HOT LINKS:
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell
What’s going on up there in your head?
Pass it on! Tell a friend!
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* MORE NOTEWORTHY POSTINGS
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April 24, 2023
Neural Nanotechnology
Nanowire Networks Learn and Remember Like a Human Brain
By University of Sydney
In a groundbreaking study, an international team has shown that nanowire networks can mimic the short- and long-term memory functions of the human brain. This breakthrough paves the way for replicating brain-like learning and memory in non-biological systems, with potential applications in robotics and sensor devices.
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April 21, 2023
Reality or Illusion
distinguishing reality from imagination
By Neuroscience News
The more vividly we imagine something, the more likely we are to believe it’s real, a new study reports. Researchers found the brain encodes the vividness of perceived and real stimuli in a similar manner, resulting in a confusion between reality and imagination.
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April 21, 2023
Little Man in the Brain
How our team overturned the 90-year-old metaphor
By Nico U.F. Dosenbach — Scientific American
A pillar of every neuroscience textbook, the classic “homunculus” has just gone through a radical revision.
In my first neuroscience course at Columbia University, I learned about the homunculus. This “little man” is depicted as an upside-down representation of the human body moving from toe to head in a portion of the cerebral cortex that controls movement. Wilder Penfield, the trailblazing Canadian-American neurosurgeon, created the homunculus metaphor after mapping areas of the human brain by using direct electrical stimulation in awake patients in the 1930s.
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Nervous Systems
Brain Science in the Early Cold War
![Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War by [Andreas Killen]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41giruTXgbL.jpg)
By Andreas Killen
The 1950s were a transformative, even revolutionary decade in the history of brain science. Using new techniques for probing brain activity and function, researchers in neurosurgery, psychiatry, and psychology achieved dramatic breakthroughs in the treatment of illnesses like epilepsy and schizophrenia, as well as the understanding of such faculties as memory and perception. Memory was the site of particularly startling discoveries. As one researcher wrote to another in the middle of that decade, “Memory was the sleeping beauty of the brain—and now she is awake.” Collectively, these advances prefigured the emergence of the field of neuroscience at the end of the twentieth century.
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The Truth About False Memory Syndrome
By James G. Friesen
When psychologists began hearing adults tell harrowing tales of childhood abuse, some dismissed the stories as false. Other therapists, however, recognized that the hidden memories might indicate multiple personality disorder, a complex coping strategy that helps victims deal with severe abuse.
Through engrossing, yet unnerving, case studies of various patients, dealing with everything from sexual to satanic ritual abuse, Friesen draws a distinction between memory and fantasy, truth and falsehood. In the process, our misconceptions about the victims of abuse, and FMS, are dispelled.
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Presence
the strange science and true stories of the unseen other
![Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other by [Ben Alderson-Day]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41EP-H8geDL.jpg)
By Ben Alderson-Day
A psychologist’s journey to understand one of the most unusual experiences known to humankind: the universal, disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone.
These experiences of sensing a Presence when no one else is there have been given many names—the Third Man, guardian angels, shadow figures, “social” hallucinations—and they have inspired, unsettled, and confounded in equal measure.
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Are Coincidences Real?
By Paul Broks — The Guardian
The rationalist in me knows that coincidences are inevitable, mundane, meaningless. But I can’t deny there is something strange and magical in them, too. Coincidence, or rather the experience of coincidence, triggers magical thoughts that are equally deep-rooted.
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False Memories Can Form in Seconds
By Ed Cara — Gizmodo
It’s not just distant recollections that can fool you.
Human memory might be even more unreliable than currently thought. In a new study, scientists found that it’s possible for people to form false memories of an event within seconds of it occurring. This almost-immediate misremembering seems to be shaped by our expectations of what should happen.
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Forget About It
how we purge thoughts from our mind
By Lisa M.P. Munoz — Cognitive Neuroscience Society
Forgetting is not always easy.
If you have ever tried to erase that annoying earworm from your mind or stop thinking about whether you locked the door after leaving the house, you know how disruptive it can be to think about something irrelevant to the task at hand.
