Use a mind map, unlock your creativity!

Computer-Supported Creativity: Evaluation of a Tabletop Mind-Map Application

The aim of this study is to investigate the usability and usefulness of interactive tabletop technologies to support group creativity. We implemented a tabletop interface enabling groups of 4 participants to build mind-maps (a tool for associative thinking). With 24 users in a within-group design, we compared its use to traditional paper-and-pencil mind-mapping sessions. The results showed no d...

How to Use Your Mind

Unlock Your Data: The Case of MyTag

The business model of Web2.0 applications like FaceBook, Flickr, YouTube and their likes is based on an asymmetry: Users generate content, Web2.0 application providers own, (i), the access to user content, (ii), the user profiles and, (iii), user interaction data. We argue in this paper that such asymmetry disadvantages the users and prevents innovative applications. We demonstrate an applicati...

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...