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Chris Chatham is a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University.
April 27, 2007
Early neuropsychology research indicated that long-term memory and short-term memory were separable - in other words, long-term memory could be impaired by damage to the hippocampus without any corresponding deficits in short-term memory. However, this idea has come under scrutiny...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 10:13 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 26, 2007
[ Cognitive Neuroscience, Computational Modeling ]
People are remarkably bad at switching tasks - and research focusing on this fact has isolated a network of brain regions that are involved in task-switching (I'll call it the "frontal task network" for short). One of the stranger findings...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 2:14 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 25, 2007
[ Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Neuroscience, Comparative Psychology, Computational Modeling ]
A lack of clear definitions for terms like "intelligence" and "consciousness" plagues any serious discussion of those concepts. A recent article by Seth, Baars & Edelman argues for a core set of 17 properties that are characteristic of consciousness, and...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 10:16 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 24, 2007
Ever heard that "you're born with all the brain cells you'll ever have"? It turns out that could be a good thing - if it were true. A new study shows that at least in some circumstances, neurogenesis actually impairs...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 10:53 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 20, 2007
Have you ever momentarily forgotten the name of a specific place, or person, despite being able to recall many things about the name (for example the first few letters, or the number of syllables)? Chances are, if you've experienced this...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 9:46 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 19, 2007
Children are famously bad at considering the future consequences of their actions, but some evidence suggests this criticism is slightly off-the-mark: they may not even comprehend "time" in the same way adults do. A variety of findings from multiple lines...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 10:15 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 18, 2007
[ Link Posts ]
What better way to start out than some cool visual illusions known as hybrid images. It's a short jump from visual illusions to mass delusions. Is the benefit of exercise a similar mass delusion, a kind of population-level placebo effect?...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 12:55 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 17, 2007
[ Comparative Psychology, Developmental Psychology ]
Your body's bilateral symmetry statistically predicts your health, probability of schizotypy and depression, number of sexual partners, and resting metabolic rate (particularly if you are male). Bodily symmetry may reflect "developmental stability" - i.e., influences like disease, mutation and stress...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 10:04 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 16, 2007
[ Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Neuroscience, Computational Modeling ]
Among nature's most impressive feats of engineering is the remarkably flexible and self-optimizing quality of human cognition. People seem to dynamically determine whether speed or accuracy is of utmost importance in a certain task, or whether they should continue with...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 9:46 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 11, 2007
[ Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Neuroscience, Computational Modeling ]
Very early in the history of artificial intelligence research, it was apparent that cognitive agents needed to be able to maximize reward by changing their behavior. But this leads to a "credit-assignment" problem: how does the agent know which of...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 12:07 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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