PBS_Braincraft

American college students and Tamil speakers in India were given the same unusual task: to connect two meaningless words to two irregular shapes. The remarkable result was that more than 95% of people provided the same answer. The words in question were “buba” and “kiki” and the shapes were random drawings of closed lines, one of them round-edged and the other pointy. The people associated the round-shaped line with the word “buba” and the pointy one to “kiki”. The results of the experiment indicate that we can draw meaning from where there is none. Even when we are talking to someone in the same language, our body language, tone, pitch and accent convey information beyond what we tell. What about accents? We all have it, although no one seems to notice their own. Accents develop because people who live in close proximity share the way of speaking, and we have our own accent bias. Studies have shown that even one-year-old babies have a preference for the sounds of the <a href="https://rumble.com/v30jfx-english-language-quiz-renaissance-period.html" target="_blank">language</a> spoken at home. But why does the English speaking world have so many accents in the first place? After colonizing territories on all world continents the descendants of the English must have lost the English accent at some point and developed their local way of speaking. During the period of 200 years since the first settlement to the invention of sound records, accents have changed and even developed tendencies peculiar to a geographical area: the <a href="https://rumble.com/v4e4ut-buckeye-woman-wakes-up-with-british-accent.html" target="_blank">British</a> non-rhetoric (inaudible) vs. the American rhetoric (hard) “r”. The way we talk conveys information about our level of education, ethnicity, socio-economic status, maybe not always accurate but it can affect people’s perceptions. Especially about credibility: people with accent are more likely to be disbelieved, and the heavier the accent the less believable they are perceived to be. Also, people are more likely to rate a suspect as guilty if they have a regional accent vs. a London accent. However, we all have a bias towards our own accent – we like it because it belongs to our social group.

The "prisoner's dilemma" is a classic test in psychology. How can you win?

Is more choice really better than less?

Colour persuasion plays a big role in everyday life...and advertisements.

A 24-year-old guy known as Z decided he had enough sleeping in this lifetime so one day in 1930, he approached a couple of researchers and ask them if they could help him stop sleeping. He was convinced that sleep is a habit and that with proper procedures the habit could be broken. On several occasions, he would have gone without sleep for four or five days. There are many experiments like this in the past and in this one, the guy Z thought if he could be stimulated by tasks and other people to stay awake more than a week he would never need to sleep again. He would break the habit. So, the researchers gave him a typewriter and ask him to type for thirty minutes a day marking each minute of typing. They would compare his typing speed and accuracy as one measure to find out the effects of sleeplessness. Throughout the ten days of not sleeping, his pulse, his blood pressure and the chemicals in his pee all stayed the same. He did a bunch of intelligence tests every day and his marks belly changed. But his typing speed declined and after day four he couldn’t type any more. He couldn’t fixate on letters and numbers and he said his eyes were sore. Still, Z stayed up and didn’t complained of <a href="https://rumble.com/viral/v1217871-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-information.html" target="_blank">mental or physical fatigue</a>. He didn’t become easily irritated. He started reporting hallucinations. On the last day of the experiment he wrote a nice poem and when the experiment ended, he slept. The researchers concluded that it was possible to go with practically no sleep for ten days without any known physiological effects or damage to mental functions. Similar studies found no damage from sleeplessness. Now after 50 more years research we know that sleep deprivation leads to depression, high blood pressure, diabetes, <a href="https://rumble.com/v3he57-natural-weight-loss-and-anti-aging-secrets-to-regain-your-health.html" target="_blank">weight gain</a> and heart diseases. A good night sleep is kind of a big deal. We need 7-9 hours at night for our memory to function. If we don’t sleep, we will never learn. Your body needs sleep, just as it needs air and food to function at its best. So, don’t forget to sleep.

How does perceived 'personal space' impact your daily life?

Do you believe in mind reading? So far, science denies its existence. At the same time, we still hear stories about telepathic experiences. Telepathy, direct transference of thought from one person (sender or agent) to another (receiver or percipient) without using the usual sensory channels of communication, hence a form of extrasensory perception (ESP). This is a great story that begins in California in the late 90’s where a group of scientist got a group of cats to watch a movie. The cats had electrodes attached to the visual area of their brains. The researchers saw how the cats experienced the outside world by hacking into and recording what their brain cells were communicating. With these bits of information, they rebuilt images from the movies- as seen by the cats. Understanding how our brains encode information and how we can crack the code- could make <a href="https://rumble.com/v3349f-6-people-with-real-superpowers-caught-on-camera.html" target="_blank">”superpowers”</a> like telepathy a reality. While it seems like science fiction, telepathy of mind reading has a scientific name- Brain to brain communication. Between the thoughts of us, humans (or cats) is a computer, a Brain-Computer Interface. It’s clunky compared to the elegant telepathy of Jedi knights. So the final answer to our question? Unfortunately, telepathy doesn’t exist, but advances in technology are bringing it closer to reality. We still need a computer interface between our brains- not as cool as <a href="https://rumble.com/v42b6n-10-greatest-star-wars-fan-theories.html" target="_blank">Star Wars</a>. If you could wear technology and communicate with a thought rather than speech what would you say?

