An interesting experiment - or perhaps it is merely an optical illusion - has been circulating around the internet and cultivating an interesting discussion surrounding the nature of time. Try it here.

Therein, one stares at a clock, any old-school big-hand / little-hand / second-hand style will work. Without too much practice, one can observe that the second-hand becomes "sticky". It will literally stop dead on the clock for several seconds -and this phenomenon has caused quite a bit of reaction and speculation. The best and most cognizant of these theories are summarized in the follow-up post, Why Did Time Stop? Further explorations in tachypsychia, a term used by psychologists to describe the subjective experience of time, can be found below.

According to the overview for Haunt, an installation by London’s noted architectural firm Haque, para-psychologists have deduced several “empirical” environmental characteristics of haunted spaces: infrasound (frequencies below the threshold of hearing), fluctuations in humidity, fluctuations in temperature, air movement, electromagnetic fields. Herewith, a haunted space is created and invoked, what Haque dubs an non-visual architecture, by simulating (or creating?) the atmospheric conditions that commonly accompany these experiences.

Recent advances in adaptive optics, a technique borrowed from astronomy, has revealed new insights into the arrangement of retinas in living people, which show surprising variation from one person to the next. Nonetheless, our perceptions don’t vary as might be expected.

As researchers took pictures of the thousands of cells responsible for detecting color in the deepest layer of the eye, they found that our eyes are physically wired differently. Yet we all — with the exception of the colorblind — identify colors similarly. The results suggest that the brain plays an even more significant role than previously thought in deciding what we see. The findings were detailed in a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Read the full story.

Reports about scientific studies that provide clues to links between the brain, the mind, and meditation are surfacing around the web, spawned in particular by the Dalai Lama’s appearance this past weekend at Investigating the Mind, a round of talks on the science and clinical application of meditation. Here’s a survey of the top stories on the subject: