Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/18/2009

• Review of Supersized Mind

  I was agreeably surprised by Andy Clark’s ‘Supersizing the Mind’. I had assumed it would be a fuller treatment of the themes set out in ‘The Extended Mind’, the paper he wrote with David Chalmers, and which is included in the book as an Appendix. In fact, it ranges more widely and has a number of interesting points to make on the general significance of embodiment and mind extension. Various flavours of externalism, the doctrine that the mind ain’t in the head, seem to be popular at the moment, but Clark’s philosophical views are clearly just part of a coherent general outlook on cognition. (Conscious Entities)

  tags: Clark, mind, extended-mind, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/15/2009

• Monkeys feel regret like humans, study shows

  Monkeys to feel regret and learn from their mistakes just like humans, according to a new study.

  tags: primates, regret, neuroethics, emotion, cogsci, grue

• Science Saturday: Brains and Gavels

  Science Saturday: Brains and Gavels on Bloggingheads.tv. Zimmer and Gazzaniga

  tags: neuroethics, brain, neuroscience, cogsci, grue

• How the brain talks to itself - errors in emotional prediction

  Gilbert and Wilson offer an engaging essay in the Philisophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (PDF here) titled: "Why the brain talks to itself: sources of error in emotional prediction." In trying to plan futures that involve more pleasure than pain, we perform mental simulations (previews) of future events, which produce affective reactions (premotions), which are then used as a basis for forecasts (predictions) about the future event’s emotional consequences. Their review summarizes several main sources of systematic errors of these predictions. (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)

  tags: brain, cogsci, emotion

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/12/2009

• Dan Dennett on our consciousness | Video on TED.com

  Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us.

  tags: consciousness, dennett, grue, cogsci, magic

• When Senses Intersect

  Dr. Richard Cytowic is one of the leading researchers of synesthesia, a condition in which two normally separated sensations - such as sight and sound, or touch and taste - occur at the same time. As a result, a synesthetic person might experience the taste of a dish on her fingertips, or be convinced that the letter X is a vibrant turquoise. (Scientific American)

  tags: synesthesia, qualia, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/11/2009

• Don’t!

  Most of the children were like Craig. They struggled to resist the treat and held out for an average of less than three minutes. “A few kids ate the marshmallow right away,” Walter Mischel, the Stanford professor of psychology in charge of the experiment, remembers. “They didn’t even bother ringing the bell. Other kids would stare directly at the marshmallow and then ring the bell thirty seconds later.” About thirty per cent of the children, however, were like Carolyn. They successfully delayed gratification until the researcher returned, some fifteen minutes later. These kids wrestled with temptation but found a way to resist. (New Yorker)

  tags: self-control, mind, psychology, neuroethics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/09/2009

• Is religious cognition adaptive?

  There was a paper recently in PNAS on "The cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief". A couple of bloggers, Epiphenom and I Am David, come to opposite conclusions. Epiphenom says that the study shows that religion is not a side-effect of the evolution of cognitive processes, while IAD says that is exactly what it shows. (Evolving Thoughts)

  tags: evolution, religion, religious-cognition, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/08/2009

• The neuroeconomics of taking your pick.

  Whaley offers a summary of papers by Martino et al. (open access) and Sharot et al. in a recent issue of J. Neurosci and a more recent paper by Croxson et al. notes correlates of cost-benefits valuation. (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)

  tags: decision-making, value, brain, grue, cogsci, neuroeconomics

• Watching Movies

  Instead of having our narrative understanding slowly build, these directors dole out comprehension in sudden spurts, when a crucial twist is suddenly revealed. The end result is that disbelief can't be suspended because we're too busy trying to figure out what the hell is going on. (The Frontal Cortex)

  tags: movies, cognition, 150, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/07/2009

