Category: This Mortal Coil

What are you afraid of?

FearLooking into those several week old containers of leftovers in the fridge? Analyzing data for an experiment you’ve now done a third time looking for a tie-breaker? Walking into that small conference room with your thesis committee hoping to graduate? Each of these things can cause the body to enact the fear response.

A great deal of evidence has implicated the portion of the brain called the amygdala in fear and recall of fear and behaviors associated with it. It is incredibly rare for a human to have damage to their entire amygdala but these cases do exist. One example is Patient SM who has a rare condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease. This disease causes a build-up of calcium in blood vessels which can damage particular parts of the brain, in the case of Patient SM, both portions of her amygdala have been destroyed by these calcifications. This woman exhibits no fear response to normally frightening stimuli like snakes, spiders, haunted houses, or scary movies. She cannot recognize fear in the faces of others. She and a few other patients have been critical to studies of how the amygdala modulates fear in humans. Are these people truly fearless? Continue reading “What are you afraid of?”

The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess 3

Did you know that there is research showing that being exposed to “spoilers” increases enjoyment of a story? True. Do I think you believe me or the research? No. In fact, I think you will treat this evidence with the same condescension political pundits applied to the predictions of Nate Silver. Furthermore, I think you will completely ignore the object lesson afforded you by the 2012 election forecasting. Is this the most overwrought and evidence-laden spoiler alert ever? Yes. You have been warned.

Let’s get the first major spoiler out of the way. At the end of The Walking Dead season 2, we discover that you do not need to be bitten by a zombie to become a zombie. You merely have to die. This leads to a lot of scenes of survivors sticking pointy objects into the brain cases of their recently deceased or mortally wounded friends in a practical act of mercy.

If you die, you kind of lie there for a little bit – just long enough for a father and son to share a moment – then you rise up and get your zombie on. This means that everyone in The Walking Dead universe has been exposed to the zombie pathogen. All survivors are carriers – zombies in potentia. This also means that the zombie pathogen is even weirder than it already had to be. Continue reading “The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess 3”

The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess 2 [repost]

Originally posted on 17 May 2012, we are reposting this piece to make sure you are adequately prepared for The Walking Dead to return from hiatus on AMC Sunday, 10 February 2013 at 9PM (ET). We’ll have a third post in this series for you on Saturday. 

*SPOILER ALERT*

Previously on The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess. . .

. . .we discussed how incredibly unlikely it would be that Rick would be the only available blood donor for Carl among the group of survivors on Hershel’s farm1. This led us2 to wonder what the blood type of his mother, Lori Grimes, might be. It is not at all unusual for a parent to not be a compatible donor for their child, especially for a direct transfusion. Lori is pregnant and her blood type could be important to the health of the wee baby Grimes (WBG). Continue reading “The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess 2 [repost]”

Less Porn for the TSA

Image courtesy of Jonathan Warner
Image courtesy of Jonathan Warner

Last year I wrote a post about the potential dangers of x-ray backscatter scanners in use at airports around the country. According to a recent post on the TSA blog, these scanners are now being decommissioned and being replaced with millimeter wave technology scanners which do not emit radiation. This is exciting if you travel frequently and prefer to keep your x-ray dosage to a minimum. But it turns out,  the TSA didn’t pull these machines because they actually care about exposing the public to harmful radiation. Continue reading “Less Porn for the TSA”

The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess [repost]

Originally posted on 27 March 2012, we are reposting this piece to make sure you are adequately prepared for The Walking Dead to return from hiatus on AMC Sunday, 10 February 2013 at 9PM (ET). We’ll have a third post in this series for you on Saturday. 

There are spoilers below. You’ve been warned. If you are even further behind watching The Walking Dead – Season 2 than me and can’t bear the thought of being spared the waste of those hours of your life, this is not for you.

I have recently started catching up on The Walking Dead – Season 2. At the end of Episode 1, Carl Grimes, son of our hero, Rick Grimes, is wounded in a hunting accident. Episode 2 is then devoted to keeping Carl from bleeding out. This means surgery and blood transfusions. Unfortunately, you can’t just stick blood from one person into someone else1. The immune system will attack a blood transfusion as a foreign invader if the donated blood is not compatible with the recipient. These reactions can be fatal. Keeping blood banks stocked is difficult in our modern world. Trying to find appropriate blood donors for a kid with internal bleeding in a zombie-filled, post-apocalyptic wasteland poses a particular challenge. Continue reading “The Walking Dead’s Bloody Mess [repost]”