Now on ScienceBlogs: Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: more religion and child abuse
[ over time, across species, and cross-platform ]
Chris Chatham is a grad student at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
September 27, 2007
Cognitive scientists are increasingly aware of how individual differences can confound experimental results. That is, differences in group means cannot always be interpreted clearly if, for example, only some subset of individuals in each group demonstrates the effect. Consequently, even...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 9:59 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 26, 2007
Infantile "amnesia" refers to the apparent absence or weakness of memories formed at ages younger than 3 or 4. Some evidence indicates that these early-life memories are not actually lost or forgotten, but are rather merely mislabeled or otherwise inaccessible...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 2:18 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 25, 2007
Say you are writing an email when the phone rings. After the phone call, you return to finish the email. Are you slower to continue writing this email than you would be if you'd been doing something else prior to...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 3:44 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 24, 2007
What processes allow us to execute delayed intentions? This ability, known as prospective memory, is often considered to have two constituent parts: a prospective component which involves forming the intention and possibly maintaining it until action execution, and a retrospective...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 11:38 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 21, 2007
The word "noise" comes from the latin nausea, meaning disgust or annoyance. But in the phenomenon known as stochastic resonance, noise can actually be a good thing: it can serve as a signal amplifier in thresholded systems. This phenomenon is...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 11:20 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 20, 2007
Can information be directed to different networks in the brain depending on the "transmission frequency", like the channels on a TV? A 2006 Cerebral Cortex paper reveals that this may not be as absurd as it sounds. A relatively new...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 4:05 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 19, 2007
[ Cognitive Neuroscience, Link Posts ]
In the "motion standstill" illusion, a rapidly moving object is perceived as motionless, and yet not blurred. This means that color, depth, and shape are accurately processed while the motion system fails: in fact, subjects are no better at detecting...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 7:04 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 14, 2007
[ Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Psychology ]
The claim that language processing can be carried out by purely "general purpose" information processing mechanisms in the brain - rather than relying on language-specific module(s) - may seem contradicted by a slew of recent neuroimaging studies demonstrating what appears...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 10:11 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 10, 2007
An article in last week's Nature describes a highly experimental - but also highly promising - new treatment for patients who have undergone massive traumatic brain injury. These patients are typically left in a "minimally conscious" state, showing little to...
Posted by Chris Chatham at 6:56 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
