neurophilosophy
Posts by this author
July 21, 2007
The Angry Toxicologist has just joined ScienceBlogs, so go and say hello.
ScienceBlogs also has a Cheerful Oncologist, so I'm wondering who'll be next to join their ranks. Will it be a disgruntled pharmacologist? A despondent dermatologist? Or pherhaps an exultant gynaecologist?
July 20, 2007
That the removal of an entire hemisphere of the brain can be performed with little or no noticable changes in behaviour is a demonstration of the remarkable adaptability of the human brain.
This procedure, known as a hemispherectomy, is a drastic measure taken to treat severe and intractable…
July 19, 2007
Nerve cells are excitable. At rest, they are said to be polarized; the cell membrane separates the negatively and positively charged ions, so that the inside of the membrane is negatively charged with respect to the outside. In response to a stimulus, nerve cells produce action potentials, which…
July 18, 2007
How the brain interprets complex visual scenes is an enduring mystery for researchers. This process occurs extremely rapidly - the "meaning" of a scene is interpreted within 1/20th of a second, and, even though the information processed by the brain may be incomplete, the interpretation is…
July 18, 2007
BioMed Central has just launched Open Access and the Developing world, a portal that focuses on the benefits of open access to scintific and medical literature for developing countries.
July 18, 2007
The world's most advanced prosthetic hand is now available commercially for about US$18,000.
The device is controlled by the electrical signals generated by the muscles in the arm. It has independently movable digits, much like Ambroise Pare's earlier model.
July 17, 2007
Soon after the discovery of the neuron as the basic functional unit of the nervous system, a model of how nerve cells function emerged. According to this model - the neuron doctrine - the cell body integrates nervous impulses received by the dendrites, and generates an output, in the form of a…
July 17, 2007
There have been no less than three different stories about orchids in the news during the past week.
This hammer orchid, which was discovered in southwestern Australia only recently, evolved to resemble a female wasp, thus seducing males of the species into pollinating it.
These…
July 16, 2007
The French anatomist, anthropologist, and surgeon Pierre Paul Broca (1824-1880) is best remembered for his descriptions of two patients who had lost the ability to speak after sustaining damage to the left frontal lobe of the brain. Broca's observations of these patients, and the conclusions he…
July 16, 2007
Via email: International Psychoanalysis.
Specially for Caledonian, who was disappointed that I didn't explicitly state the unscientific nature of Sigmund Freud's theories in my post about the psychology of Alfred Hitchcock.
July 16, 2007
The 27th edition of Encephalon is online now at The Neurocontrarian.
The next edition will be hosted by the Bohemian Scientist on 30th July. If you'd like to contribute, send your links to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com.
July 15, 2007
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was one of the most outstanding filmmakers of the twentieth century. In a career spanning six decades, Hitchcock made 53 films, the best of which are at once suspenseful, exciting, disturbing, funny and romantic.
The 'master of suspense' pioneered many of the…
July 15, 2007
Id really appreciate a faithful English translation of Amroise Pare's description of his mechanical artificial hand.
July 15, 2007
From the Wall Street Journal:
We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot…
July 14, 2007
This mechanical artificial hand, with fingers that could be moved individually by means of tiny internal cogs and levers, was designed and made almost 500 years ago by Ambroise Pare.
Pare (1517-1590) began working as a battefield surgeon in 1536. When treating gunshot wounds on the battlefield…
July 14, 2007
Books for the summer, as recommended by the editorial staff at Seed Magazine.
Reviews of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours, by Noga Arikha, and The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, by Michael J. Sandel, from last weekend's New York Times.
A…
July 14, 2007
I was recently tagged by Orli to write 8 miscellaneous facts about myself, and although I had decided that I wouldn't get involved in any more of these meme things, I thought it would be a good way of introducing myself to any new readers I may have.
However, I won't be tagging anyone else,…
July 12, 2007
Most people recognize Tutankhamun as the boy-king of ancient Egypt. He is the most well-known pharaoh because his tomb was discovered apparently intact* and, more importantly, because it contained the magnificent gold mask that has become an icon of Egypt.
Tutankhamun was otherwise…
July 11, 2007
Tone deafness (or amusia) is an impairment in the ability to discriminate changes in the pitch of a melody. The condition, which was first described in 1878, affects about 4% of the population. It arises in early childhood and continues throughout adulthood.
Neuroimaging studies show that amusia…
July 10, 2007
The ancient theory of 'animal spirits' (pneuma psychikon in Greek; spiritus animalis in Latin) was first proposed by Alexandrian physicians in the third century BCE. Animal spirits were thought to be weightless, invisible entities that flowed through the hollow nerves to mediate the functioning of…
July 10, 2007
Real-Time Face Detector is a computer program being developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, Germany.
On a standard PC, the software can immediately locate and analyse large numbers of faces simultaneously. The algorithms can recognize changes…
July 10, 2007
The Maze by William Kurelek (1927-1977); on display at the Novas Gallery in Southwark as part of an exhibition called Redefining Bedlam: The Art of Healing the Mind, which features more than 200 works by artists with mental illnesses, and runs until August 18th.
The Maze was painted just a…
July 9, 2007
The higher-order brain functions underlying complex patterns of human behaviour are poorly understood, not least because of the enormous number of neural computations involved. Complex behaviours require the parallel and integrated activity of hundreds (or even thousands) of discrete brain modules…
July 9, 2007
The Democratic presidential candidate answers questions about climate change, science education and health care, but there's no mention of stem cells or of evolution/creationism.
Nevertheless, it's well worth reading both the interview and the comments.
July 8, 2007
This print shows the "brain of someone described as an idiot". Published in the Journal of Mental Science, the illustration is by George Edward Shuttleworth, who was Superintendent of the Royal Albert Asylum in Lancaster, U. K., between the years 1870-1893.
Shuttleworth's drawing comes from a…
July 8, 2007
The first person to be banned from commenting on this blog is Thought Provoker, aka Quantum Quack, for his trolling (that is, "making comments intended only to disrupt a thread and incite flames and confusion") and insipidity.
I will use the spam filter to prevent trolling, insipidity, stupidity…
July 8, 2007
The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, began in 1881 as a weekly column in a San Francisco paper, and was published as a book in 1911.
BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do…
July 7, 2007
The editors of ScienceBlogs are conducting a reader survey. They'll use the feedback to make ScienceBlogs network even better, and one lucky respondent will win an iPod Nano.
July 6, 2007
PHINEAS GAGE (1823-1860) is one of the earliest documented cases of severe brain injury. Gage is the index case of an individual who suffered major personality changes after brain trauma. As such, he is a legend in the annals of neurology, which is largely based on the study of brain-damaged…