cherry valley forever
h
will byers stan first human second
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
JBB: An Artblog!
art blog(derogatory)
Xuebing Du
Peter Solarz
d e v o n
Misplaced Lens Cap
KIROKAZE
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
if i look back, i am lost
ojovivo
AnasAbdin
Andulka
tannertan36
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One Nice Bug Per Day
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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@jkwasniak
Let's explain away
Let’s explain away
What is the difference between explaining and explaining away? If I watch a magician do a trick and I witness some object appear from nowhere or simply disappear before my eyes, I of course want to know how these things happen. I want an explanation. But do I want an explanation of how matter can be created or destroyed or do I want an explanation of how the magician made it appear to me what…
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Inner speech is close to uttered speech
There has recently been a paper in eLife by Whitford etal, Neurophysiological evidence of efference copies to inner speech, Dec 2017 doi 10.7554/eLife.28197.001, examining inner speech. They find it very similar to overt speech.
When we speak a series of motor commands are prepared and executed by the mouth, throat and vocal cords. Copies of these commands, called efferemce copies are used to…
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Ancient Origins - a great book
Ancient Origins – a great book
Ancient Origins – a great book
I have just read a book by Feinberg and Mallatt, The Ancient Origins of Consciousness – How the Brain Created Experience. It may turn out to be one of those classic books that cause a big change in accepted science. They tackle the ‘mystery of consciousness’ in a new way, a very biological way. The book ends with, “a satisfying and complete explanation of primary…
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Meaning of Consciousness - part 4
Meaning of Consciousness – part 4
For each science there seems to be a naïve folk version. There was a folk physics that allows people to predict that movement of physical objects, and so on with other sciences. This is still seen in expressions like ‘sun rise’ and the spontaneous beliefs on young children. Nothing is as it appears and we get used to the new knowledge. The sky is not as we thought – the stars and sun and moon are…
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Meaning of consciousness - part 3
Meaning of consciousness – part 3
What is the function of consciousness? Is the function thinking? There is type 1 thinking, unconscious thinking, and type 2 thinking, which we are conscious of. But it appears that what we are really conscious of is working memory, and not conscious of how an item is created and put in working memory. Type 2 thought is just unconscious processes using working memory as a tool for certain sorts of…
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Meaning of consciousness - Part 2
Meaning of consciousness – Part 2
In part 1 a particular meaning of consciousness was picked out of the group of meanings. So what can be said about this neural idea of consciousness as simply awareness of self and surrounding world, here and now? Is it as it appears? Well, no.
To start with it is questionable whether it is a continuous stream, the ‘stream of consciousness’, as it seems to be. Instead It is likely to be discrete…
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Meanings of consciousness
How little do we agree on what consciousness is? Not much. The word itself (in English) has a number of separate meanings: a type of awareness, such as ‘class consciousness’; awareness in an everyday sense, ‘they were consciousness of the fact that the room would be cold’; a personal awareness of the current moment, ‘his consciousness was filled with bright lights and music’; all mental activity…
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The indirect route
There has been a bit of mystery around how different areas of the cortex initiate shared synchrony or seem to pass information between them.
A paper from a few years back (Poulet, Fernandez, Crochet, Peterson; Thalamic control of cortical states; Nature 2012) showed that the activity of the whiskers of mice affected the state of activity in the cortex. How did the whiskers affect the whole…
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Doing science backwards
A recent article, (Trettenbrein, P. (2016); The Demise of the Synapse As the Locus of Memory: A Looming Paradigm Shift?; Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 10), questions what many consider settled science – plastic changes to synapses are the basis of learning and memory – may not be correct. Thanks to Neurosceptic for noting this paper (here).
“Actually, as of today, large parts of the field…
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Where is consciousness?
A particular type of epilepsy has been treated by cutting the corpus callosum, the tracks of nerves connecting the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. The result had very little side effects on the patients. However, with closer experimental studies, the nature of the split brain was examined. Only the left hemisphere spoke and so only stimuli presented to the left visual field resulted in spoken…
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Does it ring true?
Does it ring true?
I make a point of not commenting on research into medical and psychological conditions. However, I am dyslexic and feel able to comment on research into that specific condition. I recognize that there are probably many types, levels and causes of dyslexia and so my reaction might not be the same as others. But I still automatically judge the research by ‘does it feel like it is right in my case?’
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Time travel is not uniquely human
Time travel is not uniquely human
There are constantly statements about what abilities humans have that are unique. One of these is mental time travel. Decades ago Tulving put forward the notion of episodic memory and at the same time stated his opinion that it was unique to humans and that animals do not have episodic memory or a conscious experience of remembering. Suddendorf and Corballis put forward the notion of mental time…
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New look at self-control
New look at self-control
Much of the time, our model of reality is viewed from the perspective of ourselves, right now. The notion of Theory of Mind (ToM) is that to a certain extent we can instead take the perspective of another person. We can metaphorically walk in their shoes. This ability seems to reside in the posterior temporo-parietal junction (pTPJ). This is also the location involved in prosocial behaviour. A…
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local or not
A recent press release describes a paper ( T. A. Engel, N. A. Steinmetz, M. A. Gieselmann, A. Thiele, T. Moore, K. Boahen. Selective modulation of cortical state during spatial attention. Science, 2016; 354 (6316): 1140 DOI: 10.1126/science.aag1420 ) on the neural activity during awake attention. Here is the abstract:
Neocortical activity is permeated with endogenously generated fluctuations, but…
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Notice
i have just lost my husband and will not have time or inclination to post for a while. I will be back in a a few months.
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Beta waves
Judith Copithorne image
Brain waves are measured for many reasons and they have been linked to various brain activities. But very little is known about how they arise. Are they the result or the cause of the activities they are associated with? How exactly are they produced at a cellular or network level? We know little about these waves.
One type of wave, beta waves (18-25 Hz) are associated…
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Fighting Libet's experiment
Fighting Libet’s experiment
A post in Science of Us in Feb, by Christian Jarrett, reviews the Libet experiment and recent attempts to overturn the implications of it. (http://nymag/scienceofus/2016/02/a-neuroscience-finding-on-free-will.html) I find the struggle to reverse Libet’s finding to be the result of a mistaken way of viewing thought. An enormous amount of effort has gone into failed attempts to show this experiment…
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