In 1951, a biopsy was performed on Henrietta Lacks as part of her treatment for cervical cancer. Henrietta died a few months later, but cells collected during the biopsy are being used for research study today.

Click on the image for a closer look.

Wired put together this graphic tracing the history of the HeLa cell line—Henrietta’s cells- to show how it has nudged along biological research through the years. The cell line is known as an “immortal line” due to its ability to survive and proliferate indefinitely, and this is exactly why it is so significant for research. I only wish this woman could’ve known that part of her would live on to make a such a difference. [Wired and Wikipedia]

I’ve seen this test a few months ago and I ran into it again today looking at videos on YouTube.

Let me show the clip first and then talk about it.

It’s incredible how we think our brain can see and analyze evrything when in fact it only sees what it’s focused on and completely disregards everthing else. 

It can go as far as missing the obvious too. I came across an article about Change Blindness which is a phenomenon that occurs when a person viewing a visual scene apparently fails to detect large changes in the scene.

In the following clip, people are asked to fill up a form. When done the guy at the counter duck done behing the counter and another guy looking completely different from the first one comes back up and hands the form to the subject. In 75% of the cases, the subject doesn’t even notice the difference between the to guys at the counter.

Our brain is a real mystery. Did you know that we are effectively blind for around 40 minutes per day? When our eyes move real fast from one point to another, like when you look rapidly at the wall to your left, the brain shuts down your optic nerve while your eye is in motion to prevent motion sickness. This phenomenon is called Saccadic Masking.

I could go on and on about all the things our brain does to alter our perception or basically mess with us. The brain is still something we don’t know much about and I fins it very interresting to read about all the things it can and cannot do.