#neuroscientist love language

[alphie-in-the-sky]

[an-ambivalent]

Woes of Reincarnation Part 2 [Yandere! Miguel x Fem! Reader]

Chapter Synopsis: You’re an Alchemax neuroscientist specializing in genetics and cognition memory research. Outside of work, you spend majority of your time with your daughter Gabriella and your partner Miguel. For the most part, you loved your life - you had a thriving career, a lovely daughter, and your wonderful stay-at-home partner who supported you and cared for your small bundle of joy in ways you were unable to. But slowly but surely, something starts to seem amiss with your husband and you realise that Miguel is not who you knew him to be. This is a sequel to this

Warnings: As this is yandere fiction, this deals with behaviours and themes of that can be uncomfortable to read. Specific warnings: implied noncon. This work also has spoilers about Miguel from the comics. Read at your own risk. This work is purely fictional, I do not condone this behaviour irl. By clicking the ‘read more/keep reading’ you are consenting to read this at your discretion.

Establishing yourself at your current point in career was a lot of work hard; from extensive studying, to jumping from one temporary contracted job to another, it often made you want to hit your head against the wall in frustration. Amidst all the chaos, the universe threw even more at you; just as you were finishing your PHD, and were starting to climb your career ladder, you had found out that you were pregnant. It was nerve wrecking, stressful, exciting, and involved so many other emotions and tears, and pondering over countless of future possibilities. Becoming overwhelmed from all of this was beginning to drive you mad. But lucky for you, Miguel was the perfect anchor to your chaotic storm of thoughts; he was with you every step of the way and was amazing at providing you the reassurance you needed. After your daughter was born, whom you had named Gabriella, things had been very challenging at first: you had to look after your daughter while still having your own recovery. Miguel took on additional responsibilities while also trying to look after you and your daughter as well. Eventually, after a few years passed, it became easier to manage and cope with the challenges that came with looking after a tiny human. Both of you decided that you were going to work full-time at your new job, while Miguel would be the stay at home partner to look after Gabriella. 

Over the years, you made exceptional progress in your career until you got to your current position. While you really enjoyed your work in the past, recently, it was starting to become too stressful and impact your mental health. There was a certain feeling of being done etched in your body language. And despite the fact that you looked after your physical health, there was a new type of dullness on your face in place of your usual genuine contentment, and the glint of mischief that always gleamed in your eyes and smiles was starting to disappear. 

A heavy sigh escaped your lips as you unlocked the front door and entered your abode. You took off your outdoor shoes and placed them on the shoe rack, while simultaneously slipped your feet in your indoor slippers. As you walked through the hallway and into the main living room, you raised your eyebrow in surprise when you saw Miguel leaning against the kitchen counter closest to you, with his back turned against you, and nervously tapping his index finger on the counter’s marble surface. 

“What are you doing here?” You asked simply, and threw your jacket and keys carelessly on the dinning table as you walked towards the kitchen. 

Your usual very composed and charismatic husband jumped at the sound of your voice. He whipped around in shock, his eyes wide, looking like a deer caught in headlights. He seemed even more jumpy when you neared him in proximity, grabbed onto the collar of his white shirt, and strongly pulled him down to your level for a chaste kiss as a greeting. Usually, your pecks that started out as a quick greeting, would turn into deeper, and more passionate kisses, almost into a full make out session. But that wasn’t the case this time around; this time around, Miguel was simple frozen in surprise as you kissed him. He did not respond back, and his hands were raised and stilled awkwardly in mid air as if he was going to push you away, but didn’t due to some last minute realisation. It was very strange because he never hesitated to wrap his arms around you and pull you closer until there was no physical space left, and one of his hands would be tangled messily in your locks. The awkwardness of the entire situation made you pull away instantly, and there was even more confusion evident in your eyebrow raise. Nonetheless, you released your hold on him, and started to work your way around the kitchen like your usual evening routine. 

“I’m surprised that you’re already home. Picking up Gabriella from her tennis practice and the groceries, you usually wouldn’t be home for another hour,” You remarked causally, while you put on your bright pink apron that had ‘Kiss the chief’ written on it. It was one of the gifts your Miguel and Gabriella had given you on the most recent mother’s day, so anytime you wore it, they had an excuse to shower you in kisses. 

Miguel blinked owlishly, as he stared hard at the words written on your apron for for a good few seconds, before returning his gaze to you. He showed no signs of moving closer to you to kiss you like he usually would. 

“Uh, doesn’t she have tennis practice on Tuesdays and not today? Besides, I don’t have the car.” He responded simply. 

You blinked at him in confusion. “She has her practice today - she has her coaching on Tuesdays and her club games on Friday. And what do you mean you don’t have the car? I left the keys in front of the TV and its parked right outside on the street...? We talked about it this morning - you dropped me off to work and I took the train back. This is no new information, come on Miguel,” You retorted, and opened the fridge to get the needed ingredients you required to make dinner. However, there was barely anything in there - your eye twitched. You turned to Miguel with your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. 

“How come you didn’t go grocery shopping?” You asked. Just as Miguel was about to respond, your eyes widened in another realisation. 

“Don’t tell me you forgot to pick up Gabriella?! No wonder I don’t hear her trotting around! Miguel! What’s wrong with you today?!” You snapped, and instantly untied your apron, and took it off instantly. 

At the shift of annoyance in your tone, Miguel’s eyebrow twitched in anger. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know - this wasn’t even meant to be his responsibility. It was supposed to be your Miguel’s responsibility but he was dead now. He simply chose to replace him in this dimension because he had a family; he felt sorry for the young child who had lost her father, and a bit sorry for you, who would have been a full-time working single mother if you had found that your husband was dead. He was doing you a favour, and you had no idea how grateful you should be. But alas, you were so bossy instead. He wanted to reveal the truth so he could see the reaction on your face, but he couldn’t disclose anything. For his young child, he would endure. 

“You didn’t tell me to do so,” He responded coldly, since there was no other way he knew how to carry out his argument. 

You were so confused by his response that you had to stop for moment and gather your thoughts. You blinked at him in confusion, even more so, when you noticed the anger on his face - Miguel never got angry that easily. 

“It’s the same routine every week...? What’s there to tell?” You murmured to yourself. You glanced at him once more, and you looked at him from the top of his head, to the soles of his feet in scrutiny multiple times. Upon closer inspection, you saw something different about him; the exhaustion in his body - it was an exact reflection of yours. He looked like he was done. It made you think:  had you been so busy thinking about your own problems at work that you forgot to check in with your own husband? Had you relied on him to take care of you and Gabriella so much that you forgot to do your part and look after him?! 

Guilt wallowed up in your chest, and your throat started to feel constricted - you were starting to feel anxious again. However, just before your anxiety could overwhelm you, you pushed it down. Miguel needed you right now, not the other way around. 

“I’m sorry for snapping at you, love. I shouldn’t have done that. I guess work’s been too stressful,” You mumbled, and then, walked closer to Miguel. The Spider-Man was genuinely surprised at the quick apology that left your lips; he was even more shocked when you walked in front of him once more, and gave him a bright grin. He was taken back by how beautiful you looked when you were smiling and the way your face glowed when a hint of joy shone through. 

“We both seem to be having a tough time today, how about we get things done together and just relax? Let’s go pick up our cheeky munchkin and order in, we’ll get your favourite! Sounds good?” You said grinning wider, and cheekily swung your hip against his. Given his build and strength as Spider-Man, it barely did anything. But your joy and cheekiness was contagious because Miguel returned your grin with a playful scoff off his own. Instinctively, he lifted you up easily, and the suddenness of the gesture made you yelp in surprise. You easily wrapped your legs around his tiny slutty waist as he supported your weight by holding you in both of his arms, and wrapped your arms around his neck. You combed through his soft brown locks with one of your hands, and leaned closer to his face; Miguel felt flustered. 

“Can I kiss you?” You whispered softly, looking at him with so much love and longing in your eyes as if he had hung up the moon and stars for you. No one had looked at him with so much love before. Miguel felt flustered. Instead of answering you, he tightened his hold onto you, as he brought you closer to him until you were absolutely squished against his physique. He felt more muscular than before, and his grip on you felt more possessive rather than his usual protective one. But, you weren’t the one to complain since this was so much better than the awkwardness from before.

Miguel moved his arms so he supported your weight with one, and held the back of your head with the other. Then, he guided you down until your lips locked. It was a nice kiss, a bit clumsy than usual, but nice nonetheless. He didn’t want to follow your lead like he usually did, so you tried to follow his lead instead. It was definitely different, even more so, when you felt him bite your bottom lip hard. You yelped in pain and tried to pull away from him. Your efforts were fruitless for a few seconds until Miguel eased his grip at the back of your head. Just as he let you go, enough blood gathered instantly at the spot you were bitten on your lip that it started to drip down your chin. Immediately, Miguel licked it and then gazed at you with his disheveled hair hovering above the predatory and lust gleaming in his red eyes. Both of you breathed heavily, but he wore a giant grin  that showed off his canines. When did Miguel have canines? 

“What you said sounded good, but I would like it much better if we could relax, just the two of us, later tonight.” 

                                                         ***

Once upon a time, Miguel was a bright and innovative scientist himself. He was intelligent and quick to grasp things. For that reason, it didn’t take him long to adapt to the same lifestyle that the original Miguel of this dimension was living. Actually, this domestic life was so much better and easier than his job had been at Alchemax. Maybe, it was easy because he genuinely came to love it; he loved his daughter Gabriella like he had anticipated he would. But first impressions aside, he was also surprised at how quickly he came to love you. You were just so caring and attentive, and everytime you smiled your lovely smile, he swore, cupid’s arrow shot through his heart. You always looked at him with so much love - and it didn’t just end there - you always showed your love through actions too. Every morning when you woke up, before going to sleep, coming home, before leaving, and if you saw each other just after a few hours, you always kissed him. They were such passionate kisses too - it was addictive. All of your little quirks and the constant displays of affection were addictive. For once, Miguel was constantly surrounded by love and happiness. He loved it, and he was going to do anything to protect it. 

