ODDITIES E CURIOSITA'

Qui ci infilo un po' tutto quello che sembra interessante, ma poi bisognerà trovargli una collocazione migliore.

How scents evoke memories:
Although certain pieces of music and some visual experiences can evoke memories, smell is by far the strongest in evoking memories from the past.

Fonte: http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/11/10/how-scents-evoke-memories/9449.html

Secondhand music: the chance harmonies of everyday sounds may mean more than we think.
Because sounds in the minor key can make us sad and ones in the major key can make us happy, prolonged ambient noise in our surroundings (A/C motor, fridge running, dial-tones, beeps, etc.) can actually affect our moods.

Fonte: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97apr/toby.htm

Sleepless man:
During WWI, a hungarian soldier named Paul Kern was shot in the frontal lobe, making him unable to fall asleep. He lived for years afterwards, and no one know how.

Fonte: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19380925&id=MoxAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Iw4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=5764,4446554

Different genes, same effect:
Blond hair is exceptionally rare outside Europe, but evolved independently in Melanesia[7]where Melanesians of some islands are one of the few non-European peoples, and the only dark-skinned group, to have blond hair. This has been traced to an allele of TYRP1 unique to these people, and is not the same gene that causes blond hair in Europe.



Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesian

Minor's syndrome (Superior canal dehiscence):
There is a disease that affects the inner ear and amplifies all internal sound. It get to the point where the sound of the eyeballs moving in their sockets sounds like “sandpaper on wood”. It's called the Superior canal dehiscence syndrome.

Causes: According to current research, in approximately 2.5% of the general population the bones of the head develop to only 60-70% of their normal thickness in the months following birth. This genetic predisposition may explain why the section of temporal bone separating the superior semicircular canal from the cranial cavity, normally 0.8 mm thick, shows a thickness of only 0.5 mm, making it more fragile and susceptible to damage through physical head trauma or from slow erosion. An explanation for this erosion of the bone has not yet been found.

Eponym: Occasionally this disorder has been referred to as Minor's syndrome, after its discoverer, Dr. Lloyd B. Minor. However, it is important that this disease is not confused with the paralysis and anaesthesia following a spinal injury, also known as Minor's syndrome after the Russian neurologist, Lazar Salomowitch Minor (1855–1942). In the latter case this term is now nearly obsolete.

Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_canal_dehiscence

Five Strange sightings in the Peruvian Amazon (APPROFONDIRE):
Deep in the Peruvian Amazon lurk strange creatures and unique animals and sights, including spiders that make large spider-shaped decoys in their webs, unusually hairy caterpillars and atmospheric specters called solar halos.

These amazing finds were spotted by Jeff Cremer, marketing director for Rainforest Expeditions, an ecotourism company that hosts guests in the Peruvian Amazon and organizes trips to the jungle, as well as Phil Torres, a collaborating biologist.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Fonte: http://www.livescience.com/28144-strange-peruvian-amazon-sightings.html

Study: to the human brain, Me is We.

 * David DiSalvo, Contributor: I write about science, technology and the cultural ripples of both.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">A new study from University of Virginia researchers supports a finding that’s been gaining science-fueled momentum in recent years: the human brain is wired to connect with others so strongly that it experiences what they experience as if it’s happening to us.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">This would seem the neural basis for empathy—the ability to feel what others feel—but it goes even deeper than that. Results from the latest study suggest that our brains don’t differentiate between what happens to someone emotionally close to us and ourselves, and also that we seem neurally incapable of generating anything close to that level of empathy for strangers.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">To find this out, researchers had to get a bit medieval. They had participants undergo fMRI brain scans while threatening to give them electrical shocks, or to give shocks to a stranger or a friend. Results showed that regions of the brain responsible for threat response – the anterior insula, putamen and supramarginal gyrus – became active under threat of shock to the self; that much was expected. When researchers threatened to shock a stranger, those same brain regions showed virtually no activity. But when they threatened to shock a friend, the brain regions showed activity nearly identical to that displayed when the participant was threatened.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">“The correlation between self and friend was remarkably similar,” said James Coan, a psychology professor in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences who co-authored the study. “The finding shows the brain’s remarkable capacity to model self to others; that people close to us become a part of ourselves, and that is not just metaphor or poetry, it’s very real. Literally we are under threat when a friend is under threat. But not so when a stranger is under threat.”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">The findings back up an assertion made by the progenitor and popularizer of “Interpersonal Neurobiology,” Dr. Daniel Siegel, who has convincingly argued that our minds are partly defined by their intersections with other minds. Said another way, we are wired to “sync” with others, and the more we sync (the more psycho-emotionally we connect), the less our brains acknowledge self-other distinctions.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">Research in this category also dovetails nicely with that conducted by evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, whose work has shown that we seem to have evolved to cognitively connect in relatively small groups of roughly 150 or less people (often referred to as “Dunbar’s Number”). Beyond that number, our brains strain to sync with others. From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes a lot of sense because chances of survival for ourselves and the group are amplified if we can devote the greatest level of cognitive resources to the task.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">“A threat to ourselves is a threat to our resources,” said Coan. “Threats can take things away from us. But when we develop friendships, people we can trust and rely on who in essence become we, then our resources are expanded, we gain. Your goal becomes my goal. It’s a part of our survivability.”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">The study appears in the August issue of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Fonte: http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/08/22/study-to-the-human-brain-me-is-we/

