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Researchers Identify Phantom Limb Brain Activity
mmmscience writes "Researchers in Switzerland think they had identified the regions of the brain responsible for creating phantom limbs and the senses that go along with them. Scientists studied a stroke victim who claimed that the phantom limb of her now-paralyzed left arm could do a number of things a normal limb could do, including 'scratch an itch on her head, with an actual sense of relief.'"
You clearly know how hyperlinking works, so what are you complaining about? Or is the slashdot summary supposed to contain all information that might be interesting to anyone? TFA is pretty heavily linked to the sources... anyone who cares will find the study authors.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There is no scientific evidence that supports parapsychology. All those links are nothing but pseudoscience and consist of books written by crackpots and cranks who understand nothing about the scientific method.
If I disagree with you it's because you are wrong.
I have to wonder, if there is a large body of science behind paranormal events, why don't the scientists cash in on the Randi Million Dollar challenge (or any of the several dozen smaller ones that are out there, if Randis requirements are too hard)? I can't believe that research grants in the field of paranormal studies are so easily available that the researchers just can't be bothered...
Phantom limb usually happens in people that suddenly lose a limb. Like they wake up in the hospital after a particularly vicious night of drinking and are missing their arm or leg. Or they get their arm blown off in whichever war is currently being called 'the war'
It mostly stems from the brain's need to be able to tell the exact position of limbs in relation to the rest of the body.
The penis, usually being several inches long, is not at the top of the brain's priority when it comes to this. As a male, I can safely say that I have no idea what direction my penis is currently facing, and would have no idea what direction it were facing even when erect unless I had some kind of environmental clues, or if I didn't know which way it faced naturally.
The brain doesn't particularly care about the exact location of the penis relative to the rest of the body. Although us males do tend to spend quite a lot of time wishing about the places it could be!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I have to wonder, if there is a large body of science behind paranormal events, why don't the scientists cash in on the Randi Million Dollar challenge (or any of the several dozen smaller ones that are out there, if Randis requirements are too hard)?
Too hard? It's got nothing to do with 'hard'. It has to do with Randi being a dick who will do anything in his power to not know what he doesn't want to know. The man has the thundering ego of a. . , well, a stage magician whose reputation and sense of self-worth are pinned directly to his being Right. Quite simply, he is not capable of being wrong, and therefore he will not be, regardless of what reality has to say about it. Read through some of the case studies of his 'challenge'. The man is loud, rude and biased, about as unscientific as any religious pundit. If you've ever dealt with somebody like that personally, and you probably have, then you'd know that such a 'challenge' is not real, but rather is presented entirely to give the impression of reasonableness, thus giving one the illusory basis for righteous denial of anything which offends and frightens them. It functions, I suspect, from the same part of the brain as extends the Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly form of 'journalistic integrity'.
Any challenger or prize-offerer is going to hold a similar profile. If they truly wanted to Know, then they would. It's not that difficult to go and find and experience this stuff. --Thus, the larger part of the issue is that such 'challenges' make the presumption that truth is owed to the rest of the world. It is not. It is available, but very few actually want Truth. To shove a truth down somebody's throat when they do not want it, is a violation of Free Will.
In short, if you want to know, go look; nobody is going to go to the trouble of providing anything for you if you can't be bothered to invest the energy to put in the requisite work through exploring. If you don't want to know, then carry on as you are. It's really that simple. --The only real difficulty is that those who do not want to know also feel the need to diminish and prevent those who DO want to know. If you don't want something to be there, then you have to deal somehow with those who are not satisfied to consume the same lies you are satisfied with.
Thus, we get nonsense like the false, 'Randi Challenge'. Pre-fab ammunition available for easy launch from the coward's armchair. Of course, it only works if you don't consider it too deeply, but that's easy for those hiding from truth. Self-deception is a skill improved over time.
-FL
I'm not entirely sure what you are rambling on about, but, the guy and his rules seem pretty simple to me: Come in and prove you can do whatever it is you claim you can do, under our conditions, those conditions also being fairly straight forward. No cheating.
So, aside from your word, which is nothing short of one big "Citation Needed", I'm going to see "1 (one) million dollars, verified in a bank account, just waiting to be had", along with a sensible set of rules that should be absolutely no problem at all for anyone having a talent of this kind, and conclude that you are either scorned because you failed it, or just incapable of understanding others might be a tad cynical of those who come with extraordinary claims.
I'll be able to do that when you can prove that you, 'Dream'.
Well done, you've shown that there exist some things that are unfalsifiable.
Yes, if we lived in a world where only some people dreamed, it would be hard to verify that. We could however read their brain patterns, note their eye movements, see how it matches up with their experiences. We can conduct experiments such as playing sounds when they sleep and seeing if they can recall them in their dreams. It's called evidence - just as we infer that some animals likely dream, even though we can't ask them.
Of course, you'll quibble we can't know 100% what their experiences of dreaming are like. Well, so what - it's unfalsifiable anyway. The problem is that claims of the paranormal often aren't unfalsifiable. You claim that people can read people's minds, that they can see the future, that ghosts do exist. Whether these are true or not are testable, in a way that what people experience dreams (a similar example would be "Prove that you see red the same as I do"). Yet despite this, they never pass such tests - and moreover, those who claim to have such powers do all they can to weasel out of being tested.
If we had a "dream test" that could test people were dreaming, I would expect people who claimed dreams exist to show it with that test. We do have tests for various paranormal claims - so why not undergo them? If you want to believe that dreams don't exist, if that makes you happy, that's up to you, but the lack of a dream test is not an excuse not to undergo the tests that do exist.
This is just a variation of the tired "But you can't prove love exists!" response from theists to atheists. Well, how about you prove that you're not an antelope? If you can't, it's okay for me to claim that you are?
The answer doesn't come from demanding the world dance for you, but by getting out there and exploring beyond the walls of official culture.
I don't expect anyone to dance. But if someone makes outlandish claims such as "I've got three heads", when I offer to test that, and they refuse, it's reasonable for me to be suspicious. People who dream have been happy to subject themselves to scientific testing, so your attack against them is unfounded.