103
If Homer talks about the dark-wine sea, it seems he also talks about the "blue eyebrows of Poseidon". You can read here about Homer's colorful descriptions that helped orators remember the verses of his poems.
κυανό is known to be "blue" for ancient greeks and became "cyan" in english.
In this book about Homer writing, κυανό entry represents "smalt, blue ...
90
The first claim is based on the research of Berlin and Kay "Basic Color Terms", which posits the hypothesis that languages evolve colour terms in the following order, and therefore that ancient languages did not possess separate terms for blue and green:
Stage I: Dark-cool and light-warm
Stage II: Red
Stage III: Either green or yellow
Stage IV: Both green ...
67
It's somewhat simplistic view that dopamine is directly proportional with pleasure. This was a mainstream hypothesis in the 1980s, but has fallen out of favor:
The idea that dopamine was a mechanism for pleasure is known as the ‘dopamine hedonia’ or ‘dopamine pleasure’ hypothesis, and was originally proposed by Roy Wise: “dopamine junctions represent a ...
64
A 2011 literature review looked at the problem as it related to one particular condition: Difficulties in diagnosing pulmonary embolism in the obese patient:
A literature review.
They conclude that there is a problem - not only are many CT scanners unable to handle morbidly obese patients (although this is improving), there are no guidelines for when this ...
32
Ancient Hebrew has the word תכלת for blue (or more specifically, azure), as attested to in the Bible:
Numbers 15:38:
Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them that they shall make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments, throughout their generations, and they shall affix a thread of sky blue [wool] on the fringe of each ...
20
The sentence is technically true, albeit drawing any conclusion about animal feelings from it would be very questionable.
Our neurons secrete several substances, such as neurotransmitters, neuromodulators and neurohormones in many different situations. The same molecules are used by a dog's neurons, or by those of a fruit fly or an earthworm for that ...
20
Birth order does not influence IQ but social rank in the family does.
Birth order is not associated with intelligence in between-family data once the number of siblings is statistically controlled. The analyses support the admixture hypothesis, which avers that the apparent birth-order effect on intelligence is an artifact of family size, and cast doubt on ...
20
Short answer: Most certainly no, but as so often, it's impossible to prove a negative.
The Cultural Meaning of the Brain
There are many descriptions of how the brain was discarded during mummification, while other organs like the heart, lungs, liver and intestines where carefully embalmed and kept in special vessels. However, mummification processes changed ...
15
This addresses the second claim.
There are 4 types of photoreceptive neurons in your eye. One is the rod, which is sensitive to green but creates a black/white percept (for "scotopic" or night-adjusted vision) and the other 3 are cones with various types of rhodopsin, a receptor that is sensitive to photons.
In a normal, unmutated (non-colorblind) person, ...
14
It's reported, but not conclusively demonstrated by experiment. Also, in some cases sex is known to cause migraine. I found absolutely no evidence for it being more than a temporary analgesic, let alone a cure.
source
Primary sexual headache
This is a well known ailment which affects about 1% of the population. There are three main kinds:
Early coital ...
13
Short version:
A short-sleep human phenotype has been described in the literature. However, the reported sleep times I found in the scientific literature for those people are around 6h / day vs. 8h for controls, so nowhere near 2 h.
About Tesla: The Wiki page has a paragraph on his sleeping habits where biographies are cited that he claimed to never ...
12
Yes
https://www.centeronaddiction.org/what-addiction/addiction-disease
Addiction is defined as a disease by most medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
Like diabetes, cancer and heart disease, addiction is caused by a combination of behavioral, environmental and biological factors. ...
11
The cause for most Alzheimer's cases is still mostly unknown except for 1% to 5% of cases where genetic differences have been identified.
According to the Alzheimer's Association:
While scientists know Alzheimer's disease involves progressive brain cell failure, the reason cells fail isn't clear.
As for the claims by Dr. Perlmutter's book, there is an ...
11
No one knows what "mind" is, but the brain is a bad candidate for hosting quantum superpositions, much less sharing them with other people.
The most credible proponent of mind having a quantum component is the physicist Roger Penrose who has argued, beginning in his 1989 book The Emperor's New Mind that the human mind displays non-computable behavior and ...
