Mind Definition and 296 Threads

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mind-control-by-cell I read this article at sciam. I found it very interesting. Just wondering what people here might have to say about it.

A friend of mine told me a while ago about this article he read ~50 years ago about some prisoners being blindfolded, told they were going to be cut with a razor, and having an ice cube rubbed on them. Apparently it felt like a razor and because of "mind over matter" the prisoners actually got...

Last night i awoke in the middle of the night to find that my bedside lamp was on. How is this possible? I don't remember turning it on myself and it's not a touch lamp. It really freaked me out. Is there anyway that it is in fact possible for it to have turned on?? Any help would be...

It was thought at one time that the right brain processed all our subjective thinking (stuff like intuition, perception and interpretations of our experiences) while the left hemisphere was responsible for performing objective thinking (logical, analytical). I think I've read that with MRI...

The Exodus Frame of Mind Recently David Brooks wrote for the New York Times an article labeled “The Past Meets the Future”. This was an imaginary conversation between Mr. Past and Mr. Future. Mr. Past focused upon our failure to understand the past and in so doing we make egregious...

Has anyone read this book? http://www.newphysicsandthemind.net/?gclid=CKXHt4Drx5QCFQ8gQgodyil1lg It sounds a bit spooky to me.

Ok, I know I'm not losing my mind. But I am in a discussion with other people in another forum. My theories are a little whacked compared to the norm. I know I saw the discovery channel and an eastern european scientist (i think czech) created some electromagnetic anti-gravity field or...

Since the human mind has a relatively large degree of freedom, it can do things on its own will. How does the human mind fall under the laws of entropy?

When you begin your transitional period from student to professor. I bet most of you will say during your graduate studies or even beyond that stage of learning

Would it be possible to say that the brain in some aspects has nothing to do with the functionality of the mind? For me personally, I don't care how my brain works, it's totally irrelevant for me living my life, but what does this mean? To me it seems obvious that we have to separate the mind...

Hi I was wondering if you guys know any VERY cool labs I could use? I want to demonstrate the lab to my student body and i want it to interest them very much so we get more students interested into sciences.

Perhaps someone can offer me some opinions; I don't really know what to research at this point. My mind absorbs the world like a sponge and I have a photographic representation of my entire life going back to 5 years old, with a few memories going back to 2 years old. My memories are as...

How can I Improve my problem solving skills using my mind only?

Are mental phenomena such as experience, thought and qualia just an epiphenomena? The "exclusion argument" per Yablo: Ref: Yablo (1992) "Mental Causation" To put it even more simply, the cause of a switch in a computer changing position is due to the local affects of voltage on that...

Im curious if anyone knows if it is theoretically possible to place the human mind into an infinite loop in a similar manner to the placing an electronic computer into one. If not, why? What is principle physical/neurological process that prevents this from occurring?

is there a technical term for when the mind cannot distinguish between what is real, and what is not. I've read many stories of people doing mental training for basketball, vs those who did know training, and those who did actual physical training, and those who did the mental training, actually...

can we only remember a certain amount of information, after that we can't remember more no matter what? is the capacity of mind limited?

I'm new here and I am dumb as rocks in physics. I need a couple of semesters of physics for my degree. By the way my name is Jon. I am extremely happy I found this site! I never had a Physics course before last semester! Guess what happened? I failed it! It was only introductory physics...

I am aware that establishment opinion is that a persons mind forms as as a consequence of the brain. But i was wondering how do we know that for sure? could it be possible that the mind actually gives rise to the brain? as nueroscientists still do not know how the computer modeled brain actually...

Law of Magnetic Attraction??Power of mind over matter?? Hello all you brainy people :-) I am new to the forum and not a physicist. Can you all please explain how this could be achieved even under so much scietific scrutiny? http://www.magneticman.org/ (please do think about it...

Anyone seen this show? This guy is a mentalist/hypnotist who goes around doing apparently remarkable feats of suggestion and hypnosis. It's reminiscent of David Blaine in format, but very much more interesting for psychological reasons. The two remarkable feats he performed on the episode...

Hello! I wonder if anyone here that can communicate with the subconscious mind. I have tried many times but i don't get any signs. I have bought the book thegeniewithin Harry W Carpenter. I wan't to know if someone here can communicate with the subconscious mind that can help me.

Can the way we perceive time be explained by time dilation? When you think of our consciousness as being the motion of the spark(s) moving around on the circuit board we call our brain, the only part of ourselves that is moving at near c. Add a little adrenaline which increases the...

In terms of the brain why is it that the vast majority of legendary artists are men?

The New York Review of Books got Lee Smolin to do a 10-page review of a handful of recent Einstein books. It's definitely stereoscopic (3D). with a sense of the complex personality. nice to see the oversimplified popular images countered http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20279 Mark Trodden of...

Is this a valid thing for society to aim for? Would this do more harm than good? Technology is capable of taking us towards this.