Although he did love his current life, there were some things that he did wish could be better - like how he wished he could spend more time with you. He had been trying to talk you into reducing your work hours, because recently, it seemed like you just were getting busier and busier. Your acts of affection, your long lasting kisses -- everything was becoming quicker and more rushed. The nights of intimacy you shared often when he had first came into your life versus recently, were much fewer too. It was distraughting and almost starting to feel frustrating because he had become accustomed to everything you had given him. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand how he had ever managed to live without having you by his side. Now, it was almost to the point where he felt that his even spider craved you. 

It was another night like the one’s recently. Presently, it was just after 9:30 pm, half an hour after Gabriella has been put to bed. Miguel had just come out of a steaming hot shower - his skin carried an underlying darker red hue indicating just how boiling hot the water had to be, and he only wore a small white towel around his hips. He was hoping that giving you a preview would help him finally get another night of sex with you. But the moment he had stepped out of your shared ensuite, and was browsing through your shared closet, pretending to look for clothes, you paid no attention to him. Instead, you were entirely focused on the folders of paperwork labelled ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ in big block red letters that you had been bringing home from work every, single, fucking, day. 

Come to think of it, exactly what was your job? Why were you the one that had chosen to work rather than his alternate deceased self? Surely, if his deceased self was also a scientist at Alchemax like he had been, he had to be making more than enough money. 

In the end, Miguel mindless chose to wore a pair of grey sweatpants and a plain black t-shirt. He climbed into your shared bed with you,  and snatched your papers from your hands. You yelped when this happened suddenly, and immediately tried to wrestle Miguel for them as he started to look over their content himself. 

“What the hell, Miguel?! Give those back to me right now! That’s confidential!” You yelled, while trying to climb over him in whatever way you could to get your paperwork back. Miguel simply ignored you, and easily held you back with one arm, while holding up the papers with his other hand, and reading them. 

It read: 

“ALCHEMAX PROPERTY 

ONGOING RESEARCH PROGREES: PROJECT DIMCOG6.V - COGNITION AND MEMORY THROUGH THE MULTIVERSE 

RESEARCH LEAD: [Name] O’Hara

‘-utlising deep learning neural networks, we have managed to analyse microarray data at an anatomical level[1]. Given this groundbreaking discovery, we can hypothetically give ourselves false memories of living in another universe and completely alter our reality. Or, we could even transfer the psych of our alternative self to our current self. Tests will need to be conducted-��� 

“You’re... working for Alchemax?” Miguel asked in disbelief, looking at you with wide eyes - like he didn’t knew you at all. In a way, that was not far from the truth. 

You took his shock as an opportunity to snatch your paperwork back, and scoffed at him. “Of course I am. I don’t see why you’re so surprised? You’re the one who told me to take the job when I was offered it.”

You carefully tied up your paperwork the way you had brought it from work, before setting it on the bedside table beside you. You turned towards Miguel and scowled at him. 

“I’d appreciate it if you don’t just snatch my things. Seriously Miguel, what is with you recently? You’re so moody and quick to temper! I understand you may be stressed and I’m seriously trying my best to make things as easy as possible for you, but you can’t just do whatever you want. You know I’m having a really hard time at work right now as it is, I don’t need you making it the same for me at home. Back off a bit, yeah?” You snapped. Instantly, you turned away from him. You had been feeling your regular nightly migraine building up for a while, and the stress from dealing with Miguel just seemed to have triggered it. You took off your reading glasses so they were resting on your head instead of your nose; a heavy sigh left your lips as you rubbed your temple to try soothe your headache. 

You failed to notice the angry red eyes that were glaring at you. 

“I didn’t know that you were working for the filth of Alchemax.... And I didn’t tell you to take that job, I would never allow my own wife to betray me like that. If it really had been me, in the first place, you wouldn’t even be working.”  Miguel hissed, as he had moved closer to you until his body was pressing right against your side. Then, he leaned closer to you, and gently nipped you right behind your earlobe. Chills went through your spine, and you groaned in frustration; you failed to understand exactly what Miguel words implied due to your horrible headache reducing your ability to focus. 

“I don’t have the energy to worry about your nuances Miguel, nor do I have the energy for sex tonight. Just let me rest,” You murmured, and tried to swat at his arms he wrapped around you possessively. 

You didn’t get the response you wanted - verbally or his actions wise. Instead, you screamed as Miguel pushed you so you laying on your back, and he sat on you immediately. From the impact, your glasses were swung backwards randomly and dug into the randomest part of your neck painfully. You winced and tried to move so they weren’t digging into your skin, but you were unable to move since Miguel had your wrists pinned down on the bed in each hand. He pushed all of his bodyweight on you making it hard to breath, and leaned down until he was right next to your ear. 

“Let me rephrase what I said, and really listen this time, okay? You’re my smart little scientist, I’m sure you can figure it out.” He whispered sensually, and this time, bit your earlobe hard enough to draw blood. 

You cried out in pain. You tried to wriggle yourself free, but your efforts continued to be in vain. When Miguel applied more pressure on your wrists to the point it felt like they were going to break, you stopped struggling. However, your breath started to pick up and your throat felt tight. Despite how light headed you felt, you understood that this wasn’t normal. His grip wasn’t normal - your Miguel would never do something like this. He had never raised his voice at you, much less be physically violent with you the way the stranger on top of you was being. So, for your own sake, you listened attentively to what he had to say. 

“I didn’t tell you to take the job. I would never tell you to take any job, much less at Alchemax, especially after what they did to me. If it had been me, the me in front of you right now, I would keep you locked up in a safe little cage that I make just for you.” 

Tears welled in the corner of your eyes. You hoped that what you were thinking wasn’t right. 

“W-What they did to you...? You never told me? I, I don’t understand-” You tried to say. You weren’t sure if you were just repeating yourself like a parrot because there wasn’t enough oxygen flowing in your brain to think rationally, or you were desperately hoping that what you understood to be the truth, wasn’t actually the truth. Maybe it was both. 

“I’m not your Miguel, I never was. Where I’m from, I used to be scientist at Alchemax. They spliced my DNA with a spider when I tried to quit,” Miguel started, and then, flashed his fangs at you. “I have access to many dimensions. I saw that the me of this dimension was killed and out of pity, I decided to take his place so Gabriella wouldn’t be fatherless and you wouldn’t be a single mother. 

“You really pissed me off in our first interaction.... but now, now, I love you, I can’t see myself without you. I might not be your Miguel yet, but you are my [Name]. Thanks to your research, we can start again. I can figure out a way to change your memories so you’ll know me as your Miguel from the start. I’m sure there’s a dimension out there somewhere we can use.” He whispered in your ear, and then, grinded against you. 

Goosebumps of repulsion and fear arose across your skin - you shook your head in denial. 

“Don’t, please don’t do that. You have no idea what you’re messing with--” 

“Shut up. Now that you know, you’re going to see what I would have done with you in the first place. I’m going to keep you locked up in a cage I make just for you. No work, no research, nothing for you. I’m going to keep you locked up so you’re not a tired cranky bitch and I’m going to be the only person you see. I’m going to make you so touch starved so that whenever you see me, you’re going to be nothing but yearning and desperate for any ounce of attention that I give you.” 

Then, Miguel wrapped his hands around your neck, and pressed tightly onto your trachea until you passed out from the lack of oxygen. He grinned widely. 

“Goodnight [Name]. We’ll meet again on the other side.” 

                                                          ***

[1] deep learning neural network is a type of AI technique that mimics the workings of a human brain. It’s used in neuroscience to study the complex intra- and interhemispheric coherence, and other brain regional interactions in relation to cognition and behaviour. 

Microarray data refers to studying many genes at once. So, given all this, and how astrophysics works (if you were to be anywhere in the universe, like being pulled into a black hole or a neutron star), their ruthless gravity would literally tear you apart at your atoms level. So my theory is that, if you were to transfer “memories and cognition” through dimensions and defy the very essence of space and time, you’d need to have studied the neurobiology at the atoms level to the very least. [JUST MY THEORY BASED ON WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THESE SUBJECTS. I JUST WANTED TO NERD OUT OKAY]

[2] basically the ‘isekai’d’ reader’s memories in Part 1 can be understood in this  way: in all the manipulation of memories that Miguel does after this, [Name] gets so many new memories implanted she eventually remembers all of this. She made an escape plan to stage her own death and live in the shadows with random memories planted (like she thinks she reincarnated and lived in a ‘different’ world) but thats actually just false memories. And given how much Miguel was trying to code that “she loves him” in her genes everytime he changed her memories, that turns into a false memory of him being her favourite character and that she “simps for” so she automatically wants to seek him out to meet him when she gets “reincarnated” 

I hope everything I explained makes sense and that you enjoyed this! Let me know if you have any questions! 

[mightymizora]

For me the golden combo for Gortash is:

He’s got to be mechanical in his logic towards people. Manipulating the masses, putting x emotion in to get x emotion out.

He’s got to be a consummate liar. Self explanatory.

He’s got to have a simmering undercurrent of shocking violence. But it’s not violence for the sake of loving it. It is a tool as anything else is, but he will use it without hesitation to get what he wants.

He’s got to use his language precisely but/and…

He has to have a level of camp. This guy is camp! A showman, a politician, a performer (wonder where he got that)

He’s got to be a polymath. The man is a neuroscientist, an engineer, a writer, an orator, a researcher, a theologian and historian, as well as a politician and tyrant. He has a myriad of skills and they all need to be firing.

He has to have a reason for anything he does. This is not a man of blind passions. Everything has a play. Everything.