While much work in cognitive neuroscience focuses on how the human brain remembers and retains information, some cognitive neuroscientists have instead turned to forgetting – working to track exactly how we forget a piece of information and what it means for patients suffering from neurocognitive disorders.
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Neurotech’s Battles Impact Our Brain’s Future
Mental sovereignty is no longer a given
By Michael Nolan — IEEE Spectrum
Neurotechnologies today—devices that can measure and influence our brains and nervous systems—are growing in power and popularity. The neurotech marketplace, according to Precedence Research, is worth US $14.3 billion this year and will exceed $20 billion within four years. Noninvasive brain-computer interfaces, brain-stimulation devices, and brain-monitoring hardware (measuring alertness and attention at work, for example) are no longer just laboratory experiments and technological curios. The societal and legal implications of widespread neurotech adoption may be substantial.
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The Battle for Your Brain
Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology
![The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology by [Nita A. Farahany]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T2/images/I/41CFGrGBtAL.jpg)
By Nita A. Farahany
A new dawn of brain tracking and hacking is coming. Will you be prepared for what comes next?
Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
Neuroscience has already made all of this possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the “universal controller” for all of our interactions with technology.
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AI Memory
What makes a neural network remember?
By Tomomi Okubo — Neuroscience News
Utilizing a classic neural network, researchers have created a new artificial intelligence model based on recent biological findings that shows improved memory performance.
Computer models are an important tool for studying how the brain makes and stores memories and other types of complex information. But creating such models is a tricky business. Somehow, a symphony of signals – both biochemical and electrical – and a tangle of connections between neurons and other cell types creates the hardware for memories to take hold. Yet because neuroscientists don’t fully understand the underlying biology of the brain, encoding the process into a computer model in order to study it further has been a challenge.
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Organoid Intelligence
move over ai
By CNN
Computers powered by human brain cells may sound like science fiction, but a team of researchers in the United States believes such machines, part of a new field called “organoid intelligence,” could shape the future — and now they have a plan to get there.
Organoids are lab-grown tissues that resemble organs. These three-dimensional structures, usually derived from stem cells, have been used in labs for nearly two decades, where scientists have been able to avoid harmful human or animal testing by experimenting on the stand-ins for kidneys, lungs and other organs.
Brain organoids don’t actually resemble tiny versions of the human brain, but the pen dot-size cell cultures contain neurons that are capable of brainlike functions, forming a multitude of connections.
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Organoid Intelligence
Revolutionary Biocomputers Powered by Human Brain Cells
By Frontiers in Science — SciTechDaily
Despite AI’s impressive track record, its computational power pales in comparison with a human brain. Now, scientists unveil a revolutionary path to drive computing forward: organoid intelligence, where lab-grown brain organoids act as biological hardware.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been inspired by the human brain. This approach proved highly successful: AI boasts impressive achievements – from diagnosing medical conditions to composing poetry. Still, the original model continues to outperform machines in many ways. This is why, for example, we can ‘prove our humanity’ with trivial image tests online. What if instead of trying to make AI more brain-like, we went straight to the source?
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Nine Year Old Autistic Girl
has a higher iq than einstein or hawking
By Hip-Hop Vive
A young woman has defied the odds in a major way. This young lady was diagnosed with autism, so there were many who looked at what she was not able to do. However, at the age of nine years old, this young woman has already graduated high school. It turns out, she has a genius level IQ.
Because a person may have some kind of learning disorder, some people may write them off. At the same time, a person learning differently may just need things interpreted in a different way for their own understanding.
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Cognitive Bias
the elephant in every room
By Kyrtin Atreides — Venture Beat
In every room where a human is present, there is also an elephant: That human’s subconscious.
Although the conscious mind is very adept at ignoring the elephant, doing so only produces blindness to the biases being applied to every decision. The elephant is always there, and if it isn’t addressed, that blindness dominates the decision-making process.
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Perceptual Diversity
a key to consciousness
By
Every brain experiences reality differently. This census might help us understand why — and what it means.