• In search of the conscious will

  Studying how people form a conscious intention to move is troublesome for at least two reasons. First, as soon as you instruct a participant that now is the time for them to move freely, of their own volition, you've already undermined the idea that they're making up their own minds. Second, there's no room in materialist science for a conscious will, separate from the electro-chemical workings of brain. (BPS RESEARCH DIGEST)

  tags: volition, freewill, brain, grue, cogsci, AZB, neuroethics

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/06/2009

• Talking Philosophy » Emotion and Ethics

  Naturally, it is reasonable to consider the role of emotions in moral decision making. Obviously, most people feel bad about murder and this no doubt plays a role in their view of the second case. However, to simply assume that the distinction is exhausted by the emotional explanation is clearly a mistake. After all, a person can clearly regard murdering one person to save five as immoral without relying on a gut reaction. It could, in fact, be a rational assessment of the situation.

  tags: morality, emotion, neuroethics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/05/2009

• Clips of Penn Neuroethicists

  Here are some five to ten minute video clips of neuroethicists from the University of Pennsylvania that may interest readers (or should I say viewers!):

  tags: neuroethics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/04/2009

• Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion

  For Teller (that's his full legal name), magic is more than entertainment. He wants his tricks to reveal the everyday fraud of perception so that people become aware of the tension between what is and what seems to be. Our brains don't see everything—the world is too big, too full of stimuli. So the brain takes shortcuts, constructing a picture of reality with relatively simple algorithms for what things are supposed to look like. Magicians capitalize on those rules. "Every time you perform a magic trick, you're engaging in experimental psychology," Teller says. "If the audience asks, 'How the hell did he do that?' then the experiment was successful. I've exploited the efficiencies of your mind."

  tags: magic, perception, grue, cognitive-science, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/03/2009

• Culture May Be Encoded in DNA

  “We found that in this case, the culture was pretty much encoded in the genome,” said Partha Mitra of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, co-author of a study in Nature on Sunday. (Wired Science)

  tags: culture, genetics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/02/2009

• Walter Sinnott-Armstrong discusses the relevance of psychological research to moral philosophy

  Moral psychology is the empirical study of how people make moral judgements. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Walter Sinnott-Armstrong discusses the relevance of psychological research to moral philosophy. (Philosophy Bites)

  tags: moral-judgment, morality, neuroethics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/01/2009

• Interpreting hybrid images

  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 usually correct.
  
  Occasionally, however, visual stimuli are open to interpretation. This is the case with ambiguous figures - images which can be interpreted in more than one way. When an ambiguous image is viewed, a single image impinges upon the retina, but higher order processing in the visual cortex leads to a number of different interpretations of that image. (Neurophilosophy)

  tags: vision, brain, grue, hybrid-images, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/30/2009

• Wednesday Is Indigo Blue - Table of Contents - The MIT Press

  tags: synesthesia, grue, cogsci

• What brain damage might reveal about moral thinking

  Bloggingheads.tv - Percontations: Your Brain and Your Genes

  tags: neuroethics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/29/2009

• Michael Merzenich on re-wiring the brain

  Video on TED.com

  tags: brain, plasticity, grue, cogsci, TED

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/25/2009

• Inside the baby mind

  It's unfocused, random, and extremely good at what it does. How we can learn from a baby's brain. (Jonah Lehrer)

  tags: brain, grue, cogsci

• "AH-HAH!" Insights And The Right Frontal Lobe

  It's thrilling when it happens, but what actually causes insight? New research in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience takes us one step closer to an answer: up to 8 seconds before people solve problems thought to require insight, a particular set of very fast oscillations are observable above the right frontal lobe.

  tags: brain, frontal-lobes, insight, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/24/2009

• Can evolution explain how minds work?

  Biologists have tended to assume that closely related species will have similar cognitive abilities. (Nature)

  tags: evolution, mind, grue, cogsci, AZB

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/23/2009

• Do Women Have Better Empathy Than Men?

