neurophilosophy
Posts by this author
June 23, 2008
In recent years, researchers have found that a wide variety of animal species, many of the cognitive skills that were once thought to be unique to humans. These findings show that we have grossly underestimated the intelligence of other animals, and that we are not as different from them as we like…
June 23, 2008
At the Neuroanthropology blog, Daniel rounds up the usual suspects of neuroscience and psychology bloggers for the 48th edition of Encephalon.
This time, the carnival includes entries on everything from visual illusions and the neurobiology of language evolution, to the ethnography of Second Life…
June 23, 2008
I've just discovered that the book Eye, Vision and Brain, by Nobel Prize winner David Hubel, is available online in its entirety.
Hubel is a neurophysiologist who performed some classic experiments with Torsten Wiesel, beginning in the late 1950s, on the development and functional properties of the…
June 21, 2008
The Smithsonian Institution's new Flickr photostream contains nearly 900 photographs, including a large set of portraits of scientists and inventors, among them Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie and Walther Nernst (above).
Nernst was a German physical chemist who in 1888 derived an…
June 21, 2008
Here's some superb old footage of the legendary Syrian musician Farid al-Atrash giving a virtuoso performance on the oud.
June 20, 2008
The 19th century histologists who discovered the neuron also found that the nervous system contains another type of cell. They assumed that the role of these other cells was to provide structural support for neurons, and so named them glia (meaning "glue"). Subsequently, investigators focused their…
June 20, 2008
My post about overturned neuroscientific dogmas has been translated into Polish by Jedrzej Kaminski, the author of a blog called Neurotyk.
This isn't the first time that something I've written has been translated into another language. Last year, my post about Phineas Gage was translated into…
June 19, 2008
In 1965, Senator Robert Kennedy visited several "institutions for the mentally retarded" in New York State. His descriptions of the conditions he found there, which were published widely in the media, shocked the American public and angered those in charge of the institutions.
Later that year, Dr…
June 19, 2008
Our closest extant relatives have received a fair bit of attention in the past few days, with the publication of two new studies which have been picked up by numerous news outlets.
First came the study by Fraser et al, which shows that chimps, like humans, console each other with physical contact…
June 18, 2008
This cartoon, found at Paleo-Future, accompanied a short article from the August 28th, 1949 edition of the San Antonio Light:
CHICAGO, Aug. 27 - (AP) - Some day composers won't write music, and musicians won't play it - yet fans will enjoy it in never-before-heard perfection.
The composer or…
June 18, 2008
The authors of Trick or Treatment? The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine have thrown down the gauntlet to homeopaths:
We challenge homeopaths to demonstrate that homeopathy is effective by showing that the Cochrane Collaboration has published a review that is strongly and conclusively…
June 18, 2008
The idea that memory is reconstructive and not reproductive - which dates back at least to the 1930s, when Frederic Bartlett published his classic book Remembering - has profound implications for the criminal justice system, as it raises questions about the reliability of eyewitness testimonies.…
June 18, 2008
The Boston Globe has an infographic containing tips on how to nap effectively.
But why would you want to run the risk of being thought of as lazy by sleeping during the day? Recent research shows that power napping enhances memory consolidation and increases alertness and productivity.
June 17, 2008
I just logged in to my email to find this worrying comment on my post about trepanation:
I have been very interested in this procedure for quite some time and I am curious to find someone that has had the procedure done. I am a Reiki Master I work with stones and crystals as a form of intigrated […
June 17, 2008
Photo: Edmund E. Kasaitis.
Tomorrow night's full moon will be very low in the sky, and will give a strong illusion of being far bigger than it actually is.
Exactly why we experience this phenomenon is unclear; NASA provides several explanations, including this one:
A similar illusion was…
June 17, 2008
The winners of the first Kavli Prize were announced a couple of weeks ago. One of the three recipients of the prize for neuroscience was Pasko Rakic, a professor of neurobiology and neurology at the Yale School of Medicine.
Rakic has spent most of his career investigating the development of the…
June 15, 2008
Designed and built by IBM, at a cost of some $130 million, Roadrunner is the world's fastest supercomputer. It contains 12,960 IBM PowerXCell 8i central processing units, 6,480 AMD dual-core processors, and occupies nearly 6,000 square feet at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico…
June 13, 2008
WE BELIEVE THAT memory provides us with a faithful record of past events. But in fact, it is well established that memory is reconstructive, and not reproductive, in nature. In retrieval, a memory is pieced together from fragments, but during the reconstruction errors creep in due to our own biases…
June 12, 2008
Click to enlarge
From the August 1962 issue of Science and Mechanics:
Artificial MIND--Next from Science
COMPUTER experts keep reassuring us that Man and his mind will never be replaced by their electronic marvels. But a small, doughnut-shaped electronic neuron has been…
June 12, 2008
A reader sent me a link to this report on today's NPR Morning Edition, about the potential benefits of voluntary work for patients with Alzheimer's Disease.
The program describes the work of Peter Whitehouse, who founded a school in Cleveland, Ohio 8 years ago, which regularly engages people who…
June 12, 2008
Paraskavedekatriaphobia is an irrational fear of Friday 13th; it is a form of triskaidekaphobia (a fear of the number 13 in general).
June 12, 2008
The bi-monthly American magazine Psychology Today has launched a network of blogs covering a wide variety of topics, including addiction, cognitive science, sports psychology and psychotherapy.
The network contains more than 80 blogs, many of which are written by researchers who are prominent in…
June 11, 2008
When it comes to human brain evolution, it is often said that size matters. The human cerebral cortex is much larger than that of other primates, and therefore its expansion must have been a vital feature of human evolution. Researchers have therefore emphasized the importance of encephalization,…
June 11, 2008
Several years ago, the mad scientists at DARPA (the research and development wing of the Pentagon) conceived of a pair of binoculars that would enhance soldiers' ability to detect enemies.
Danger Room informs us that DARPA has just awarded the giant defence contractor Northrop Grumman a $7.6…
June 10, 2008
The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is a pioneering open access online journal devoted to the publication of peer-reviewed biological research in video format.
The JoVE website was launched in December 2006, and now has about 200 films, which are divided into 7 categories, and which…
June 10, 2008
A group of Dutch researchers report that a 115-year-old who remained mentally alert throughout her whole life had a healthy brain that showed no signs of Alzheimer's Disease or other forms of dementia.
den Dunnen et al had the unique opportunity to evaluate the woman's performance on…
June 10, 2008
This week's issue of Time has a cover story called America's Medicated Army, about the increasing use of antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs among U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The article quotes figures from a recent report by the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team, according to…
June 10, 2008
At Channel N, Sandra has compiled a fantastic 47th edition of Encephalon. There are, as usual, many blog posts about a wide variety of topics neuroscience and psychology.
This edition also includes no less than 7 film clips, including one which contains footage of Albert Bandura's classic 'Bobo…
June 9, 2008
Plate XIII: Encysted tumour of the brain, from Robert Hooper's Morbid Anatomy of the Human Brain (1828). 14 more plates from the book, and many other wonderful vintage illustrations, can be viewed at Images from the Past.
(Via where else but the excellent - and now 1-year-old - Morbid Anatomy…
June 9, 2008
Neuroscience, like all other branches of science, is fraught with dogmatic ideas about its subject matter. A number of principles have emerged, principles that have been regarded as fundamental to our understanding of brain function.
But the human brain is an organ of bewildering complexity -…