The "strange face in the mirror" illusion (sightings of Bloody Mary and Caputo effect):
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">To trigger the illusion you need to stare at your own reflection in a dimly lit room. The author, Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo, describes his set up which seems to reliably trigger the illusion: you need a room lit only by a dim lamp (he suggests a 25W bulb) that is placed behind the sitter, while the participant stares into a large mirror placed about 40 cm in front.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">The participant just has to gaze at his or her reflected face within the mirror and usually “after less than a minute, the observer began to perceive the strange-face illusion”.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">Caputo suggests that the dramatic effects might be caused by a combination of basic visual distortions affecting the face-specific interpretation system.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">The visual system starts to adapt after we receive the same information over time (this is why you can experience visual changes by staring at anything for a long time) but we also have a system that interprets faces very easily.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">This is why we can ‘see’ faces in clouds, trees, or even from just two dots and a line. The brain is always ‘looking for faces’ and it is likely that we have a specialised face detection system to allow us to recognise individuals whose faces actually only differ a small amount in statistical terms from other people’s.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">According to Caputo’s suggestion, the illusion might be caused by low level fluctuations in the stability of edges, shading and outlines affecting the perceived definition of the face, which gets over-interpreted as ‘someone else’ by the face recognition system.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">More mysterious, however, were the participants’ emotional reactions to the changes:

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">The participants reported that apparition of new faces in the mirror caused sensations of otherness when the new face appeared to be that of another, unknown person or strange `other’ looking at him/her from within or beyond the mirror. All fifty participants experienced some form of this dissociative identity effect, at least for some apparition of strange faces and often reported strong emotional responses in these instances. For example, some observers felt that the `other’ watched them with an enigmatic expression – situation that they found astonishing. Some participants saw a malign expression on the ‘other’ face and became anxious. Other participants felt that the `other’ was smiling or cheerful, and experienced positive emotions in response. The apparition of deceased parents or of archetypal portraits produced feelings of silent query. Apparition of monstrous beings produced fear or disturbance. Dynamic deformations of new faces (like pulsations or shrinking, smiling or grinding) produced an overall sense of inquietude for things out of control.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">Fonte: http://mindhacks.com/2010/09/18/the-strange-face-in-the-mirror-illusion/

Progetto Giochi di Ruolo:
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Il Progetto giochi di ruolo si propone di riordinare, migliorare e rendere meglio fruibili le voci riguardanti giochi di ruolo di tutti i tipi, che essi siano carta e matita, dal vivo o videogiochi di ruolo.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Fonte: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:Giochi_di_ruolo

Television Tropes [Wikia]:

 * What is this about? This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.


 * Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite." In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.


 * PS: è una fonte notevolissima di materiale, probabilmente utile per la creazione dei personaggi e delle situazioni. Andrà analizzata con maggiore attenzione.

Fonte: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/

Futuristic Pyramid:

 * Some sci-fi writers like to stick modern or futuristic-looking pyramids into their works to combine old and new in a distinctive yet recognisable manner.


 * PS: mi era stato detto che interessava il pantheon egizio, e tutto ciò che vi è associato.

Fonte: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FuturisticPyramid

Sinister Geometry:
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">Humans do not build perfect spherical vehicles or any other large mathematically perfect geometrically shaped device. Such devices seem more than foreign: they seem not of this world.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 24px;">The lack of visual cues is another source of fear. A giant cube in space does not look like a spaceship; it could be anything. It could be a massive bomb, or a toy, or a probe. Consider the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey: it is the ultimate unknown.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Fonte: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SinisterGeometry