Links
neurophilosophy | September 26, 2007Just posted on the Seed website is an article about the evolution of language by Juan Uriageraka, from the October issue of Seed Magazine. Most of the article concerns the role of the FoxP2 gene in the brains of songbirds. (I discussed this gene earlier in the week in my post about echolocation.)
Also on the Seed website are the winners of the second annual Seed Science Writing contest, in which the contestants were asked to write an essay about what it means to be scientifically literate in the 21st century. The winners are Scientific Literacy and the Habit of Disclosure, by Thomas M.…
neurophilosophy | September 25, 2007The Learner.org website has a large collection of video teaching modules for high school, college and adult students, including modules on the brain and mind.
The Brain module has 32 film clips, ranging in length from 5-20 minutes. They include films about Phineas Gage, the visual system, sensori-motor integration, the role of synaptic plasticity in learning, the brain's language centres and neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric conditions.
The 35 videos in the Mind module include films on brain mechanisms of pleasure and addiction, the role of the frontal lobes in cognition and awareness…
neurophilosophy | September 21, 2007
This 3D reconstruction of the presynaptic terminal show the nuts and bolts of intercellular communication in the nervous system. They were generated by Siksou et al, from serial electron micrographs of neurons from the rat hippocampus.
The blue spheres are synaptic vesicles containing neurotransmitter molecules. They are docked at the presynaptic membrane (white). The arrival of an action potential (or nervous impulse) at the nerve terminal leads to an influx of calcium ions, which causes the vesicles to fuse with the membrane and release their contents into the synapse.
The gold…
neurophilosophy | September 21, 2007ScienceBlogs has two new additions: On Being A Scientist and a Woman and A Few Things Ill Considered.
neurophilosophy | September 18, 2007More on the cultural destruction of Iraq, or, as Robert Fisk calls it in this article from The Independent, the death of history.
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, 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 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 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.
neurophilosophy | September 8, 2007ABC News has posted a transcript of Osama bin Laden's videotaped statement, in which he refers to Noam Chomsky as "among the most capable" of commentators on the Iraq war.
And in a Mind Hacks exclusive, Vaughan has posted a deleted portion of the statement, in which bin Laden lays out his demands for psycholinguists.
neurophilosophy | September 8, 2007
You don't have to be a bibliophile to enjoy this compendium of beautiful libraries.
neurophilosophy | September 8, 2007 Daniel Vasella, chief executive of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, discusses the U.S. health care system in an interview with the New York Times.
Vasella, who was listed in the Time 100 of 2004, has this to say about the demographics of Alzheimer's Disease:
In the United States alone, we have an estimated five million patients. The costs are about $150 billion a year. With the aging of the population, and the strong link between senile dementia and Alzheimer's, the patients who will get it is increasing dramatically. By 2050 worldwide, it's estimated that the number of people…
neurophilosophy | September 7, 2007
The Believer has an interview with primatologist Franz de Waal:
De Waal's research is no friend to human vanity. In the grand tradition of Galileo and Darwin, de Waal provokes those who seek to draw a clear line between human beings and everything else. But his message is an optimistic one. If human morality has deep roots in our evolutionary past, then we can expect it to be more resilient, less susceptible to the contingencies of history. Seeing morality in this light also undermines the view of human beings as inherently selfish--a view that de Waal terms "veneer theory." Morality,…
neurophilosophy | September 6, 2007
Bill Choisser (left) has written an online book called Face Blind!, where he describes his experiences of prosopagnosia, a neurological condition in which the ability to recognize faces is impaired.
In extreme cases, prosopagnostics are unable to recognize family members, and even their own face.
Prosopagnosia (commonly known as face blindness), often occurs as a result of damage to a region of the brain called the fusiform gyrus, located near the inferior (lower) surface of the temporal lobe at the midline. The damage may be due to head injury, stroke, or various neurodegenerative…
neurophilosophy | September 6, 2007Here are a handful of new blogs I've just found:
Neurofeedback on the Brain
Mind Modulations
Neuromod Blog
Gray Matters
Cognitive Neuroscience Review
And here are two new blogs by philosophers of mind:
The IP Blog
Colin McGinn
neurophilosophy | September 5, 2007
Erasing Memory: The Cultural Destruction of Iraq is a 28-minute film from the Archaeology Channel which documents the plundering of Iraqi archaeological sites and looting and destruction of priceless artifacts.
This destruction of Iraq's heritage has been going on since the U.S. invaded the country in March 2003, and continues to this day. The looting of artifacts from the Iraq museum in Baghdad, which took place soon after the U.S. began its military action, was widely publicized, but the mass media now makes no mention of the subject.
In the last few years, many objects looted from various…
neurophilosophy | September 4, 2007 At 3 Quarks Daily, Abbas Reza reviews Steven Pinker's new book, Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, which is published by Allen Lane later this month.
Pinker discusses the book in this recent interview.