French Researchers Spent 40 Days in a Cave to Study Our Perception of Time
In today’s fast-paced world, many of us feel that time is a luxury we just don’t have. But what would happen if we had no way of telling the passing of time? A group of volunteers, isolated in a French cave for 40 days, recently found out.
A group of 15 French volunteers was part of a study called “Deep Time”, which set out to explore human adaptability to isolation. Christian Clot, an explorer and the project’s director, was also one of the volunteers.
“The main objective for the entire mission was to understand how a group of human beings can adapt when suddenly they are in a situation without one of the most important things in our life, which is time. I mean, everything is time in our life, we’re always watching our watch or smartphone, and suddenly you are out of time, you don’t have this information,” he said.
“What happens to the brain? What happens to social situations? What happens to our genetics?”
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Woman Missing Large Part of Brain Ranks 98th Percentile in Speech
A recent study sheds light on the remarkable case of a woman who grew up without a key part of her brain and was barely affected by it.
In the endless search to understand the workings of the human mind, scientists take special interest in cases of the most unique brains. The most recent and fascinating is that of a woman known as EG (to protect her privacy.)
Now in her fifties, EG first learned her brain was atypical in her twenties when she had it scanned for an unrelated reason. She was told then that she had been missing her left temporal lobe from infancy, which was most likely the result of an early stroke. This part of the brain is thought to be involved with language processing, which makes EG’s story so extraordinary.
Despite being repeatedly told by doctors that she should have major cognitive deficits and neurological issues, EG has a graduate degree, has enjoyed an impressive career, and speaks Russian as a second language.
Several years ago, EG met Dr. Evelina Fedorenko, a cognitive neuroscientist at M.I.T. who studies language. Fedorenko was immediately fascinated by EG’s case and conducted a number of studies, the first of which was recently published in the journal Psychologia.
