Stroop Effect

 Got Brains, eh??

I know you guys must have given this test many times.. but still try!! :P

Now, name the COLOR (not what the word says!)

Well.. having done that, read below!!

In psychology, the Stroop effect (the test you gave above!) is a demonstration of the reaction time of a task. When the name of a color (e.g., "blue," "green," or "red") is printed in a color not denoted by the name (e.g., the word "red" printed in blue ink instead of red ink), naming the color of the word takes longer and is more prone to errors than when the color of the ink matches the name of the color. The effect is named after John Ridley Stroop who first published the effect in English in 1935.

The words themselves have a strong influence over your ability to say the color. The interference between the different information (what the words say and the color of the words) your brain receives causes a problem. There are two theories that may explain the Stroop effect:

1. Speed of Processing Theory: the interference occurs because words are read faster than colors are named.
2. Selective Attention Theory: the interference occurs because naming colors requires more attention than reading words.

For a number of years, the Stroop Effect has been helpful in testing people with mental disorders like Schizophrenia and different Phobia Disorders. For instance, Schizophrenia is a psychological disorder characterized by severely disordered thoughts and therefore patients have a very difficult time controlling their attention. Once on medications, a psychiatrist can use the Stroop Task to evaluate their patient's progress and see if his or her attention improves. Also, the Emotional Stroop Task was created, which instructs people to name the ink colors of printed words like "hairy" or "slither". It has been found that people with various phobias are much slower when working with anxiety related words.
The Stroop Effect has played a large and significant role in individual’s lives as a whole, not just in the eye of psychology. The Stroop Effect has been tested and vigorously researched for years and yet it continues to prevail as a huge contributor in the complex world that is cognitive psychology.

John Ridley Stroop first reported this effect in his Ph.D. thesis published in 1935, commonly known as "Stroop Effect":

• When the meaning of a word and its color are congruent, such as the word "BLUE" written in blue color, it is easy to recognize the actual color of the word.
• But when the meaning of the word is incongruent with the color, such as "BLUE" written in red color, it creates a conflict between the color and the word's meaning.
• The "conflict" between two brain processes are word-recognition and color-recognition.
• This conflict requires extra processing time for the brain to resolve.
• It turns out that we are so fluent in our language that word-recognition is slightly faster/stronger than color-recognition.
• Most people will recognize the meaning of the word before recognizing the color.
• In order to name the color correctly, the two processes compete for the final decision-making process.
• The brain has to inhibit the faster/stronger word-recognition process in order to allow the color-recognition to win in the final response.
• This inhibition requires "selective attention" (attentional focus) to inhibit the competing conflicting process.
• The reaction time is an indicator of the "attentional process" in the brain – it increases with attentional fatigue and/or inattentiveness.
• The error in recognizing the correct color when a conflict is present is associated with the "impulsivity" that the brain is unable to suppress.
• Thus, Stroop Effect is widely used to indicate mental process of attentional fatigue and/or the decreased ability to inhibit ongoing competing conflicts often associated with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).
• ADHD subjects often take much longer time than normal subjects to resolve the conflicts and make more errors due to the insufficient inhibition in the brain circuitry to suppress the ongoing competing processes.

Hiccups

Hello..!!!

Ever wondered why we get hiccups..?? What are it's causes..?? And, is it really true that someone is missing you when you get hiccups...???

Well, the "missing" part is just a myth...!! :(

But, I can tell you the biological or the actual reason behind this..!! :)


A hiccup is involuntary twitching of muscle of the diaphragm (sheet of internal muscle that extends across the bottom of the rib cage) that repeats several times per minute. In humans, the abrupt rush of air into the lungs causes the vocal cords to close, creating a "hic" sound.

Most likely hiccups are a reflex. Nerves inside the chest send signals to the diaphragm and muscles between the ribs to spontaneously contract during normal breathing. This “hiccup reflex” may be set off by many triggers, including:

• Emotional stress or excitement
• Stretching of the stomach as may occur after overeating, drinking carbonated beverages, or swallowing air
• Abrupt changes in the temperature (as with drinking a hot beverage)
• Alcohol binging
• Smoking

 And, below are listed some of the ways to cure these annoying hiccups.. ;)

1.  Sweeten The Hiccups

Overloading the nerve endings in the mouth with a sweet sensation may do the trick. Have a teaspoonful of sugar, and if you can, place the sugar on the back of the tongue, where "sour" is tasted. This way, the sugar overload will pack the most punch.

2. Play "Hear No Evil"

Some doctors recommend that you put your fingers in your ears to stop hiccups. The branches of the vagus nerve (one of the nerves that connects directly to the brain) also reach into the auditory system, and by stimulating the nerve endings there, the vagus nerve goes into action. But be gentle, and don't stick your fingers too far into your ears.

3. Get Scared

Having someone surprise you can overwhelm the vagus nerve and put an end to hiccups.

