Alex’s Heresies - embracing a physical reality

To celebrate the end of the year at Mind Matters, we’re going to highlight a few of the posts that we featured over the past 12 months. Although our articles have covered a wide variety of subjects, from visual illusions to borderline personality disorder to the limitations of free will, many of our most popular posts dealt with the intersection of neuroscience and everyday life. [More]

The body image is a mental representation of one's physical appearance, constructed by the brain from past experiences and present sensations. It is an essential component of self-identity, which, when altered, can have dramatic effects on how one perceives oneself. For example, a small proportion of migraine sufferers experience visual hallucinations just before the onset of a headache, in which the body parts appear larger or smaller than they actually are. Lewis Carroll, who is known to have suffered from migraines, documented such hallucinations in Alice in Wonderland. These body image distortions can have bizarre consequences. Otherwise healthy people report that they have always percived a part of their body as feeling "wrong," and opt to have it removed by amputation; some brain-damaged or psychiatric patients experience alien hand syndrome, in which they deny ownership of a limb, and insist that it is under the control of external forces. [More]

The Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano published an article over the weekend claiming that the contraceptive pill pollutes the environment massively, contributes to male infertility and causes abortions. Those claims, if true, hit lots of hot buttons about science, ethics, faith and government policy. They should make headlines around the world. But apart from the Italian [...]

Controversial U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson has given his annual predictions for the year ahead, based on what he says God has told him. You can see a video broadcast of his 2009 forecasts here.  ”The Lord said the dollar is going to go down dramatically … (and) If I’m hearing him right, gold will go to [...]