10
Is this image "lying", not showing both types of connections for both genders? The article claims scientific accuracy and to report a scientific paper: does this image represent its conclusions in a fair manner?
Well, it's certainly reporting some of the conclusions correctly. But it's not telling the whole truth.
The article doesn't seem to give the exact ...
10
There is anecdotal evidence to support the notion that some obese patients might have been referred to a zoo. Here is a recent NY Times article that explores the standard of care obese patients are receiving. From the article:
When an obese patient cannot fit in a scanner, doctors may just give up. Some use X-rays to scan, hoping for the best. Others ...
8
Concerning the second claim, the differences seem to be cultural/linguistic, not genetic according to this article from the American Psychological Association:
The study tracked color naming, comprehension and memory in two populations over three years. Researchers led by Debi Roberson, PhD, of the University of Essex, compared young English children with ...
8
First, I want to stress the fact that there is difference between delaying and preventing. The articles I have read online claim that bilingualism may delay Alzheimer's progression.
Those claims are actually true, since there is some evidence online suggesting that bilingualism may (and not will) slow Alzheimer's Progression.
There is an academic article ...
8
This question is hard to answer because it includes the wrong assumption that dietary calorie restriction damages the brain. This assumption forms the basis for the assertion that "lack of breakfast" is "brain damaging".
So I would answer it in two steps.
Step 1. Is dietary calorie restriction detrimental?
Much to the contrary, there is ...
8
The problem is that even specialists in this field of sleep medicine use terms like "awake" or "arousal" with different meanings.
In the sentence emphasized in the question "awake" almost certainly does not mean in the classical sense of Rechtschaffen and Kales (1968), who define awake as being cortically aroused for more than 15 seconds.
Given the context ...
8
Yes, though the improvement is not direct, not large, and not just from classical music.
Listening to any emotionally positive music has been shown to improve a subject's mood, which in turn has been shown to improve cognitive abilities. Furthermore, although positive effects on certain tasks have been observed, the effects appear to be quite small overall....
7
Jason Padgett acquired a new and unique skill/ability of drawing mathematical fractals after getting hit on the head which is known as a phenomenon called acquired savant syndrome.
Savant syndrome is a rare but remarkable condition in which persons with developmental disabilities, brain injury, or brain disease have some spectacular skill or ability that ...
7
A version of this claim is present on Wikipedia:
Experiments have shown rats will forgo food to the point of starvation
in order to work for brain stimulation or intravenous cocaine when
both food and stimulation are offered concurrently for a limited time
each day.
Notice "Experiments" plural. The sources apparently are:
Routtenberg & Lindy (...
6
** EDITED to reflect edits to the question and discussion in comments. **
Everything in the article seems credible, and doesn't seem to contradict other sources. It does seem guilty of sensationalising the subject because there doesn't seem to be any unique link here - you can could equally draw similarities with love, food, sex, sports or many other things.
...
6
I found the following words in the Latin dictionary at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
caesĭtĭus (-cĭus ), a, um, adj. id., I. [select] bluish, dark blue:
“linteolum,” Plaut. Ep 2, 2, 46; cf. Doed. Syn. III. p. 17.
cūmātĭlis (cȳm- ), e, adj. from κῦμα, with the Lat. ending ilis. I.
Adj., of the waves: “deus,” i. e. Neptune, Commod. 10, 1.— B. Esp.,
...
6
In short, no, the device is a complete hoax, and it was awarded the "Huuhaa" ("Humbug") prize as the worst sham of 2012 by the Skeptic Society of Finland.
The first controlled clinical trial of the device in 2011 showed that a placebo works better:
When a second test also failed, the company blatantly falsified the results and was caught red-handed doing ...
6
Oral Contraceptives actually increases gray matter.
According to 50 years of hormonal contraception—time to find out, what it does to our brain (Belinda A. Pletzer and Hubert H. Kerschbaum), areas of the brain displayed larger volumes of gray matter1.
1Effects of hormonal contraceptives on brain structure
Recent results demonstrated that regional gray ...
6
Current evidence:
Non-dominant hand training activates the dormant motor control areas in the brain.
The path from brain to dominant hand is well-traveled, she explains. But when a person starts using the non-dominant hand more than usual, the brain has to start activating areas that have remained comparatively dormant. Like an atrophied muscle, the ...
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