Why do you get a brain freeze? Sometimes, after ice-cream or a cold drink, it can feel like your skull is squeezing in our your brain – it can even be pretty painful. The cold temperatures are picked up by pain receptors near your palate, so while a brain freeze feels like a headache, it's actually just referred pain from your mouth. Keep watching for a few ways to get rid of a brain freeze... as

YouTube, as a platform for creative expression, has inspired a new form of modern creativity. In this video essay, there is an exploration into how the remix, a product of this participatory creativity, hijacks your brain. Why do we love watching things we've probably already seen be reproduced in new ways? A guy from New Jersey, John Sedano, creates covers of various songs. This Japanese creator played the songs just using calculators because art is not such a straight line. This extra meaning and relevance was generated by the audience where disparate individuals interacted to create together. This video will look into creativity through the lens of the remix. All the remix songs have one thing in common - we all want to watch them. Why is so enjoyable to watch something already seen or heard by being reproduced in a new way? At the heart of the remix is the idea of participatory creativity and it is not a product of a single individual but of social systems, and what is being produced in this way is a novel variation of ideas already floating around in that system, and right now you are in one of these systems - on <a href="https://rumble.com/v328ee-10-weirdest-videos-on-youtube.html" target="_blank">YouTube</a>! The easiest way to understand human creativity today is by studying the Internet which has given rise to this particular easy to digest format. YouTube has been called a remix culture and through this culture collective intelligence merge. So why remixes hijack our brains? Because repetition is the most convincing and compelling way to make a point and we crave repetitive, easy to digest pieces of media. We get an emotional boost from humor, nostalgia, and love finding evidence that confirm something we have long suspected or we already believe. Remixing is the language of the <a href="https://rumble.com/v34ck1-why-would-you-put-that-on-the-internet-114.html" target="_blank">Internet</a> and it’s a new way our voices can be heard.

Our brain uses some nifty tricks in helping to remember faces.

Can we actually test the difference between the male and female brain? We are often told that there is a difference between male and female. Despite the most obvious reason of body parts and physique, does your gender really define you in other ways too? Is there such a thing as a male brain which can solve mathematical problems faster or a female brain that can be fluent in more languages? The fact of the matter is that it’s not that much about the gender, but rather about the size and form of the brain. Male brains are bigger in size due to men being bigger in size than women in real life but it also has a lot more holes inside while a female brain is smaller but it contains a lot more of the bundles of fiber that connect the right and left hemispheres of the brain. But when it comes to certain abilities, gender is not even remotely influencing the brain. In fact, the gender barrier is mainly imposed by society and isn’t real. <a href="https://rumble.com/v301zo-human-brains-arent-distinctly-male-or-female-study.html" target="_blank">Studies</a> have shown that both men and women perform equally as good on test when gender isn’t mentioned, compared to other groups which have been asked to state their gender. So don’t let <a href="https://rumble.com/v334vp-female-doctors-better-than-male-doctors.html" target="_blank">society’s norms</a> keep you from doing what you want to do and trying new things. It’s literally only in your head.

Our senses of taste and smell are crucial when enjoying food... But is there more to it?

Network Neuroscience offers a new way to look at our brains –where researchers organize our brain's connections as patterns and look at how those connections interact, change and stay the same when we perform different tasks. It turns out that the flexibility of those connections can indicate how quickly we can learn or multitask –and is a top predictor of intelligence.

Persuasive and personalised messages are all around us.

The hosts from Vsauce join Vanessa for a few fascinating mental challenges.

In response to earlier videos on sugar, here are three misconceptions most of us share.

How attention and focus affects creative thinking.

