experimentally confirmed that the brain reacts to disagreements with the larger group in a similar manner to punishment. Groupthink exists, and exists on a massive scale. This makes more and more sense in the mass media age where we consume the same media (NY Times, TechCrunch, and Hacker News for me) and read the same forums and talk about all the same ideas. While the Internet revolution has brought many more voices to the foreground and reduced the role of traditional media (1000 channels on TV instead of 5, 1 million blogs instead of 1 local newspaper), this effect still plays out heavily throughout society. Whenever there is a crowd, there will be group consensus. The CNN article mentions that groupthink will overwhelm even obviously correct thinking: "The most famous experiments in the field were conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. He found that many people gave incorrect answers about matching lines printed on cards, echoing the incorrect answers of the actors in the room." This is significant for entrepreneurs. Apple was absolutely on to something when it said: Think Different. Why think different? Because the masses are wrong. (In fact, the masses are asses. =) ) And this is why many startups and entrepreneurs are perceived to be pursuing inane, crazy or irrelevant ideas. Prevailing wisdom isn't, and it takes a crazy dreamer to ignore the massive and overwhelming tidal wave of group think.
