We also observed one case in which we believe cross activation enables a colorblind synesthete to see numbers tinged with hues he otherwise cannot perceive; charmingly, he refers to these as “Martian colors.� Although his retinal color receptors cannot process certain wavelengths, we suggest that his brain color area is working just fine and being cross-activated when he sees numbers…

Martian colors! That rules.

Is it wrong to be jealous of an “abnormality”?

—

Track o’ the Post: Bright As Yellow from Glow by The Innocence Mission, because I’m a little girl sometimes.

Unlike these traditional cleaners, antibacterial products leave surface residues, creating conditions that may foster the development of resistant bacteria, Levy notes. For example, after spraying and wiping an antibacterial cleaner over a kitchen counter, active chemicals linger behind and continue to kill bacteria, but not necessarily all of them.

I friggin’ told you so!

(via Garret)

Now Garret points me to this article which actually shows us that I was ill-informed:

When glass is made, the material (often containing silica) is quickly cooled from its liquid state but does not solidify when its temperature drops below its melting point. At this stage, the material is a supercooled liquid, an intermediate state between liquid and glass. To become an amorphous solid, the material is cooled further, below the glass-transition temperature. Past this point, the molecular movement of the material’s atoms has slowed to nearly a stop and the material is now a glass. This new structure is not as organized as a crystal, because it did not freeze, but it is more organized than a liquid. For practical purposes, such as holding a drink, glass is like a solid, Ediger says, although a disorganized one.

Good enough. Lesson learned and all that.

“Amorphous solid” it is.

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. But what if $250,000 is at stake? “More often correct” does not seem certain enough to serve as a basis for a decision. How can you evaluate the true likelihood of a hunch being accurate?

This is a great read. Especially when you get sentences like this:

My neurohormones whipped from black misery to shining ebullience, saturating my brain in a boiling cauldron of epinephrine and endorphins.

Dork.

My theory was that the part of my brain responsible for normal speech was still intact, but for some reason had become disconnected from the neural pathways to my vocal cords. (That’s consistent with any expert’s best guess of what’s happening with Spasmodic Dysphonia. It’s somewhat mysterious.) And so I reasoned that there was some way to remap that connection. All I needed to do was find the type of speaking or context most similar – but still different enough – from normal speech that still worked. Once I could speak in that slightly different context, I would continue to close the gap between the different-context speech and normal speech until my neural pathways remapped. Well, that was my theory. But I’m no brain surgeon.

The secret (for him) was rhyming!

Monkeys “imitate with a purpose�, matching their behaviour to others’ as a form of social learning, researchers report.

Such mimicry has previously been seen only in great apes – including humans and chimps – but now Italian researchers have recorded wonderful footage of the phenomenon in newborn rhesus macaques.

Oh sure, they “imitate with a purpose” alright: To take us down a notch and move on up the evolutionary scale, I’d say!

Stupid learning monkeys…

Now some immunology experts are beginning to agree that germs that many parents bleach and disinfect out of existence might help children.

“Hygiene hypothesis” holds that when babies are exposed to germs, it helps them fight allergies and asthma later.

I easily start to sound like an X-Files wackjob conspiracy theorist when I start talking about anti-bacterial foo-faw. I compare it to ArmorAll — the more you use it, the more you need it.

Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker, right?

That level of recall suggests another hypothesis. Some people are able to recall past events by categorizing them. Certain events, or facts, are associated with others, and filed away together so that they may be easier to access. That’s a trick that is often used by entertainers who use feats of memory to wow their audience.

AJ does have “some sort of compulsive tendencies. She wants order in her life,” McGaugh says. “As a child, she would get upset if her mother changed anything in her room because she had a place for everything and wanted everything in its place.

“So she does categorize events by the date, but that doesn’t explain why she remembers it.”

Fascinating… She remembers when tax inititatives were passed in her childhood, for crying out loud!

Surprisingly, nobody is really sure why ice is so dang slick.