Sunday, February 01, 2009

Cognitive Neuroscience Links 02/01/2009

  • To understand the role of gestures in the origins of human language, Amy Pollick and Frans de Waal decided to see how they are used by our closest relatives - the chimpanzee and the bonobo. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)

    tags: primates, language, cogsci, evolution

  • there's some suggestive evidence that the brain might contemplate other people very differently when that person is a virtual Facebook "page" and not a flesh and blood individual, with a tangible physical presence. Humans, after all, are social primates, blessed and burdened with a set of paleolithic social instincts. We aren't used to thinking about people as computerized abstractions. (The Frontal Cortex)

    tags: facebook, neuroethics, trolley, social-networking, cogsci

  • What do your dreams mean? Do men and women differ in the nature and intensity of their sexual desires? Can apes learn sign language? Why can’t we tickle ourselves? This course tries to answer these questions and many others, providing a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of thought and behavior. It explores topics such as perception, communication, learning, memory, decision-making, religion, persuasion, love, lust, hunger, art, fiction, and dreams. We will look at how these aspects of the mind develop in children, how they differ across people, how they are wired-up in the brain, and how they break down due to illness and injury. (20 video lectures by Paul Bloom at Yale)

    tags: psychology, lectures, cogsci


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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