Following the weekly guest lectures in the course Information, Communication, Cognition, students are confronted: our free will does not exist, our behavior can be predicted, prejudice is inevitable and our brains function like computers. The extent to which these are true can be a subject of argument, but certainly these bold statements have changed the way we think about perceiving the world.

Doing research and writing this blog nearly killed me. Consciously thinking of the fact that we have to breath often makes us stop breathing, which is astonishing. Several times I´ve experienced this feeling of having to force myself to breathe because the automatic process had stopped. I never really understood why the automatic process of breathing had stopped when I thought of it. So I´ll be using this weblog to elaborate on the process of breathing and possibly find an answer to this mystery.

Wisdom

My aunt Wendela, who has the cranial capacity of a nut – and I am not referring to pecans or macadamias here, it is more like a pine nut – and I were watching ‘As the World Turns’ when she made a remark that I will never forget. “Anne,” she said, whilst holding up a cigarettein between herpudgy fingers, “lemme tell you this: some people just oughta shut their trap when nobody’s askin’ for their opinion. Smarties belong in the candy jar, somewhere hidden far away.”

Why do we dislike being tickled, but laugh anyway? Why does the tickle monster ignore our heart filled pleas to stop? Here’s a cognitive-evolutionary explanation on the tickling paradox.

It is a widely established idea that your environment effects your faith. It makes sense-if you are brought up in a religious environment, have certain political beliefs that correspond, are in unfortunate circumstances which leave you with the need to believe in something more-and so on, religion is an obvious answer.

I have always been stuck between two worlds. One side of me belongs to science, a world where everything has measurable values and nothing can be concluded without proof. The other side of me belongs to art, a world where the exact opposite is true, where anything goes, and nothing needs to be measured, concluded or proven. Artistic creation (and as an extension creativity) is an integral part of me, and it has always fascinated me on many levels. I would like to explore creativity and artistic creation from the perspective of information, communication and cognition, as they are complex interplays of all three fields.

  If you’ve ever had your heart broken, you probably remember that it really hurt. In fact brain-imaging research has shown that it is the same parts of the brain that respond to social rejection and physical pain.

Bullets are trying to get me out of cover. Explosions penetrate my field of vision, blood covers the floor and somebody yells instructions over the intercom. Welcome to the modern world of gaming. Gone are the days of endless sessions of Tetris and hours of Link discovering the pixel-loaded world of Hyrule. High definition graphics brought around a wave of realism, which flesh out the colorful world of gaming. More and more do gaming worlds mimic and imitate or even match environments found in reality. Virtual environments are not only a necessary narrative device for games; they also challenge the brains of players in interesting ways.

How many times have you heard people wish for, in the words of Kid Cudi, a ‘Sountrack 2 My Life’? In film, music is used to highlight the most emotive moments, and it sometimes feels like this would be appropriate in our own lives as well. But do we have already have a soundtrack that we do not appreciate?