And past that all is flavour to me. You can, I think, logically infer an aroace Gortash who is only motivated by his own rising star. Or a man who is carving up a world into ribbons for his alliance or indeed his love if he’s capable of love, or his legacy, which could be work or (ouch) children. He can actively making in his workshop, he can be personally kidnapping the people whose skull shavings he leaves on his desk. He can have a number of flavours but this is what is at the core to me.

[fismoll7secinv]

15 questions, 15 people:

I was tagged by dear @a-very-fond-farewell 💚I hope you get your lobster sanctuary! 💚

-

1. are you named after anyone?

nope

2. when was the last time you cried?

I don't know, I don't really cry

3. do you have kids?

never

4. do you use sarcasm a lot?

yeah, quite casually in everyday life, but I try to tone it down

5. what’s the first thing you notice about people?

I'm bad with faces, I might not recognise someone who's new to me after interacting with them every day for 2 weeks (based on a true story) xdd so what I notice at first is the overall vibe they present, which is a combination of their posture and body language, clothes and accessories, facial expressions etc. This doesn't tell absolutely accurately who they are, but it shows how they want to be perceived mixed with some unconscious elements they might not notice themselves, which is interesting to me

6. what’s your eye color?

eh idk, people say they're blue when I'm in a blue pool, green when I'm among greenery, grey when it's a bit dark. I guess they're a subtle mixture that looks like nothing until there's something external that brings out one of the colors. it's a bit annoying tbh, so I usually just say grey

7. scary movies or happy endings?

i love horror, very high on my list of fav genres, but I also love happy endings, just not necessarily in horrors. In media other than horror I need HE or I feel down. So i'd say: both

8. any special talents?

I've had a music talent since I was little, couldn't understand how other kids didn't know how to play the flute or keep the rhythm. I've also heard various ppl say that I somehow know how to arrange things to be aesthetically pleasing, but I could never explain how to do it, it just looks better a certain way. A bit for drawing, considering how fast I improved compared to some other people, but I haven't pursued it farther than sketching. Sport comes pretty smoothly to me and my body, I've always been "the athletic girl"

I may sound like i'm bragging but i try to be objective for my own self. After all "talent" means nothing and is just bitterly wasted if you're not practising, so for me it can be more of a shameful thing that I let rot rather than something to be proud of. It's also so useless when teaching others, because you don't know how to explain shit when you do it intuitively, which tripped me a lot of times while trying to teach someone. Very annoying and sometimes isolating in a sense that you just vibe with yourself instead of sharing the experience with others

9. where are you born?

in a hospital

10. what are your hobbies?

reading, writing, taking care of plants, pen & paper rpgs, collecting weird trinkets and paintings, drawing, horror movies, detective stories, listening to podcasts

11. do you have any pets?

we have a dog but I moved out of my family home recently and the doggo stayed there, I still visit often and walk him, but it doesn't feel like he's really mine anymore :(

12. what sports do you/have you played?

I did gymnastics and horse-riding for a few years as a kid, used to jog in middle/high school, I also go on a trip to the mountains at least once a year to hike bc I'm obsessed with it. Recently I like to do yoga and fitness to bring my body to its limit and stretch all the pains that keep accumulating. I almost didn't move from my desk for over a year some time ago because i was too busy with uni, work and a few other big things, and it ended up in a neck injury that escalated to a few months of rehab. Now I move a lot so those nightmarish pain and several contusions don't repeat

13. how tall are you?

taller than most women and many guys

14. favourite subject in school?

all languages, math, biology

15. dream job?

neuroscientist, astronaut or pilot of small planes

-

I have no idea who did this already, feel free to ignore as always. Tagging @prommethium @miyakuli @still-gathering-roses @carmine-sunlight @wikipedie

[medics-secret-shipfic-folder]

Classic Medic, The Doctor of BLU

Classic Medic, The Doctor of BLU - The Classic Medic is the mysterious healer of Team Fortress Classic. Since the 1930's, this man has remained an enigma, with most of his files mysteriously disappearing from the Administrator's records sometime in the 1950's. However, despite staying off the radar for most of his tenure in the Gravel Wars, the Classic Medic was beloved by his original team and was regarded as a brilliant mind amongst his peers.

According to his former co-workers, Cmedic was kind, unfailingly loyal, and extremely resourceful on and off the battlefield. Cmedic was also hyper-competent in battle, easily being able to dispatch of larger mercenaries. Because of his combat prowess, he was the first in his generation to be given the informal title of "Combat Medic." He would continue to demonstrate his abilities when he began experimenting with chemical weapons, instilling fear into much of Redmond's mercenaries.

Cmedic's father emigrated from Haiti in 1909, where he would meet Cmedic's mother in Connecticut. Cmedic would be born in 1911 and would grow up a single child. His father taught him much about his Haitian heritage and instilled in him a strong sense of justice and compassion. His father was a renowned neuroscientist and his mother was a famous pathologist. Because of their impressive careers, Cmedic's parents nurtured a strong love of knowledge in Cmedic, where he would eventually discover his passion for theoretical physics. Despite this, however, Cmedic was subtly encouraged to pursue a degree in medicine instead. While Cmedic ultimately did go to medical school, he still retained a love of theoretical physics. When Cmedic joined Team Fortress Classic, he received Fred's help in refurbishing a nearby warehouse into a labratory so Cmedic could continue his research.

During Cmedic's time with BLU, he would develop an especially close romantic relationship with Cheavy. The two were nearly inseparable and would make plans to settle down once their contracts with BLU ended. Unfortunately, these plans would come crashing down after a tragic incident on November 2nd, 1952. Sometime in the middle of the night, Cmedic would disappear without a trace. Sabotage was a likely answer as the bases' cameras mysteriously shut down before Cmedic's disappearance could be captured. According to Blutarch Mann, Cmedic was kidnapped and murdered by the RED's, a claim that would lead to the slow degradation of Team Fortress Classic and the mental breakdown of Cheavy for the next 20 years.

Cmedic would be declared dead until 1972, when he would miraculously reappear in a maximum security prison on China's southern coast. From here, he would join Medic, Heavy, and Cheavy on their journey chronicled in Take Back The Fortress, where his involvement in the story would prove extremely important due to his status as The Marker, a mortal whose Blight-immune blood is coveted by the Disciples. While his blood makes him a target, his immunity does grant him a strange power: he can read the language of the Disciples. This enables him to read the corrupted data from the laptop, a mysterious item once owned by the nameless author of Sol in Umbra.

Cmedic would go on to become highly proficient with the Thunder Resonance Ark, granting him mastery of electrokinesis. In addition, Cmedic was revealed to have a prosthetic leg that he built himself. According to Cmedic, he lost his left leg after a mechanical accident in prison.

🌟| My DA | My AO3 |🌟

[bodyalive]

When it comes to settling down young children, parenting advice focuses mostly on one tool: What to say.

If the toddler starts to have a tantrum, say this. If a child can't go to sleep, say that. And if you wind up yelling in the process, well, there's even a script for how to apologize.

But all around the world, many parents turn to another tool to soothe a crying child and settle them to slumber. And it's totally silent.

Instead of talking, many parents touch their child. But it's not just any type of touch. Oh no! This touch occurs at a particular speed and with a particular pressure.

After decades of research, neuroscientists are beginning to understand how our skin senses this specific type of touch and how that sensation lights up regions of the brain to alter our emotions.

Jose Grajeda and daughter, Victoria. "If I wanted to go to sleep as a child, I would go cuddle with my mom and she would give me piojito," he says — Spanish for "little lice." The late Peruvian linguist Martha Hidlebrandt described piojito as "gently scratching the scalp of a child as if he were being relieved of the itching of imaginary lice" — hence the name.

Jessica Lutz /for NPR

How to give piojito

In Korea, parents call this type of touch yakson. In Taiwan, they say 秀秀(xiù xiù). In India: "we have different languages in different parts of the country, but in Delhi, it's called malish," says Dr. Sarika Chaturvedi, who studies infant massage practices at Dr. D. Y. Patil Vidyapeeth College in Pune. "This type of touch is so ingrained in our culture. It's all about avoiding frustrations in the child and enhancing the pleasurable connection."

But in Latin America, parents may just have the best name of all: Piojitos, which literally means "little lice."

"If I wanted to go to sleep as a child, I would go cuddle with my mom and she would give me piojito," says Joe Grajeda, age 40, who was born in northern Mexico and now lives in Alpine, Texas, with his three young children (Joe owns a coffee shop in Alpine and is a good friend of mine).

"Now I love giving my children piojito," he says, smiling brightly. "My sons like to sit there and just kind of enjoy the moment. Victoria – my daughter – loves it when she's ready to go to sleep."

With piojito and other types of soothing caresses, the key is not to go too fast or too slow. And don't press too deeply. "You scratch someone's back, or their head, with the tip of your fingers. And you do it very lightly and softly," Grajeda explains. "You want to make the skin kind of crawl a little bit." (The late Peruvian linguist Martha Hidlebrandt described piojito as "gently scratching the scalp of a child as if he were being relieved of the itching of imaginary lice" — hence the name.)

Jose Grajeda gives his daughter the same kind of soothing caress that he got from his mom when he was a child.

Jessica Lutz /for NPR

How a gentle caress affects the nerves

When you give a child piojito, the gentle stroking turns on special nerves, in the hairy parts of our skin, called C-tactile fibers. So yes, that includes your head, back and arms.

These nerves are tuned to detect a specific speed of caressing, says Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, a neurobiologist at Columbia University. "If you rush across the skin surface too quickly, a person may actually perceive the touch as aversive," he says.

All mammals have these special neurons. And all mammalian parents use a stroking touch or licking with their young offspring, Abdus-Saboor says. "There's evidence these neurons also respond to maybe even warmth as well," he explains. "So these neurons have the ability to detect social cues between two mammals as they caress, touch and embrace one another, such as a mother with her offspring."

Of course, human parents have been doing this type of touching "forever," Abdus-Saboor says. "This rubbing and stroking is something that we do almost innately with children. And I think it's because our system is wired to tap into this network [in the brain] that provides soothing and relief."

