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An entrée of Cognitive Science with an occasional side of whatever the hell else I want to talk about.
Cognitive stuff from a cognitive person. If you've got any requests, drop me an email. If it takes me a while to get to it, drop me another one.
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April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
The Mixing Memory Reading Group is a place for experts and non-experts alike to discuss books and papers in cognitive science.
June 30, 2006
Category: Research & Theory
I'm going to play biologist for a moment, and talk about a species other than humans or nonhuman primates. First, imagine that you're about 10 mm long, a couple mm high, and you're stuck in the middle of the...
Posted by Chris at 9:10 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 28, 2006
Category: History of Psychology
Jonah, over at Frontal Cortex, has a post titled "Neglected Psychologists," in which he asks: What other great scientists of mind are modern neuroscientists neglecting? The same could be asked of all cognitive scientists. Jonah gives two names: William James...
Posted by Chris at 7:43 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 27, 2006
Category: History of Psychology
In a response to my defense of Freud, Jonah Lehrer states that, with Harold Bloom (ewww!), he sees Freud as "one of the great artists of the 20th century." In my view, how we read Freud today -- as literature,...
Posted by Chris at 8:00 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cognitive Neuroscience
Dave over at Cognitive Daily beat me to this (curse you, Dave!), but I wanted to point everyone to an article in Seed Magazine by Paul Bloom, titled "Seduced by the Flickering Lights of the Brain." If you can't tell...
Posted by Chris at 6:29 PM • 6 Comments • 2 TrackBacks
Category: Cognitive Neuroscience
In the past, I've often wondered how journalists pick which studies to write about. The obvious answer is that they pick studies that will get readers or viewers, but given how little their stories correspond with the research they're writing...
Posted by Chris at 8:07 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 26, 2006
Category: Miscellaneous
The first edition of The Synapse, one of two new neuroscience carnivals, is here. Especially interesting are the mating robots and the post on neurotheology....
Posted by Chris at 8:44 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 25, 2006
Category: Blogs and Blogging
Well, not on blogs exactly, but internet communication in general. What he says definitely applies to blogs, though. The quote is in a footnote in this speech that Habermas gave at the 2006 annual convention of the International Communication Association....
Posted by Chris at 2:20 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogs and Blogging
This week's "Ask a Science Blogger" question is, "What makes a good science teacher?" I don't know how to answer that. I've had many science teachers, some of whom were very good, some of whom were very bad, and most...
Posted by Chris at 10:55 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 24, 2006
Category: Bad Science Reporting
Mark Liberman has two great posts over at Language Log debunking first a claim made by David Brooks in this article on the gender gap in education, and then Leonard Sax's poor use of science that inspired Brooks' claim. This...
Posted by Chris at 4:34 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Visual Illusions
Here is an illusion that was discovered relatively recently. Take a look at this (from here): You should see two figures with a purple outter border and an orange inner border. What color is the interior of the figure? It...
Posted by Chris at 12:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
