Mind Your Body

Mind Your Body

Method of Production: First the appropriate supplied data files (150000 data points, 500Hz sampling rate, corresponding to 5 minutes of acquisition) were given headers so that they could be recognised as 16 bit aiff 44.1kHz audio files. A Python routine was written to do this; the purpose of this was to permit using them as audio files with realtime audio rate reading and manipulation of the da...

Why Your Body Can Jog Your Mind

Philosophical tradition influences the way we think about body and mind (Rogers, 1936). We have a body to move around and a mind to think and to learn (Descartes, 1637). At school, we sit, listen, and read, but we are not allowed to move. However, cognitive science has shown that our body is tightly linked to the mind (Wilson, 2002; Pecher and Zwaan, 2005; Gärtner, 2013). In this paper, we prov...

Commentary: Why Your Body Can Jog Your Mind

Microbes Manipulate Your Mind

Take Toxoplasma gondii, the single-celled parasite. When mice are infected by it, they suffer the grave misfortune of becoming attracted to cats. Once a cat inevitably consumes the doomed creature, the parasite can complete its life cycle inside its new host. Or consider Cordyceps, the parasitic fungus that can grow into the brain of an insect. The fungus can force an ant to climb a plant befor...

What's in your Mind?

Neuropsychologists have an advantage on us dry Cognitive Scientists: They always have impressive color slides of PET or MRI or fMRI images showing the exact location of whatever they wish to discuss — the soul or the locus of sinful thoughts or the center of consciousness. If one were to go by popular science articles on the brain one would have to conclude that we know where everything is loca...