For some kids with autism spectrum disorder, this type of touch might not feel good, Abdus-Saboor notes, and may even feel bad. "A cardinal symptom of autism is hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli, like auditory and tactile stimuli," he says. "The relationship between touch and reward can be greatly altered."

Back in February, Adbus-Saboor and his colleagues published a landmark paper in the journal Cell showing how activation of these special neurons, in mice, lights up the dopamine pathway in their brains. This pathway motivates animals to seek out the touch again – to seek out togetherness, cuddles or grooming.

Jose Grajeda and his daughter, Victoria, cuddling before bedtime in Alpine, Tex. "I love piojito," he says — that's the soothing caress his mother gave him when he was a kid. "I ask my mom now – and my kids – to give me piojito now," says the 40-year-old father of three. "I think it's my language of love."

Jessica Lutz /for NPR

In people, activating C-tactile fibers not only feels good, it reduces the perception of pain in adults and babies and lowers their heart beat rate, studies have found. There's evidence that activation of these nerves may also trigger the release of naturally occurring opioids in people's brains, such as endorphins.

"These endorphins relax you and cause you to feel at peace with the world," says psychologist Robin Dunbar at Oxford University. And they help to bond or connect you to the parent who's caressing you. "They make you feel very trusting with the individuals doing the gentle stroking."

Neuroscientist Helena Wasling isn't convinced by the studies linking caressing to endorphins. But she thinks, rather, this type of touch is critical for helping children's feel safe and as if their bodily needs are met.

"Being touched is just a basic need, like having dinner when you are hungry. You need to have this touch in order for you to reach a good, steady state in your body. You need it so you can feel safe enough to go out and explore the world." says Wasling, who has studied the neuroscience of touch for more than a decade and now is a physiotherapist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The dawn of the anti-touch era

During the end of the 19th century, many European pediatricians actually advised parents not to touch their children because they said it would weaken them and make them dependent. This idea hit a fever pitch in the 1920s when the psychologist John B. Watson wrote a parenting book, "even though he knew basically nothing about parenting," Wasling points out. In the book, Watson advises mothers to stay away, physically, from children: "You could give them a pat on the head if they did something really special, but when you greet them in the morning, you could give them a handshake."

Watson thought that lovingly caressing children – as parents all over the world have done for thousands of years – would prevent them from becoming independent, self-sufficient adults. By touching, parents would be "building up a human being totally unable to cope with the world it must later live in," Watson wrote in the book Psychological Care of Infant and Child, published in 1928.

Watson believed that by not touching young children and toddlers, parents teach them to be independent at an early age, Wasling explains.

"But then it turns out that the opposite is actually true," Wasling says. "Children who get a lot of touch, support and closeness from their parents are actually the ones that dare to go out and explore, as they grow up, because they have a basic safety that they can rely on. They have a solid foundation."

[theromanticrationalist]

Oh my gosh, the episode where Sheldon spends quality time with Bernadette was SO CUTE - and I don't even really like Bernadette as a character! He was so sweet and tender with her, and he designed a whole D&D campaign so that she could role play herself enjoying things she couldn't because of being pregnant. I feel like my heart was just bursting with how sweet and utterly thoughtful that was. Sheldon is absolutely pure in every way. 🥰 Which makes me want to talk about how this show treats Sheldon. It is like they kind of go back and forth between him being an actual complex character vs the weird man-child who everyone shits on. (By the way, Sheldon isn't a man-child, Leonard, Howard, and Raj ARE man-children...*ahem!*) After Sheldon and Amy have gotten back together, I feel like they've kind of reverted him back to the latter, although not every episode, thankfully. I absolutely LOVED the Sheldon birthday episode where Amy tries to celebrate him, and it causes him to have a trauma response from his childhood. Beautiful - as in beautiful character work from all involved! I don't like that they've kind of looped Amy in on the "let's shit on Sheldon" campaign at times. Like, of course I love that Amy is his foil - constantly challenging him, taking the time to explain situations to him to let him know when he is being inconsiderate and rude, and not giving into all of his unreasonable demands (which everyone else does WAY too often! Grow a backbone, guys!). That's all good! Yet, I feel like they've made Amy a little too mean to him at times. It is feeling out of character to me how much Amy is exhausted and annoyed at Sheldon. Sometimes I'm like, she does enjoy spending time with him right?? RIGHT??? I mean, I get it. Sheldon is A LOT, but it is SO obvious - to me any way - when Sheldon is being genuinely himself vs just being a jackass. I know Amy's love language is very different from Sheldon's, but I think Amy would be understanding and acknowledging Sheldon's love language, because she's incredibly smart, a neuroscientist, and is head over heels in love with Sheldon! Also, that there is nothing wrong with how passionate Sheldon is about things: contracts, trains, fun facts - I think he's so adorable. I kind of miss weird little Amy who could match Sheldon in his idiosyncrasies. She does still manifest, but not as much as she did earlier on. I feel like the writers believe that in order for Amy and Sheldon to work, one of them had to be the "normal one". I absolutely disagree with that.

[postwarlevi]

hi elizaaaaa 💗

Random Aot question time with the characters you prefer!

What would you think they'd study in college?

📏🚸🏫👩🏻‍🏫👨🏽‍🏫

Hello! Here's another inbox ask sitting here way to long. Sorry!

This one really stumped me though cause right out of school I got a job and never did any other sort of schooling other than what my job required.

But! Here we go!

Armin and Annie - Armin goes to school to become a paralegal in the courtroom world, and he meets Annie in one of the classes that overlap while she's studying to be a lawyer. Out of school they team up to work in family court.

Jean and Niccolo - Culinary school! We know he has a talent for cooking and this would really help his skills. No doubt he's going to own a restaurant one day. It helps when he meets Niccolo and they cannot be stopped! Co-restaurant owners coming right up! Then he introduced Niccolo to Sasha and he, Connie, Porco and Colt are groomsmen at their wedding and Jean bakes their cake...I'm sorry did I go off topic? :)

Historia - she's either gonna work with kids or animals. I'm going animals and she takes classes like animal medicine and pharmacology and starts out as a veterinary assistant before loving it so much she buys the practice. AND she keeps her prices at a decent rate so no one is forced to have to give up on their pet!

Erwin, Levi and Hange - They all meet in psychology, for different reasons! Hange goes to to get a biology major and becomes a biological psychologist and a neuroscientist! Levi goes on to also study sociology as well and becomes a social psychologist and does some ground breaking work in helping teens transition to adulthood. Erwin helps out with the interactive side and becomes a career counselor. The trio is amazing at what they do and the people they encounter are better for knowing them.

Connie - He isn't sure what he wants to do but likes drawing and design so starts taking the prerequisites for architecture! He needs a bit of help in the math classes but he wants it so bad and once he gets it and moves on to creative design it's clear he's made for this! One day he'll make the layout for the new town hall structure!

Miche - Took me a moment but he's going to study landscape architecture! He takes art, design and construction classes. This big guy just wants to beautify the neighborhood and helps Connie with landscaping for town hall, also has plans for redoing a rundown local playground that is sure to become a hotspot for families in the near future. Next up, the Capital!

Mikasa - She's a natural for photography! She doesn't know exactly what to pick so takes multiple courses like studio lighting and digital photography and even graphic design! Her breakthrough comes from at article of the opening of Jean and Niccolos restaurant on an international food magazine. And she hits it big with a National Geographic cover of a national park and has a whole spread inside dedicated to the wildlife! (And she photographs Sasha and Niccolos wedding!!)

Sasha - This girl here has an encounter with the veteran trio one day and between seeing the kids they help and her own adoptive siblings, becomes a speech-language pathologist! She has many choices but has a passion for helping children improvement of their verbal and non-verbal language skills. She is well known in her field and even works in a pediatricians office now.

Eren drops out to become a model.. NO NO kidding! (is my love/hate relationship with him showing?? - Okay he models on the side and Mikasa is his best photographer, but ANYway, since his dad's a doctor perhaps he is interested in medicine and gets a pharmacology degree.... that doesn't sound right LMAO OKAY! He models and gets Mikasas help with graphic design and they run a website and he becomes the most sought after and most followed male model of the decade! The end!

Reiner - HE'S the pharmacology major and specializes in psychiatry. He's very careful about listening to his patients and preventing substance use disorders by deciding if medicine is really the best route, or doesn't hesitate to help people seek alternative options.

Pieck - That's where Pieck comes in as a naturopath, our natural medicine holistic specialist. She not only runs a massage spa but is a fabulous nutritionist and works with crystals and overall wellbeing. Her goal is to get you feeling good as naturally as possible and suggests different herbs and vitamins if you need an extra push to get you there.

Porco - I can't help it, he's in the automotive industry. He doesn't mind getting his hands dirty and just overall likes to work on cars. He has to take courses in computers, math and language before finally getting his hands on a car. But he does some amazing work and is the main mechanic for the winning car in a prestigious car race 3 years in a row before going international!

I feel like I went a bit off topic sometimes but this was really fun!!

Wow I didn't mean to write this much I'm so hungry now LOL

[kunstmull]

The Pit of Language

One of those weeks when I am so grateful for the space that is the Neubauten Supporters' Project.

Just the playfulness and curiosity and breadth of knowledge among the folks that hang out there!

I'm trying my hardest to erect a containment field so that my latest Special Interest doesn't overrun everything - but there are people who want to play, and we end up with this sprawling multi-thread conversation that leaps from B-T to Mishima to Sun Tzu to House MD to the Mind-Body Problem and then the local neuroscientist pops in to say "Well, actually the latest research on language and the brain indicates..."

.

And I'm in love with the world again, because having a Special Interest is a lens for making the whole world beautiful

[bethanydelleman]

Not Jane Austen related, but could you tell me about your career as a cognitive neuroscientist?

