neurophilosophy
Posts by this author
December 15, 2007
The film clip below shows a pack of killer whales co-operating to catch a seal. First, they break up the ice floe on which their prey is standing, and push it out into open water. Then, they create large waves to knock the seal into the water.
This kind of behaviour has been observed in killer…
December 15, 2007
Remote viewing is a form of "psychoenergetic perception" (i.e. clairvoyance) developed as part of a long-term $20 million research program initiated by U.S. intelligence agencies in the early 1970s. Now known by the codename Stargate, the program was initiated largely in response to the belief that…
December 13, 2007
Merged series of phase contrast micrographs showing neurite outgrowth in rat dorsal root ganglion cells grown on an acetylcholine biopolymer. (Christiane Gumera)
Last year, Yadong Wang and his colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology reported that they had produced a…
December 13, 2007
The word "wOOt" - spelt with zeros instead of the letter 'o' - has just been voted as Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary's Word of the Year. Coined by internet users, and defined as an interjection "expressing joy", it's quite apt today, because my axon guidance essay was returned with a mark of 80…
December 11, 2007
Here's an article about a sophisticated type of advertising which uses hypersonic sound:
New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman's voice right in her ear asking, "Who's there? Who's there?" She looked around to find no one in her immediate…
December 11, 2007
Sega is to develop toys controlled by thought, in collaboration with NeuroSky, a Silicon Valley-based start-up company that interfaces biological feedback (such as brain waves) to consumer electronics.
The toys will be based on NeuroSky's ThinkGear, a brain-computer interface (BCI) consisting of a…
December 10, 2007
The New York Times has just published its seventh annual list of the year's best ideas, which includes:
Alzheimer's telephone screening: a "telephone quiz" consisting of 50 questions, designed to measure the "cognitive vital signs", such as short-term memory loss, which can identify Alzheimer's…
December 10, 2007
Yesterday's Sunday Feature on BBC Radio 3 was program about the evolution of music, by Ivan Hewitt. It isn't available online yet, but should be uploaded onto the Sunday Feature page soon, and will remain there for a week.
The progam features linguist Steven Pinker of Harvard University, who…
December 9, 2007
Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, discusses race and IQ, arguing that the differences in the IQ scores of blacks and whites are due largely to environmental factors.
Nisbett begins his article by mentioning James Watson, who recently retired from his post as…
December 9, 2007
It actually rained very lightly while we were walking along this small beach in Alexandria about three weeks ago. Generally though, the weather in Egypt was warm and sunny - in stark contrast to the wet and windy weather we're having in London at the moment.
December 8, 2007
About 2 years ago, researchers reported the discovery of the so-called "Halle Berry cell" in the human brain. This, and similar cells which respond selectively to other well-known celebrities, famous landmarks or categories of objects are located on the medial surface of the temporal lobe.
The same…
December 8, 2007
Jennifer writes to point out a documentary about neuroplasticity which is being aired on PBS this month. Follow the link for a 3-minute preview, which features Michael Merzenich.
December 4, 2007
An article in the NY Times discusses the work of Michael Marmor, a professor of ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine who has created a computer simulation of how eye diseases such as macular degeneration and cataracts have affected the painting styles of a number of impressionist artists.…
December 3, 2007
Researchers from Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute report that a young chimp can out-perform university students on a working memory task. (Cognitive psychologists use the term working memory to refer to the temporary storage and manipulation of information.)
The researchers developed…
December 3, 2007
The 37th edition of Encephalon, hosted by Bora at A Blog Around the Clock, includes posts from students in PZ's neurobiology class, as well as the first piece of coursework for my M.Sc., an essay on axon guidance which I posted in four parts while I was away in Egypt.
December 1, 2007
Using sophisticated techniques to silence or activate specific neurons, researchers from Stanford University have established that a simple behaviour used by fruit fly larvae to evade attack from parasitic wasps is triggered by a type of sensory neuron that is similar to the neurons which respond…
November 30, 2007
This brain map comes from The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man (1912), by the obscure mystical philosopher Alesha Sivartha, who is sometimes referred to as a "grandfather of the new-age movement".
The map is of particular interest, as it approaches modern neurology but…
November 30, 2007
Emotional Systems is the inaugural exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Centre La Strozzina at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy. It begins tomorrow and runs until 3rd February, 2008.
The...installation...[includes] an exhibition, a publication and a programme of lectures…
November 29, 2007
The image on the right is a supercomputer simulation of the microcircuitry found within a column from the neocortex of the rat brain.
The simulation is a tour de force of computational neuroscience: a single column is a highly complex structure, containing approximately 10,000 neurons and 30…
November 28, 2007
It is said that the camera never lies, but according to new research published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, the camera not only lies, but those lies can lead to the creation of false memories.
In the study, which was led by Dario Sacchi of the University of Pagua and designed…
November 28, 2007
Neurologist and neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran is giving a talk at the Royal Society in London tonight. Entitled Nature and nurture in brain function: clues from synesthesia and phantom limbs, the talk begins at 6.30pm GMT.
The lecture is free and does not require a ticket or advance…
November 27, 2007
This image of the brainstem of a Brainbow mouse, by Jean Livet of Harvard University, has just been awarded 1st prize in the 2007 Olympus Bioscapes International Digital Imaging Competition.
November 27, 2007
A lengthy article in last weekend's Washington Post Magazine discusses the work of Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) who has almost completed the first phase of a clinical study into the use of ecstasy as a therapeutic tool for post-traumatic…
November 25, 2007
I'm back in London after a hectic - but fantastic - week in Egypt. Of the hundreds of photographs that I took on the trip, this is one of my favourites. It shows part of old Cairo as seen through a peephole in the minaret of a medieval mosque. I'll be posting more of my photos (of both this…
November 22, 2007
[Introduction|Part 2|Part 3]
The three studies discussed here make important contributions to our understanding of axon guidance. Lopez-Bendito et al describe a novel guidance mechanism involving tangentially migrating GABAergic interneurons. These cells migrate ventrally from the LGE to form a…
November 21, 2007
[Introduction|Part 2|Discussion]
Tojima et al (2007) find that the growth cone's response to attractive guidance cues requires asymmetrical vesicle transport and exocytosis. They cultured dorsal root ganglion (DRG) cells from embryonic chicks, and produced localized elevations in calcium ion…
November 20, 2007
[Introduction|Part 3|Part 4]
Lopez-Bendito et al (2006) show that pathfinding of thalamocortical axons (TCAs) requires the formation of a permissive corridor through non-permissive territory, and that this corridor is generated by cells which undergo a tangential migration from the lateral…
November 19, 2007
Dylan T. Burnette/ Nikon Small World.
The remarkable specificity of neuronal connectivity depends on accurate axon pathfinding during development. Pathfinding involves the detection of guidance cues in the environment by the growth cone, a motile chemotactic structure at the leading tip of the…
November 16, 2007
I'm off to Egypt later on today to attend my cousin's wedding. I probably won't have access to the internet for the 8 days that I'm there, so I've scheduled some posts for next week: the essay I've just submitted for my Masters will be appearing in a series of four posts, starting on Monday.…