neurophilosophy | July 1, 2008The folks at Nature Network have organized the Science Blogging 2008 Conference, which will take place on Saturday, August 30th at the Royal Institution in London.
The programme for the event was put online earlier today. I'll be moderating this discussion between Anna Kushnir, Jenny Rohn and Grrl Scientist:
Mistrust of scientists is common, and misinterpretation of scientific results rampant. Science blogs can serve as a bridge between scientists and the general public. Blogs build a community of scientists in which they can discuss the peculiarities of their jobs, their work, and their…
neurophilosophy | June 30, 2008We are being constantly bombarded with news stories containing pretty pictures of the brain, with headings such as "Brain's adventure centre located". Journalists now seem to refer routinely to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as "mind reading", and exaggerated claims about its powers abound, as do misleading, irresponsible and downright ridiculous stories about the technology.
Take, for example, this article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Atlantic:
The preliminary findings began to arrive a few days later, in a series of e-mails..."Carter: big amygdala response on both sides…
neurophilosophy | June 26, 2008Technology pundits speculate that mind control is the future of gaming. They envision that the movements of computer game characters will be controlled not with joysticks but with non-invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) which monitor the brain's electrical activity and transmit the signals to the games console.
Although scientists are concerned about the non-therapeutic use of BCIs, such devices are already commercially available; last year, Emotiv Systems demonstrated its Project Epoch EEG cap, and began marketing it to games developers such as Sega and Nintendo.
In anticipation of the…
neurophilosophy | June 26, 2008Nature News has an interesting article by Philip Ball about a dancing cockatoo named Snowball:
Aniruddh Patel of the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues say that Snowball's ability to shake his stuff is much more than a cute curiosity. It could shed light on the biological bases of rhythm perception, and might even hold implications for the use of music in treating neurodegenerative disease.
Below is a film clip of Snowball getting his groove on.
neurophilosophy | June 25, 2008Researchers from the Computational Neuroimaging Laboratory at New York University recently carried out a study of the effects of films on viewers' brains.
Hasson et al scanned the brains of 45 participants whilst they watched scenes from a number of films and television programmes. Not surprisingly, they found that all the scenes activated numerous and diffuse regions of the cerebral cortex - visual areas in the occipital lobes, auditory and language centres in the temporal lobes, and so on.
The data obtained were then subjected to a newly-developed statistical method called inter-subject…
neurophilosophy | June 24, 2008The forthcoming issue of The New Yorker contains a fantastic article by surgeon and writer Atul Gawande about the neurobiology of itching.
The article begins with the extraordinary case of a patient known as M., whose itch, which occurred following an episode of shingles, became so unbearable that one morning she awoke to find that she had scratched through her skull and into her brain while she slept.
Gawande continues with a brief history of theories about itching - it was long considered to be a mild form of pain, but came to be recognized as a distinct sensation, following experimental…
neurophilosophy | June 24, 2008Common cockles, by Nick Veasey, who "uses x-ray technology to create mesmerizing and intriguing art".
neurophilosophy | June 24, 2008General anaesthetics activate a heat-sensitive protein found in pain pathways and may exacerbate post-operative pain, according to a new study published online yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Anaesthetics suppress activity of the central nervous system, leading to a reversible loss of consciousness. The suppression of neural activity is thought to occur by the actions of the anaesthetic on the GABA receptor, which is normally activated by gamma-aminobutyric acid, the principal inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain.
Every year, more than 100 million…
neurophilosophy | June 24, 2008The incredible case of Phineas Gage has now been translated into Spanish.
neurophilosophy | June 24, 2008Here are some more new members of the ever-growing online neuroscience community:
The Brain and the Sky
Illusion Sciences
N-Cog-Neato!
Neurophilia
Neurotonics
neurophilosophy | June 23, 2008In 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 to think we are.
So, below are 5 amazing feats of animal intelligence which have been observed (and, in some cases, captured on film) over the past few years.
1. Plotnik et al (2006) have shown that elephants are capable of self -awareness. In the film clip below, the elephant recognizes itself in…
neurophilosophy | June 23, 2008At 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 and a new study which purports to show that mirror neurons control erections.
neurophilosophy | June 23, 2008I'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 visual system.
Using microelectrodes inserted into the primary visual cortex of anaesthetized cats, Hubel and Wiesel characterized the responses of cells to various visual stimuli. They found groups of cells which responded selectively to lines of a specific orientation, others which responded to…
neurophilosophy | June 21, 2008The 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 equation which can be used to calculate an ion's equilibrium potential, i.e. the voltage at which its movements in one direction across a membrane are equal to its movements in the other.
The Nernst equation is of importance to electrophysiologists, because the electrical properties of neurons are…
neurophilosophy | June 21, 2008Here's some superb old footage of the legendary Syrian musician Farid al-Atrash giving a virtuoso performance on the oud.
neurophilosophy | June 20, 2008The 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 attention on neurons, which they considered to be the key players in brain function, and glia were largely ignored.
The view that glia play a secondary role in brain function persisted for about a hundred years. Recently, however, this has begun to change, and it is now clear that glia play…
neurophilosophy | June 20, 2008My 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 Italian.
neurophilosophy | June 19, 2008In 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. Burton Blatt visited five such institutions in the eastern states, with his photographer friend Fred Kaplan, who, armed with a hidden camera attached to his belt, took hundreds of photographs of their "darkest corridors and vestibules". The result was a remarkable document called Christmas In…
neurophilosophy | June 19, 2008Our 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 following bouts of aggression. This was found to occur more often when a fight between two chimps was not followed by reconciliation, and was more likely to take place between individuals that share a close relationship.
This study was quickly followed by that of Townsend et al, who show that female…
neurophilosophy | June 18, 2008This 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 artist will simply project it by brain waves - "thought transference," says Raymond Scott.
BRAIN WAVES
This man, who thinks in terms of electronics and music, thinks that is all quite possible. Scott said in an interview:
"Brains put out electrical waves. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some day it…