For something as intimate to our lives as perception — how we experience ourselves and the world — we know remarkably little about all the ways it can differ from person to person. Some people, for instance, have aphantasia, which means they experience no mental imagery, while others have no inner monologue in their heads, just silence. Studying what scientists now call “perceptual diversity” is part of an increasingly mainstream effort to learn more about consciousness itself.
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Introverts
their brains work differently
By Friederike Fabritius — CNBC
Being the most talkative person in the room may be a good way to get people’s attention, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have the best ideas. There are some surprising strengths that introverts bring to the table, and they shouldn’t be overlooked.
Here’s what sets introverts apart from extroverts!
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Quiet
the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking
![Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by [Susan Cain]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41mb5BNuG0L.jpg)
By Susan Cain
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.
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Spying on Your Brainwaves?
That future is near
By Hamilton Nolan — The Guardian
At Davos, a futurist spoke in glowing terms about ‘brain transparency’ – and downplayed the obvious dystopian risks!
The reptilian annual World Economic Forum at Davos, where the masters of the universe meet to congratulate themselves on their benevolent dictatorship, is home to many sinister ideas. Sharing the latest sinister ideas with business leaders is, in essence, why the event exists. This year, one of the creepiest discussions of all was delivered under the guise of progress and productivity.
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Your Lying Mind
We’re hardwired to delude ourselves.
By Isabel Fattal –The Atlantic
What can we do about it?
Julie Beck (This Article Won’t Change Your Mind) asks a social psychologist: “What would get someone to change their mind about a false belief that is deeply tied to their identity?”
The answer? “Probably nothing.”
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What Psychology Can Teach Us
about george santos
By Maria Konnikova — The Atlantic
Telling lies about yourself can actually make you feel more confident.
Branding anyone who misrepresents something or lies a bit as a con artist might be convenient, but if we do so, the term loses all meaning. For con artists, lying is a way of being. It reaches past exaggeration or misrepresentation into a prevailing disconnect from reality.
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151 Cognitive Biases
By Gust de Backer
Cognitive Biases cause us to make irrational decisions and judgments on the information we process. A Cognitive Bias is actually a programmed error in our brains.
You could think of Cognitive Biases as thumb rules that our brains follow to interpret information in an easy way.
There are a huge number of Cognitive Biases that you could or should take into account.
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Only 8 Animals Recognize Themselves in a Mirror
By Nicole Karlis — Salon
Several years ago, a TikTok-famous Sheepadoodle named Bunny stared at herself in a mirror and asked, “Who is this?” by tapping her paws on her augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device’s buttons. The video of her evidently pondering her existence sparked a series of humorous memes suggesting that she was having an existential crisis.
But beyond the comedic value, Bunny’s possible existential crisis also resurfaced a scientific debate: can dogs pass the “mirror test”?
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New Functions of the Ancient Brain
By Howard Hughes Medical institute
The hindbrain is a region of the brain that controls basic vital functions such as heart rate, respiration, and balance. The hindbrain is considered the most primitive part of the brain and acts as the main link between the spinal cord and the higher brain regions.
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The Molecular Basis of Cognition
the 2022 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards
By The Kavli Foundation
In October of 2022, scientists gathered in Tucson, Ariz., for a series of discussions about new ways to probe the chemistry, biology, physics and computation science that underlie memory and other cognitive processes. One outcome of the conference is funding for researchers to pursue high-risk, high-impact projects. The Kavli Foundation participates as part of the funders collective to support innovative research aligned with its mission.
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Implanted Brain-Computer Interface
By Neuroscience News
For people with paralysis caused by neurologic injury or disease—such as ALS, stroke, or spinal cord injury—brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to restore communication, mobility, and independence by transmitting information directly from the brain to a computer or other assistive technology.
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The Zone of Uncertainty
enables the brain to rapidly form new memories
By Neuroscience News
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and the University of Freiburg Medical School have discovered that a little understood brain area, the zona incerta, has an unconventional way of communicating with the neocortex to rapidly control memory formation.
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This is Your Brain on Code
By Steve Nadis — MIT News
MIT researchers are discovering which parts of the brain are engaged when a person evaluates a computer program.
