Sense Think Act:Current events

IN THE NEWS

'Sensors' from the new iPhone
Three-axis gyro

Accelerometer

Proximity sensor

Ambient light sensor

Szczels 20:49, 5 October 2011 (BST)


 * And Siri Gordo 22:00, 5 October 2011 (BST)

"Shooting Zombies is Good for Your Eyes"
This was a story in the Metro 30-3-09 referring to a study that found contrast sensitivity enhanced by computer game play. The week before another bunch of scientists had found computer games can boost brain power. So yah boo to all those freting Nineties parents. New Scientist

"Emotional pain hurts more than physical pain"
Daily Telegraph 29-8-08 article by Chris Irvine

reporting on research article: "When Hurt Will Not Heal: Exploring the Capacity to Relive Social and Physical Pain" by Zhansheng Chen, Kipling D. Williams, Julie Fitness, and Nicola C. Newton

available on: Journal of Psychological Science

"Recent discoveries suggest that social pain is as real and intense as physical pain, and that the social-pain system may have piggybacked on the brain structure that had evolved earlier for physical pain. The present study examined an important distinction between social and physical pain: Individuals can relive and reexperience social pain more easily and more intensely than physical pain. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people reported higher levels of pain after reliving a past socially painful event than after reliving a past physically painful event. Studies 3 and 4 found, in addition, that people performed worse on cognitively demanding tasks after they relived social rather than physical pain."

Haptic - Awakening the Senses
The exhibition Haptic - awakening the senses is at the Lighthouse in Glasgow from June 18th - Sept 29th and there is a full accompanying programme - visit: The Lighthouse

Shock science finding! music is good for you!
Dr Peitro Modesti of the University of Florence has found that 30 minutes a day of relaxed music listening (with attention to slow breathing) seems to lower blood pressure. ease high Blood Pressure

Senses and the City: Taste with Simon Callow
National Portrait Gallery, in association with the University of Westminster London Studies Programmes This lecture and conversation, the third in our series about London as it is experienced through the senses.

Thursday 12 June 2008, 19:00, Lecture Theatre, National Portrait Gallery

Tickets: Â£6/Â£4 concessions and National Portrait Gallery Supporters

Glenmorangie 5 Senses - photography by Mike Figgis
Mike Figgis!? FIVE senses? You should know better. or is it meant to have a magikal resonance?

At Camden's new Proud Gallery until 27th May

Just 'Five' Senses - No Way Time Out!


The old medieval myth of Five senses still holds sway!

The 9 Emotions
M.P. Dhakshna Kollywood billboard painter on: the erotic; the valorous; the furious; the terror-stricken; the pathetic; the comic; the disgusting; the marvellous; the peaceful.

Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, 2a Conway st London W1T 6BA  11th April to 17th May 2008

Radio 4 Check Up - Back Pains
Barbara Myers presents the health phone-in. She discusses the best way to improve posture to avoid back pains with Dr Peter Skew.Top tip - standing on the underground stimulates core muscles!

Check Up

Podcast available...

Walking and Art: A Weblog
about the uses of walking in art a surprisingly academicised field

and Walking as Knowing and Making, a 'protracted symposium' from 2005

Rambling Your Way to Better Health
Workshops and local introductory walks. Attenders get free step counters and 'other goodies'

For further information on the London programme contact the Get Walking team on 020 7926 8997 or 020 7926 8998 or check out the website, Get Wallking!

See also: http://www.walklondon.org.uk/

Sight Training
Nintendo DS Lite has brought out Sight Training

The Senses and the City - Sight
Richard Rogers, in conversation with Andrew Holmes

The National Portrait Gallery, in association with the University of Westminster London Studies Programmes. Thursday 27th September 2007, 19.00. The Ondaatje Wing Theatre, National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin's Place. Richard Rogers: Internationally acclaimed, Richard Rogers is one of the most influential architects of our time, known for a series of iconic buildings including the Pompidou Centre, Lloyd's of London, the National Assembly for Wales and Madrid's Barajas Airport. In 1992 he was given an honorary doctorate by the University ofWestminster. In the second of a series of talks exploring the city through the five senses, he talks about how we experience London's architecture and built environment through the sense of sight.

Reconfigurable House
A House constructed from thousands of low tech sensor/actuators that can be "reconfigured" by its occupants is now open to the public in Tokyo, Japan, until March 2008, at NTT ICC. Any sensor/actuator can be connected to any other sensor/actuator -- it is the occupants of the house who determine the systems that run inside it. A collaboration with Adam Somlai-Fischer, full information about the project is available here:.

Nina and the Neurons
BBC2 Mornings. Has animated 'neurons' characters for each of the '5' senses. Pedagogic with many experiments, exercises and demonstrations... Directed by Derek Farnell

Can eye movements tell us anything about schizophrenia?
by Dr. Samuel Hutton, University of Sussex "Since the mid 1970s over 500 papers have been published describing eye movement abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia. This research has been driven primarily by an "endophenotype" approach - the aim being to discover specific eye movement abnormalities that might act as markers for genetic vulnerability to the illness. More recently, research has also been motivated by a "neuroscience" approach - the assumption being that a better understanding the eye movement abnormalities associated with schizophrenia will allow useful inferences concerning the neurophysiological disturbances underlying the disorder to be made. I will argue that progress in both respects has been disappointing, and that a "cognitive" approach, which aims to determine the relationship between oculomotor abnormalities and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia (and other psychiatric disorders) may prove more productive."

Dr Samuel Hutton

Training Your Brain in 60 Days
Times 2 February 15th has a lead story that reports a Japanese neuroscientist, Ryuta Kawashima, claiming that "doing simple calculations quickly and often can exercise the brain and arrest mental ageing".

Dr Kawashima says "We don't yet have a definition of the mind, that's my goal. I want to put my brain into a computer and have a converstion with myself"


 * I would like to meet Dr Kawashima Gordo 12:17, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The Science of Sleep
New Mike Gondry (wacky music video director) fourth feature,The Science of Sleep (2006 France), is released now in London.

Radio 4 series - Extra Senses
Radio 4, Tuesday 13th February to 13th March, 2007.

Extra Senses

He experiences pain

You may think that humans only have five senses, but in fact we have many more. Graham Easton delves into the extra senses that we take for granted, from our sense of balance to our sense of time. Graham cautiously steps into a Pain Research laboratory to discover why some things hurt more than others. Plus he talks to The Torture King, the ex-Jim Rose circus performer, who threads skewers right through his bicep.

How does he control the pain?

See Extra Sense home page

Ante natal fish oil boosts to hand-eye co-ordination and language
Cultural significance... discuss.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/526133/

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