  In this Edge Video, psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen looks at one test he's developed to see if there are differences between males and females in the mind.

  tags: empathy, neuroethics, cogsci, grue, brain

• Annals of Economics

  What neuroeconomics tells us about money and the brain. (The New Yorker)

  tags: neuroeconomics, neuroethics, grue, cogsci

• Readings in Neuroethics

  This list collects academic writings on the topic of neuroethics. For whose new to the field we recommend Martha Farah's two short papers as an introduction (Farah 2002 and 2005). (BRAINETHICS)

  tags: readings, neuroethics, aapt, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/21/2009

• Choice blindness: You don't know what you want

  WE HAVE all heard of experts who fail basic tests of sensory discrimination in their own field: wine snobs who can't tell red from white wine (albeit in blackened cups), or art critics who see deep meaning in random lines drawn by a computer. We delight in such stories since anyone with pretensions to authority is fair game. But what if we shine the spotlight on choices we make about everyday things? Experts might be forgiven for being wrong about the limits of their skills as experts, but could we be forgiven for being wrong about the limits of our skills as experts on ourselves? (18 April 2009 - New Scientist)

  tags: choice, blindness, mind, psychology, neuroethics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/20/2009

• Brain Gain

  A young man I’ll call Alex recently graduated from Harvard. As a history major, Alex wrote about a dozen papers a semester. He also ran a student organization, for which he often worked more than forty hours a week; when he wasn’t on the job, he had classes. Weeknights were devoted to all the schoolwork that he couldn’t finish during the day, and weekend nights were spent drinking with friends and going to dance parties. “Trite as it sounds,” he told me, it seemed important to “maybe appreciate my own youth.” Since, in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible.

  tags: neuroethics, enhancement, grue, cogsci

• How Does the Brain Form Sentences?

  Forming a grammatically correct sentence may seem to require advanced cognitive skills, but it turns out that our creative language capacity might rely on a less sophisticated system than is commonly thought. A recent study suggests that our ability to construct sentences may arise from procedural memory—the same simple memory system that lets our dogs learn to sit on command. (Scientific American)

  tags: language, evolution, grue, cogsci

• Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

  I first saw Price last May in a YouTube clip of her on 20/20. Diane Sawyer asks Price, an avid television viewer, to identify certain significant dates in broadcast history. When did CBS air the "Who shot JR?" episode of Dallas? When was All in the Family's baby episode shown? And so on. Price nails every question. She not only gives the date for the final episode of MASH but describes the weather that day.

  tags: memory, cogsci, grue

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/16/2009

• Freedom of Memory Today by Adam Kolber

  Emerging technologies raise the possibility that we may be able to treat trauma victims by pharmaceutically dampening factual or emotional aspects of their memories. Such technologies raise a panoply of legal and ethical issues. While many of these issues remain off in the distance, some have already arisen.
  
  In this brief commentary for the journal Neuroethics, I discuss a real-life case of memory erasure. The case reveals why the contours of our freedom of memory -- our limited bundle of rights to control our memories and be free of outside control -- already merit some attention.

  tags: memory, neuroethics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/15/2009

• The Big Similarities & Quirky Differences Between Our Left and Right Brains

  On the day I visited, there were half a dozen brains sitting on a table. Vonsattel began by passing them around so the medical students could take a closer look. When a brain came my way, I cradled it and found myself puzzling over its mirror symmetry. It was as if someone had glued two smaller brains together to make a bigger one. (Carl Zimmer)

  tags: human-evolution, brain, cogsci, grue

• Curious: Split Brain

  Language, memory and intuition depend on rapid communication between both hemispheres of the brain. The corpus callosum is the conduit for that communication. Tony Grobmeier was born without one. Lynn Paul, a neuroscientist, tries to understand how Tony faces the world with a brain disconnected from itself. (YouTube)

  tags: neuroethics, splitbrain, theory-of-mind, 150, grue, aapt, cogsci

• Curious: Decisions, Decisions

  To Steven Quartz & Colin Camerer the brain is a huge number-cruncher, assigning a numeric value to everything from a loaf of bread to our most deeply held moral "values". In that sense, moral decisions are also economic ones. Using a brain scanner (fMRI), they want to catch the brain in the act—to see what it's doing at exactly the moment a tough moral decision gets made. Their research is pioneering a new branch of neuroscience -- neuroeconomics. (YouTube Video)

