Category:
Brain
In 1968, 20-year-old Evelyn Jacoby was awarded the title of "Miss Intelligence." Or, more specifically, the "most intelligent German woman." A panel of 25 professors of psychology selected her.
Asbury Park Press - May 16, 1968
Culpeper Star-Exponent - May 10, 1968
At the 1956 National Electronics Conference in Chicago, engineer Curtiss R. Schafer predicted a future in which people would be enslaved via "bio-control."
"This enslavement could be imposed upon the vanquished as a condition of peace, or through the threat of hydrogen bombing. Bio-control could make this enslavement complete and final, for the controlled subjects would never be permitted to think as individuals."
How is this possible? Schafer said that a few months after birth a surgeon would equip each child with a socket mounted under the scalp and electrodes reaching selected areas of brain tissue. A year or two later, he said, a miniature radio receiver and antenna would be plugged into the socket.
"From that time on," the speaker declared, "the child's sensory preceptions and muscular activity could be either modified or completely controlled by bio-electric signals radiated from state-controlled transmitters."
More details from the conference press release:
Time - Oct 15, 1956
Player embedded below the Tracklist. Enjoy!
In 1974, Dr. Adrian Upton of McMaster University placed E.E.G. electrodes on a blob of lime jello and obtained positive readings. This indicated brain activity. He published his results in 1976 in the
Medical Tribune.
Upton was trying to demonstrate that when doctors use an E.E.G. to determine brain death, it can be difficult to obtain a perfectly flat readout, because the equipment picks up stray electrical activity from the surrounding environment. Or maybe he had discovered that jello is a sentient lifeform.
The Jell-O Gallery Museum in Le Roy, New York seems to prefer the latter conclusion. A brain-shaped jello mold on display at the museum bears the message: "A Bowl of Jell-O Gelatin and the Human Brain Have the Same Frequency of Brain Waves."
image source: Donna Goldstein, researchgate.net
More info:
The Straight Dope
Wichita Eagle - Mar 8, 1976
An Australian woman had been suffering from headaches for seven years. Doctors suspected a brain tumor. The good news was that, after operating, they found she was tumor free. The bad news was that she had a cyst full of tapeworm larvae in her brain.
More info from cnn.com. Or read the full case report in the
American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
AKA Cerebrex. Invented by
Dr. Yoshiro NaKaMats. It was essentially a lounger chair that was supposed to improve brain function in only 30 minutes. Details from the
Arizona Republic (Sep 12, 1986):
NaKaMats unveiled the chair this summer [1986] and plans to mass-produce and lease the recliners for about 14,900 yen, or $93 a month.
Meanwhile, customers can use it only in his sun-flooded "oyasumidokoro," or sleeping place, a nearly empty room a few floors below his laboratory, where white-coated assistants bustle around prototypes of industrial robots in various stages of development.
The inventor explains how the chair works, sort of.
"It activates your alpha brain waves by emitting ultra-high frequency electronic pulses, which in turn increase the flow of blood to the head, through the chair's pillow and foot rest," he said.
York Dispatch - July 2, 1986
You can check out a (non-embeddable) video about Cerebrex on Vimeo.
Sep 1950: Dr. Alejandro Arellano of Massachusetts General Hospital took readings of Einstein's brain waves while Einstein was thinking about his theory of relativity (special or general? It doesn't say), and while he was resting. It was noted that the zigs were quite different than the zags while Einstein was thinking of his theory. Based on this finding, it was hoped that in the future it might be possible to identify geniuses by their brain waves.
Pittsburgh Press - Feb 11, 1951
Los Angeles Times - Feb 24, 1951