The weird and wonderful science of goose bumps. Hope you didn't get the chills. It is amazing how evolution has given the human body some odd parting gifts. The human body has been a work in progress for about the last six million years, so it’s understandable if over that time we have outgrown some of our components. Did you know that your appendix used to help digest plants. Since our diet isn’t that plant-heavy anymore, it only causes problems like appendicitis. Given, the early humans moved their ears for peripheral hearing, some of us can still wiggle our ears just for fun. It is curious that one bit of the corner of your eye was once bigger and served to protect and moisturize the eyeball. Now, this same feature only keeps dirt out off your eyes. It doesn’t come as a surprise that our ancestors had an extra muscle to help them hang from trees. Touch your pinky to your thumb and if you don’t see it, you are among the 10% of humans who lost it. Even our ancestors never made use of male nipples. They most likely form in the embryonic stage when we are essentially sexless. Knowing that your tiny tailbone is a relic of the mammalian tail is somewhat astonishing. Humans are believed to have lost their tails when they started walking upright. Our ancestors needed strong molars to chew through raw meat. When we learned to cook, our jaws shrunk and left no room for what we call wisdom teeth. Body hair kept our ancestors from freezing. Now, we no longer need <a href="https://rumble.com/v37srv-10-benefits-of-baking-soda-for-hair-skin-and-body.html" target="_blank">body hair</a> to do all of our temperature regulation. Also, goosebumps fluffed up our hair to keep us warm. Now that we wear sweaters and coats, there’s no need for goosebumps anymore. The human brain has been getting smaller in size over time. We are not getting dumber, our brain just works faster while taking up less space. If you happen to be interesting as to why or how <a href="https://rumble.com/v3rb8j-prepare-for-goosebumps.html" target="_blank">goosebumps</a> play their role onto our body, this video will come in hand and prove to be very useful and educational. Enjoy!

This is a game! It’s called the Ultimatum Game and there is a big pot of money. But, you have to split the pot! You need to decide how you want to split the pot – think 80/20 or 50/50 and suggest that! If agreed, you will both get the share. If rejected, no one gets the money. What do you do? This game has been used in a lot in tests of fairness. And things like your brain or electric stimulations of certain brain regions affect how people decide to split the pot, and if others accepted their offer they will split it. In one study, participants were given a pill of amino acids or placebo, and then they played The Ultimate <a href="https://rumble.com/v3537v-check-out-this-clever-japanese-board-game..html" target="_blank">Game</a>. Those who had the amino acid pill rejected unfair offers in 80% of the cases, and those who took the placebo, rejected unfair offers 65 % of the time. The amino acid pill didn’t include tryptophan, the amino acid necessary to synthesize serotonin, a chemical that plays a role in regulating emotions during social decision-making. So reduced serotonin resulted in more resentment towards the offer, making the responders less likely to accept. Another study bent the rules of The Ultimatum Game. When the participants first split the pot, they are offered 10-25% of the value to their partner. Then The Ultimatum Game became electrifying. Some participants received electrical stimulations that increased activity in a <a href="https://rumble.com/v32vhg-quiz-nothing-will-test-your-brain-more-than-these-riddles-good-scores.html" target="_blank">brain</a> area though to control fairness. It’s kind of mind-blowing that our sense of fairness and inequity can be manipulated by drugs and electrical stimulations. But… can you really win The Ultimatum Game? How would you split the pot?

Neuroscience is being used in Hollywood to measure and predict audience reactions. Could your brain direct an Oscar winner?

It’s not often that we say this, but sometimes it seems that there are worse things to fear than death, and the act of forgetting sits somewhere on top of that list. Living your life with diminishing memories from day to day can feel worse than totally leaving this earth. Forgetfulness is a silent killer of spirit and it just gets worse with age, but where were we? There appears to be a positive side to forgetting after all, but in order to understand it. We need to understand how memories are lost. So we know that our brain decides to store past experiences in the form of memories in our mind, but think of it as a <a href="https://rumble.com/v3emh2-tense-moments-with-a-usb-flash-drive.html" target="_blank">flash drive</a>. It can only store so much. After a while our brain decides that memory is running short and it’s time to do a bit of clean up. There are actually two theories that explain the way memories are selected for removal. One of them is the decay theory which suggests that the brain deletes, so to say, old memories to make room for new, ant the interference theory suggests that whenever we experience a thing that is of similar value with a past memory, the new one is stacked on top of the old one, erasing the old memory in the process. In reality though, both of these theories are true. Our brain creates two proteins, Mushashi and Adducin, the first one breaking the bonds between synapses and stopping the flow of information between nerve cells and the latter repairing that bond. What this means is that we have a constant fight of these two in our brain and it is the sole reason some memories are lost in the process. The good side of forgetting comes with the fact that whenever we lose a memory, it leaves a lot open for a new one to be stored. So don’t fret too much and work hard on making <a href="https://rumble.com/v30j3x-memory-quiz-top-score.html" target="_blank">memories</a> that count!

Join AsapSCIENCE for a deeper look at defining insanity.

Is there really such a thing as your intellectual peak?

I sit down with StarTalk Radio hosts Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman to chat about what it would be like for our brain and body in space. We have a model of gravity built into our brains that allows us to catch balls and function normally on Earth: what happens if gravity was higher? Or lower? How do aliens move? What do aliens from higher gravity planets look like? Should we ever stop askin

We've all heard about neurons, but what else is there to discover inside our heads?