This Is Your Brain Under Hypnosis

The NY Times has a piece on hypnosis, looking at a little of the history, uses, some stats from the general population, and some new research that studies the patterns of the brain as it undergoes through the Stroop Effect.

Some especially interesting thoughts on the interplay between "bottom-up", sensorial-led reporting of the world vs "top-down" almost-consciousness-led interpretation. A reliance on a dual-part system makes sense to me, between the observed and the observer. Hypnosis (along with other mentral control mechanisms) may be a way to place more weight on one than the other.

Brain blocks out Ad Overloads

This weekend's Guardian has an article on ad blindness, using a newly-developed pair of spectacles to monitor what ads the wearer looks at, for how long. A round of questions then links that up to what brands and products you actually remember, and surprisingly (or perhaps not) they find that 99% of adverts have no effect.

Note that this is probably quite contextual - when bombarded with 130 adverts in 45 minutes, the brain is probably quite effective at filtering the whole lot out. If you saw 2 or 3 in the same amount of time, they might stand out more. Still, the point is that an entire landscape of massvertisement really doesn't help much. What good, then, does all that billboard budget do?

Dotty

Neat optical illusion... Inverting your colour-o-vision

(via Blahsploitation)