The Brain
I watched a series called "The Brain with David Eagleman" on PBS recently. Lots of it was literally over my head but some of it I could grasp. There's a whole playlist of clips on YouTube, but there are two clips in particular that stood out for me.
One is an excellent explanation of time distortion, in which it seems like time slowed down in life-threatening situations, when in reality it was a portion of your brain hijacking other parts of the brain to quickly process what was happening. They explain it in the clip, but the short version is that after such an event, it's like your brain recorded every detail in ultra high definition and at higher speed, so when when you review it mentally later, it seems much slower and more detailed. I will warn that the example shown if from a guy who was wearing a wingsuit and flying off a cliff and smacking into part of said cliff before crashing to the ground. It's painful to watch.
This one on "mirroring others" is about how we read facial expressions to judge other people's mood. They put sensors on the test subjects faces, then show them a series of pictures, and note that their own facial muscles move slightly, as if they have to mirror what they're seeing in order to understand it. Small warning of needle squick.
Then he shows off a vial of the most lethal neurotoxin on the planet (I know the answer!), and then says it seems unlikely that anyone would pay to have this injected into themselves, but they do. He then says if it's injected in the forehead muscles, it will freeze them and reduce wrinkles. He never once mentions the medical uses of Botox, of which migraine treatment is one. I get injections on my forehead, but it's in a different pattern than someone dealing with wrinkles, plus shots above both ears, at the base of my skull, and a few other choice points.
His experiment shows that people with faces frozen by Botox have a difficult time understanding facial expressions because they can't move the muscles needed to mirror what they're seeing. I've never noticed having any issues with that, because my visual system works just fine at figuring out expressions, but perhaps it's so sublte a side-effect I wouldn't notice. But it really bothered me that he's supposedly a specialist on the brain and neglects to mention that people use Botox to stop their brain from malfunctioning and creating a migraine. There's no pain receptors in the brain, so it's not hurting, but something's happening to trick the brain into thinking that's where the pain is, and for bonus points, they have no idea why Botox stops this reaction. They just happened to figure it out from people using Botox to reduce wrinkles who also suffered migraines and suddenly had a drop in the number of migraines.
A startling number of medications are in the "We don't know what it's doing, but the results are generally..." category. I'm on more than one.
One is an excellent explanation of time distortion, in which it seems like time slowed down in life-threatening situations, when in reality it was a portion of your brain hijacking other parts of the brain to quickly process what was happening. They explain it in the clip, but the short version is that after such an event, it's like your brain recorded every detail in ultra high definition and at higher speed, so when when you review it mentally later, it seems much slower and more detailed. I will warn that the example shown if from a guy who was wearing a wingsuit and flying off a cliff and smacking into part of said cliff before crashing to the ground. It's painful to watch.
This one on "mirroring others" is about how we read facial expressions to judge other people's mood. They put sensors on the test subjects faces, then show them a series of pictures, and note that their own facial muscles move slightly, as if they have to mirror what they're seeing in order to understand it. Small warning of needle squick.
Then he shows off a vial of the most lethal neurotoxin on the planet (I know the answer!), and then says it seems unlikely that anyone would pay to have this injected into themselves, but they do. He then says if it's injected in the forehead muscles, it will freeze them and reduce wrinkles. He never once mentions the medical uses of Botox, of which migraine treatment is one. I get injections on my forehead, but it's in a different pattern than someone dealing with wrinkles, plus shots above both ears, at the base of my skull, and a few other choice points.
His experiment shows that people with faces frozen by Botox have a difficult time understanding facial expressions because they can't move the muscles needed to mirror what they're seeing. I've never noticed having any issues with that, because my visual system works just fine at figuring out expressions, but perhaps it's so sublte a side-effect I wouldn't notice. But it really bothered me that he's supposedly a specialist on the brain and neglects to mention that people use Botox to stop their brain from malfunctioning and creating a migraine. There's no pain receptors in the brain, so it's not hurting, but something's happening to trick the brain into thinking that's where the pain is, and for bonus points, they have no idea why Botox stops this reaction. They just happened to figure it out from people using Botox to reduce wrinkles who also suffered migraines and suddenly had a drop in the number of migraines.
A startling number of medications are in the "We don't know what it's doing, but the results are generally..." category. I'm on more than one.