Having just returned from a 3 week vacation to purchase (and then move into) a new home, I am finally now able to get back to posting. Here's just a very small subset of the best in brain-blogging while I was away:
Fundamental limitations in predicting individual differences: the margin of error in predictive algorithms of individual behavior (as used, for example, by the UK Department of Health to determine whether an individual is fit for release from a psychiatric institution, and much more widely in marketing and finance) may be so high as to render some of these algorithms unusable.
Building Blocks of The Mind: Abstract from a recent talk by Elizabeth Torres.
Are new insights "mentally prioritized" relative to older ones? A somewhat speculative paper on novelty, insight and problem solving.
Roombas Revenge: once they're equipped with tasers, there will be no more torturing of your robotic slave...
Robotic locomotion and central pattern generators: Nikolai Bernstein's work from the 1930's is now applied in robotics. Also here.
Blue light, awake at night? A surprising article from Sleep indicates that alertness can be maintained throughout the night merely by exposure to blue light.
A new PlosOne paper indicates that it may be possible to determine the directionality of functional connectivity using "directional coupling analysis." Fascinating stuff... I'll post on this soon. Here's the Eurekalert summary.
PFC but not MTL activation differences in children vs. adults during a memory test (via Al Fin)
Why do some people show fewer clinical symptoms of Alzheimer's than others? SharpBrains interviews Dr. Yaakov Stern about "cognitive reserve theory."
Blogroll additions:
Cognitive Computing Blog
Evolved Machines
