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Back in August, we told you about a free course on artificial intelligence being offered by Stanford University, and co-taught by two world-renowned AI experts. The class officially started today, so if you managed to register for it on time, then good on you. More »
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Filler words like "um" and "er" may seem like the enemy of good speech - just ask anyone about to do a bit of public speaking - but they actually play a crucial role in helping children learn the language. More »
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Common sense holds that your brain sees an object, and then recognizes it. But a new study shows that the reality may be the reverse. Your expectations shape what you see. More »
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Bringing us one step closer to giant robot overlords is CLARION, a program that performs the same way human subjects do in some impressive cognitive tests. It mimics not what we think, but how we think. More »
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Harvard's media-friendly evolutionary psychologist Marc Hauser, famous for his 2006 book Moral Minds, is under investigation for misrepresenting research on morality in primates. Students asked Harvard officials to raid Hauser's lab three years ago; they didn't like what they found. More »
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Tools aren't just for vertebrates anymore. The veined octopus has been spotted lugging around coconut shells to serve as mobile shelters, the first time scientists have observed tool use in an invertebrate species. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5426109&view=rss&microfeed=true A new study shows that people's painful or frightening memories can be erased. A group of cognitive scientists have revealed that people can forget pain if they are exposed to specific stimuli during "memory reconsolidation," the hour or so after you recall a memory. More »
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When you look into someone's face, you probably take a split second to figure out what gender they are. Now cognitive scientist Michael Tarr has determined one of the main ways your brain decides "male" or "female" - it's by analyzing the color of the person's skin. Men's faces tend to be redder, and women's are greener. More »
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Last night, the Annals of Improbable Research held its 18th annual Ig Nobel Prizes. The prizes are awarded for scientific and social achievements "that first make people laugh, then make people think." And this year’s winners include studies on puzzle-solving slime molds, the spermicidal capabilities of Coca-Cola, and the economics of ovulating strippers. More »
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So many of our superheroes are animal-themed because we perceive non-primates as having remarkable powers. Ants have their super-strength, bats have flight and sonar, and canines have sharp teeth and the ability to detect an open bag of kibble from half a mile away. But a recent study reveals that, from the perspective of the animal kingdom, humans have a superpower of our own: “x-ray” vision. More »
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There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that so-called memory exercises can actually improve intelligence. And at last, scientists are studying this claim empirically, testing to see whether people's IQs do go up after doing memory exercises, and why that might be. It turns out that the exercises do have a scientifically-measurable effect, though only on one kind of intelligence. More »
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Transparently-shared ideas, like those that circulate on popular social networks such as Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon, may be destroying people's creativity. According to a new study published today by two cognitive scientists, people who share ideas in large groups tend to stagnate rather than innovate. They "glom onto" popular ideas and then don't pursue new discoveries or breakthroughs because they've already accepted the common wisdom of the crowd. Small groups, however, offer a different story. More »
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I'm going to do a psychological experiment on you to prove how lousy humans are at predicting the future. First, I want you to imagine reading a post about how scientists are using nanobots to restore George Lucas' brain to the state it was in right after he made THX 1138, and he'll use that brain to reboot the Star Wars franchise with Joss Whedon as the lead writer. Then I want you to imagine reading below the fold on this blog post. How much do you think you are going to enjoy reading this post? More »
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It turns out there is a neurological explanation for why people scratch and cut themselves, and spank each other for pleasure. Inflicting small amounts of physical pain, whether from scratching your skin vigorously or doing something more extreme, deactivates the parts of your brain associated with unpleasant or painful emotions. Though scientists have long speculated that there was some kind of neurological payoff from self-inflicted pain, a study published yesterday demonstrated precisely why your brain gets a reward when you hurt your body. More »
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Neuroscience cultural critic Jonah Lehrer has just written about a strange new subculture: experimental philosophy, or x-phi. These ethical innovators want to combine the scientific method and its tools, like fMRI brain scans, with traditional philosophy. Many x-phi adherents are eager to do things like, say, map the neurology of altruistic behavior. Find out why x-phi is also the first school of philosophy to advocate burning furniture and vidcasting after the jump. More »
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People in Rome remember the 2004 anti-war protest as peaceful. But when university students in the United States looked at photographs of the protest later, they called it violent and disturbing. What happened? Was it a cultural gap? No — it was a doctored photograph, much like the ones the New York Times ran of an Israeli air raid on Beirut with a lot of extra smoke billowing over the city. The doctored Rome picture was used for a new study that asked whether small changes made in photographs could transfigure the way people interpret events depicted in them. More »
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