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Outreach Event: Explore Your Universe!
What was the first science experiment you ever conducted? When did you first think about thinking? Were you in awe the first time you saw an illusion? Well, this past Sunday, Psychology in Action participated in UCLA’s annual Explore Your Universe Event – a scientific expo for the community to come and learn about the brain,…
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The Defiant Optimism of Understanding
‘Human life is beyond comprehension.’ There are literally hundreds of these seemingly benign, brain-teasing quotes I could have picked. Hundreds of pithy-sounding wisdoms taking stabs at poorly unpacked concepts that are given transcendent reverence because they claim to reveal ethereal nature. Quotes on how the sublime, consciousness, justice, mystery of life are actually beyond our…
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Obscurantism: Lame explanations to the lame questions
“Indeed, the quantum theory implies that consciousness must exist, and that the content of the mind is the ultimate reality.” Your intuition can fail you on what is genius and what is asinine. Good thinking strives, almost as its prime directive, to clarify. It doesn’t mean a discussion you have with someone else on a…
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Memory in the Mountains: How Cognitive Psychology Can Improve Rock Climbing
“You can never climb the same mountain twice, not even in memory. Memory rebuilds the mountain, changes the weather, retells the jokes, remakes all the moves.” – Lito Tejada-Flores, Extreme Skiier, Climber and Author As Lito Tejada-Flores alludes, rock climbing and mountaineering depend as much on human memory as the physical environment in which…
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Awe: Why It’s Important, and How to Feel It
Jason Silva – Shots of Awe Have you ever gazed up at the starry sky and felt amazed by its vastness? Or have you looked over the abyss of the Grand Canyon and found your breath catch in your throat? If so, you probably felt awe, a “feeling of wonder and astonishment experienced in the presence of…
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What is color (in vision)?
Roses are red, Violets are blue, And you probably think That the sky is blue too. Color, however, exists only in the mind: Color is our experience that maps onto the physical luminance properties of visible light and visible-light reflectance properties of objects. Psychologists call this color perception, to recognize that color is more a property…
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Outreach Event: Brain Awareness Week!
Psychology in Action’s Outreach Program got brainy Friday, March 7th… that is, participated in an early Brain Awareness Week event! Thanks to a connection by member Irene Tung, outreach coordinators Nicco Reggente and Jenna Cummings arranged for graduate students to teach kids at Project Literacy about the brain: what it weighs, how it works, how…