Warning - nerdy liturgical theology post ahead:
"Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.
"The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.
"Experts said the study had all but closed the case: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories)."
So what? Well, what we do at mass, especially around the eucharistic prayer time is remember - specifically Christ's paschal mystery - his suffering, death, resurrection and ascension, and we remember these things in such a way that it makes those historic events present to us (or us to them). The fancy-shmancy word for this is
anamnesis.
And now we have some scientific corroboration for just this - that the way our brain remembers things is similar to the doing of those things in the first place.
Pretty darn cool.
But why this image of Homer with this post? Part of the experiments involved showing folks TV images, including Seinfeld and Simpsons clips. And as a PS - you get some pretty weird results if you do a
google image search for 'anamnesis' - it's true.
You can now find "Walk Away Different" at MyCatholicVoice, along with lots of other content - music, videos, blogs, etc. It's a rapidly growing site, and we may very well add more of our content there as time passes. Be sure to check it out - in their own words:
If you're in Canada and can read French, you can get our CD "Walk Away Dfferent" at palmares.ca - but it appears to complain, when we try to load the necessary webpage, that we aren't and can't, so here's a link to a google cache of the relevant page.
Warning - nerdy liturgical theology post ahead:
Unfortunately, just a concept for now, but it would be a cool way to combine two intense interests in the Hammond/Johnson house - saving the earth and technogadgets.
A great online physics game, Fantastic Contraption.
CNN - Don LaFontaine, the voiceover king whose "In a world ..." phrase on movie trailers was much copied -- and much parodied -- has died, according to media reports. He was 68.
Orin, as a big fan of all things Apple, was bemused that Bloomberg accidentally sent Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs's obituary over the wire. Read it and about it here.
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