neurophilosophy | July 16, 2007Via 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.
neurophilosophy | July 16, 2007The 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.
neurophilosophy | 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 techniques of the thriller genre, and remains highly influential to this day. He was, for example, one of the first directors to portray psychological processes in film narrative.
However, his films were initially more popular with audiences than with critics, and it was not until the latter part of his…
neurophilosophy | July 15, 2007Id really appreciate a faithful English translation of Amroise Pare's description of his mechanical artificial hand.
neurophilosophy | 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 Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: "I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word "weblog."
neurophilosophy | 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, he often amputated limbs.
Pare treated many amputees during his career. He developed safe and effective methods for amputation, and closely followed the progress of all his patients. He therefore recorded many first-hand accounts of phantom limb syndrome, and, in 1551, provided the first medical…
neurophilosophy | July 14, 2007Books 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 gargantuan textbook of neuropsychopharmacology, made freely available online by the ACNP (via Mind Hacks).
My own reviews of Jonathan Moreno's Mind Wars and Eric Kandel's In Search of Memory, both of which are now displayed in the sidebar on the left.
neurophilosophy | 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, because I don't want to impose, and because I don't know who's already been tagged. So, if you're reading this and want to get involved, then feel free to do so.
I haven't been to a hairdresser's for over 10 years. Instead, I shave my head every 3-4 months.
I have 3,000+ books.
In 1998, I nearly…
neurophilosophy | 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 unremarkable, as was his mother Nefertiti, who is renowned only for her beauty. Of far greater interest, and importance, than both Tutankhamun and Nefertiti was the pharaoh who some believe was Tutankhamun's father: Akhenaten, the so-called "heretical" pharaoh.
Akhenaten was an eighteenth dynasty pharaoh…
neurophilosophy | July 11, 2007Tone 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 is not associated with abnormal neural activity in the auditory cortex (the region of the temporal lobe involved in processing auditory information). It is also now known that the condition is specific to musical tones; tone deaf individuals (hereafter referred to as amusics) are able to perceive the…
neurophilosophy | July 10, 2007The 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 the body. The animal spirits theory was related to the notion of the four humours (blood, phlegm, and yellow and black bile), and was popularised by the Roman physician Galen (c. 129 -216) in the second century AD. Because of Galen, animal spirits dominated thinking about the nervous system for 1,…
neurophilosophy | July 10, 2007Real-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 in mood in real time by analyzing 30,000 different facial characteristics and comparing them to pre-pregrammed data.
The program has a host of potential applications - it could, for example, be used to determine how people respond to advertisements.
A demo version of the program can be downloaded…
neurophilosophy | 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 few miles away from the Novas Gallery, in 1953, while Kurelek was a patient at the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill. Read his own description of the painting, and see Out of the Maze, which he painted in 1971, below.
(Click both pics to enlarge)
The subject, seen as a whole, is of a man (…
neurophilosophy | July 9, 2007The 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, each consisting of thousands of neurons.
For a real understanding of how the brain generates complex behaviours, we need detailed knowledge of the large-scale architecture of the neural networks involved. Visualizing this global architecture is possible with simple organisms. For example, the…
neurophilosophy | 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.
neurophilosophy | 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 huge database of images released recently by the Wellcome Trust Library under a Creative Commons Licence. The database contains old and new images depicting 2,000 years of medical history and human culture.
(via Boing Boing)
neurophilosophy | 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, morphing, slagging, spamming, sockpuppetry and...ahem...wanking on this blog. (See Pharyngula's killfile dungeon for a definition of all these terms.) And I will be quite ruthless - Thought Provoker was given one warning about leaving irrelevant comments, but he persisted.
neurophilosophy | 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 something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the…
neurophilosophy | July 7, 2007The 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.
neurophilosophy | July 6, 2007PHINEAS 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 patients.
Gage was foreman of a crew of railroad construction workers who were excavating rocks to make way for the railroad track. This involved drilling holes deep into the rock and filling them with dynamite. A fuse was then inserted, and the entrance to the hole plugged with sand, so that the force…