One pursuit that’s received little attention is computer programming — both the chore of writing code and the equally confounding task of trying to understand a piece of already-written code. “Given the importance that computer programs have assumed in our everyday lives,” says Shashank Srikant, a PhD student in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), “that’s surely worth looking into. So many people are dealing with code these days — reading, writing, designing, debugging — but no one really knows what’s going on in their heads when that happens.”
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How the Brain Distinguishes
Memories from Perceptions
By Yasemin Saplakoglu — Quanta Magazine
The neural representations of a perceived image and the memory of it are almost the same. New work shows how and why they are different.
Perception and memory use some of the same areas of the brain. Small but significant differences in the neural representations of memories and perceptions may enable us to distinguish which one we are experiencing at any moment.
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Improve Short-Term Memory
with non-invasive laser light therapy
By University of Bermingham
Laser light therapy, which is non-invasive, could improve short-term, or working memory in people by up to 25 percent.
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7 Books About the Brain
By Richard Sima — The Washington Post
From tomes that examine the beauty and intricacy of the organ to ones that explore the neuroscience of autism and individuality, these are great to read and gift. Reading is good for our brains and our health, benefiting our cognition, mood and even our longevity.
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Collective Illusions
Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions
By Tod Rose
Much of our thinking is informed by false assumptions—making us dangerously mistrustful as a society and needlessly unhappy as individuals.
The desire to fit in is one of the most powerful, least understood forces in society.
As human beings, we continually act against our own best interests because our brains misunderstand what others believe. A complicated set of illusions driven by conformity bias distorts how we see the world around us.
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Why Are We Pretending Covid Didn’t Happen?
Covid was devastating
By Emma Beddington — The Guardian
A recent book about the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic details a ‘collective forgetting’ of the period. Our lack of Covid reckoning suggests history is repeating itself
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Ignorance
a global history
![Ignorance: A Global History by [Peter Burke]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41Mf2LEdrGL._SY346_.jpg)
By Peter Burke
In this highly original account, Peter Burke examines the long history of humanity’s ignorance across religion and science, war and politics, business and catastrophes. Burke reveals remarkable stories of the many forms of ignorance—genuine or feigned, conscious and unconscious—from the willful politicians who redrew Europe’s borders in 1919 to the politics of whistleblowing and climate change denial. The result is a lively exploration of human knowledge across the ages, and the importance of recognizing its limits.
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Ignorance Book Review
Ignorance is not always bliss — and not always bad
By Michael Dirda — The Washington Post
Ignorance explores the myriad ways in which not-knowing — consciously or unconsciously — has shaped history.
Ignorance may sometimes be bliss, but in general it gets a bad rap — which is why the latest book from Peter Burke comes as a surprise.
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Profiles in Ignorance
how american’s politicians got dumb and dumber
![Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber by [Andy Borowitz]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/314+NqeoS7L.jpg)
By Andy Borowitz
Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking.
Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying.
In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades.
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A Passion for Ignorance
What We Choose Not to Know and Why
![A Passion for Ignorance: What We Choose Not to Know and Why by [Renata Salecl]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/4196FGA160L.jpg)
By Renata Salecl
Ignorance, whether passive or active, conscious or unconscious, has always been a part of the human condition, Renata Salecl argues.
What has changed in our post-truth, postindustrial world is that we often feel overwhelmed by the constant flood of information and misinformation. It sometimes seems impossible to differentiate between truth and falsehood and, as a result, there has been a backlash against the idea of expertise, and a rise in the number of people actively choosing not to know.
The dangers of this are obvious, but Salecl challenges our assumptions, arguing that there may also be a positive side to ignorance, and that by addressing the role of ignorance in society, we may also be able to reclaim the role of knowledge.
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Is the Brain a Quantum Computer?
A remarkable pair of studies suggests so
By Troy Farah — Salon
If someone were to (theoretically) throw a wrench at your head, you might be able to catch it just in time to avoid a concussion. But how? Typically, for split-second reactions, we do not consciously decide to catch. Your brain reacts, does the catching thing, and you don’t have to think about it at all.
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Giant “Super Neurons”
Discovered in superager brains
By Northwestern University — SciTechDaily
Post-mortem brains of SuperAgers reveal significantly larger neurons in memory region.
