Size of your brain striatum predicts computer game skills.

In the fresh paper from January issue of Cerebral Cortex, authors argue that the size of your striatal volume (indicated in procedural learning and cognitive flexibility) predicts video game skill acquisition. They asked participants with different levels of gaming experience to play Space Fortress and their measured their brain volumetry using MRI. They've found that people with bigger dorsal striatum were overall better in performance and their performance improved with learning quicker than people with smaller striatum. Additionally, hippocampal areas (implicated in declarative memory) didn't predict learning improvement, suggesting lack of experience effect (interesting...). Those results suggest that there might be some major brain size effect for procedural learning and cognitive flexibility in general. I'm just wondering if there is any task specific effect related with playing computer games, so it would be nice to test participants with different other cognitive tasks (like some IQ test) to see if there is any correlation in such cases as well. You can read the paper here. Discuss ;-)

You brain can process only 150 Facebook friends.

I am back to my geek space for a moment after busy week of massive literature search/review I am doing. So today - some science stuff for change.

First - something for Facebook freaks - a theory by Professor Robin Dunbar from Oxford Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. The thing is about to get publish so I can't give you the full paper reference, but the idea goes like this: we have in the brain area called neocortex, responsible for processing complex thought and language (probably). However, the volume of neocortex is limited, and therefore we are only able to actively manage social circles of about 150 friends.

Social circle is defined by Dunbar as "relationships where a person knows how each friend relates to every other friend". Dunbar calculated this number when he surveyed such social circles as Neolithic farming villages, unit sizes in Roman armies and even non-primates groups. It seem that when the circles go larger than 150, then some part of links deteriorate and stagnate. Now, he is arguing that the same rule ('Dunbar number') works for online social groups like Facebook. He showed that you can have as much as 1000 friends, but you actively manage only about 150 of them anyway. There is a gender difference here: females communicate more via Facebook and manage their circles more than males (surprise?).

I am reluctant to agree, there are so many other factors that could determine our social circle management skills (e.g. personality traits like 'openness' or 'extraversion', level of anxiety). But I acknowledge the fact that we have a limited cognitive capacity which could effect managing our social circles. What do you think?

[image credit: Geek On Acid with shitty and broken camera]

Noticin.gs

There is a new game I started playing recently - Noticin.gs. The rules are simple - when you NOTICE something interesting in your environment, you make a photo, and then you upload it to Flicker, with geotag for the location where you captured the photo. The other rules are:

• People aren't noticings,
• You can only submit one photo of each 'thing',
• Each player is limited to three noticings per day,
• It must be clear to other players what the noticing in the photo is, using the title of the photo if it's unclear in the picture.

After each day you photos get scored and you are earning the points. That's it.

Why is it interesting?

For the same reason as the reactive music I described here - this is a trick that makes you connect and attend to reality, rather then isolate and disconnect from it. When I am searching for the thing to capture I am more aware of everything around me. Speaking simply, noticin.gs makes you NOTICE things more.

So get your mobile phone set up with Flicker and start playing, and you will notice a lot of cool things surrounding you...

Nexus One, Transparent Display, Project Natal and shit loads of touch tablets.

Its the beginning of 2010 and there is a lot of stuff happening in the technology world. Particularly, I have been focusing on Consumer Electronic Association (CES) conference to see if there is anything worth cyberpunk attention.

First - everyone has been hooked on the release of Google Nexus One phone (pictured below), which for me looks really like another iPhone copy. Some specs are better (larger screen, 5 Megapix camera, voice recognition, multitasking), but to be honest - I would expect more from Google. All the internet gossips about Nexus One came true, which was... very disappointing, because it was all so predictable! I really like the fact that you can dictate your SMS's to the Nexus, but I know from experience that as a non-native English speaker, those technologies doesn't work so well for me. Nothing really new there, it is like Google just recycled iPhone. Not impressed at all. However, what has to be admitted is that the real war is not in the hardware but software that matters in mobile phones at the moment. As Mike Harvey reflects in his Times review from yesterday that only Google Android OS is a real candidate to overtake Apple on the mobile market. We shall see how it develops, and what phone we will have in our pocket in a year time...


Second - the cool stuff, is the prototype for Samsung transparent OLED display and 0.05 mm OLED panels (pictured below in the format of window displayed during CES conference). Yes! I was waiting for it! I already see my mobile phone with transparent display scanning the reality around me with augmented labels, or my flat windows being my displays. Also, the perspective of reading a e-newspaper on 0.05 mm display is even more exciting. Ok, maybe I haven't outlined the most practical aspects of this technology (like hmmm... transparent medical body scanner - you know, the one from Aliens) but it still has very high cyberpunk-geek factor for me. It's the kind of stuff from sci-fi movies that comes true. Ah, shame it's still in research and development, no release date yet...


