From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Thu Mar 28 2002 - 15:08:34 MST
From Mike Lorrey..........
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?
> Chewing gum can greatly improve the performance of the brain, research
> issued yesterday suggests. People who chewed gum scored 40 per cent
> more in memory tests
< snip>
At first my april fool's day proximity alarm went off. The physiological
basis (glucose/atp/blood supply) seems plausible. Recently there was a
series of discussions about the effect of certain music on IQ. I'm also
wondering if the aural neural ruffling from music and the olfactory neural
ruffling from gum chewing have the same effect.
My lay anatomy says, if I remember properly (gum needed), that the olfactory
(much older) sense system is the only sensory input that hooks directly to
thalamus/hippocampal area. It's 'hardwired' into the main memory zone, not
via the usual cortical pre-processing attachments. As such, stimulation may
liven up ('arm') associative loops that would otherwise be inaccessible,
especially if the chosen gum had childhood memories (including school)
attached.
Why didn't they have a control group with olfactory stimulus, but no
muscular - give them strong mints and tell them not to chew. Then they could
separate the stimulii. I think 'chewing nothing' isn't a very good test if
it's the jaw's muscular blood supply that you're targeting. They should have
chewed something without taste to eliminate the olfactory side.
Doing an exam? Get that gum out _now_. Also "X is do dumb they can't walk
and chew gum at the same time" becomes "X is so dumb they need to chew gum
to walk".
Colin Hales
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