- SuperAger neurons are even larger than those in individuals 20 to 30 years younger
- These neurons do not have tau tangles that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s
- Larger neurons in the brain’s memory region are a biological signature of SuperAging trajectory
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What’s Gotten Into You
The Story of Your Body’s Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night’s Dinner
![What's Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body's Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner by [Dan Levitt]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513R7nKDrML.jpg)
By
A wondrous, wildly ambitious, and vastly entertaining work of popular science that tells the awe-inspiring story of the elements that make up the human body, and how these building blocks of life traveled billions of miles and across billions of years to make us who we are.
Every one of us contains a billion times more atoms than all the grains of sand in the earth’s deserts. If you weigh 150 pounds, you’ve got enough carbon to make 25 pounds of charcoal, enough salt to fill a saltshaker, enough chlorine to disinfect several backyard swimming pools, and enough iron to forge a 3-inch nail.
But how did these elements combine to make us human?
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Book Review: What’s Gotten Into You
Review By Harvey Freedenberg — BookPage
Dan Levitt delivers a survey of life’s building blocks that’s intelligent, accessible and just sheer fun.
Even if the word science only conjures up bad memories of frog dissections and failed lab experiments, you’ll find much to enjoy in Dan Levitt’s What’s Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body’s Atoms, From the Big Bang Through Last Night’s Dinner. Levitt, a writer and producer of science and history documentaries, delivers a survey of life’s building blocks that’s intelligent, accessible and just sheer fun.
Levitt launches his inquiry with two fundamental questions: “What are we actually made of? And where did it come from?”
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The Age-Poof Brain
New Strategies to Improve Memory, Protect Immunity, and Fight Off Dementia
By Marc Milstein PhD
Serious mental decline is not an inevitable part of aging. You can boost your short and long-term brain health and significantly lower the risk of dementia—if the right steps are taken now.
Fifty million people have dementia worldwide, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We—not our genes—can control our cognitive destiny. Serious mental decline is not an inevitable part of aging. You can boost your short- and long-term brain health and significantly lower the risk of dementia—if the right steps are taken now.
Dr. Marc Milstein reveals the secrets to improving brain function, which lie in the brain’s surprising connection with the rest of the body. Debunking common misinformation, he offers science-driven strategies in an entertaining, motivating, and easy-to-follow guide
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Alcohol Changes Brain Circuitry
How many drinks is too much?
By University of Illinois at Chicago — SciTechDaily
According to a recent rodent study, even tiny amounts of alcohol may cause epigenomic and transcriptomic changes in brain circuitry in a region that is essential for the development of addiction.
The pathways that are involved in setting the brain up for addiction, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, are also linked to the highs that come with drinking, such as euphoria and anxiolysis, a state of relaxed but awake sedation.
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Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness
By Patrick House
A concise, elegant, and thought-provoking exploration of the mystery of consciousness and the functioning of the brain.
Despite decades of research, remarkable imagery, and insights from a range of scientific and medical disciplines, the human brain remains largely unexplored. Consciousness has eluded explanation.
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A New Explanation for Consciousness
By Gina DiGravio – Boston University
Consciousness is your awareness of yourself and the world around you. This awareness is subjective and unique to you.
A Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine researcher has developed a new theory of consciousness, explaining why it developed, what it is good for, which disorders affect it, and why dieting (and resisting other urges) is so difficult.
A new theory of consciousness suggests decisions are made unconsciously, then about half a second later, they become conscious.
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The Mystery of Consciousness
By Bernardo Kastrup, Carlo Rovelli, and more
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Paralyzed Man Spells Out Sentences
using new brain-computer interface
By Laura Simmons — IFLSCIENCE
A device designed to allow patients with speech paralysis to silently spell out messages is the subject of a new study. While it has so far only been tested in one person, it could pave the way for future approaches that may be life-changing for people experiencing communication difficulties due to paralysis.
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Brain Cells in a Lab Dish Play Pong
and offer a window into intelligence
By John Hamilton – NPR
A dish of living brain cells has learned to play the 1970s arcade game Pong.