Third - Microsoft Project Natal for 'new' Xbox 360 - finally. 'You Are The Controller' as the advert says - full body gaming interface. I think it was inevitable after Nintendo Wii, but it will finally be here, this year, in your living room. Project Natal is a tiny camera (pictured below), that combines depth sensor, multi-array microphone, and software which provides camera with 3D full body motion capture, face capture, voice recognition, acoustic source localization and ambient noise suppression. So you slash, shot, speak, shout, kick, or jump, and your on-screen gaming character does the same. However, on the CES they didn't actually demoed this device. Microsoft folks just showed cheesy clips of Natal and jumped around excited how amazing it's going to be. Demo please Microsoft, we want proper user demo. Anyway, its coming soon, this summer. I think I will actually buy Xbox just to experience it...


Forth, fifth, sixth... all the other releases are taken by so called 'Slates' or touch tablets. Lenovo Tablet, Dell Tablet, Freescale Tablet, T-Mobile Vega Android Tablet... This year on CES almost every possible company decided to release their own tablet, probably in competitive anticipation for widely-gossiped iSlate (that is supposedly coming soon from Apple). And, I totally agree with my pal from lab, David (who already criticized it here), that tablets don't fill any market gap, and therefore they are useless. Ebook I understand, because I want to read and store journal papers, newspapers and articles on the thin and light device with E-ink display (and they are cheap). Netbook I acknowledge, because I would like to have a light laptop working in the Cloud (and they are cheap). But I don't need a 10" copy of my iPhone with touch LCD or LED screen. Not useful for writing, not useful for reading, shit, it's a retarded technology and it's expensive. Enough for today.

[photo credits: Google, Engaget, Wikipedia]

I got Eigenharp Pico!!!

I am back after long break and skiing (Cairngorm), and it's 2010 - the year when they send the second crew in Space Odyssey.

And I got the best Christmas gift ever (thank you Ola!:*) - Eigenharp Pico!

I wrote about Eigenharp and their synthesizers here, but now it's hands-on (Fig 1). So let me try to outline some main coolest features of this small instrument.

What strike you first is the quality of design - attention to small details. It feels like professional instrument, it has the just right weight (about 500g), adjustable thumb hooks to hold it (Fig 2) and neck strip. The 3 meter USB cable has special attachment to prevent it from disconnecting (Fig 3). The breath pipe is also adjustable and detachable for easy cleaning, with interchangeable mouthpieces (Fig 4). You got 18 keys, but you 8 fingers are most intuitively using only 6 of them - the remaining 2 are used for quick browsing of samples. There are also 4 'options' keys, which you use to program Pico on the fly. Finally, there is a touch sensitive strip running through the length of Pico's body.

So I hooked it to my mac, and installed massive software package (about 8GB), which took about 15 minutes. The software is demanding, because of the heavy physical modeling instruments (Cello and Clarinet), FX units and audio units. I lunched the EigenD (native software that controls Pico) and... it was ready to play.


It takes time to get used to playing on Pico keys, which are more sensitive to your touch than the strings of guitar. However, the tutorials are really straightforward, so after only 2 hours I was able to make some basic programming of the device.

My first impression - it is an instrument capable to create very interesting sounds, but it is too limited in terms of programming at the moment. They will release the workbench, which will allow to program every parameter of Pico, but at this stage I can't do some things I want to. For example - the drum machine is limited to sample playing (no sequencer), changing some default parameters is still not possible.

However, as a controller for virtual synthesizer, its ultimately best I ever played (and I tested about 40 hardware and 60 software synths in recent years). For example I have two software synths (Arturia Jupiter 8V and Native Instruments Absynth 5) loaded into Pico, so I play keys on two voices, change frequency using touch strip, change resonance using keys roll and apply various levels of distortion using breath pipe. Then I add some delay, extra filter as separate audio effect. Effect is quite crazy. Then I change Absinthe for physical model of clarinet and it gets even more industrial-dirty.

So overall, I love it, but it still needs lots of work from software side, Workbench is essential for serious programming and interface will take me probably 2 months to get to the decent level of playing. But it is definitely the most intersting instrument I have been playing which uses the full power of computers with very smart and friendly tactile interface. I give it 8 out of 10.