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What group do ‘Indians’ belong to?

If you mean ethnic background, scientifically there are the three main ethnicities in the study of anthropology: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid. North Indians belong to the Caucasoid classification along with Arabs and Europeans. Regardless of skin color, notice how Indians have the same facial features. They have the caucasian noses, wavy hair, thin lips, etc. South Indians are Australoid which is similar to Caucasoid. In some northeastern parts there are Mongoloids. In the very southern tip, there are some Negroid looking people. The majority of Indians are Caucasoid and Australoid. 

[Source].

Very interesting. I’d have to verify with a study or article on the matter, but I’m going to trust the person this information came from for now. Update on it later if it changes. It’s interesting how classifications of races/ethnicity vary according to several factors. Sometimes I think the way some people classify others is really off, even today.


Related: 

Why so few people are left-handed

youmightfindyourself:

Right-handers have long accounted for 90 percent of the population, and scientists may have figured out why

Only one out of every 10 people are predisposed to favor their left hand instead of their right, ”a ratio that has remained constant for more than 5,000 years,” says Rick Nauert at PsychCentral. Why isn’t there a 50-50 righty-lefty split? Why aren’t all of us right-handed? New research from Northwestern University may have the answer. Here’s what you should know:

What exactly is this new theory?
Researchers are positing that the steadily low percentage of lefties “is a result of the balance between cooperation and competition in human evolution.” Humans have long had an evolutionary need to cooperate, such as when sharing tools or hunting in groups. And if most people use the same hand, it makes such cooperation easier. “The more social the animal — where cooperation is highly valued — the more the general population will trend toward one side,” says co-author Daniel M. Abrams. 

Then why aren’t we all right-handed?
Because people aren’t purely cooperative. We compete with each other, too, and always have. “If a society was totally cooperative, then everyone would be same-handed,” says Nauert. But that’s not us. Our competitive streak ensures that there will always be lefties.

Why does competitiveness foster left-handedness?
Physical competition “favors the unusual,” Nauert says. For example, “in a fight, a left-hander in a right-handed world would have an advantage.”

What proof do researchers have?
To showcase the validity of their model, researchers turned to sports like boxing, fencing, and table tennis. In athletics, lefties are “overrepresented to the tune of about one in five,” says AFP, underscoring the competitive advantage of left-handedness. And the inverse is true for sports where handedness isn’t a factor. For example, “the number of successful left-handed PGA golfers is very low, only 4 percent,” says PhysOrg. 

(via cmannswings)

Source: youmightfindyourself

Did Humans Invent Music?

psydoctor8:

jtotheizzoe:

Psychologists Gary Marcus & Geoffrey Miller debate the origins of human music and its associated behaviors. Is it a cultural invention, a technology that piggy-backs on language? Or is there a deeper genetic wiring behind our music and its neurological effects?

Marcus says:

“Ancient” seems like a bit of stretch to me. The oldest known musical artifacts are some bone flutes that are only 35,000 years old, a blink in an evolutionary time. And although kids are drawn to music early, they still prefer language when given a choice, and it takes years before children learn something as basic as the fact that minor chords are sad. Of course, music is universal now, but so are mobile phones, and we know that mobile phones aren’t evolved adaptations. When we think about music, it’s important to remember that an awful lot of features that we take for granted in Western music—like harmony and 12-bar blues structure, to say nothing of pianos or synthesizers, simply didn’t exist 1,000 years ago.

While Miller says:

Darwin argued that music evolved mainly by sexual selection through mate choice—and that we’re uncomfortable acknowledging that fact. He wrote back in 1871 that, “The impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when with his varied tones and cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which his half-human ancestors long ago aroused each other’s ardent passions, during their courtship and rivalry.” He knew that music didn’t need to have a “survival value” for the individual or the group; it could spread through purely reproductive benefits. He suggested that the more musically talented proto-humans attracted more sexual partners, or higher-quality sexual partners, than their less-musical rivals. We see sexual selection for music in many other species—insect song, frog song, bird song, whale song, and gibbon song—so I think that’s a reasonable default theory for how humans evolved music. It’s the theory to beat.


It’s an article that makes a compelling case for both sides. I think the jury is still out, based on the current state of neuroscience and genetics in this area. Give it a read and see what you think.

And if you absolutely refuse to take a side, Mark Changizi comes down in the middle and says they might not have to be either instinct OR invention.

And look guys, Gary Marcus is on tumblr.  Side note: I’m really enjoying the articles going around that set up the topic and let the experts explain their position rather than the typical interview. 

Source: jtotheizzoe

medicalschool:

Floaters are deposits of various size, shape, consistency, refractive index, and motility within the eye’s vitreous humour, which is normally transparent. At a young age the vitreous is perfectly transparent but, during life, imperfections gradually develop. The common type of floater, which is present in most people’s eyes, is due to degenerative changes of the vitreous humour. The perception of floaters is known as myodesopsia. Floaters are visible because of the shadows they cast on the retina or their refraction of the light that passes through them, and can appear alone or together with several others in one’s field of vision. They may appear as spots, threads, or fragments of cobwebs, which float slowly before the observer’s eyes. Since these objects exist within the eye itself, they are not optical illusions but are entoptic phenomena.