  tags: neuroethics, 150, grue, morality, brain, cogsci, neuroeconomics, aapt

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/14/2009

• The Mind-Body Problem

  What does it feel like to have too many arms? (Scientific American)

  tags: phantom-limbs, mind, grue, cogsci, 150, neuroethics

• Reconstructive memory: Confabulating the past, simulating the future

  The term 'Rashomon effect' is often used by psychologists in situations where observers give different accounts of the same event,and describes the effect of subjective perceptions on recollection. The phenomenon is named after a 1950 film by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

  tags: memory, cogsci

• Can Twitter Make You Amoral? Rapid-fire Media May Confuse Your Moral Compass

  Emotions linked to our moral sense awaken slowly in the mind, according to a new study from a neuroscience group led by corresponding author Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California.

  tags: neuroethics, twiter, cogsci, grue

• Brain Enhancement

  How should we deal with cognitive-enhancing drugs?

  tags: neuroethics, enhancement, grue, cogsci

• The Future of Interrogation

  What if we could look inside, or even pry open, the mind of a suspected criminal or terrorist? (Neuroworld)

  tags: neuroethics, lie-detection, grue, cogsci

• The Neuroscience of Pathological Lying

  n 2005, the British Journal of Psychiatry published a study which found an increased amount of white matter, and a decreased amount of gray matter, in the brains of subjects they categorized as “pathological liars.” (Neuroworld)

  tags: neuroethics, lie-detection, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/13/2009

• 18 Ways Attention Goes Wrong

  Here are 18 ways attention can go wrong, some very common, some extremely unusual, a few downright weird; each giving us an insight into how our minds work. (PsyBlog)

  tags: psychology, attention, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/12/2009

• Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior

  Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.

  tags: morality, neuroethics, primates, cogsci, grue

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/09/2009

• Do Parents Matter?

  A researcher argues that peers are much more important than parents, that psychologists underestimate the power of genetics and that we have a lot to learn from Asian classrooms. (Scientific American)

  tags: genetics, parents, nurture, 150, cogsci, grue

• Neuro Talk: Tap In | The Experts Weigh In

  Some of the world's top scientists and ethicists met at Banff earlier in March, to ponder the most pressing issues in neuroscience. Their focus: Neuroethics

  tags: neuroethics, grue, brain, cogsci, aapt

• Brain technologies raise unprecedented ethical challenges

  We share Jens Clausen's opinion, expressed in his Commentary 'Man, machine and in between' (Nature 457, 1080–1081; 2009), that brain–machine interfaces promise many benefits and should be pursued. However, we do not agree that these technologies pose similar ethical challenges to those already addressed. Some consequences may be unprecedented.

  tags: neuroethics, brain, cogsci, aapt, grue

• Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory

  Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills.

  tags: memory, brain, neuroethics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/08/2009

• The Right and the Good: Distributive Justice and Neural Encoding of Equity and Efficiency

  Hsu et al. 320 (5879): 1092 -- Science

  tags: neuroethics, justice, grue, cogsci

• Our flexible friend (the brain)

  There is growing evidence that the brain can be trained to compensate for dead or damaged areas. As Ian Sample reports, this could benefit those suffering anything from a stroke to depression or relationship problems

  tags: brain, plasticity, cogsci, grue, AZB, neuroethics

• Your brain on movies (3)

  The experimenters used a regular movie, a silent without accompanying sound track, a purely audio storytelling, an unedited film of people aimlessly moving about, and a series of films that demonstrated a gradation of less and less directorial control.

  tags: movies, brain, psychology, grue, cogsci

• Your brain on movies (2)

