{"id":3058,"date":"2011-09-26T22:09:17","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T02:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3058"},"modified":"2011-09-28T16:35:28","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T20:35:28","slug":"hardwired-brain-fractals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3058","title":{"rendered":"Hardwired Brain Fractals"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Laugh\n<\/p>\n

Who knew this was a documentary? <\/em><\/p>\n

[Image seen here<\/a>.] <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n It’s been a rather heavy week in science.<\/p>\n

An international scientific team in Italy claims<\/a> to have recorded sub-atomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light. And just when you were finally getting comfortable with the fabric of the universe<\/a>. Rip up that old model<\/a> — because, according to Reuters<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.<\/p>\n

That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Uh-oh. Somebody better call the Mending Apparatus from E. M. Forster’s The Machine Stops<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n

\"Einstein's <\/p>\n

But hyper-accelerated quantum shape-shifting particles exceeding the cosmic speed limit was (unbelievably) not the weirdest and most jaw-dropping geek achievement this week.<\/p>\n

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), scientists at Berkeley have successfully decoded the brain signals of three individuals and transformed those signals into watchable movies. Wearing those 3-D glasses<\/a> is now more than just retro. You obviously need the latest flat screen feature: Telepathy<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Move  <\/p>\n

The left clip is a segment of a Hollywood movie trailed that the subject viewed while in the magnet. The right clip shows the reconstruction of this segment from brain activity measured using fMRI.<\/em><\/p>\n

To my eyes, some of these internally reconstructed images look muddy but still somehow recursive. Those elephants and birds appear neurally re-mapped into blotchy fractal landscapes<\/a>. I think fractal tracking shots might be physiologically hardwired into our brains: <\/p>\n