I have two convolution problems, that I would like to be sure are right. If someone wouldn't mind the fun job of checking these, that would be great. QUESTION: Compute the convolution of x(t) and h(t) where: 1: x(t) = u(t) h(t) = e^{-at}u(t), \,\,\, a>0 2. x(t) = u(t) -...

Very interesting clip about a scientist who mapped neuron cell firing patterns in a monkey's brain while the monkey was playing a simple video game. The scientist then makes a breakthrough discovery that you will see...

Everytime i write down something the thing that is in my mind is right, but what i wrote down is completely different. For instance, if I wrote down two plus two and stopped and thinked thinking it is four I would write down two instead of four for some odd reason. It's like I'm lingering off...

Meet Daniel Tammet, a 27 year-old math and memory wizard. He can do things with numbers that will truly amaze you. He is a savant. . . with a difference. Unlike most savants, he shows no obvious mental disability, and most importantly, he can describe his own thought process. Join correspondent...

Let's keep this about the subject. This isn't about religion, but about people believing in one thing (creationism) and pursuing an advanced scientific degree. Some say it is for carrying the "legitimate" degree in order to give credibility to creationism and shouldn't be allowed if they...

H e l p m e I want code for gauss elimination by C++ for solving my homework

My mind has gone fallow, and I can't quite understand factoring a number into two coprime numbers. What happens if the number of divisors is odd?

Wasn't really sure where to put this : I am trying to gather thoughts and peoples states of minds for a paper when facing extreme disasters and potentially devastating disasters. (It's not the happiest paper ever) - Not so much the first hand perspective, but along the lines of what the...

What are the prerequisites for great new scientific ideas? Intelligence and creativity? Assuming these two variables-feel free to add more if you wish-does the mind ever peak at a certain age in either of these two areas, be it physically or simply subjectively? It seems the true geniuses do...

Let's share some stories about math things that are interesting enough to tell somebody about, even if it's just to sound smart at parties. My head exploded when I learned that dropping the compound period for growth to 0 increased growth by a factor of "e". Up until then I had no idea why...

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/08/16/mindreading_hea.html?category=health&guid=20060816103000 Very interesting article. This could be the beginning of something big, the way I see it. The reason why I found this article so interesting is because it seems to be the first time we have...

[img=http://img285.imageshack.us/img285/2332/untitled2bj9.th.jpg] Hi everyone! I am mind boggled by this tension problem. Here's what I grasp. If the clown pulls downward, the rope exerts an opposite force with the same magnitude upward. I don't understand how exactly the tension going upward...

Seriously, it seems like the cannabis plant is built for the intelligent, inquisitive, imaginative, ect. mind. Not only do my senses, reason, intuition, and imagination expand on marijuana, I also understand science so much more. There is something it does to your logical faculty that makes you...

Try thinking about measuring the expansion of the universe based on relativity. That is to say that depending on where you are located in the universe you might measure expansion or you might measure contraction! Think about this. The observer is placed anywhere inside of a giant ball of...

Hi guys, I'm a high school student at a private high school in the LA county called Bishop Amat Memorial. I'm currently in Honors Physics, so far I've been have a smooth and fine time until my teacher hit us with a project concerning scaling... His philsophy of teaching for this project is...

Key ideas: Our minds are the emergant property of interations between two fundamental forces, reason and emotion. Our minds don't need to exist within space-time. The mind is the interaction of two forces, reason and emotion. Or maybe I should say that our minds exist in two "environments" at...

Is reality created in the mind or is there an objective reality outside of the mind? It almost seems like an absurd question and most people would say the latter but some philosophers are skeptical. If you have a candy bar in front of you, you assume that it exist because you can see it. The...

How on Earth some of people are always interfering in everything!:bugeye:(am I interfering here?o:) ) So I don't know what's strange about me that my coworkers always talk about me more than anyone else and have lots of questions about me. :confused: They talk about my way of speaking...

Can people really use yogic powers/their mind to levitate? How do they do this?

x^2-6x-7/2x^2+3x +1

How we think is a question for science, but it's also relevant for philosophy of mind. In this thread I want to see how science reflects certain ideas of the philosophy of Kant. That's why I put it in the science forum, I think this is the most appropriate place; if it is not, I apologize...

Ok, simply put, i am 21, working in a warehouse that i am not even closely challenged, and i feel as if i am getting dull. As unfortunate as it may be, when in high school learning was low on my rank of importance, and as you can imagine, i don't feel i learned much... Despite it being one of...

Hi, I saw a documentary of what string is and how small it is. But, what's the point of knowing that there are strings in every atom. I don't know the quantitative ratio of it but the documentary says that if an atom was the size of a solar system, a string would a tree on earth. No experiments...

I am struggling to decide on a major, and I have two years left. I want to go into computational linguistics and AI. I cannot decide between linguistics, mathematics, computer science, and cognitive science. I'm sure about cognitive science, with a concentration in computation and AI, but I...