About 800,000 cells linked to a computer gradually learned to sense the position of the game’s electronic ball and control a virtual paddle, a team reports in the journal Neuron.
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How the Brain Focuses
By David Orenstein — Neuroscience News
Working memory, that handy ability to consciously hold and manipulate new information in mind, takes work. In particular, participating neurons in the prefrontal cortex have to work together in synchrony to focus our thoughts, whether we’re remembering a set of directions or tonight’s menu specials.
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Modern Humans Grow
more brain cells than Neanderthals
By RODRIGO PÉREZ ORTEGA — Science
Lab experiments pinpoint extra brain growth orchestrated by a single gene change in modern humans. We humans are proud of our big brains, which are responsible for our ability to plan ahead, communicate, and create. Inside our skulls, we pack, on average, 86 billion neurons—up to three times more than those of our primate cousins. For years, researchers have tried to figure out how we manage to develop so many brain cells. Now, they’ve come a step closer: A new study shows a single amino acid change in a metabolic gene helps our brains develop more neurons than other mammals—and more than our extinct cousins, the Neanderthals.
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Why Facts Don’t Change Minds
cognitive biases and brain biology
By Keith M. Bellizzi – The Conversation
Our worldview forms during childhood as a result of our socialization within a particular cultural context. Our views get reinforced over time by the social groups we keep, the media we consume, and even the way in which our brains are wired. Challenging our worldviews with facts can feel like an attack on our personal identities and can often result in hardening our positions. Researchers assess how we can open our minds and explore facts that may go against our personal worldviews.
People form opinions based on emotions, such as fear, contempt and anger, rather than relying on facts. New facts often do not change people’s minds.
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The Mystery of Consciousness
By Elana Oberlander – Bar-Ilan University
Consciousness can not simply be reduced to neural activity alone, researchers say. A novel study reports the dynamics of consciousness may be understood by a newly developed conceptual and mathematical framework.
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The Creative Brain
By INSTITUT DU CERVEAU (PARIS BRAIN INSTITUTE)
We must use all of our prior knowledge while trying to come up with a creative idea. But how does this take place in our thoughts and brains? Two semantic memory search mechanisms that are involved in creativity have been uncovered by Emmanuelle Volle’s group (Inserm) at the Frontlab of the Paris Brain Institute in association with the Universities of Graz (Austria), Warwick (UK), and the Israel Institute of Technology.
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Felt Time
The Psychology of How We Perceive Time
![Felt Time: The Psychology of How We Perceive Time by [Marc Wittmann, Erik Butler]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514Fpc5SqOL.jpg)
By Marc Wittmann
An expert explores the riddle of subjective time, from why time speeds up as we grow older to the connection between time and consciousness.
We have widely varying perceptions of time. Children have trouble waiting for anything. (“Are we there yet?”) Boredom is often connected to our sense of time passing (or not passing). As people grow older, time seems to speed up, the years flitting by without a pause. How does our sense of time come about?
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Time Warped
Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception
![Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception by [Claudia Hammond]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/6149ivZS7LL.jpg)
By Claudia Hammond
Why does life seem to speed up as we get older? Why does the clock in your head move at a different speed from the one on the wall? Why is it almost impossible to go a whole day without checking your watch? Is it possible to retrain our brains and improve our relationship with it?
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Your Brain Is a Time Machine
The Neuroscience and Physics of Time
![Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time by [Dean Buonomano]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Kmc1aXzdL.jpg)
By Dean Buonomano
Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano embarks on an “immensely engaging” exploration of how time works inside the brain.
The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time, but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological movement and enables “mental time travel”—simulations of future and past events.
These functions are essential not only to our daily lives but to the evolution of the human race: without the ability to anticipate the future, mankind would never have crafted tools or invented agriculture.
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To Better Understand the Brain
look at the big picture
By Mallory Locklear — Yale University
Researchers have learned a lot about the human brain through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique that can yield insight into brain function. But typical fMRI methods may be missing key information and providing only part of the picture, Yale researchers say.