4. Drink Water

Swallowing water interrupts the hiccupping cycle, which can quiet the nerves. Gargling with water may also have the same effect.

5. Tickle Them Away 

Tickling the soft palate of the roof of your mouth with a cotton swab may do the trick. Or, if you're the type who enjoys getting tickled, have someone find your ticklish spots.

6. Hold Your Breathe

Hold your nose and close your mouth for as long as you can or until you sense that the hiccups are gone.

7. Take An Antacid  

This method may be more effective if you choose one that contains magnesium, since the mineral tends to decrease irritation and quiet the nerves. One or two tablets should take care of hiccups.

By the way, you can always use "desi nuske"..!! :)

L and R Earphones

Hey..!!!
Ever noticed L and R signs on your earphones..?? Well, L stands for Left and R is for Right. Many of you might be knowing this... But. does it really matter to put the right earphone in the right ear..?????

Well, the answer is YES.. for the sake of better tone of the music being played..!!

All two-channel or stereo recordings have a left, L, and right, R, audio channel. These channels do not contain the same audio information.

Most studio recordings are really multi-channel mono recordings, in which the producer 'places' the audio signal from each channel somewhere between hard left and hard right using the pan control on the mixing console. Each instrument or voice is recorded very close to the source, eliminating any room effects. The relative content, left vs. right, is a production decision, so listening with the left earphone in your left ear and the right in your right reproduces the environment the producer was trying to create.

In real stereophonic recordings, at least two microphones, usually oriented towards the left and right sides of the hall, are used to record a musical performance from the listener's perspective. The audio information that is recorded includes the musical source material, as well as any room reflections and any other out of phase sounds. When this is played back in the proper orientation - left channel to the listener's left and right to the right - the performance can be reproduced with many, if not most, of the directional cues intact. Playing with the channels reversed can ruin the acoustic image.

 

Hope you will check your earphones now before plugging 'em in..!! :)

Chocolate Shortage

Yeah... you read it RIGHT..!!!

I was reading newspaper, and this really small article about chocolates caught my eye...!! Chocolate's production gonna decline drastically in next 20 years... and hence, its consumption..!! :(

In a world that takes for granted the availability of delicious and affordable chocolate, it's easy to forget that the popular product actually comes from trees -- not magical elves or free-flowing cocoa rivers, sadly. But, some experts are predicting that in a matter of decades a drop in production due to changing weather and agriculture incentives may make chocolate 'as expensive as gold'. In 20 years chocolate will be like caviar. It will become so rare and so expensive that the average person just won't be able to afford it. The reason behind the worry is that we're consuming more chocolate than we're producing cocoa which is notoriously difficult to harvest. Added to that is the recent drought in Western Africa and unrest in the Ivory Coast (the world's biggest cocoa producer) which when combined with rising consumer taste for cocoa-rich dark chocolate, raises concerns about a shortage in supply in the not-too-distant future.

 

Well... that's a reason  for concern...!!!!

Physics Meets Philosophy

Heyaaa..!!!

I was never so keen about science and its discoveries.. but after reading The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown , I got interested in Noetic Science... And, thus, wanted to share what I got about it...

Noetic Science is a branch of metaphysical philosophy concerned with the study of mind and intuition, and its relationship with the divine intellect. Among its principal purposes are the study of the effects of perceptions, beliefs, and intentions on human consciousness. The theory of noetics centers around the idea that the human mind is capable of affecting work or events or even doing work in the physical world. Just as gravity affects all matter, so do thoughts to an apparent lesser degree. Noetic sciences are explorations into the nature and potentials of consciousness using multiple ways of knowing—including intuition, feeling, reason, and the senses. Noetic sciences explore the "inner cosmos" of the mind (consciousness, soul, spirit) and how it relates to the "outer cosmos" of the physical world.

According to the novel, the IONS and PEAR have proved that human thoughts, if properly focussed, had the ability to affect and change physical mass. Our thoughts actually interacted with the physical world. 

"Mind Over Matter"

Researches had proven that 'focussed thought' could affect literally anything- the growth rate of plants, the direction that fish swam in a bowl, manner in which cells divided in a petri dish and chemical reactions in our own body.

"Human Thought Can Literally Transform The Physical World"
The mind had the ability to alter the state of matter itself, and more important, the mind had the power to encourage the physical wrldd to move in a specific direction.

Thought, any tiny idea that forms in our mind, actually has mass. It is an actual thing, a measurable entity, with a measurable mass. A minuscule mass, but mass nonetheless. If a thought has mass, then a thought exerts gravity and can pull things towards it. And, if people start focussing on the same thought, all the occurences of that same thought begin to merge into one, and cummulative mass of this thought begins to grow. And, therefore its gravity grows.

Meaning, if enough people begin thinking the same thing then the gravitational force of that thought becomes tangible and it exerts actual force and it can have a measurable effect on our physical world.