Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Misophonia: a rare disorder in which certain sounds provoke extreme reactions of dislike or hatred in the affected individual. An example of mild misophonia is an aversion to the sound of fingernails scraping a blackboard. When the condition is more severe, the offending sound can produce rage, disgust, panic, hatred, suicidal thoughts, or a desire to flee. It…

Contraction of the pupil. The opposite of miosis is mydriasis.

In general, something that is less than something else. For example, the teres minor muscle is smaller than the teres major muscle.

That which thinks, reasons, perceives, wills, and feels. The mind now appears in no way separate from the brain. In neuroscience, there is no duality between the mind and body. They are one.

Imitation or mimicry. Mimesis in medicine refers to the hysterical simulation of organic disease and to the imitation of one organic disease by another. Mimesis in aesthetic or artistic theory refers to the attempt to imitate or reproduce reality. The word “mimesis” comes from the Greek verb “mimeisthai” meaning “to imitate” and from “mimos” meaning “mime.” The…

A unit of absorbed radiation equal to 0.001 gray. (A gray is the dose of one joule of energy absorbed per kilogram of matter, or 100 rad.) Because the gray is such a large unit, many radiation measurements are made in milligrays. In particular, exposures from by X-ray equipment are typically expressed in the milligray range. The abbreviation for milligray is…

A unit of measurement of mass in the metric system equal to a thousandth of a gram. A gram is equal to the mass of one milliliter, one thousandth of a liter, of water at 4 degrees C. The abbreviation for milligram is mg.

Miller’s lung: a type of hypersensitivity pneumonitis in people who are hypersensitive to the granary weevil (the wheat weevil or Sitophilus granarius). Hypersensitivity pneumonitis is a type of inflammation of the lung that develops from breathing in a foreign substance. People who work with grains or flours contaminated with this weevil are at especially high risk…

Milk of magnesia is a medication available as an over-the-counter product that is used as a laxative in addition to treating conditions related to stomach acid such as heartburn or indigestion. The active ingredient in milk of magnesia is magnesium hydroxide. It is believed to work as a laxative by drawing water into the intestinal tract. Milk of magnesia is…

A distinctive syndrome of headaches, today better known as cluster headache. There are two main clinical patterns of cluster headache — the episodic and the chronic: The episodic and acute forms of cluster headache may transform into one another, so it seems most likely that they are merely different-appearing clinical patterns of one and the…