  I'd sum that up by saying the viewers' brains behaved alike at the level of sensory processing and simple comprehension of the plot of the film. But in later experiments, this group refined those findings.

  tags: movies, brain, psychology, grue, cogsci

• Your brain on movies

  You might think it would be easy to see how our brains function while we are watching a movie. Just hook some viewers up to an electroencephalograph or a magnetic resonance imager (MRI) and see what happens when they watch a movie. But who ever said it would be easy?

  tags: brain, movies, psychology, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/07/2009

• Testosterone-fuelled traders make higher profits

  With such high stakes, it's worth remembering that traders, regardless of their intellect or experience, are as fallible as the rest of us and their brains and bodies are influenced by the same ensemble of hormones. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)

  tags: trust, hormones, neuroethics, morality, cogsci

• Do testosterone and oestrogen affect our attitudes to fairness, trust, risk and altruism?

  the study provides a solid blow to the idea that sex hormones affect our attitudes to trust or fairness, and it reminds us yet again to be cautious about relying too heavily on correlations. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)

  tags: morality, neuroethics, grue, cogsci, fairness, trust, aapt

• Are Minds Really Like Computers?

  Some people use the metaphor of the mind as a computer in promoting the idea that a mind can be replicated on a computer. It’s a dubious comparison, a writer says.

  tags: robots, computers, ai, AZB, 150, cogsci

• The End of Philosophy

  Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly evaluating what we see. Seeing and evaluating are not two separate processes. They are linked and basically simultaneous. (David Brooks)

  tags: neuroethics, morality, philosophy, aapt, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/06/2009

• Brain immediately recognizes transplanted hand

  Amputation of a limb leads to significant reorganization of the primary somatosensory cortex, that part of the brain which processes touch- and pain-related information. The cortical region normally devoted to the amputated body part is suddenly deprived of sensory inputs, but because the adult brain is plastic, it does not lay dormant - the area assumes other functions, and begins to process sensory information from other parts of the body. (Neurophilosophy_

  tags: brain, neurophilosophy, amputee, grue, cogsci

• Finding Connections: How Do the Parts of the Brain Interact?

  A novel brain-imaging technique uncovers the structural connections underlying personality, behavior and disease (Scientific American)

  tags: brain, neuroscience, neuroethics, grue, cogsci

• Our moral thermostat - why being good can give people license to misbehave

  What happens when you remember a good deed, or think of yourself as a stand-up citizen? You might think that your shining self-image would reinforce the value of selflessness and make you more likely to behave morally in the future. But a new study disagrees. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)

  tags: neuroethics, grue, cogsci

• Using False Photographs to Create False Childhood Memories

  Because image-enhancing technology is readily availabl e, people are frequently exposed to doctored images. However, i n prior research on how adults can be led to report false childhood memories, subjects have typical ly been exposed to personal ized and detailed narratives describing false events. Instead, we exposed 20 subjects to a false childhood event via a fake photograph and imagery instructions.

  tags: memory, neuroethics, cogsci, grue

• Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory

  tags: memory, neuroethics, brain, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/05/2009

• Neural Correlates of Hate

  The study thus shows that there is a unique pattern of activity in the brain in the context of hate. Though distinct from the pattern of activity that correlates with romantic love, this pattern nevertheless shares two areas with the latter, namely the putamen and the insula.

  tags: emotion, neuroethics, brain, grue, cogsci

• Found: the brain’s centre of wisdom

  SCIENTISTS have identified the seat of human wisdom by pinpointing parts of the brain that guide us when we face difficult moral dilemmas. (Times Online)

  tags: wisdom, brain, neuroethics, morality, grue, cogsci, aapt

• Phasic Firing Of Dopamine Neurons Is Key To Brain's Prediction Of Rewards

  Researchers are one step closer to understanding the neurobiology that allows people to successfully learn motivated behaviors by associating environmental cues with rewarding outcomes

  tags: dopamine, reward, brain, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/04/2009

