neurophilosophy | September 18, 2007Christian Jarrett has posted an excellent collection of resources for students and teachers of A-Level psychology.
Christian's post includes links to PDFs of key papers in cognitive, developmental, biological and social psychology, including a classic 1968 paper from American Psychologist, called Hemisphere deconnection and unity in consciousness, in which the Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist Roger W. Sperry reports his behavioural studies of split brain patients, and discusses their implications:
One of the more general and also more interesting and striking features of this syndrome may…
neurophilosophy | September 17, 2007I got this email yesterday, and am posting it here on the off chance that a reader might be able to help out.
I thought that the article on traumatic brain injury on the front line was most fascinating and I was hoping you might know of speakers in New York who might be able to speak on the subject. I am from 1199SEIU League Training and Upgrading Fund, the largest non-profit education and training orgnization of healthcare workers in the United States, covering over 350 employers and approximately 275,000 healthcare employees. The development and delivery of these seminars reflect a…
neurophilosophy | September 17, 2007I'm hosting the 16th edition of the genetics carnival Gene Genie on Sunday. If you've written something about genes or genetic diseases on your blog and would like to submit it, you can do so using this submission form.
neurophilosophy | September 17, 2007The Wakeda-Docomo Face robot 2 (WD-2), developed by mechanical engineer Atsuo Takanishi and his colleagues of Waseda University in Japan, can make and switch between various facial expressions, all of which are very realistic.
The robot consists of an elastic mask whose morphing is controlled by 17 shafts, each of which is driven by a motorized pulley and slide screw. The shape of the mask can be modified according to data of human faces collected by a 3D scanner. Photographs of faces can also be projected onto the mask.
Watch the WD-2 face robot in action here and here.
neurophilosophy | September 17, 2007From Yahoo! News:
A Chinese man dropped dead after playing Internet games for three consecutive days, state media said.
The man from the southern boomtown of Guangzhou, aged about 30, died on Saturday after being rushed to the hospital from the Internet cafe, local authorities were quoted by the Beijing News as saying.
"Police have ruled out the possibility of suicide," the newspaper said, adding that exhaustion was the most likely cause of death. It did not say what game he was playing.
neurophilosophy | September 17, 2007
This film clip shows Michael Gazzaniga carrying out a behavioural study of a split brain patient named Joe.
The split brain procedure (or corpus callosumectomy) involves severing of the corpus callosum, the bundle of approximately 100 million nerve fibres that connect the two hemispheres of the brain.
The procedure was performed on patients with intractable epilepsy, the idea being that preventing the left and right hemispheres from communicating with each other would stop the abnormal electrical activity associated with epilepsy from spreading across the whole brain.
Split brain patients…
neurophilosophy | September 17, 2007The Boston Globe has a nice article about the cognitive abilities of birds, by Seed Magazine editor-at-large Jonah Lehrer.
There's a remarkable similarity between a passage from Jonah's article and something I wrote about the same subject. On page 2 of his article, Jonah writes:
For most of the 20th century, "bird brain" has been used as an insult. Noting the stark structural differences between human and bird brains, anatomists concluded that birds are essentially flying reptiles. Their minds were too tiny for thought. But in recent years, scientists have discovered that the bird brain…
neurophilosophy | September 17, 2007
This drawing is a 4-year-old boy's depiction of Hurricane Katrina. It is one of 50 drawings, photographs and sculptures that went on display yesterday at the New Orleans Museum of Art, as part of an exhibition called Katrina - Through the Eyes of Children.
Involved in the exhibition is Karla Leopold, one of a team of art therapists that has been working with children who have been staying at a trailer park in Louisiana since their displacement by the hurricane two years ago.
The children's drawings are an indicator of how they are coping with the trauma of the hurricane. According to…
neurophilosophy | September 16, 2007The Inquisitive Mind (In-Mind) is an online quarterly social psychology magazine written by staff and students at the Free University in Amsterdam.
The site has articles that cover all areas of social psychology, written in such a way as to make the field easily accessible to the general public. There are also links to psychology resources and stories in the news, and a discussion forum.
Free registration is required for full access to the contents of the site.
neurophilosophy | September 16, 2007 Katelyn Sack writes:
Another blogger has sent me a link to your post "Neurological alphabet fridge magnets" asking for more information about my "Baby, Be A Brain Surgeon!" painted tile series, featured on The Science Creative Quarterly this Tues., Sept. 11.
