Takehome: Humans can do things that AI cannot do, as we saw earlier, but those abilities are not due to the superior learning ability of a human neuron.
Neuroscience
At Mind Matters News: Jumping genes … a new clue to octopus intelligence?
Formerly thought of as “junk DNA,” their mobility may help explain unique problem-solving abilities. “I literally jumped on the chair…” one researcher said.
How does a human being thrive normally with “quite a bit” of brain missing?
Suppose a man said, “I am one of a really small minority of people who fell twenty thousand feet from a plane and survived, despite my injuries…” We’d want to know more.
At Mind Matters News: Human brain has many more language connections than chimp brain
Among the many differences between the human brain and other animal brains is the role of the arcuate fasciculus that connects lobes of the brain. If we are really 99 percent chimpanzee, as some claim, it doesn’t appear to be showing up in the brain.
At Mind Matters News: The human brain has neural networks not found in lab mice
In a just-published study that he led, the researchers examined human tissue removed by neurosurgeons during operations. Studying it, they discover neuron networks (connectomes) unknown in mouse brains… The interesting part is that this network exists mainly in order to silence other neurons…
At Mind Matters News: The battle over the human mind split two great thinkers
Philosopher Neil Thomas points out how neuroscience today has undermined a purely materialist account of the mind — an unexpected role but that’s what happened.
At Mind Matters News: Researchers: Our brains use data compression to get things right
Curiously, we humans often invent things by design for a purpose and yet, when we find the same things in nature, some conclude that
Takehome: Curiously, we humans often invent things by design for a purpose and yet, when we find the same things in nature, some conclude that there is no design or purpose in nature…
At Mind Matters News: Researchers: Humans process information differently from monkeys
The researchers found that, from an information theory perspective, human brains engage in less redundant and more synergistic processing than macaques. So information theory supports human exceptionalism where Darwinism doesn’t?
At Mind Matters News: A little-known structure tells our brains what matters now
Takehome: The cuneate nucleus (CN) in the brain stem turns out to communicate regularly with your prefrontal cortex and spine as to what you had better notice. The more we learn about the brain, the less likely it seems to be purely a product of material, natural causes.
At Mind Matters News: Study: Eight-week mindfulness courses do not change the brain
O’Leary: Eight-week courses don’t provide enough time. Tibetan monks can control metabolism and even brain waves through meditation but they devote their lives to it. It would be more surprising if that fact had no effect on their brains than if it does.
Researcher: Stinging cells evolved by repurposing a neuron from an older form of life
Researcher: “These harpoons are made of a protein that is also found only in cnidarians, so cnidocytes seem to be one of the clearest examples of how the origin of a new gene (that encodes a unique protein) could drive the evolution of a new cell type.” (It’s hard to avoid the sense of design here.)
Claim: Why human brains were once bigger
The researchers cite writing as one possibility for shrinking brains:
Unexpectedly? Multiple brain regions control speech
“More evolved” brains, not “better muscles”
Another layer of complexity in the human brain
Researchers: Investigators led by a team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) that previously discovered tiny channels in the skull have now found that cerebrospinal fluid (also known as “brain water”) can exit the brain into the skull’s bone marrow through these channels.
The secret world in the gaps between brain cells
Neuroscientist: It’s now known that every cell in the brain is separated from its neighbor by a fluid-filled extracellular space (ECS), which forms sheets and tunnels, as shown on page 26 in a computer reconstruction of the ECS in a rat’s brain.