• Alva Noe, You are not your brain

  We have become too reductive in understanding ourselves, argues philosopher Alva Noe. Our thoughts and desires are shaped by more than neurons firing inside our heads. (Salon)

  tags: consciousness, Noe, grue, aapt, cogsci, AZB

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/03/2009

• Comparing the Major Theories of Consciousness

  Ned Block

  tags: consciousness, mind, grue, cogsci, aapt, AZB

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/02/2009

• Anger or Moral Outrage? (Maibom)

  In a recent issue of Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (45, 155-60), Daniel Batson—known for his influential empathy-altruism studies—and colleagues find little evidence of moral outrage. In a series of studies meant to measure people’s judgments of torture, they find little evidence that torture evokes much anger unless the subjects have some relation to the person tortured. (Neuroethics & Law Blog)

  tags: neuruoethics, morality, emotion, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 04/01/2009

• Computers vs. Brains

  As neuroscientists, we’re excited about the potential of using computational models to test our understanding of how the brain works. On the other hand, although it eventually may be possible to design sophisticated computing devices that imitate what we do, the capability to make such a device is already here. All you need is a fertile man and woman with the resources to nurture their child to adulthood. With luck, by 2030 you’ll have a full-grown, college-educated, walking petabyte. A drawback is that it may be difficult to get this computing device to do what you ask. (NYTimes.com)

  tags: computers, brain, mind-body, 150, grue, cogsci, AZB

• Neuroethics: Implications of Advances in Neuroscience

  tags: neuroethics, ethics, philosophy, grue, aapt, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 03/30/2009

• Descent of Rational Man

  From the ‘herding instincts’ of traders to our unselfish approach to transactions, behavioural studies are turning the economic orthodoxy of rational self-interest on its head. Pete Lunn explains what this means for consumer policy.

  tags: rationality, evolution, instincts, grue, cogsci

• Nature v nurture? Please don't ask

  The question has fuelled some of history's fiercest scientific and political feuds. Now we have an answer (Times Online)

  tags: nature-nurture, aapt, grue, 150, cogsci

• Large-Scale Problems in Neuroscience > Patricia Churchland

  What do neuroscientific discoveries imply for free will and responsibility?

  tags: freewill, neuroscience, neuroethics, grue, cogsci, aapt

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 03/29/2009

• BOLD-faced lie detection

  You wouldn't know it from the claims of companies like No Lie MRI, but we're a long way off being able to use brain scans to detect reliably whether a person is lying or not. Nonetheless, cognitive psychologists are busy beavering away in the background, testing the ways that brain activity varies when people lie compared with when they tell the truth. One such study has just been published, claiming to be the first to investigate deception in the context of face recognition.

  tags: lie-detection, neuroethics, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 03/28/2009

• Scientists Map the Brain, Gene by Gene

  Behind all the gore there's a profound purpose: The scientists here are mapping the brain. And while conventional brain maps describe distinct anatomical areas, like the frontal lobes and the hippocampus—many of which were first outlined in the 19th century—the Allen Brain Atlas seeks to describe the cortex at the level of specific genes and individual neurons. Slices of tissue containing billions of brain cells will be analyzed to see which snippets of DNA are turned on in each cell.

  tags: brain, neuroscience, neuroethics, AZB, cogsci, grue

• When we enhance cognition with Adderall, do we sacrifice creativity? A preliminary study

  The preliminary evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis that Adderall has an overall negative effect on creativity. Its effects on divergent creative thought cannot be inferred with confidence from this study because of the ambiguity of null results. Its effects on convergent creative thought appear to be dependent on the baseline creativity of the individual. Those in the higher range of the normal distribution may be unaffected or impaired, whereas those in the lower range of the normal distribution experience enhancement.

  tags: neuroethics, neuropharmacology, brain, grue, cogsci

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Cognitive Neuroscience Links 03/27/2009