Sure! Now I will be clear, I don't have a PhD, I have an MA, but the definition of "scientist" doesn't include your degree level and it’s the easiest term to understand.

My MA is in cognitive neuroscience and I mainly studied how fear changes our ability to remember things. You can read my dissertation if you want. I also spent a lot of time working with seniors and I have taught courses on how memory changes as we age. My job title has mostly been “research assistant.” I mostly studied memory, but I had an interest in language development and OCD.

After I graduated, I taught brain function and research methods for two semesters at a small university as a sessional lecturer.

Then I got a job as a research assistant to family doctors. I really loved that job. The research I was doing was public health focused. We looked at offering free legal advice to our patients, helping seniors take their medications on time, helping family medicine residents study for their exams (two papers out of that one!), and the needs of family doctor training programs in low income countries. (Many of these are available free to read online)

Here I need to say something about research: it doesn’t matter what you are an expert in, it matters that you know the process. The doctors I worked with were the experts, but because I know the basic methods of research, I can apply these to any project I encounter.

Then I spent a year in a different department doing heart health research. This research was more qualitative (people's experiences) than quantitative (things I can do statistics on) so I didn't enjoy it as much. But I was between pregnancies and I needed a job.

I am planning to get back into research again soon, I took a break when my kids were both in daycare and I opened my own home daycare, which ended up being a very good move, because the pandemic hit right when I would have been heading back to work after maternity leave (I live in Canada, one year at 50% pay). That is what I am doing now but I keep involved in science by continuing to participate in the peer review process. Peer review is always done on a volunteer basis and on your own time.

Now if you are thinking of getting into science, I know some things have happened recently with the whole pandemic, but let me say: it's a tough field. Researchers like me are often only hired on temporary contracts because our pay is based on grant funding. Despite advanced degrees, many of us are not paid very well at all and because of the short contracts we don’t have job security.

I was actually enrolled in a PhD program but I realized I wanted to do more applied research, which my supervisor couldn't offer. I also became aware that in the job market, the PhD wouldn't give me that much of an edge because I didn't want to be a professor.

Why not a professor? I don't like all the parts of the job. It is constant grant applications, a lot of training grad students, teaching rabbles of undergrads, and a lot of paper writing and revisions. I like some of those things, like teaching and statistics, but not others. Also, as a Canadian, it's almost impossible to get a job without first moving to the United States or Europe and I didn't want to do that. I've been watching friends have marriages fall apart because they both have PhDs and it's very hard to get post-docs in the same province or country, let alone city...

Universities are also hiring less full professors and more sessional lecturers. SLs are paid almost nothing and you have to accept a very high course load to make a reasonable living. Also no research, you just teach.

Which is all to say, get a PhD if you really love the subject matter, but the career prospects afterwards are rough. I love doing it though, so I most likely will be returning. Right now I’m using all my extra brain power on Jane Austen analysis and writing JAFF.

And for fun!

Here is a picture of my actual brain, which I lay perfectly still in an MRI for 1.5 hours just to get (look at that beautiful cerebellum, those healthy white matter tracks... I’ll stop):

And me doing a traumatic brain injury study (I fell off a cliff once) in an EEG:

And me cutting up a sheep brain (best day ever!)

[deepmochi]

Hiii i don't know if you're still active but i've been reading your astrology takes for a while and i really like your observations and thoughts so thank you so much for sharing them! i would like to know what do you think would be a good career choice for me because right now i feel kinda lost and i'm searching for answers or even guidation through astrology. using whole sign system, my MC is in Scorpio in the 11th house. scorpio is ruled by Mars(?) and i have Mars in Libra 10th house (besides Mars I also have my Sun and Mercury in Libra 10th house). Libra is ruled by Venus and my Venus is in Scorpio in the 11th house. I'm a capricorn rising and my north node is in gemini 6th house. let me know what do you think and thank you so much in advance! also sorry if there are any mistakes, english is not my first language :)

Hello, love

First, take a deep breath and let go of worries, sweetie. You can do this.

You need to set the tone of your life not for profession but for yourself. In Astrology the 2nd house, it is where money comes to you. The 6th house is your daily routines. They 8th house how you receive money. Now, these houses are important to take into account too.

About your request, you have gifts for research and technology. Are you good with computers and tech devices, are you interested in helping others? However, you may have people pleaser tendencies (Libra Mars). So, be aware of doing things just for others. The challenge is to do things that you want (NN). A place that stimulates your mind daily and where you have to adapt. My guess goes to biotechnology jobs, researchers, app developer, psychologist, biologist, neuroscientist, doctor specialist, volunteering, or computer engineer/ technician. I wrote many and different professions. Geminis can do anything if they want to. Go and check your 6th house ruler (Mercury) and what you are challenge in this life.

Also, we aren't taking into account the aspects to the planets, so take what resonates.

I hope your day/night goes well.💚

[kryptonite-solutions]

Revolutionizing Healthcare: Exploring the Intriguing World of fMRI Technology

One area where fMRI displays enormous potential is creating more immersive and personalized patient experiences during MRI scans. Traditionally, MRI scans could be loud, isolating, and uncomfortable for patients. But new fMRI visual systems and MRI cinemas are dramatically improving this. These allow patients to watch movies, television, video games, virtual reality environments, and more during scans on special MRI compatible display screens and headsets. Offering patients specialized entertainment, relaxation techniques, and diversions can enhance the MRI experience. Research suggests that medical imaging procedures are executed more efficiently and yield more favorable results when patients are in tranquility and relaxation. Patients allow autonomy in selecting materials to give them a sense of control during an otherwise restrictive machine scan.

Enhanced patient monitoring

Advanced MRI compatible camera systems mounted inside MRI scanner bores enhance the imaging experience. Instead of audio communication, intra-bore cameras let doctors see patients throughout scans to assure their safety and comfort. Knowing professionals are watching may make patients feel more cared for. The inside eyes also enable better patient coaching and positional corrections during scans as issues arise for cleaner final images. Unlocking insights into brain function

Neuroscientists can learn a lot about the complicated workings of the brain and how it works by looking at brain activity with the FMRI System. Researchers are getting a better idea of how healthy and unhealthy brains work as machine learning systems get better at studying functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data with many different types of information.

These in-depth scans make detailed maps of structures and links that are linked to a range of cognitive abilities and behaviors, such as movement control, sense awareness, thinking, mood regulation, language skills, decision-making, memory formation, and more. fMRI lets scientists study which complex brain networks are active when we do things like recognize a familiar face, listen to music, grieve after a loss, or even fall in love. Informing Treatments and Evaluations

These functional neural maps have a wide range of medical uses. They can provide more precise guidance for targeted neurosurgeries and improve evaluations for conditions such as visual or auditory impairment, cognitive disorders, psychiatric disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, epileptic seizures, language difficulties, substance dependencies, chronic pain syndromes, movement abnormalities, and others. fMRI scans provide improved therapeutic assessments on a micro-brain structure scale by analyzing before and after therapy. Exploring Cognition and Behavior

Finally, adapting immersive VR technology to work inside fMRI scanners unlocks remarkable research possibilities. Scientists can now present subjects with custom-simulated realities for studying precisely synchronized brain responses and mental phenomena that are difficult to recreate in labs. This promises a deeper study into things like spatial processing, threat reactions, skill acquisition, group dynamics, moral reasoning, and beyond during fMRI neuroimaging. The healthcare and neuroscience insights gleaned will prove invaluable.

As FMRI System resolution, power, and speed keep improving in tandem with smart AI analytics, so will this technology’s incredible contributions toward comprehending and enhancing brain function for healthcare. fMRI continues to open captivating neurological windows into the intricate world of minds and bodies. Kryptonite Solutions stands as a beacon of innovation in the healthcare industry, harnessing the power of cutting-edge technologies to revolutionize patient care and advance our understanding of the human body. Their dedication to patient well-being and unwavering commitment to innovation position them as a driving force in shaping the future of healthcare.

Virtual Skylights for Healthcare

[welcometomy20s]

June 28, 2023

Yesterday, I took a look at Henry Lindner and his quixotic take on science. Today, I continue examining the battle between science and philosophy by talking about Hubert Dreyfus.

I think this kind of mistake happens in many areas, one near artificial intelligence is the idea of consciousness, a battle between philosophers like David Chalmers and neuroscientists like Christof Koch. I think Koch was way too optimistic to say we would have a scientific theory of consciousness in twenty-five years, but Chalmers might be too confident in his assertion that science would never find one, and that his theories somehow defy scientific interpretation.

For example, Searle’s Chinese Room Experiment was presented as a challenge against the idea of artificial intelligence, but now is as a presentation of how consciousness is a systemic property and not a singular preposition. Once the idea was established, neuroscience found ways to accurately describe these systemic concepts. I think more philosophical ideas will slowly be translated into the language of science, and perhaps even vice versa.

My love of Wittgenstein comes from his challenge to interpret continental ideas of language into the analytical world, first through his Tractus and then through his Investigations. I hope I will do something similar to various different fields of inquiry in this blog, and have done so.

[starfriday]

TEDXGATEWAY RETURNS TO MUMBAI WITH A LINEUP FEATURING ICONIC SPEAKERS AND REMARKABLE IDEAS TO INSPIRE THE FUTURE

The upcoming edition in association with the Aditya Birla Group will spotlight 24 speakers and will be hosted at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) on 4th June 2023

Mumbai, 22nd May 2023: TEDXGateway, India’s largest platform for breakthrough ideas, and conversations presented in a radical format, is scheduled to take place in Mumbai on Sunday, 4th June at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA JBT).

Known to bring together an exceptional list of creators, thinkers and catalysts from across the world, this edition too will play host to individuals - on stage and in the audience, who through their work, have reimagined and revitalised the will to challenge the world we live in.

Attendees who have previously been witness to this exchange have described their time at the events as one that offers a glimpse into the future, in the company of those creating it. Accepted globally as a platform for the exchange of ideas, TEDXGateway 2023 will continue to give firsthand access to ideas and conversations that have potential to propel us into a better future.

