Latest Brain Talk Posts at VideoSift.com

Cats 'exploit' humans by purring

Tymbrwulf (http://brain.videosift.com/member/Tymbrwulf) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:10:50 -0700

(3 comments - 491 views)
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46053000/jpg/_46053673_cat_bbc_226.jpg

From BBC News:

Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a "soliciting purr" to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.

Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a "cry", with a similar frequency to a human baby's.

The team said cats have "tapped into" a human bias - producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.

Dr Karen McComb, the lead author of the study that was published in the journal Current Biology, said the research was inspired by her own cat, Pepo.

"He would wake me up in the morning with this insistent purr that was really rather annoying," Dr McComb told BBC News.

"After a little bit of investigation, I discovered that there are other cat owners who are similarly bombarded early in the morning."

While meowing might get a cat expelled from the bedroom, Dr McComb said that this pestering purr often convinced beleaguered pet lovers to get up and fill their cat's bowl.

To find out why, her team had to train cat owners to make recordings of their own cats' vocal tactics - recording both their "soliciting purrs" and regular, "non-soliciting" purrs.

"When we played the recordings to human volunteers, even those people with no experience of cats found the soliciting purrs more urgent and less pleasant," said Dr McComb.

How annoying?

She and her team also asked the volunteers to rate the different purrs - giving them a score based on how urgent and pleasant they perceived them to be.

"We could then relate the scores back to the specific purrs," explained Dr McComb. "The key thing (that made the purrs more unpleasant and difficult to ignore) was the relative level of this embedded high-frequency sound."

"When an animal vocalises, the vocal folds (or cords) held across the stream of air snap shut at a particular frequency," explained Dr McComb. The perceived pitch of that sound depends on the size, length and tension of the vocal folds.

"But cats are able to produce a low frequency purr by activating the muscles of their vocal folds - stimulating them to vibrate," explained Dr McComb.

Since each of these sounds is produced by a different mechanism, cats are able to embed a high-pitched cry in an otherwise relaxing purr.

"How urgent and unpleasant the purr is seems to depend on how much energy the cat puts into producing that cry," said Dr McComb.

Previous studies have found similarities between a domestic cat's cry and the cry of a human baby - a sound that humans are highly sensitive to.

Dr McComb said that the cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring. "But we think that (they) learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans."

She added that the trait seemed to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners.

"Obviously we don't know what's going on inside their minds," said Dr McComb. "But they learn how to do this, and then they do it quite deliberately."

So how does Dr McComb feel about Pepo now she knows he has been manipulating her all these years?

"He's been the inspiration for this whole study, so I'll forgive him - credit where credit's due."

- Tymbrwulf

Smartest Dogs: Moscow Stray Dogs

yourhydra (http://brain.videosift.com/member/yourhydra) — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:20:46 -0700

(0 comments - 396 views)
Russian scientists say that Moscow stray dogs became much smarter. The four legged oldest human’s friends demonstrate real smartness such as riding the Moscow metro every morning to get from their suburban places of living to the fat regions of Moscow center. Once they arrive to the downtown they demonstrate different new, previously unseen for the dog skills. Those skills can include “the hunt for shawarma” for example, the popular among Muscovites eastern cuisine dish. This hunt scene can be seen as this:

Regular Moscow busy street with some small food kiosks. A middle-aged man buys himself a piece of hot fast food and walks aside chewing it without a rush. Then just in a second he jumps up frightened - some doggy has sneaked up on him and barked out loudly. His tasty snack falls out from his hands down to the ground and the dog gets it. Just ten minutes later, on the same place, the teen youngster loses his dinner in exactly the same manner. The modern Russian dogs are on their urban hunt.

“This method of ambushing people from their back is widely exercised by Moscow dogs”, saying A. Poiarkov, working in Ecology and Evolution Institute of Moscow. “The main point here is to define who would drop the food scared and who won’t, but the dogs are great psychologists they can do it better than us”.

Full article and adorable pictures here

http://englishrussia.com/?p=2462

- yourhydra

Dreamin' 'bout the Sift

Fusionaut (http://fusionaut.videosift.com) — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:43:31 -0700

(9 comments - 373 views)
So, a couple of nights ago I had a dream. In my dream all of the Sifters were gathering for our annual convention! I was so excited to meet everyone face to face! When we finally had our first meeting of the convention I walked into the room, took my spot, and looked around at everyone.