• Daniel Dennett Explains How People Are Like Robots

  Video at Big Think

  tags: robots, mind, Dennett, aapt, cogsci, AZB, 150

• Alva Noe, You are not your brain | Salon

  We have become too reductive in understanding ourselves, argues philosopher Alva Noe. Our thoughts and desires are shaped by more than neurons firing inside our heads. (Salon)

  tags: embodiment, brain, Noe, aapt, grue, cogsci, AZB, CDC

• Crabs Not Only Suffer Pain, But Retain Memory Of It

  New research published by a Queen's University Belfast academic has shown that crabs not only suffer pain but that they retain a memory of it.

  tags: pain, consciousness, other-minds, aapt, grue, cogsci

• Brain Activity Associated With Phantom Limbs, Study Shows

  Phantom limbs, often described after amputation, are also experienced as an extra limb in patients who are paralyzed on one side following a stroke. Referred to as supernumerary phantom limb (SPL), patients can usually perceive these limbs as a vivid somatosensory presence of an extra limb, but generally cannot see or intentionally move them. In some unusual cases, however, patients have reported seeing their phantom limb or feeling objects or body parts with it, which indicates that multiple areas of the brain may be involved in SPLs.

  tags: phantom-limbs, brains, grue, AZB, cogsci

• The Living Robot

  The robot now gets around well enough. “But it has a biological brain, and not a computer,” says Warwick, and so it must navigate based solely on the very limited amount of information it receives from a single sensory device. If the number of sensory devices connected to its brain increases, it will gain a better understanding of its surroundings. “I have another student now who has started to work on an audio input, so in some way we can start communicating with it,” he says.

  tags: robots, AI, aapt, cogsci, AZB, grue, 150

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

Cognitive Neuroscience Links 03/26/2009

• Scientists identify brain region that helps us make choices

  They have identified a brain region that predicts choices before we even know what they are. The caudate nucleus, part of a structure called the striatum, is involved in anticipating rewards.

  tags: decision-making, brain, neuroscience, cogsci, grue

• Visual Attention: How The Brain Makes The Most Of The Visible World

  The visual system has limited capacity and cannot process everything that falls onto the retina. Instead, the brain relies on attention to bring salient details into focus and filter out background clutter. Two recent studies by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, one study employing computational modeling techniques and the other experimental techniques, have helped to unravel the mechanisms underlying attention.

  tags: brain, attention, perception, cogsci, grue

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

Dynamics of Cognitive Processing and Learning: Linking Connectionist, Neuroscience, and Dynamical Systems Approaches

Abstract:
Connectionist or parallel-distributed processing models provide mechanistic accounts of cognitive processes, demonstrating how emergent dynamics of higher-order cognitive states such as percepts, decision states, and actions can arise from the micro-dynamics of the interactions of simple neuron-like processing units. These models can also address changes in representation and processing that occur as a result of experience, via adjustments in the strengths of the connections among the units that participate in processing. As such these models make several points of contact with the literature on dynamical systems in development. The models also link to many other recent models on the neural population dynamics underlying decision making in the brain. This talk will discuss recent developments related to these issues, building on a model of the dynamics of simple perceptual decision making (Usher and McClelland, 2001). http://tinyurl.com/cb2wuv

Judgement and Decision Making

Discovering Psychology (11)

Cognitive Neuroscience Links 03/25/2009

• Evolution of Human Minds Video

  William Calvin discusses the evolution of the human mind

  tags: evolution, minds, human-evolution, brain, aapt, grue, cogsci, AZB

• Building a Brain on a Silicon Chip

  An international team of scientists in Europe has created a silicon chip designed to function like a human brain. With 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections, the chip is able to mimic the brain's ability to learn more closely than any other machine. (Technology Review)

  tags: brain, technology, cogsci, 150, aapt

• Mugged By Our Genes?

