2009-08-13
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Not the pleasure centre
Thanks to The Infamous Brad I read this article about attention centres in the brain.
Remember the experiment where they put a wire in the pleasure centre of a rat's brain and it would repeatedly press the on-button until it died of starvation?
Turns out that it wasn't the pleasure centre, but something more akin to curiosity, anticipation or foraging. It's the same bit of the brain that goes "Ooh, an interesting link, I shall click on it.", or "If I slay one more Orc then maybe I'll find something cool", or "I shall hit refresh one more time on LJ to see if anyone has posted in the last 3.5 seconds."
So if you've ever wondered where an hour went while you link-hopped on wikipedia, or why you haven't seen your partner in the week since they bought the latest World of Warcraft expansion, now you know :->
Remember the experiment where they put a wire in the pleasure centre of a rat's brain and it would repeatedly press the on-button until it died of starvation?
Turns out that it wasn't the pleasure centre, but something more akin to curiosity, anticipation or foraging. It's the same bit of the brain that goes "Ooh, an interesting link, I shall click on it.", or "If I slay one more Orc then maybe I'll find something cool", or "I shall hit refresh one more time on LJ to see if anyone has posted in the last 3.5 seconds."
So if you've ever wondered where an hour went while you link-hopped on wikipedia, or why you haven't seen your partner in the week since they bought the latest World of Warcraft expansion, now you know :->
Entry tags:
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-13-2009
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Plus World of Warcraft :->
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Huzzah for myths and pseduoscience
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Very nice behind the scenes look at what it took to get the game made. With added Yoko Ono!
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Read all the way to the bottom...
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A view on the George Sodini shootings
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A lovely little personal reminiscence
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Damned kids want to meet their wives in advance!
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For TV!
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Anyone care to tell me if this is a reasonable/accurate assessment?
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They do support Firefox and Safari though.
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Four different techniques to make you happy, a sample size of 26,000 people. What more could you want?
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Welcome to the world of Tomooooorrooooow!
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Not that you can do a vast amount extra with them - still pretty cool though.
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Which is pretty much the headline of the day. And the video is full of crazy people!
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Looks like a 12 hour fast before waking sorts you out (anecdotally at least). So if you want to be up at 8am then stop eating at 8pm. I'll be giving this one a go...
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Zombie ants in this case, but still.
Any Nokia experts out there?
I have an N85 - I'm very tempted by the new 32GB SDHC cards - as I'd then be able to fit pretty much my entire music collection onto my phone.
Sadly, I can't find anything saying whether the N85 supports the 32GB cards - they didn't exist when it came out, but theoretically they should work. Of course, when it comes to technology theory and practice are very different things, and I don't want to spend £60 testing this out.
Anyone know for sure?
Sadly, I can't find anything saying whether the N85 supports the 32GB cards - they didn't exist when it came out, but theoretically they should work. Of course, when it comes to technology theory and practice are very different things, and I don't want to spend £60 testing this out.
Anyone know for sure?