cognition

tags: Encephalon, blog carnivals The 38th edition of Encephalon is now ready for you to read, so stampede on over there for some brainy goodness!
tags: brain blogging, blog carnivals The 23rd edition of the Brain Blogging carnival is now available for you to enjoy. And hey, they included one of my pieces!
tags: encephalon, blog carnivals The 37th edition of Encephalon is now available for your reading pleasure. The editor included a submission from me, so of course, I am happy!
Rockridge Institute published a set of articles (and a video ad) that I found quite interesting about the way to frame health care. See for yourself: Introduction to Rockridge's Health Care Campaign: Framing for Rockridge is about the honest expression of the progressive moral view based upon empathy and responsibility for oneself and others. It is about recognizing government's role to protect and empower citizens. In other words, we want to communicate our moral view as directly as possible. We want to make sure the moral view is not lost in the fog of complex policy proposals. The Logic…
tags: Irene Pepperberg, Alex, African grey parrot, streaming video Alex was a famous African grey parrot who could count to six, identify colors and even express frustration with repetitive scientific trials. He died about five weeks ago, after 30 years of helping researchers better understand the avian brain. This streaming video below the fold has a wonderful tribute to Alex and his many talents. [2:39]
The 33rd edition of Encephalon was just published and they included one of my essays. As you might remember, I hosted the previous edition of Encephalon so be sure to visit this issue as well!
tags: encephalon, brain, behavior, cognition, neurobiology, blog carnival The last frontier: The brain. Orphaned Image. Contact me so I can provide credit and linkage. Several months ago, I was invited to host Encephalon, probably because I send so many submissions to this blog carnival and possibly also because I am fairly good at sending traffic to the contributors of those blog carnivals that I host. Unfortunately, I have not had wifi for the past two days, so I hope that you appreciate my modest efforts on behalf of this blog carnival. So, without further ado, I present to you the 32nd…
Unfortunately, due to the Murphy's Law of conference dates, I will have to miss this fantastic meeting, because I will at the time be at another fantastic meeting, but if you can come, please do - registration will be open online in a few days. Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity The conference theme is about bringing scientists and humanities scholars to talk about ways that science is changing human life. November 8th, 9th, and 10th, the National Humanities Center will host the second ASC conference. And the program features a Who's Who list: Thursday, November 8th Frans de Waal Martha…
tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, cognition, learning, speech disabilities, Irene Pepperberg Alex, the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, who worked with Irene Pepperberg for more than 30 years. Image: Illustration by Andrew Kuo, Photograph by John Woo. An article about Alex, the African grey parrot who worked with Irene Pepperberg, has been reprinted on the Seed magazine site. This piece was originally published in 2004 and reappears now as a memorial to Alex. It includes lovely images, such as the one above. Alex is an African Grey parrot, but in all…
tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, cognition, learning, speech disabilities, Irene Pepperberg Alex, the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, who worked with Irene Pepperberg for more than 30 years. Image: Brandeis University. Alex, the African grey parrot who worked with Irene Pepperberg, has managed something that most of us never will: his obituary is in today's LATimes (even more remarkable, it was in yesterday's NYTimes); Some scientists have questioned whether Alex was as smart as he seemed. African grey parrots are very social birds, and some scientists…
I promised that I would post the link to the interview with Irene Pepperberg by All Things Considered, so here it is. It also includes a streaming version [3:53]
tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, cognition, learning, speech disabilities, Irene Pepperberg Alex, the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, who worked with Irene Pepperberg for more than 30 years. Image: Mike Lovett/Brandeis University [larger size] Alex, the African grey parrot who worked with Irene Pepperberg, has managed something that most of us never will: his obituary is in today's NYTimes; Scientists have long debated whether any other species can develop the ability to learn human language. Alex's language facility was, in some ways, more surprising than…
tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Irene Pepperberg, streaming video "Alex is actually THINKING!" Well, of course animals think. They're constantly making decisions based on information available to them. What was special about Alex, the African grey parrot who worked with Irene Pepperberg, was his ability to communicate his thoughts, giving us insight into how his mind works. Rest in peace, little guy. [0:34]
tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, cognition, learning, speech disabilities, Irene Pepperberg Alex, the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus and his colored blocks. Image: EurekaAlert. [wallpaper size] As you know, I have spent my life researching, breeding and living with birds, especially parrots. I have also had the distinct pleasure of meeting Irene Pepperberg several times, both at professional meetings as well as at avicultural meetings. However, yesterday, I received the devastating news that Alex the African grey parrot, who was both a study subject and…
This is the third part in an overview of menopause and hormone therapy. Parts one and two are here and here. This time around I describe changes in cognitive and behavioral profiles for women and animal models of menopause. I may decide to expand on a handful of studies at a later date, but for now I wanted to provide a very brief overview of human studies, problems inherent to human studies, and animal studies. I think the next part of this series will focus on the quality of our animal models and what they have to tell us. But for now, anyone who is interested in these issues knows where…
In the May 18th issue of Science there is a revew paper by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. An expanded version of it also appeared recently in Edge and many science bloggers are discussing it these days. Enrique has the best one-sentence summary of the article: The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science. The article divides that "what children know prior to their exposure to science" into two categories: the intuitive grasp of the world (i.e., conclusions they come up with on their own) and the learned…
Last week's Casual Friday study on Cognitive Daily tried to look at the way various curse words are used and perceived by their blog readers. Today, the results are in and, though not surprising, they are quite interesting. The sample is probably skewed towards well-educated folks interested in cognitive science, as well as towards the US readers (or at least English-speaking readers), but they had a large enough sample this time to get significant differences between sexes, if not races. Do you find "bitch" less offensive if you are a dog breeder? Or if you are a regular reader of Bitch…
Sex And Prenatal Hormone Exposure Affect Cognitive Performance: Yerkes researchers are using their findings to better understand sex differences in cognitive performance, which may lead to increased understanding of the difference in neuropsychological disorders men and women experience. In one of the first research studies to assess sex differences in cognitive performance in nonhuman primates, researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center have found the tendency to use landmarks for navigation is typical only of females. This finding, which corroborates findings in rodents and…
Truth, All the Truth, and Nothing but the Truth. You are all familiar with the phrase. It actually figures prominently (though unspoken until now) in this whole discussion about framing science. Nobody - absolutely nobody - ever suggests that anything but The Truth should be used when communicating science or communicating about science. The wisdom of framing is that 'All the Truth' can be omitted, as too much information puts off the target audience in some cases, and is thus counterproductive. The self-styled Defenders Of The Truth insist that a) 'All The Truth' should never be omitted,…
When my 'Scientific American' arrived the other day, I was excited to read the article about ravens by Bernd Heinrich, as I loved his book Mind of a Raven. I was also glad to see that new cool experiments have been done since the book came out. But I wondering how to blog about an article that is behind the subscription wall, so in the end, I abandoned the idea. Now, Grrrlscientist comes to the rescues with an excellent summary of the article, that is well worth your time.