Links
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007Abdel Monim Mahmoud, an Egyptian journalist and blogger, has identified (in Arabic and English) a prison officer who allegedly tortured him for 13 days at a state security headquarters back in 2003.
27-year-old Mahmoud is a member of Ikhwan Muslimin (the Muslim Brotherhood, MB). The MB is the world's first Islamist movement - it was founded in 1928 - and its early ideology is what inspires most of today's Islamists, including al-Qa'eda.
The MB has always been, and remains, Egypt's biggest and most popular opposition party. It is officially illegal, but is tolerated by Egyptian president…
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007 The current issue of Chemical & Engineering News contains a series of articles by Sophie L. Rovner on memory:
Hold that thought is a comprehensive piece about what is known of the cellular and biochemical bases of memory formation.
Molecules for memory discusses the ethical issues regarding memory-enhancing drugs being developed by several pharmaceuticals companies.
The well-endowed mind considers what studies of knockout mice tell us about variations in human memory performance.
Memory at its worst looks at how highly emotional memories can lead to post-traumatic stress…
neurophilosophy | August 29, 2007Beliefnet.com has an interview with Martin Seligman. (Don't click on the link if you can't bear promises of finding "eternal joy with Jesus' word," or - worse - ads for live psychic readings.)
Seligman is a highly influential psychologist. A former president of the American Psychological Association, he is perhaps best known for his theory of learned helplessness.
Beliefnet also has excerpts from Seligman's latest book, Authentic Happiness.
neurophilosophy | August 24, 2007 Zooillogix is the latest addition to ScienceBlogs.com. It's chock full of weird and wonderful stuff from the animal kingdom, like the Peter's elephant nose fish, which detects prey using electrical fields emitted from its chin.
neurophilosophy | August 22, 2007Somatopsychic is a relatively new blog, by Mitch Harden, a graduate student in the Behavioral Neuroscience program at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.
neurophilosophy | August 20, 2007 ...in the Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science is a fantastic new blog that needs a shorter name. It's by Jack Josephy, who's studying philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Sussex.
See also Distributed Neuron, by Zachary Tong, a biology undergraduate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
neurophilosophy | August 14, 2007
In today's New York Times, John Tierney discusses an argument by Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, that our existence could be nothing more than a computer simulation being run by posthumanists.
Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or "posthumans," could run "ancestor simulations" of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.…
neurophilosophy | August 12, 2007At Open Access News, there's an interview with Pat Brown, cofounder of the Public Library of Science.
neurophilosophy | August 9, 2007Slate Magazine has a report from the DARPATech conference, containing details of the contraptions under development by those mad Pentagon scientists, including the robotic surgeon trauma pod and this prosthetic arm:
At one display area, a pair of armless volunteers and a young veteran missing his right hand demonstrate some fancy new models. We don't yet have bionic arms that hook up directly to the cortex, but one machine uses electrical signals from the muscle tissue remaining in a patient's stump to drive a mechanical hand: After extended training, the veteran could open and close his…
neurophilosophy | August 8, 2007 Vaughan discusses the recent revelations that psychologists play a key role in military "interrogations", and provides plenty of links about the subject, including this article from Vanity Fair about two psychologists who developed torture techniques for the CIA.
As I have mentioned, my father was tortured during his time as a political prisoner in Egypt in the late 1950s. So campaigning against this abhorent practice is something that I'm extremely passionate about.
neurophilosophy | August 7, 2007A few new additions to my feed reader:
Advances in the History of Psychology - whose "primary mission...[is] to notify readers of publications, conferences, and other events of interest to researchers and students of the history of psychology." By Jeremy Trevelyan Burman, Ph.D. student in the history and theory of psychology at York University.
Brain in a Vat - "a neuroscience research digest." By Noam, who "recently graduated from Yale with a double major in Philosophy and Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics [and is] conducting laboratory research at the University of Pennsylvania with…
neurophilosophy | August 4, 2007
Resident ScienceBlogs psychiatrist Joseph has found some interesting papers about various types of cognition-induced epilepsy, including this one from the Hong Kong Medical Journal:
Mah-jong induced seizures: case reports and review of twenty-three patients.Chang, R. S. K., et al.
