neurophilosophy | June 18, 2008The 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 positive about high dilution homeopathic remedies for any human condition.
Or, we challenge homeopaths to have such a review published within 12 months of the first publication of extracts from Trick or Treatment? (8 April, 2009).
The Prize will be £10,000 - it will be paid by Ernst and Singh out of…
neurophilosophy | June 18, 2008The 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.
The BBC now reports that cognitive psychologist Martin Conway of the University of Leeds has called for "a major rethink of memory and the law" in a report written for the British Psychological Society and the Law Society.
The article also quotes prominent memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus of the…
neurophilosophy | June 18, 2008The 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.
neurophilosophy | June 17, 2008I 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 [sic] healing and also African D'jembe for Shamanic sound therapy. I find the information that I am reading very pertanant [sic] to my work and have given very serious thought to having it done but can't seem to find out more about it from someone that has had it done.
Namaste,
Kevin
I am not a…
neurophilosophy | 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 discovered in 1913 by Mario Ponzo, who drew two identical bars across a pair of converging lines [like railroad tracks]...The upper yellow bar looks wider because it spans a greater apparent distance between the rails. This is the "Ponzo Illusion."
Some researchers believe that the Moon Illusion is…
neurophilosophy | June 17, 2008The 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 cerebral cortex of man and other mammals, and it is for his outstanding contribution to this area of research that he has been awarded the Kavli Prize for Neuroscience.
Cortical development (or corticogenesis) is a highly dynamic and complex process, involving the tightly orchestrated movements of…
neurophilosophy | 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.
Roadrunner will primarily be used to simulate the behaviour of nuclear weapons, but will also be used for astronomy, genomics and climate change research. Last weekend, to put it through its paces, researchers ran a program called PetaVision, which models more than 1 billion neurons and trillions of…
neurophilosophy | June 13, 2008WE 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 and expectations.
Generally, these errors are small, so despite not being completely accurate, our memories are usually reliable. Occasionally, there are too many errors, and the memory becomes unreliable. In extreme cases, memories can be completely false.
False memory, or confabulation, is…
neurophilosophy | 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 announced that artificially duplicates part of the human nervous system. And it carries out learning processes, according to Aeronutronic Division of Ford Motor Co.
The device is called MIND for Magnetic Integrator Neuron Duplicator.
Like a living cell, MIND can remember experiences and learn new facts…
neurophilosophy | June 12, 2008A 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 have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia in voluntary work with the pupils.
Voluntary work necessarily involves social interactions, which Whitehouse believes has significant health benefits for the patients. There is some evidence to support his claim - recent research shows…
neurophilosophy | June 12, 2008Paraskavedekatriaphobia is an irrational fear of Friday 13th; it is a form of triskaidekaphobia (a fear of the number 13 in general).
neurophilosophy | June 12, 2008The 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 their respective fields. I haven't had a look at all of them, but here are a few that caught my eye:
Brainstorm, by the editors of the magazine;
In Practice, by psychiatrist Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac; and
Quirky Little Things, by Jesse Bering, director of the Institute of Cognition…
neurophilosophy | June 11, 2008When 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, the process by which brain mass increased dramatically in relation to total body mass that occurred in the human lineage.
However, a new study which used bioinformatics to compare the synapses of distantly related species suggests that size may not be the most important factor in human brain…
neurophilosophy | 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 million contract to develop the device. Here's a snippet from the press release:
In Phase One of the program, the Northrop Grumman team plans to demonstrate the concept by building a breadboard system and complete a preliminary design for the company's Human-aided Optical Recognition/Notification of…
neurophilosophy | June 10, 2008The 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 describe all sorts of experimental procedures.
The neuroscience category contains videos describing basic techniques such as culturing mouse neocortical neurons, and more sophisticated procedures, such as implanting a glass-covered "brain window" for in vivo imaging in rats.
(In March of last year, I…
neurophilosophy | 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 psychological tests just a few years before she died, and then later to examine her brain at autopsy.
They say that their findings, which are due to be published in the August issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging, call into question long-held assumptions about the cognitive decline and…
neurophilosophy | June 10, 2008This 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 which, 12% of troops in Iraq, and 18% of those in Afghanistan, have been prescribed these medications (that is, approximately 20,000 of the total number of troops deployed).
A study of British troops published last year showed that the longer troops are deployed, the more likely they are to suffer…
neurophilosophy | June 10, 2008At 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 Doll experiment', in which the effect on children of viewing violence on television was examined.
neurophilosophy | 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?)
neurophilosophy | June 9, 2008Neuroscience, 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 - it is often referred to as the most complex object in the known universe - which doesn't give up its secrets easily. After 100 years of scientific investigation, we still know very little about it.
So it's no real surprise that in recent years, neuroscientists have made quite a few discoveries…