Monthly Archive for July, 2006

still by fly­zip­per

Soothe a burn, cure a toothache, clear a stuffed nose…

1. If your throat tick­les, scratch your ear.

When you were 9, play­ing your armpit was a cool trick. Now, as an adult, you can still appre­ci­ate a good body-based feat, but you’re more dis­crim­i­nat­ing. Take that tickle in your throat; it’s not worth gag­ging over. Here’s a bet­ter way to scratch your itch: “When the nerves in the ear are stim­u­lated, it cre­ates a reflex in the throat that can cause a mus­cle spasm,” says Scott Schaf­fer, M.D., pres­i­dent of an ear, nose and throat spe­cialty cen­ter in Gibb­s­boro, New Jer­sey. “This spasm relieves the tickle.”

2. Expe­ri­ence super­sonic hearing!

If you’re stuck chat­ting up a mum­bler at a cock­tail party, lean in with your right ear. It’s bet­ter than your left at fol­low­ing the rapid rhythms of speech, accord­ing to researchers at the UCLA David Gef­fen School of Med­i­cine. If, on the other hand, you’re try­ing to iden­tify that song play­ing softly in the ele­va­tor, turn your left ear toward the sound. The left ear is bet­ter at pick­ing up music tones.

3. Over­come your most pri­mal urge!

Need to pee? No bath­room nearby? Fan­ta­size about Jes­sica Simp­son. Think­ing about sex pre­oc­cu­pies your brain, so you won’t feel as much dis­com­fort, says Larry Lip­shultz, M.D., chief of male repro­duc­tive med­i­cine at the Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine. For best results, try Simpson’s “These Boots Are Made for Walk­ing” video.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Tips For the Body’

Sum­mer Night’s Dream by Hello Doo­dle!

Good ques­tion…

There’s a short arti­cle from this month’s Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can avail­able online where sleep spe­cial­ist Pro­fes­sor Ernest Hart­mann attempts to answer the ques­tion “Why do we dream?”.

There­fore I will try to explain a cur­rent view of dream­ing and its pos­si­ble func­tions, devel­oped by myself and many col­lab­o­ra­tors, which we call the Con­tem­po­rary The­ory of Dream­ing. The basic idea is as fol­lows: acti­va­tion pat­terns are shift­ing and con­nec­tions are being made and unmade con­stantly in our brains, form­ing the phys­i­cal basis for our minds. There is a whole con­tin­uum in the mak­ing of con­nec­tions that we sub­se­quently expe­ri­ence as men­tal func­tion­ing. At one end of the con­tin­uum is focused wak­ing activ­ity, such as when we are doing an arith­metic prob­lem or chas­ing down a fly ball in the out­field. Here our men­tal func­tion­ing is focused, lin­ear and well-bounded. When we move from focused wak­ing to looser wak­ing thought – reverie, day­dream­ing and finally dream­ing – men­tal activ­ity becomes less focused, looser, more global and more imag­is­tic. Dream­ing is the far end of this con­tin­uum: the state in which we make con­nec­tions most loosely.

Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can: Why do we dream? via Mind Hacks: Why do we dream?