Brain scans reveal why some people feel your pain

Researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, have observed atypical neurophysiological activity in amputees who experience synesthetic pain (pain synesthetes) when observing pain in another.

The researchers found that reduced alpha and theta brainwaves in pain synesthetes may reflect inhibition of normal inhibitory mechanisms (neurotransmitters involved in the processing of observed pain) as well as increased synesthetic pain.

The researchers used EEG to record brain activity in eight amputees who experienced both phantom and synesthetic pain, 10 amputees who experienced just phantom pain, and 10 healthy people with no amputations while they looked at images of hands or feet in potentially painful and non-painful situations.

When viewing the images, the researchers found that the pain synesthetes exhibited decreased theta and alpha brainwaves compared with the other volunteers. The researchers said that such a decrease reflects an increase in neural activity, suggesting that their mirror systems (neurons that fire when an animal observes the same action performed by another) are activated more strongly.

They said the traumatic experience associated with losing a limb may heighten the sensitivity of pain synesthetes to others’ pain. When threatened, our body naturally becomes hypervigilant to pain: our pain threshold lowers, which can make even small triggers painful. Pain synesthesia may be a symptom of an abnormal, ongoing hypervigilance, the researchers said.

Mining patterns in search data with Google Correlate

Google Correlate has been launched on Google Labs. Users can now upload their own data series and retrieve a list of search terms based on popularity to see what best corresponds with a real world trend.

In the example below, official flu activity data were uploaded from the U.S. CDC over the last several years. The data reveal that people search for terms like [cold or flu] in a pattern similar to actual flu rates. Finding these correlated terms, a Google Flu Trends graph was built.

Users can also enter search terms such as [ribosome] and find other terms with activity that correspond well over time.

A white paper describes the methodology behind Google Correlate. How can Google help with the flu? Find out here.

Gestural interfaces: a step backwards in usability?

Usability researchers from the Nielsen Norman group have pointed out that well-tested and understood standards of interaction design are being “overthrown, ignored, and violated” in the rush to develop natural gestural interfaces that can lead to “usability disaster.”

“The first crop of iPad apps revived memories of Web designs from 1993, when Mosaic first introduced the image map that made it possible for any part of any picture to become a UI element,” said Norman Nielsen. “As a result, graphic designers went wild: anything they could draw could be a UI, whether it made sense or not. It’s the same with iPad apps: anything you can show and touch can be a UI on this device. There are no standards and no expectations.”

“One of the worst designs last year was USA Today‘s section navigation, which required users to touch the newspaper logo despite the complete lack of any perceived affordance that the logo would have this effect….

“I thought I’d driven a stake through splash screens many years ago and eradicated them from the Web, but apparently splash screens are super-vampires that can haunt users from beyond the grave.”