For the first time, this year, the platform will present the Big Idea Scholarship Pass by the Aditya Birla Group. If you are a young innovator with on your way to build the next big thing or a truth teller in the early stages of your career or know of someone who is, the Big Idea Scholarship & Pass gives you the opportunity to be present at TEDXGateway 2023 in the same venue as some of the world’s most enterprising and creative minds. Apply here.

This edition will also feature 24 esteemed Indian/International speakers from diverse professional backgrounds, sitting at the intersection of science, technology, humanities, culture, environmentalism, activism and more:

NAME OF SPEAKER

TOPIC OF CONVERSATION

DOMAIN

Anirudh Krishna - Public Policy Expert, Duke University

Achieving Excellence by Investing in Talent Ladders

Policy

Robert Katzschmann - Robotics Expert, ETH Zurich

Why is it Necessary to Build Machines that Resemble Nature and Humans?

Soft Robotics

Alexander Macdonald - Chief Economist at NASA

A New NASA Project

Space

Smita Sharma - Independent Photojournalist

Trafficking Of Minor Girls - Photojournalistic Stories

Women’s Rights

Prof. Ramanan Laxminarayan - Epidemiologist, Princeton

5 Biggest Key Threats Likely for the Next Pandemic

Healthcare

Naheed Farid - Former Afghan Parliamentarian

Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

Women’s Rights

Madhusudan Rapole - Clean Energy Innovator

Topic of conversation to be shared shortly

Climate Change

Agata Blasiak - Digital Healthcare Expert

The Power of Digital Therapeutics

Healthcare

Kelly Wanser - Climate Innovator & TED Speaker

Climate Intervention Technologies

Climate Change

Bharat Vatwani - Mental Health Activist

Social Work led by Emotion

Mental Health

Mohit Raj - Prison Reformer

Prison Reform with Prisoners as Leaders

Social Work

Arun Sundararajan - Economist

Should we own our AI?

Technology and Social Transformation

Aadeel Akhtar - Roboticist

Bionic Revolution of Affordable & Quality Prosthetic Devices

Innovation

Daniel Bögre Udell - Language Activist

Revitalization of Languages and why is it important

Language

Michelle Drouin

Overcoming the Intimacy Famine in the post- Covid era

Love and Intimacy

Moran Cerf - Neuroscientist

Critical Decision Making

Neuroscience

Piyachart Phiromswad - Economist

Unleashing the Power of Ageing Population

Policy and Academia

Marco Tempest - Creative Technologist, NASA

Creating Illusions using AI and Technology

AI And Technology

Rashid. K - Innovator

Innovation for Social Good

Innovation

Radhika Batra

Preventing Permanent Blindness in Children

Healthcare

Deepa Unnikrishnan Aka Dee Mc - Artist

Performance

Khatija Rahman + Sunshine Orchestra

Performance

Sahil Vasudeva - Pianist

Performance

Tharanga Goonetilleke - Soprano

Performance

“TED has always been the cornerstone of innovation, insight, and storytelling. It has built a worldwide community committed to lifelong learning and to sparking positive change. As an extension of this thought in India, TEDXGateway addresses the curiosity, creativity, and enterprise of our audience. We have always passionately believed in the power of ideas that will change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. The upcoming edition this June in Mumbai, will be bold and brilliant — without apology. At TEDXGateway 2023, we’re shining a spotlight on 24 dazzling ideas from some of the world’s most extraordinary risk-takers and innovators. Attendees can expect a fast paced and curated daylong conference that will explore the most pressing questions of our time. The mainstage sessions will celebrate pioneers making power moves, and those who tirelessly show up as allies and advocates, setting in motion a community that is driven by curiosity, connecting both the speaker and listener.” said Yashraj Akashi, Curator of TEDXGateway and Senior Ambassador for the TEDX Program.

Speaking about the association, Percy Chowdhry, Director, Rustomjee Group, said: “Rustomjee is excited to partner with the upcoming edition of TEDxGateway and welcome the platform back in its physical form to Mumbai. Our philosophy at Rustomjee is to bring people together and form happy & healthy communities. And it is truly the power of ideas that have formed our blueprint for impactful change. Similarly, TED and TEDxGateway have been at the forefront of nurturing a global community - spanning domains, cultures, walks of life; and driven by curiosity. With this association, we look forward to an exchange of game-changing ideas that promises to set the foundation for our future.”

IMPORTANT LINKS:

Readers could: Book tickets here. Get more information on the speakers here.

To apply for the Big Idea Scholarship & Pass, visit this link

For more press information, visit: Airtable Press View

About TEDXGateway:

TED has originally stood for Technology, Entertainment, Design — three broad subject areas that are collectively shaping our world. Today, it encompasses the full spectrum of human ingenuity. But a TEDXGateway conference goes beyond, showcasing important research and ideas from all disciplines and exploring how they connect. The goal is to expand the imagination, make unexpected connections, inspire conversation and set the ball in motion for meaningful learning and change. Its signature blend of innovation, insight, and storytelling has ignited a worldwide community committed to lifelong learning and to sparking positive change.

[xtruss]

Does Your Dog Truly Love You? Science Has the Answer

— By Adam Piore | May 17th, 2023 | Newsweek

Illustrations Brit Spencer; Photographs Clockwise From Top Left Catherine Lender/Getty; Getty; Sensoespot/Getty; Rich Legg/Getty

It's probably impossible to know exactly what your dog is thinking. But a few years ago, Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University, decided he wanted to try and find out anyway.

The catalyst was Bern's diminutive pug Newton, a fawn-colored pooch with a friendly disposition and a small black mole on his cheek vaguely reminiscent of a young Robert De Niro. Every night for more than a decade, Newton climbed into bed with Berns and his wife and nestled his meatball-shaped head into the crook of the neuroscientist's armpit, before passing out and snoring loudly. The routine continued even after Newton grew so arthritic that he relied on a tiny-wheeled cart attached to his hind legs to tow himself around and required assistance to get into the bed.

When Newton finally passed away at the ripe old age of 97 (in dog years), Berns was so devastated that he began to ruminate on the nature of their relationship. Yes, he really had loved that little guy intensely. But had Newton, he wondered, felt the same way about him? Berns tried not to dwell on the question. It was sad to contemplate the possibility that for Newton their relationship might have come down to nothing more than a hankering for dog treats or a new chew toy. And how could one ever really know what went on in the head of an animal?

A few months later, while watching news footage of a trained dog participating in the military operation to capture Osama bin Laden, Berns had an epiphany. If a dog could remain calm during a military raid, perhaps he could train his new pet terrier to lie still in an MRI machine long enough to scan her brain and see how she thinks.

Since then, Berns has scanned the brains of more than 100 dogs, published the results in two books and established himself as a pioneer of the rapidly growing field of research called "canine cognition," which is revealing new insights about the often-enigmatic behaviors of our fabulous furry four-legged friends.

Today there are Canine Cognition labs at Yale, Duke, University of Arizona, University of Portsmouth, Barnard College, University of Florida and a wide array of leading scientific institutions around the globe—and the study of dogs in general is one of the fastest growing areas in the broader field of animal behavioral science. A new international consortium called the ManyDogs Project, with researchers in Austria, Poland, Italy, Canada, the U.S., Argentina and a number of other countries, recently completed its first major collaborative study and plans to publish it later this year.

The insights emerging are confirming things many dogs owners have long suspected and are fundamentally changing what scientists thought they knew about dogs. Far from being dumb creatures with good noses, as previously thought, they're actually smart in specific ways that make them ideal human collaborators and companions. Over the millennia, they have evolved to be cooperative animals, endowed with the neural machinery to understand abstract ideas and complex social dynamics. They're able to read and assess human emotions with great accuracy, can understand some language and are even capable of making rudimentary signals.

The new dog science is also addressing the issue most prominently on the minds of Bern and dog owners everywhere: Does my dog really love me?

Dogs Are No Dummies

Humans have been domesticating dogs for at least 32,000 years—more than 10,000 years longer than horses. Today the U.S. alone is home to an estimated 90 million pooches (roughly one for every four Americans), many of whom have owners who treat them like mini people, dressing them in raincoats, sweaters and booties (the global pet clothing market topped $5.2 billion in 2021). They confide their deepest secrets, rearrange vacation schedules to accommodate their idiosyncrasies and shower them with gifts and luxuries such as dog houses and rawhide.

Scientists who study animals have tended to turn their noses up at dog cognition. This attitude was driven in part by the mistaken belief that domestication had dumbed dogs down. In a famous 1985 experiment, University of Michigan researchers found that wolves could unlock a gate mechanism after watching a human do so, but domesticated dogs didn't seem to get it. The implication was that the dogs were stupid.

All that changed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, thanks to a series of groundbreaking experiments by ethnographers Vilmos Csányi and Ádám Miklósi and their collaborators at Budapest's Eötvös Loránd University.

Csányi and his wife were hiking one winter in the Hungarian mountains and stopped to pet a particularly gregarious stray. The dog followed them for five miles through the snow before Csányi picked him up and carried him the rest of the way home. Flip, as they called him, was white and brown and had stumpy legs and resembled an Ewok, a cute furry biped from Star Wars. Flip quickly became an indispensable member of the household and won over all their friends and family. What was it about this "fuzzy male of low stature, surely a mixed breed," Csányi wondered, that made him so magnetic?

Flip seemed to be living proof that the conventional wisdom about dogs—that they were unintelligent—was wrong. The ability of canines to insinuate themselves successfully into the lives of their human owners seemed like an amazing feat of evolutionary magic. "Dogs are smart enough to survive in a human family, which is actually a quite complicated task," recalls Miklósi. "Wolves can't do that. Establishing a specific social relationship with another species is quite challenging."

