Psychologists investigating the well-being of patients with an acquired brain injury (ABI) have documented a curious phenomenon, whereby the more serious a person’s brain injury, the higher their self-reported life-satisfaction.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

When we look at the world around us, we feel that we are seeing it as it is. Most of the time, we are — but not because our visual system perceives the world precisely as it is. Rather, our visual system makes informed guesses about the contents of the world based on the compressed signal projected onto our eyes. And, for most practical purposes, those guesses are pretty good. Moreover, this “guessing” system work so seamlessly that we rarely notice any discrepancy between our guesses and reality. Only when we “break” the system can we reveal these default assumptions.

My 7-minute long talk at TEDxUIUC in February 2011 explains why we have to break the visual system to understand how it works.

{ Daniel Simons | Watch the video }

related { Sean Penn faced skepticism when he arrived last year with no medical expertise and no N.G.O. experience, but he has built one of the most efficient aid outfits in Haiti today. | NY Times | full story }

{ Carrie and Zach }

{ Dan Deacon on NBC morning | Thanks Brad! }

{ MIT Scientist Captures Son’s First 90,000 Hours and First Words on Video, Graphs It }

{ Google Street View goes off road with tricycle to capture more images. }

{ Memory Tapes, Green Knight (CREEP Remix) | mp3 }

{ flash animation | impkerr.com }

{ IHOP commercial, 1969 }

Everyone already knows that romantic love requires sexual attraction, that’s a given. The second component is almost as well known. It’s called attachment, and its part of the show in both romantic and all other kinds of love, including love within families. Attachment is found in other mammal besides us humans: our cats Mischa and Wolfie have become attached to me and my wife, and we are attached to them.

Attachment gives a physical sense of a connection to the beloved. The most obvious cues to attachment are missing the beloved when they are away, and contentment when they return. Loss of that person invokes deep sadness and grief. Another less reliable cue is the sense of having always known a person whom we have just met. This feeling can be intense when it occurs, but it also may be completely absent.

Attachment accounts for an otherwise puzzling aspect of “love”: one can “love” someone that one doesn’t even like. (…)

Finally, there is a third component that is much more complex and subtle than attraction or attachment. It has to do with the lover sharing the thoughts and feelings of the beloved. The lover identifies with the loved person at times, to the point of actually sharing their thoughts their feelings. He or she feels their pain at these times, or joy, or any other feeling, as if it were her or his own. Two people can be attuned, at least at times, to each others’ thoughts and feeling.

It is important to note however, that to qualify as genuine love, the sharing need be balanced between self and other. One shares the others thoughts and feelings as much as one’s own, no more and no less. (…)

The definition of romantic love proposed here involves three components, the three A’s: Attraction, Attachment, and Attunement.

{ New English Review | Continue reading }

bonus:

{ Banksy Directs Opening For The Simpsons }

{ Acrobats strip for Pope Benedict XVI, perform topless in Vatican }

{ Skream, The Epic Last Song, 2010 }

{ The history of the “Amen Break,” a six-second drum sample from 1969 }

{ Funky Forest - After School Club | more | Thanks Glenn }