In a new study, they evaluated various approaches and found that zooming out and taking a wider field of view captures additional relevant information that a narrow focus leaves out, offering greater understanding of neural interplay.
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Signs of Dog Intelligence
gifted dogs like to play
By Linda Carroll — NBC News
“Gifted” dogs, who have a rare talent for learning lots of words for objects easily, also turn out to be more playful than other dogs, a new study finds.
Prior research in humans has shown a link between playfulness and problem-solving abilities, so animal behavior researchers from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, wondered if the same was true for rollicking pups.
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AI Chips
a million times faster than human brain synapses
By Katyanna Quach — The Register
In the early days of AI research it was hoped that once electronics had equalled the ability of human synapses many problems would be solved. We’ve now gone way beyond that.
A team at MIT reports that it has built AI chips that mimic synapses, but are a million times faster, and are additionally massively more energy efficient than current designs. The inorganic material is also easy to fit into current chip-building kit.
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When The Brain Gets Hacked!
By Tansu Yegen onTwitter
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Ant Colonies Behave Like Neural Networks
By Katherine Fenz — Rockefeller University
Temperatures are rising, and one colony of ants will soon have to make a collective decision. Each ant feels the rising heat beneath its feet but carries along as usual until, suddenly, the ants reverse course. The whole group rushes out as one—a decision to evacuate has been made. It is almost as if the colony of ants has a greater, collective mind.
A new study suggests that indeed, ants as a group behave similar to networks of neurons in a brain.
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Neural Networks Could Work More Like Brains
By Alex Wilkins — Newscientest.com
Networks of nanoscale resistors that work in a similar way to nerve cells in the body could offer advantages over digital machine learning. A resistor that works in a similar way to nerve cells in the body could be used to build neural networks for machine learning.
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Rejuvenating Aging Brains
By Bruce Goldman — Stanford University
Researchers discuss current studies about cognitive rejuvenation and discuss steps we can take to help protect our brains as we age.
Neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray, Ph.D., has spent 20 years unearthing and examining various molecules with neuroprotective and neurodegenerative properties. These molecules are found in or on different cell types in the brain and on the blood vessels abutting it, or floating in the blood and the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes it. And they become increasingly important as we age.
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Brain-Computer Interfaces
implanted in humans for the first time
By Alan Truly — digitaltrends.com
A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is now in clinical trials on human patients, the first time this has ever happened in the United States. The honor goes to a lesser-known brain interface technology leader, Synchron, and its Stentrode device.
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Brains Adapt to a Robotic Third Thumb
By Tom Hale — IFLSCIENCE
It turns out humans are a dab hand at using a robotic “third thumb”, suggests a recent experiment that saw people learning to use a specially designed robotic extra thumb. Not only did they master the use of the extra thumb with surprising ease, but scans also showed their brain had quickly adapted to manage the new skill.
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The Law of Attraction
a brain network for social attraction
By Neuroscience News
A special network that runs from the retina deep into the brain may help mediate social attraction, a new study reveals.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, in foundation, study this process in young zebrafish. They now discovered a neuronal circuit that mediates social attraction.
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The Source of Consciousness
with Mark Solms
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Consciousness Is Irrelevant to Quantum Mechanics
an interview with Carlo Rovelli
Interviewed By Alexis Papazoglou — Editor for IAI News
In this interview, Carlo Rovelli explains Heisenberg’s anti-realist motivations, clarifies the role of the “observer” in quantum mechanics, and articulates his relational interpretation of the theory, according to which reality is a network of interactions.
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Carlo Rovelli Interview
“reality is not things but connections.”
By New Scientist
Inspired by the art of Cornelia Parker, physicist Carlo Rovelli explains the idea of relational quantum mechanics – and how it could resolve some key problems concerning the nature of reality.
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Decoding the Brain
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Why and How Consciousness Arises
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The Mystery of Consciousness
sleep provides a major key
By Neuroscience News
During sleep, the brain analyzes auditory input but is unable to focus on the sound or identify the noise; therefore no conscious awareness of the stimuli occurs.
A new discovery from Tel Aviv University may provide a key to a great scientific enigma: How does the awake brain transform sensory input into a conscious experience?
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