'Mah-jong epilepsy' is a rare reflex epilepsy syndrome, manifesting as recurrent epileptic seizures triggered by either playing or just watching mah-jong. We present three patients with this condition and review all the reported cases. Mah-jong-induced seizures can be considered a subtype of cognition-…
neurophilosophy | August 4, 2007
Skeleton, brain, nerves, from John Banister's Anatomical Tables, c. 1580.
From the Anatomy Acts Exhibition website (via Morbid Anatomy).
neurophilosophy | July 28, 2007Earlier this week, I posted an email I received about a nutritional supplement called EM Power Plus. The makers of this product, a Canadian company called TrueHope, claim that it can alleviate the symptoms of bipolar disorder.
In the comments to that post, PalMD, author of the WhiteCoatUnderground blog, is having what appears to be an on-going debate with Peter Helgason, the quack who emailed me.
Update: PalMD has written about the miracle cure.
neurophilosophy | July 28, 2007
My recent post on prefrontal lobotomy has been the most popular thing on this blog so far, and the comments on it are worth reading.
While searching for more information about lobotomies and the neuroleptic drugs that replaced them, I came across this fantastic webpage at NobelPrize.org, which contains more information about Egas Moniz, the Portugese surgeon who first performed the procedure.
That's where I found this diagram of the instrument designed by Moniz for the prefrontal leucotomies he performed with his colleague. From the diagram, one can see how the instrument (called a…
neurophilosophy | July 27, 2007
This week's issue of The Lancet contains the most comprehensive meta-analysis to date of the link between cannabis and psychosis:
The evidence is consistent with the view that cannabis increases risk of psychotic outcomes independently of confounding and transient intoxication effects, although evidence for affective outcomes is less strong. The uncertainty about whether cannabis causes psychosis is unlikely to be resolved by further longitudinal studies such as those reviewed here. However, we conclude that there is now sufficient evidence to warn young people that using…
neurophilosophy | July 27, 2007 Shelley has written a nice summary of the neuroscience of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
As its name suggests, ADHD is characterized by inattention and hyperactivity. This is often accompanied by forgetfulness and an inability to control impulses.
ADHD is a developmental disorder that is believed to be neurological in nature. It presents at an early age and persists into adulthood in about 60% of cases.
The condition has proven to be highly controversial in recent years. Some believe that we are too quick to diagnose it, and that children are being over-medicated. Others…
neurophilosophy | July 26, 2007
"What is matter? Never mind. What is mind? Never matter." So says Homer, in one episode of The Simpsons. And although I'm not an adherent of Homerian dualism, the show is still my favourite thing on television. I think it's sheer genius.
The Simpsons often contains science-based jokes and references to evolution, cosmology and particle physics. In one episode, for example, Homer enters a parallel universe through a wormhole; another features Stephen Hawking, who Homer refers to as "the wheelchair guy".
One of my favourite episodes is Lisa the Sceptic (Season 9, Episode 8) in which Lisa…
neurophilosophy | July 25, 2007
The New York Times has an obituary of Albert Ellis, a highly innovative psychotherapist who died yesterday at the age of 93.
In the 1950s, Ellis broke with tradition by rejecting the theories of Sigmund Freud, which were widely used at the time.
As an alternative, Ellis developed a method called Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), which involved encouraging his patients to alter their behaviour by focusing on current events in their lives.
This new method, along with that developed by Aaron T. Beck, would later form the basis of cognitive behaviour therapy.
neurophilosophy | July 21, 2007The Angry Toxicologist has just joined ScienceBlogs, so go and say hello.
ScienceBlogs also has a Cheerful Oncologist, so I'm wondering who'll be next to join their ranks. Will it be a disgruntled pharmacologist? A despondent dermatologist? Or pherhaps an exultant gynaecologist?