I've written before about split brain patients, and what they mean for consciousness. Emily Esfahani Smith has a pretty good write up on the experiments and what they showed: How An Epilepsy Treatment Shaped Our Understanding of Consciousness - The Atlantic. The patients were there because they all struggled with violent and uncontrollable seizures. The procedure … Continue reading How An Epilepsy Treatment Shaped Our Understanding of Consciousness
Tag: Neuroscience
The tale of the neuroscientists and the computer
Joshua Brown has a sobering editorial on the state of our understanding of the brain. Warning: it requires some familiarity with how a computer works to understand his point: Frontiers | The tale of the neuroscientists and the computer: why mechanistic theory matters | Brain Imaging Methods. Once upon a time, a group of neuroscientists happened … Continue reading The tale of the neuroscientists and the computer
The attention schema theory of consciousness deserves your…attention
Michael Graziano published a brief article in the New York Times on his attention schema theory of consciousness, which a number of my fellow bloggers have linked to and discussed. I'm not sure this article was the clearest description of it that he's given, and I suspect the title biased readers to think his theory is another consciousness-is-an-illusion … Continue reading The attention schema theory of consciousness deserves your…attention
Learning the smell of fear: Mothers teach babies their own fears via odor, animal study shows.
Some of the ways that mothers can teach offspring is pretty primal: Learning the smell of fear: Mothers teach babies their own fears via odor, animal study shows -- ScienceDaily. Babies can learn what to fear in the first days of life just by smelling the odor of their distressed mothers, new research suggests. And not … Continue reading Learning the smell of fear: Mothers teach babies their own fears via odor, animal study shows.
The mythology that circles Phineas Gage
Slate has an interesting article on Phineas Gage, and about how his story has been mythologized and overhyped over the years. On Sept. 13, 1848, at around 4:30 p.m., the time of day when the mind might start wandering, a railroad foreman named Phineas Gage filled a drill hole with gunpowder and turned his head … Continue reading The mythology that circles Phineas Gage
Quantum Theory Won’t Save The Soul – Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com
Could quantum mechanics save the soul? In the light of 20th century physics, is free will plausible? Such as been the hope of some philosophers, scientists (and pretenders to those titles) – but neuroscientist Peter Clarke argues that it’s just not happening, in an interesting new paper: Neuroscience, quantum indeterminism and the Cartesian soul via … Continue reading Quantum Theory Won’t Save The Soul – Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com
The self as brain: Disturbing implications of neuroexistentialism.
Patricia Churchland, a neurophilosopher at the University of California at San Diego, says our hopes, loves and very existence are just elaborate functions of a complicated mass of grey tissue. Accepting that can be hard, but what we know should inspire us, not scare us. Her most recent book is Touching a Nerve: The Self … Continue reading The self as brain: Disturbing implications of neuroexistentialism.
Random Brain Waves Save Free Will? – Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com
The Neuroskeptic has a post up about an experiment which seems to contradict the famous Libet experiment: Random Brain Waves Save Free Will? - Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com. I've personally never found the Libet experiment particularly compelling when it comes to free will arguments, but many do. Related articles The Hand-Waver's Guide to The Brain (jfnet.wordpress.com) The … Continue reading Random Brain Waves Save Free Will? – Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com
SelfAwarePatterns 