Csányi and Miklósi decided to examine the process by which humans and dogs forge strong emotional bonds. As ethologists, they were familiar with the extensive scientific literature on "attachment," the process by which parents and children of different species formed lasting emotional bonds.

Human owners and their dogs, they theorized, formed bonds in the same way—growing close through a process that mimicked that of a human parent and child.

Their theory was inspired in part by Flip's behavior at home, which struck Csányi as uncannily familiar. "When my children were 2 or 3 years old, they wanted all of my attention. They wanted to touch me, they wanted me to touch them," he recalls. Flip's behavior was "very similar."

In an early experiment, Miklósi and Csányi placed dogs and their owners in an unfamiliar room with interesting things to explore and took notes. The dogs and their owners exhibited behaviors virtually identical to what developmental psychologists had long observed in well-adjusted human infants and their mothers. The dogs used the owners as a secure base, venturing out and coming back as they explored the new surroundings, all the while staying connected through eye contact and watching carefully for cues. The implication was clear: Dogs had hacked the human system designed to respond to cuteness and bonding.

In recent years, scientists have extended this line of research. When a dog and a human are bonded, each touch and each bit of eye contact causes their bodies to release the powerful hormone oxytocin—the "love chemical" that also promotes bonding between mother and child and is known to lower heart rate and blood pressure. Petting increases levels of the hormone dopamine, sometimes referred to as a feel-good chemical, and endorphins in both dogs and humans.

Other studies have found that dogs have evolved two to three times as many fast-twitch facial muscles as wolves, which gives them greater latitude for expression. A special facial muscle allows them to widen their eyes in ways that way human babies do, eliciting the same high-pitched voices and facial expressions that parents use with infants. Dogs at shelters that are better at making these "puppy-dog" eyes are more successful at finding new homes. Dogs given oxytocin, meanwhile, tend to gaze at their owners more, which causes the owners to look back, setting off a virtuous cycle of more oxytocin and dopamine release and bonding.

The ability of dogs to bond with members of other species is not limited to humans, as any dog owner who also has a cat will tell you. In his 2005 book, If Dogs Could Talk, Csányi describes a dachshund-like canine named Jumpy whose owners frequently cooked rabbit stew, a delicacy Jumpy enjoyed for years. Then, one Easter, they obtained a live rabbit who temporarily became Jumpy's favorite playmate. When they turned that rabbit into stew, not only did Jumpy recognize and refuse to eat his new friend, but he went on a "silent and dejected hunger strike for three days," Csányi wrote. Jumpy has refused to eat rabbit meat ever since.

Social Intelligence

It's not just that dogs are so cute we can't resist them. Research has also confirmed that dogs are hardwired for cooperation and friendship, remarkably attuned to our emotions and limitations and, it seems increasingly clear, capable of learning and remembering complex rituals and information.

For his part, Csányi immediately noticed how quickly Flip seemed to grasp and adapt to the rules of the house. The Csányi home was crammed full of small objects. Although Flip was energetic and "prone to excitement," he never knocked anything over or broke anything. When Csányi commanded Flip to fetch an object from a table—say, a ball or a toy—he invariably grabbed it with "exquisite care." And if, in the process, anything else had been accidently moved, he would "immediately stop and ask for help by looking at me or barking."

This type of behavior led Csányi and Miklósi to question the iconic Michigan experiment comparing the intelligence of domestic dogs and wolves. Perhaps the dogs had been able to open the gate mechanism after watching humans do it. Maybe they just didn't want to break the rules.

Csányi and Miklósi recruited 28 dogs and their owners and set up a complicated contraption that required dogs to pull on the handles of plastic dishes on the other side of a wire fence to obtain meat. Outdoor dogs, who spend most of their time in the yard and thus are presumably more accustomed to acting as independent agents, outscored their indoor cousins about a third of the time, while the most obedient domesticated dogs looked to their owners for permission to reach through the fence. When they got it, however, they matched the performance of their more independent cousins.

To figure out how much the dogs could understand, the experimenters hid food in one of several containers, then brought the dogs into the room and had them guess which container had the food. To help them, researchers offered various cues, alternatively staring at, nodding toward or pointing to the correct container. When researchers use these tests on human infants, they quickly catch on to the hints. Apes and chimpanzees, by contrast, almost never do without extensive training. Dogs, like toddlers, are quick learners. They soon learn to heed the pointing, bowing, nodding, head turning and glancing gestures from humans to find the hidden food.

The pointing experiments provided the first direct evidence that dogs have the brainpower not only to understand abstract ideas, but also to ascribe motivations to members of an entirely different species, according to Evan MacLean, an evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist who is the founder and director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center. It also suggested that studying dogs could give us insight into sociability and what allowed humans to be so successful.

"If you think about it, pointing is a fundamentally cooperative kind of behavior," MacLean explains. "If I point out something for you, as a human, when you're trying to figure out what that means, you without thinking about it assume that I have a cooperative motive. I know something about the world that you don't, and the reason I'm doing this is because I want to help you in some way. That is cooperative behavior at its core. Other animals can't do that."

Dogs pay close attention not just to human gestures, but to human facial expressions as well. In recent years, researchers have shown that dogs can distinguish expressions of happiness, anger and disgust. They can tell when a person is sad or cheerful. Their hearts beat faster when they see photos of expressive faces than neutral ones. They avoid angry faces and pay more attention to fearful ones.

All this helps explain why guide dogs are so effective at helping blind people navigate the world and avoid stepping into traffic and how therapy dogs can comfort traumatized children, prisoners serving life sentences for violent crimes, senior citizens fading into dementia and stressed-out college students cramming for exams: because they can read human emotions and respond appropriately.

Good Judges of Character

Evidence is growing that dog smarts are not limited to social and emotional intelligence. It apparently extends to far more complex behavior as well.

Dogs are capable of making rapid, simultaneous judgements of the kindness or potential helpfulness of humans they meet—just as Flip apparently did when he decided to adopt Csányi and his wife on that Hungarian mountaintop. They also seem to be capable of accumulating sophisticated mental files on individual people and using that information to guide behavior.

In humans, the ability to evaluate character is foundational, emerging as early as five months. Zachary Silver, who recently earned his Ph.D. at Yale and will soon open a lab at Occidental College, recently used pairs of actors to test the ability of dogs to make character judgments. One actor would pretend to steal a clipboard or actively harm somebody else, while the other would be friendlier, handing someone a clipboard they are looking for. Both actors would then simultaneously offer the dog a treat. Of 37 dogs tested, two thirds preferred to take food from the friendly actor. Other experiments have found that dogs will eventually stop following cues from human individuals who too often mislead them.

"If we're talking about social intelligence, dogs are very human-like in the way that they reason about the social world," says Silver.

Of course, dog owners have already figured this out. For instance, most people who have shy dogs know that their pets often watch their interactions with strangers closely and are more likely to make a friendly approach to someone after seeing their owner have a positive interaction. Yet they seem to understand the relationship is different—they never seem to want or expect to follow home human friends, no matter how familiar and beloved, if those friends don't reside with their primary caregivers.

With dogs, communication goes both ways. In a revised version of the pointing experiment, owners would leave the room while researchers hid food in plain sight of the dogs. Typically, when an owner returned and was asked to look for the food, the dog tried to signal by running back and forth between the hiding place and the owner or using their eyes to indicate the location.

The eagerness of dogs to help their owners was brought home to Csányi one day when he took a bad fall on an icy staircase. Flip ran to his side, licked him and stayed with him until he could get up. For years afterward, whenever they came to the same icy steps, Flip would return to his owner's side and closely watch him until they had passed the danger zone. During the summer, however, Flip seemed to recognize the danger was absent.

Barking is another effective avenue of expression. In an experiment with Hungarian mudis, a herding dog that resembles German shepherds and border collies, Miklósi recorded the dogs while playing with other dogs, anticipating food, encountering an intruder and several other situations. When he played the recordings to volunteers and asked them to guess the situation, owners and non-owners alike were right about a third of the time—about twice the rate of chance.

"When dogs are vocalizing, they're really expressing different kinds of inner states," Milóski says. "They try to communicate something about their emotions."

Dogs seem to have a big capacity to learn new ways of expressing themselves. Miklósi has shown that with just a little bit of training, dogs can be enticed to mimic a wide range of human actions spontaneously, such as bowing, jumping, lifting a limb, turning in circles—even learning to operate a machine that dispenses balls.

The Limits of 'Genius' Dogs

A sheepadoodle named Bunny has recently attracted eight million followers on TikTok for her apparent mastery of language. (A sheepadoodle is a mix of old English sheepdog and poodle.) Bunny seems to express her needs and wants by pressing buttons on a mat, originally designed to help children with difficulty communicating, linked to specific words, such as "walk." Researchers at U.C. San Diego are currently evaluating the claims and studying the extent to which nonhumans can use these tools to communicate.

It sounds like a silly TikTok thing, but the question of how much dogs can understand—and why some dogs understand more than others—is one of the hottest areas of current research.

It started a decade or so ago with the discovery of a border collie named Chaser that was extraordinarily smart. John Pilley, a behavioral psychologist at Wofford College in South Carolina, trained Chaser to identify and retrieve 1,022 toys by name (he wrote it all up in his 2013 New York Times bestseller Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words). Chaser was also able to discriminate verbs used to describe a desired action—such as "pull" or "fetch." When asked to fetch a specific toy Chaser had never heard of, the dog was also capable of inferring which toy the experimenter wanted if it knew the names of all the other toys present, presumably by a process of elimination.

Chaser kick-started a quest among some researchers to find more examples of "genius dogs" to study. In 2021, Miklósi, set up a website to find smart dogs (he's still seeking candidates) and launched a high-profile "genius dog" contest that was covered by CNN and other media outlets during the pandemic, pitting dogs with big vocabularies against one another. So far, he has identified 40 dogs from around the world. Whereas the average dog may know the names of one or two objects, a genius dog will know four to six names and can quickly learn 80 to 100 with training. It usually takes 10 or 15 minutes to learn the name of one object and the dogs retain them memory for about a month. The "cognitive trick" by which they are learning remains an active area of exploration, and to draw conclusions he first needs to recruit more dogs.