Although perhaps the images of the tiles should be printed on lighter material, laminated, and hot-glued to magnets, "Baby, Be A Brain Surgeon!" is currently composed of oil paint on 4.25" x 4.25" ceramic tiles, as reflected on my blog. (I first wrote about these on my art blog here, and also list the artwork for sale under these…
neurophilosophy | September 15, 2007This week, I've received three books which I'll be writing about in the near future:
My Lobotomy, by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. Dully was lobotomized at the age of 12 at the behest of his stepmother - that's him on the right, holding an instrument identical to the one he was lobotomized with; this book is his memoir.
The Lobotomist, by Jack El-Hai, a biography of Walter Freeman, the psychiatrist who, in 1960, performed Dully's lobotomy.
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee. This is about the somatosensory cortex, that part of the brain on which the body…
neurophilosophy | September 15, 2007
but I prefer holding a book in my hands to reading from a computer screen.
We already have the technology that will enable us to carry whole libraries in our pockets. Next month, for example, Amazon will launch Kindle, an electronic book reader, and Google will begin charging users for full access to the digital books in its database. Soon, we'll have electronic tablet devices with enough memory to store hundreds of books.
To get an idea of what it might be like to read an electronic book, take a look at the latest issue of Blogger & Podcaster magazine. Click on the image of the cover…
neurophilosophy | September 14, 2007From my inbox:
Scientific American.com recently launched a brand new podcast called 60-Second Psych, which runs every Thursday for a one-minute commentary on the latest studies in brain and behavior...Though only a couple of episodes old, this podcast is already the #2 ranked podcast on Apple iTunes in the Science and Medicine category.
neurophilosophy | September 14, 2007The New York Times reports that the findings of a study published last week in the American Journal of Psychiatry, which links a drop in the use of specific serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs, e.g. Prozac) to an increase in the numbers of teenage suicide, are being disputed.
neurophilosophy | September 14, 2007
Recently, I've written a couple of posts about the use of microfluidics-based devices in neurobiology research.
First, I wrote about microfluidics chips for imaging neuronal activity and behaviour in the nematode worm, and then about chips for culturing neurons.
Today, Technology Review has an article about the use of this technology in developing drug treatments for Parkinson's disease:
Mehmet Fatih Yanik, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, is developing microfluidic devices that could greatly facilitate experiments, including whole-genome…
neurophilosophy | September 14, 2007A new survey, released today by the ORB polling agency, suggests that around 1.2 million Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003. That's more than 4% of the country's population.
neurophilosophy | September 14, 2007You can subscribe to my RSS feed by pasting this link into your feed reader. I've added an orange RSS button, as well as a counter displaying how many subscribers I have, in the sidebar on the left.
You can also get email notifications of my latest content here.
neurophilosophy | September 13, 2007
When Carl Zimmer asked scientists to send him photos of their scientific tattoos, the response was huge, as was the interest in the photos he collected - together, the original post on his blog and the photo set he uploaded to Flickr have been viewed about 200,000 times, and have even been mentioned in the mainstream media.
My personal favourite from Carl's collection is this one. But the photo set doesn't contain any neuroscience-related tattoos, so I did a quick search and found a few. At the top is the brain tattooed on Jon's back; above it are the famous words of Rene Descartes,…
neurophilosophy | September 13, 2007The word "zombie" usually brings to mind the creatures depicted in numerous horror films - the mindless, rotting "living dead" who shuffle with their arms stretched out in front of them, devouring the flesh of their victims.
Zombies feature widely in popular culture, but the idea of the zombie originates in the Vodun religion. Popularly known as voodoo, this religion has been misrepresented and sensationalized, particularly in Hollywood films, according to which its followers practice bizarre rituals involving voodoo dolls and cannibalism.
In reality, Vodun is a complex belief system…
neurophilosophy | September 13, 2007Gareth Furber, author of the PsychSplash blog, has just launched a new website called PsychAntenna:
...an ever-growing showcase of psychology-related websites, blogs, podcasts and journals that utilize RSS to broadcast their content, [whose] goal is to help clinicians, researchers and students...to utilize RSS more efficiently and locate the best resources to keep them up-to-date in their respective areas of interest.