touch
neurophilosophy | June 25, 2010APPLYING for a job? The weight of the clipboard to which your CV is attached may influence your chances of getting it. Negotiating a deal? Sitting in a hard chair may lead you to drive a harder bargain. Those are two of the surprising conclusions of a study published in today's issue of Science, which shows that the physical properties of objects we touch can unconsciously influence our first impressions of other people and the decisions we make about them.
Josh Ackerman of the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and psychologists Chris Nocera and John Bargh of Harvard and Yale Universities,…
edyong | November 25, 2009What part of the body do you listen with? The ear is the obvious answer, but it's only part of the story - your skin is also involved. When we listen to someone else speaking, our brain combines the sounds that our ears pick up with the sight of the speaker's lips and face, and subtle changes in air movements over our skin. Only by melding our senses of hearing, vision and touch do we get a full impression of what we're listening to.
When we speak, many of the sounds we make (such as the English "p" or "t") involve small puffs of air. These are known as "aspirations". We can't hear them,…
edyong | April 23, 2009Having your arm in a cast can be a real pain but immobilising your hand in plaster has consequences beyond itchiness, cramps and a growing collection of signatures. Silke Lissek from Bergmannsheil University found that just a few weeks in a cast can desensitise the trapped hand's sense of touch, and lower neural activity in the part of the brain that receives signals from it. The uninjured hand, however, rises to the occasion and picks up the sensory slack by becoming more sensitive than before.
Lissek recruited 31 right-handed people, each of whom had one fractured arm encased in a cast,…
developingintelligence | February 14, 2008Well, it's not quite as erotic as it sounds, but they could break the ice on more than a few Valentine's dates. Hayward's new article in Brain Research Bulletin describes all known tactile illusions. Some can be tried easily at home, but can work better when your gaze is averted and if someone else is performing these illusions on you (to reduce proprioceptive feedback):
The Aristotle: an object touched with crossed fingers will sometimes be identified as two objects (try it on your nose)
Comb: With a comb and a pencil, lay your index finger along the ends of the comb's teeth; use the pencil…