Traffic Jams In Your Brain 250
An anonymous reader writes "Carl Zimmer's latest foray into neuroscience examines why the brain can get jammed up by a simple math problem: 'Its trillions of connections let it carry out all sorts of sophisticated computations in very little time. You can scan a crowded lobby and pick out a familiar face in a fraction of a second, a task that pushes even today's best computers to their limit. Yet multiplying 357 by 289, a task that demands a puny amount of processing, leaves most of us struggling.' Some scientists think mental tasks can get stuck in bottlenecks because everything has to go through a certain neural network they call 'the router.'"
Re:That was easy! (Score:3, Informative)
He said making tank gun rounds. That was pretty common during the war, the US had Rosie the Riveter as propaganda of that kind of role.
In the USSR they served in combat, too. It was accepted somewhat reluctantly, but quite a few volunteered, and initial losses gave a reason for giving it a try. They turned out to make really awesome snipers [wikipedia.org].
Re: Pulling it between layers of abstraction. (Score:3, Informative)
Last I heard, she's reduced to making a living selling horoscopes and the like, if she's still alive.
Tt seems she's doing quite well and is still active: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi [wikipedia.org]
Re:That was easy! (Score:2, Informative)
While your grandmother may have had her own way of doing this, complex calculations can be done very quickly using the Trachtenberg system of mathematics [wikipedia.org].
I actually have the book and swore to myself that (while I didn't need those computational skills) my kids would be taught it... my first is on the way now so I guess it's time to dust it off (the book... not the child).
For anyone interested in learning these skills, here is the Amazon search result page [amazon.com]
Re:That was easy! (Score:1, Informative)
Contrary to popular belief more sex makes a vagina tighter, not looser, do the increased exercise. It is like exercising any other muscle group.
Funny though, even if the stereotype is completely wrong.
Re:An analogy (Score:3, Informative)