(via the-naut)

Source: Wikipedia

nightonthesun: The Quietest Place on Earth Will Drive You Insane Within 45 Minutes There’s a small room in Minnesota that blocks out 99% of all external sound. That’s an impressive number! Also impressive: nobody can take more than 45 minutes alone in the room before they go nuts. The Daily Mail describes Orfield Labs’ anechoic chamber—perfect for making extremely sensitive audio measurements. But also perfect for sending you into a hallucinatory hell so hellacious you’ll need a chair: ‘When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You’ll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. ‘In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.’ And this is a very disorientating experience. Mr Orfield explained that it’s so disconcerting that sitting down is a must. He said: ‘How you orient yourself is through sounds you hear when you walk. In the anechnoic chamber, you don’t have any cues. You take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and manoeuvre. If you’re in there for half an hour, you have to be in a chair.’
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nightonthesun:

The Quietest Place on Earth Will Drive You Insane Within 45 Minutes


There’s a small room in Minnesota that blocks out 99% of all external sound. That’s an impressive number! Also impressive: nobody can take more than 45 minutes alone in the room before they go nuts.

The Daily Mail describes Orfield Labs’ anechoic chamber—perfect for making extremely sensitive audio measurements. But also perfect for sending you into a hallucinatory hell so hellacious you’ll need a chair:

‘When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You’ll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. ‘In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.’ And this is a very disorientating experience. Mr Orfield explained that it’s so disconcerting that sitting down is a must. He said: ‘How you orient yourself is through sounds you hear when you walk. In the anechnoic chamber, you don’t have any cues. You take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and manoeuvre. If you’re in there for half an hour, you have to be in a chair.’

(via cmannswings)

Source: Gizmodo

psydoctor8: I was revisiting a Nature article published about using fMRI as evidence in a murder case featuring someone’s work that I don’t talk enough about, Dr. Kent Kiehl. I find his research focusing on criminal psychopathy using fMRI extremely interesting. The purpose of the work, Kiehl says, is to eliminate the stigma against psychopaths and find them treatments so they can stop committing crimes. But [the] lawyers saw  another purpose. During sentencing for capital crimes, the defence may present just about anything as a mitigating factor, from accounts  of the defendant being abused as a child to  evidence of extreme emotional disturbance. Kiehl’s research could offer a persuasive argument that Dugan is a psychopath and could not control his killer impulses. Eight years I’ve spent in my business working with psychologists and psychopharmacologists prepping them as expert witnesses, so I was glad to see an article that not only discusses some of the debate on if the science of fMRI is ready for the courts, but also offers a little peep on how the attorneys intend to use this new tool. Like I’ve said before, the bottom line (after sorting the science/admissibility) is educating the jury on brain scans, which is no easy task since to understand what the image is mapping, one needs an understanding of physics, math, neurobiology and very complex data analysis techniques. To that end, and in the time being, lawyers will be looking for more neuroscience experts to battle this out infront of the jury, much to some researchers’ dismay. Would we rather spend time explaining the science and admit we aren’t exactly confident in it and why (which I do not consider a “soap box” position) or repeat that it’s not ready, click our heels 3 times and hope attorneys don’t take advantage? Those that don’t support the former, by default, may be allowing the latter. Besides, even if science get to say how far fMRI should reach, lawyers will be the ones saying how fast it will get there.  It would still seem the immediate need is two fold: more replication studies, more subjects and investigating further the potential of fMRI in clinical applications.  Nature’s full article here. 
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psydoctor8:

I was revisiting a Nature article published about using fMRI as evidence in a murder case featuring someone’s work that I don’t talk enough about, Dr. Kent Kiehl. I find his research focusing on criminal psychopathy using fMRI extremely interesting.

The purpose of the work, Kiehl says, is to eliminate the stigma against psychopaths and find them treatments so they can stop committing crimes. But [the] lawyers saw  another purpose. During sentencing for capital crimes, the defence may present just about anything as a mitigating factor, from accounts  of the defendant being abused as a child to  evidence of extreme emotional disturbance. Kiehl’s research could offer a persuasive argument that Dugan is a psychopath and could not control his killer impulses.

Eight years I’ve spent in my business working with psychologists and psychopharmacologists prepping them as expert witnesses, so I was glad to see an article that not only discusses some of the debate on if the science of fMRI is ready for the courts, but also offers a little peep on how the attorneys intend to use this new tool.

Like I’ve said before, the bottom line (after sorting the science/admissibility) is educating the jury on brain scans, which is no easy task since to understand what the image is mapping, one needs an understanding of physics, math, neurobiology and very complex data analysis techniques. To that end, and in the time being, lawyers will be looking for more neuroscience experts to battle this out infront of the jury, much to some researchers’ dismay.

Would we rather spend time explaining the science and admit we aren’t exactly confident in it and why (which I do not consider a “soap box” position) or repeat that it’s not ready, click our heels 3 times and hope attorneys don’t take advantage? Those that don’t support the former, by default, may be allowing the latter. Besides, even if science get to say how far fMRI should reach, lawyers will be the ones saying how fast it will get there.  It would still seem the immediate need is two fold: more replication studies, more subjects and investigating further the potential of fMRI in clinical applications. 

Nature’s full article here. 

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