Some experts remain skeptical about many claims people make about their dog's abilities. Amritha Mallikarjun, a postdoc at Penn Vet Working Dog Center at the University of Pennsylvania, which specializes in training and studying search-and-rescue dogs, bomb sniffers and other service dogs, says that, in general, people tend to overestimate the capacity of dogs to understand speech. Miklósi admits that only an extremely small percentage of dogs are capable of learning 100 words or more.

Dogs may never recite Shakespeare, but they do seem to have an affinity for different languages. Mallikarjun has demonstrated that dogs raised in English-speaking households show far more interest when people speak in Spanish (and vice versa), because, she thinks, it is novel to them. "They can certainly learn the idea that a spoken utterance corresponds with an action or an item, but they cannot speak language" in a technical sense, says Mallikarjun. In most cases, dogs understand the tone, and often can figure out the meaning of words by the context. But most dogs can't actually distinguish between nouns and verbs without cues.

"I can certainly train a dog to step on a button if they want to go outside," she says. "I can also train a dog to ring a bell if they want to go outside, which is what a lot of people have already done. Or you just wait until your dog comes over to you. Because generally we understand our dogs pretty well. Chaser was the only dog thus far that's basically been able to show the idea that there's an action that can go with an object, and they're separate."

Inside the Doggie Brain

As brain imaging technologies continue to advance, they're offering tantalizing clues about what goes on in canine brains. Dogs, research shows, see the world in radically different ways than people do.

Philippa Johnson, an associate professor of diagnostic imagining at Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine, recently produced the first atlas of the canine brain. She's found that the temporal areas of the brain—those involved in long-term episodic memory and emotions—are roughly comparable in dogs to those of humans. This explains how dogs bond so well with humans and understand emotions. However, a dog's frontal cortex—the seat of abstract reasoning, problem solving and imaginative thought—is far smaller than that found in humans. To Johnson, this suggests dogs are "much more present" than humans, blissfully immune to worrying about what will happen beyond the next meal or cuddle.

However, other areas of the brain are far larger in dogs than in humans. These include those involved in visual processing, fine-motor function and smell. Johnson has also done extensive work mapping the "white matter" connections in the canine brain, which sheds light on what areas most often work in tandem.

Perhaps most notably, she has identified a major track in dogs that is not present in humans. It provides a direct connection between the visual cortex and the olfactory lobes, involved in processing smells. She's also found direct connections, not found in any other species, between the nose and the spinal cord. An odor entering a dog's nose will sometimes be processed in the visual areas of the brain, which is why some blind dogs seem to retain some ability to "see." More broadly, this means that the moment-to-moment experience of a dog probably involves an intricate interweaving of sights and odors.

Indeed, if dogs have a superpower, aside from social cognition, it would be their sense of smell. A dog's nose is a million times more sensitive than that of a human. The average person is equipped with five million olfactory receptors—tiny proteins capable of detecting individual odor molecules—clustered in a small area in the back of the nasal cavity. By contrast, the average dog has 300 million olfactory receptors—60 times more than humans—extending from the nostrils all the way to the back of the throat. By some estimates 35 percent of a dog's brain is dedicated to smelling, compared to 5 percent for humans.

That's why dogs have been used for centuries to sniff out outlaws, explosives and drugs, find avalanche victims and rescue individuals trapped under buildings. In recent years, they've even been trained to sniff out cancer and COVID-19. Clara Wilson, an expert on canine olfaction at the Penn Working Dog group, found that dogs can smell human stress. In experiments, a dog presented with a piece of cloth swabbed from the back of a person's neck and breathed on can usually tell whether or not that person had recently been asked to perform a difficult math task.

Dogs, Wilson notes, also use their sense of smell to keep track of time. They can tell the difference between an odor that's 12 hours old or four hours old. That's how they know when it's time to go out for a walk and when their owner is due home from work. Often, on walks, they are sniffing out urine from other dogs, which contains copious amounts of information, such as whether a dog was in heat, stressed out, happy or sick.

One study found that small adult male dogs tended to pee higher relative to their body size than larger adult male dogs to exaggerate their height and competitive ability. In another study, researchers showed dogs pictures of other dogs whose pee they'd sniffed. The dogs who sniffed the pee were surprised if the size of the dog in the picture did not conform to the mental image in their head, Wilson says. There's so much information in pee that Wilson and her colleagues refer to it as the "pee-mail" system. A dog will often pee its reply on the same spot.

There is, of course, a wide variability between one dog's brain and another's. Erin Hecht, head of the Evolutionary Neuroscience Laboratory and the Canine Brains project at Harvard, has been studying how human breeding has affected canine brain development. In research published in 2019, she looked at 62 pure-bred dogs from 33 different breeds and found substantial differences in the sizes of different brain regions and networks, depending on whether they had been bred for hunting, herding, guarding or companionship.

One network included reward regions of the brain that would be involved in social bonding to humans, training and skill learning. These regions would be more pronounced in companion "lapdog" breeds, such as the Maltese and Yorkshire terrier. A second network, associated with active smelling and tasting in pursuit of a goal, was larger in scent hunters, such as beagles and basset hounds. A third set of areas—used for eye movement, vision, spatial navigation and motor areas involved in moving through a physical environment—was larger in dogs bred for sight hunting, such as whippets and Weimaraners.

A fourth network included high-order brain regions that might be involved in social action and interaction, including areas that appear to be activated when dogs are presented with human faces and vocalizations, which was also linked to companion breeds like the Maltese and Yorkshire terrier. A fifth set of regions involved in fear, stress and anxiety, which regulate behavioral and hormonal responses to environmental stressors and threats, was well developed in breeds historically used for fighting, including boxers and bulldogs. And a sixth network, involved in processing smell and vision, was linked to dogs with historical police and military functions like boxers and Doberman pinchers.

"There's way more variation across dog brains than there is across any other species," she says. "And so this is the result of human breeding. We have made them this way, and different breeds of dogs have brains that are sort of prewired to excel in different areas."

"It's a challenge to figure out how dogs think and what the world is like to them, because they have evolved to make us think that they are like us," she adds. "They've evolved to mimic human psychology in some ways. That doesn't necessarily mean that that's actually what's happening in their brains. We have to try to take off our human color glasses to understand what's going on with them, and that's hard for us to do."

Does My Dog Love Me?

All the research findings in the world about how much dogs understand language, read human intent and are keen judges of character did not satisfy Gregory Berns. He still sought an answer to his Big Question about Newton. When his beloved pug looked up at him with those puppy-dog eyes, was it true love?

Since Newton had already crossed the Rainbow Bridge, Berns turned his attention to Newton's successor, a pet terrier named Callie. He trained Callie to lie still in an fMRI scanner. Berns fed her, praised her and left her alone in the huge donut-shaped machine and monitored the reward areas of her brain to see when they lit up the most.

The results were unambiguous: kind words from Berns lit up Callie's reward centers just as much as the dog treats, demonstrating that Callie—and by extension, Newton—loved him just as much, if not more, than a scrumptious piece of food.

"When people want to know 'what is my dog thinking,' I think what they're asking is, 'does my dog love me? I love him,'" Berns says. "The answer is 'absolutely.' It's remarkably similar to how we experience the relationship. They have these social bonds that with us, that they find them intensely rewarding."

Science, in this case, is telling us what we already knew.

[machinesofadventure]

All the environment design artworks shown here result from a collaboration between an artist and artificial intelligence. The question is, why AI? Do we need it? And how could we use it? As an artist, my inspiration is often based on subconscious sparks of random ideas that sometimes come unexpected, untriggered. However, as a designer, it is unacceptable to rely on happy accidents. You know how much I love to dig into the science of ideation, so you won't be surprised that I may have a reasonable explanation for why we, as artists, find so much joy in dealing with ambiguity. It turns out that ambiguity might be the key to human creativity, particularly how our brains deal with it. Due to our poor sensory system, our brain is forced to crush ambiguity into choices. As neuroscientists such as David Eagleman or Anil Seth claim, these choices result from processing our memories, experiences, and emotions ... we are literary surfing our cognitive maps to interpret that indistinct indication. Although knowing how we process such visual noise is terrific, it might provide an insufficient foundation to drive creativity intentionally and in the given context. So, with that said, what if we can control the input signal, the ambiguity itself? And here comes the AI. Explicitly speaking, we do not talk about the general AI now but about its less (fortunately) sentient versions. Such as Generative Adversarial Networks, Contrastive Language Image Pre-Training or the recently popular Text-to-image Diffusion Models. So, in this topic, I was using Google's Colab notebook, called Disco Diffusion. As in other cases (Midjourney, Wombo Dream, Dall-E or Stable Diffusion), it generates an image based on your verbal prompt, but for this exact objective, it allowed me to control the ambiguity level of it better than the others. All of those, as mentioned earlier, may produce similar results, but their rendering outputs were too resolved and too precise for my needs. Why? It's all about exploration. If the image I want to interact with doesn't allow me to interpret it in various ways, and if it's too definite, how could I explore it? I want my AI to generate ambiguous images that are not just any random noise. I want my AI to help me start with something abstract enough, yet giving me hints in the required context, something I can paint over and interact with. Something new and crazy that I could use to consciously design. Thank you for joining in my exploration of planet Pontis Major over the last few weeks. It's been an enjoyable ride, thanks to this AI tool. By talking to an AI through my verbal prompts and playing with the dozens of images it generated, I could spend just ten or twenty minutes producing each of these images. It was as liberating and as joyful as doodling on a napkin. My research continues, and it seems that it crosses the borders of art and design. So please feel free to reach out via LinkedIn or email or follow me on my Facebook or Instagram. (Links in comments) Let's stop talking about happy accidents and let's talk about ambiguity.