Instead of seeing actual human faces I saw human bodies walking around with Sift avatars for heads! I definitely remember Schmawy's avatar cat-head thingy walking 'round and NicolBee's too. Everything else was all just random.

So I had a dream about you... yes, you.

Please analyze

- Fusionaut

Needed Channels! - What do you want to see?

Sagemind (http://brain.videosift.com/member/Sagemind) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:56:29 -0700

(36 comments - 918 views)
I just figured we could nail down the names of some much needed channels. I think it would be interesting if we all named our wants. Everyone is so different and we all post diverse stuff.

What have you noticed missing?

- Sagemind

Bit-tech: How AI in Games Works

gwiz665 (http://gwiz665.videosift.com) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 07:14:58 -0800

(0 comments - 464 views)
I've always been fascinated by how we create AI, and the illusion of intelligence in games. We had another discussion about AI at http://videogames.videosift.com/talk/Intelligent-Design-Where-is-AI-going which ended up in a discussion about the viability of Strong AI.

The following article talks about how you actually make a game seem like it's behaving intelligently, which like graphics rendering is based on a bunch of tricks and magic to make us believe it.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2009/03/05/how-ai-in-games-works/1

Introduction quoted:
"You probably don’t think that the average rabbit is particularly intelligent. They generally like eating grass, hopping around and digging holes. How complicated could such a small animal be?

Well, in early 2008, IBM embarked on a project to digitally simulate the cerebral cortex of such a small mammal at the Thomas J Watson Research Center. The test used 8,192 processors and 2.8TB of memory on the Blue Gene-L supercomputer to simulate the 22 million neurons and 11 billion synapses found in the16cm2 cortical surface of a rabbit’s brain.

Simulating even primitive intelligence is extremely demanding, so how does a basic PC go about simulating human intelligence in multiple game characters at once?

Gaming AI is in many ways similar to 3D graphics rasterisation, which uses complex trickery such as shaders and textures to give the impression of real light and shadow. If you were to properly ray trace a 3D scene in a game, as you would in a CGI movie, it would take considerably more processing power, and the same applies to AI."

- gwiz665

Zonbie wakes up to silver diamond, zombie apocalypse

kronosposeidon (http://brain.videosift.com/member/kronosposeidon) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:13:39 -0800

(34 comments - 966 views)

L to R: alien_concept, LadyDeath, deputydog, Zonbie, Eden, and gorillaman

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, because Zonbie just got his silver diamond! Aim for the head!

[insert zombie joke here]

What can I say about this guy that you don't already know? You might already be aware that he's a Brit who's a professional artist in the video game industry, but he's also very amiable, and he has a good sense of humor too. So what can I say about this guy? I like him. And if you know him, you probably like him too.

So let's give our boy a pat on the back, and love up his PQ while you're at it.

Edit: And while you're at it, ask him why he hasn't created his own channel yet. Inquiring minds want to know.

- kronosposeidon

Announcing the "Mind and Brain" Channel

jonny (http://brain.videosift.com/member/jonny) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:28:15 -0700

(12 comments - 322 views)
Welcome to Videosift's latest channel, Mind and Brain. It's a channel devoted to the brain and its emergent mind - everything from neurons to consciousness. This includes videos of nerve growth and damage, models of perception, talks on theories of consciousness, cognitive and computational neuroscience, neuropathology, as well as applications of this knowledge in clinical psychology, artificial intelligence, education, etc.

The basic criterion for any video to be included in the channel is that it impart some knowledge of how the brain works, whether it be the function of synaptic boutons, or the emergence of a unified perceptual field. This would also include videos describing brain function in "lower" primates and other mammals, as well as computational neuroscience applied to artificial intelligence.

Having gone through a few hundred videos looking for ones to add, I've noticed that there is a definite grey area here. My instinct is to exclude videos that ignore underlying brain function. For instance, social psychology experiments like Milgram's shock experiment and Zimbardo's prison experiment, while immensely interesting, don't really fit in this context. Likewise, videos describing Skinner's radical behaviorism would seem antithetical to the channel, since, by definition, it denies the existence of a conscious mind.

That said, I welcome the addition of any apparently relevant video to the channel, with the caveat that I may remove it and ask for a reason that it be included. I promise - I won't be nearly as much of a hard-ass as rembar. (j/k rembar! )

- jonny