viernes, enero 12, 2007

N-acetil-cisteina contra malos efectos del alcohol

Aparentemente la N-acetil-cisteina protegería contra algunos efectos nocivos del alcohol (acetilaldehido?), pero habría que tomarla antes de beber para que realmente protega y no se vuelva pro-oxidante al tomarla durante o después.

Ganan concurso usando la ciencia cognitiva

Who Wants to Be a Cognitive Neuroscientist Millionaire?

A researcher uses his understanding of the human brain to advance on a popular quiz show.

seedmagazine.com

Algunos extractos:

The first technique I drew upon was priming. The priming of a memory occurs because of the peculiar "connectionist" neural dynamics of our cortex, where memories are distributed across many regions and neurons. If we can recall any fragment of a pattern, our brains tend to automatically fill in the rest.

Another cognitive process essential for winning on Millionaire is intuition, or more precisely, knowing how to make decisions based on intuition. What if you have a feeling about an answer? What should you do with your hunch? Folk wisdom holds that on standardized tests you should go with your first impulse. Research tends to support this idea: a first impulse is more often correct than a second, revised decision.

Cognitive models developed by my advisor Gail Carpenter suggest that a more effective way to evaluate an intuition is to consider its mnemonic associations. If you can mentally trace some of the cognitive links of an intuition (through a process similar to priming), these links may suggest whether the intuition is meaningfully connected to the correct answer or whether the link is trivial, incidental, or wrong

One aspect of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? that I completely failed to prepare for was my interaction with Meredith. I never even considered the inevitable repartee between host and contestant. Our department does not put much emphasis on social cognition and social psychology

In some ways, the Meredith fake-out is the most vexing of all the show's anxiety-stirring techniques since it comes at the contestant's moment of greatest vulnerability.

I considered another cognitive capacity explored in my department: theory of mind, the ability to imagine other people's perspectives. I contemplated the show's writers themselves, imagining them sitting at their keyboards composing three fake but credible answers. "Stuffy head" struck me as resembling the kind of manufactured distraction I might come up with.

"D, persistent cough, final answer."


via mixingmemory