  Last Monday, Nicholas Hughes, son of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, killed himself. His mother was one of the world’s most famous suicides, and news stories have mentioned the tendency of suicide and depression to run in families. But this tragic inheritance is just part of a more complex story in which our lives are shaped by genes, environment — and unexpected connections between the two.

  tags: genetics, depression, cogsci, grue, 150

• Study Links Depression to Thinning of Brain’s Cortex

  Scientists who have been following families with a history of depression have found structural differences in family members’ brains — specifically, a significant thinning of the right cortex, the brain’s outermost surface. The thinning may be a trait or a marker of vulnerability to depression, the researchers suggested. (NYTimes.com)

  tags: brain, depression, cogsci

• What Can Magicians Teach Us about the Brain?

  Neuroscience can learn a lot by tapping the intuitive knowledge of magicians as new sources for inspiration and study. (Scientific American)

  tags: neuroscience, brain, magic, cogsci, neuroethics, aapt, grue

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

Cognitive Neuroscience Links 03/24/2009

• Genetic neoteny - how delayed genes separate human brains from chimps

  Take our brains, for example. In the brains of humans, chimps and many other mammals, the genes that are switched on in the brain change dramatically in the first few years of life. But Mehmet Somel from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has found that a small but select squad of genes, involved in the development of nerve cells, are activated much later in our brains than in those of other primates. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)

  tags: genetics, primates, development, cogsci, neuroethics, grue

• Stanford Brain Videos

  Learn about the frontiers of human health from seven of Stanford's most innovative faculty members. Inspired by a format used at the TED Conference (http://www.ted.com), each speaker delivers a highly engaging talk in just 10-20 minutes about his or her research. Learn about Stanford's newest and most exciting discoveries in neuroscience, bioengineering, brain imaging, psychology, and more.

  tags: brains, video, aapt, cogsci, grue, neuroethics

• Jonah Lehrer on the Decisive Moment

  video talk

  tags: decision-making, Lehrer, appt, cogsci, neuroethics

• The empathic powers of those who can't feel pain

  A popular account for how we empathise with other people's physical pain involves the idea that we perform a mental simulation of their suffering, using the pain pathways of our own brain. Support for this comes from research showing that when I see you in pain, the pain areas of my own brain are pricked into activity.
  
  Now an intriguing study by Nicolas Danziger and colleagues has tested this simulation account with the help of patients with congenital insensitivity to pain - that is, they've grown up with abnormal pain fibres, thus rendering them unable to feel physical pain. The findings may require us to rethink the way we characterise some brain areas associated with pain processing. (BPS RESEARCH DIGEST)
  

  tags: emotion, empathy, cogsci, neuroethics, aapt

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

Cognitive Neuroscience Links 03/23/2009

• The Biology of Creativity - Right Hemispheric Thinking, Problem Solving by Insight, and Diffuse Attention

  A Northwestern research group has found that people that solve anagram puzzles by sudden insight rather than by conscious search or analytic strategies have an EEG resting state that prefers the right over the left hemisphere. What's different about this finding compared to a previous study is that this hemispheric difference exists even before problem solving begins. (Eide Neurolearning Blog)

  tags: brain, creativity, cogsci, ttl, grue

• Feeling our way to right and wrong

  Whatever role one believes emotions should play in moral judgment, new research demonstrates that the influence of these low-level passions is profound. In fact, a study published in Science earlier this month suggests that many moral judgments are mediated by the same emotional mechanism that is activated by rotten leftovers and dirty socks. (Olivia Scheck)

  tags: neuroethics, ethics, disgust, aapt, grue, cogsci, emotion

• The Attentional Spotlight

  The experience of ‘looking out of the corner of the eye’ using peripheral vision is commonplace but it conceals a unusual fact about attention. That is that we probably spend a lot more of our time than we might imagine with our ‘mind’s eye’ looking in a different direction to our eyeballs. (PsyBlog)

  tags: consciousness, attention, mind, cogsci, grue, perception

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

Cognitive Neuroscience Links 03/19/2009

• Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet and funny--an evolutionary riddle

  Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are. (TED)

  tags: Dennett, evolution, consciousness, freewill, neuroethics, cogsci, grue, 150

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