Domains For Sale

Interested in hosting your own blog, or looking for a new home on the web for your company or business?

Click links below to view my current domain sales on GoDaddy.com. Feel free to pass these on to anyone who may be interested! :)

The majority of them are going to be in the auction until early February. However, most include a “Buy It Now” option, in case you want to avoid the bidding wars.

Domains:

• gmgrocer.com
• gmgroceronline.com
• shopgmfree.com
• antimodification.com
• promodification.com (current bid at $100)
• safegmfoods.com
• keentogreen.com
• lifeofacell.com
• newscienceonline.com
• newmedicalscience.com
• dnadecipher.com
• greenelectriccity.com
• aminomeds.com
• dealsonhybrids.com
• buyhybridtoday.com

Phantoms in the Brain

When I was reading one of my favourite books to date, “Phantoms in the Brain” by V.S. Ramachandran, I kept note of some facts that I found useful or particularly interesting. 

Fun Facts:

• In multiple personality disorders, eye structures and blood chemistry can change with different personas
• You can identify certain diseases by a person’s smell, for instance: diabetic ketosis – sweetish nail polish breath, typhoid fever – freshly baked bread odor, scrofula – stale-beer stench, rubella – newly plucked chicken feathers, lung abscess – foul smell, liver failure – ammonia-like windex odor, pseudomonas infection – grape juice, isovaleric acidemia – sweaty feet smell (yum yum)
• Poetry is processed in the right temporal lobe
• A distressed person who experiences a stroke in the corpus collosum might experience her left hand trying to strangle her – this is because the suicidal tendencies of the right hemisphere are no longer inhibited by the rational left hemisphere
• A stroke in the left brain might result in a patient who is anxious, depressed, and worried about prospect for recovery; a stroke in the right brain, however, might result in a patient who is blissfully indifferent
• There are two different smile circuits: (1) spontaneous smile – basal ganglia (no thought), (2) conscious smile (brain giving direction) – auditory to motor cortex. Therefore, a stroke in the right motor cortex means the instruction to smile results in right-side only, while a spontaneous smile is normal. A stroke in the basal ganglia results in a patient being incapable of a normal spontaneous smile, but an actual attempt at smiling works out alright
• A paralyzed person may still lift their arms when yawning, because a different brain pathway is used than a conscious attempt to lift the arms (unconscious lifting linked to respiratory centers in the brain stem)
• The Penfield homunculus is the name for the “little man in the brain,” whereby the body is mapped on the cerebral cortex. Brain circuitry can be remapped because the brain is flexible to change even in adulthood, which is why phantom limbs appear. These phantoms limbs can often experience sensation when the area mapped closest on the brain is stimulated on the body (see map below):

• There are two visual pathways: (1) old – goes to superior colliculus in brain stem, then to parietal lobes, used for orienting behaviour and nicknamed ‘the zombie in the brain’, (2) new – travels to lateral geniculate nucleus (a relay station for primary visual cortex), used for identifying objects. Damage to the new pathway is what we know as blindness in the conventional sense. Damage to the old pathway is known as “blindsight,” whereby patients can be somewhat oriented toward an object or target without consciously knowing how or what it is. 
• Charles Bonnet syndrome affects people whose vision has become compromised by glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, or diabetic retinopathy. Many people develop hallucinations though they are either completely or partially blind (as if to replace reality) – it goes unreported for fear of being labeled senile or insane
• Everyone has a natural blind spot, called ‘scotoma’, but the region is automatically filled in by other visual areas of other brain

His distortions are due to the fact that the homunculus is proportioned according to the amount of cortex devoted to each body part (more devotion = more sensation)

Let Me Blow Your Mind

I’m not going to straight-up call this an IQ test the way the original image location did, but it is no doubt a test of hemispheric flexibility (right brain-left brain switching), which is related to many brain and behavioural capabilities apart from intelligence. Look at this gif image of a woman turning, apparently from a study devised at Yale; which way is she going, clockwise or counter-clockwise? Instructions (via ReadnRock):

If you see this lady turning clockwise you are using your right brain.
If you see her turning anti-clockwise, you are using your left brain.
Some people can see her turning both ways, but most people see her only one way.

See if you can make her go one way and then the other by shifting the brain’s current.

HINT: I was able to switch between the two much faster when I focused on the foot turning on the ground. And no, this is not a trick; the lady is not changing directions on her own (in the image coding). It is like those perspective illusions – remember those? – when the picture can be, say, an old lady or a young one based on your focus.

A Cure For What Ails Ya

Since I’m always looking for ways to improve quality of life without swallowing gigantic horse pills or experiencing side effects, I’m interested in what I Dose has to offer. The website employs specific auditory stimuli as a method of achieving desired effects; among their musical ‘doses’ one can find a ‘cure’ for PMS, lack of focus, depression, pain, fatigue, and so on. How they claim to achieve this:

Binaural beats affect our brainwaves directly and can alter moods, behavior, even consciousness. Sound crazy? We thought so too. But guess what? We tried it and it works!

Other than streamed tracks and testimonials, there is not a lot to this site – yet. The fact is, there’s no harm in trying it, there’s scientific truth in the claim that music helps set the tone for your mood, and, last but not least, it’s free! I’m going to give it a shot, and if you choose to take it for a spin, comment on your experience below :)

I Thought I Wanted This

Any friend who has seen me through heartbreak has heard me wish I could have the painful memories erased (though I wasn’t a fan of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). So why is it just a little scary that this possibility may be on the horizon?

Scientists from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta and the East ChinaNormal University in Shanghai selectively removed a shocking memory from a mouse’s brain, the team reports in the Oct. 23 Neuron.

Insight from such experiments may one day lead to therapies that can erase traumatic memories for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or wipe clean drug-associated cues that lead addicts to relapse. (via Science News.)

Yes, I understand the positive applications of such knowledge…but there are SO many worse consequences and vulnerabilities than we can begin to imagine. I guess it’s worthwhile to ponder an option you don’t have just for the fun of it; the reality of brain tampering, however, is making me consider perhaps the more Darwinian approach of letting my less pleasant experiences teach me a thing or two.

UPDATE: I like this article on similar findings a lot better, and not only because of this quote:

Tsien, however, cautions against applying his team’s results to expunging thoughts of broken hearts or limbs. “All memories, even very painful emotional memories, have their purposes. We learn from those experiences to avoid making the same kind of mistake.”