Neuroscience

From John Horgan: In The End of Science I asserted that scientists are running into cognitive and physical limits and will never solve the deepest mysteries of nature, notably why there is something rather than nothing. I predicted that if we create super-intelligent machines, they too will be baffled by the enigma of their own existence. In Switzerland I suggested that the riddle of consciousness is a synecdoche for the riddle of humanity. What are we, really? For most of our history, religion has given us the answer. We are immortal souls, children of a loving god, striving to reach heaven or nirvana. Most modern scientists reject these religious explanations, but they cannot agree on an alternative. They have proposed Read More ›

Abstract: Neuroscientists typically assume that human mental functions are generated by the brain and that its structural elements, including the different cell layers and tissues that form the neocortex, play specific roles in this complex process. Different functional units are thought to complement one another to create an integrated self-awareness or episodic memory. Still, findings that pertain to brain dysplasia and brain lesions indicate that in some individuals there is a considerable discrepancy between the cerebral structures and cognitive functioning. This seems to question the seemingly well-defined role of these brain structures. This article provides a review of such remarkable cases. It contains overviews of noteworthy aspects of hydrocephalus, hemihydranencephaly, hemispherectomy, and certain abilities of “savants.” We add considerations on Read More ›

From Steve Twomey at the Smithsonian Magazine (2010), presumably a vintage article recycled this morning or so, without context, about the catastrophic brain injuries that supposedly greatly changed a man’s personality (psych lecture room staple): Gage’s initial survival would have ensured him a measure of celebrity, but his name was etched into history by observations made by John Martyn Harlow, the doctor who treated him for a few months afterward. Gage’s friends found him“no longer Gage,” Harlow wrote. The balance between his “intellectual faculties and animal propensities” seemed gone. He could not stick to plans, uttered “the grossest profanity” and showed “little deference for his fellows.” The railroad-construction company that employed him, which had thought him a model foreman, refused to Read More ›

Maybe the arms are an illusion too… From ScienceDaily: Neuroscientists have shown how amputees can learn to control a robotic arm through electrodes implanted in the brain. The research details changes that take place in both sides of the brain used to control the amputated limb and the remaining, intact limb. The results show both areas can create new connections to learn how to control the device, even several years after an amputation. … The researchers worked with three rhesus monkeys who suffered injuries at a young age and had to have an arm amputated to rescue them four, nine and 10 years ago, respectively. Their limbs were not amputated for the purposes of the study. In two of the Read More ›

The 21st century is not turning out at all the way pundits thought. From neurosurgeon Michael Egnor at Evolution News & Views: It is important to understand the aspects of mind that they do share. They share some motor control, some common sensations, and probably share some aspects of imagination — that is, the ability to reconstruct sensory images (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.). This sharing of some aspects of the mind, but not others, is remarkably consistent with classical Thomistic dualism. In Thomistic dualism, the human soul is the composite of three powers: vegetative, sensory, and rational. Vegetative powers are what we today call autonomic physiological control — control of heart rate, control of blood pressure, control of growth, reproduction, Read More ›

From David Oakley and Peter Halligan at The Conversation: If the experience of consciousness does not confer any particular advantage, it’s not clear what its purpose is. But as a passive accompaniment to non-conscious processes, we don’t think that the phenomenon of personal awareness has a purpose, in much the same way that rainbows do not. Rainbows simply result from the reflection, refraction and dispersion of sunlight through water droplets – none of which serves any particular purpose. Our conclusions also raise questions about the notions of free will and personal responsibility. If our personal awareness does not control the contents of the personal narrative which reflects our thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions and decisions, then perhaps we should not be Read More ›

From CBC: BC’s Hogan twins, featured in the documentary Inseparable, are unique in the world. Joined at the head, their brains are connected by a thalamic bridge which gives them neurological capabilities that researchers are only now beginning to understand. Still, they are like other Canadian eleven-year-olds; they attend school, have a favourite pet and are part of a large, loving family determined to live each day to the fullest. Krista and Tatiana Hogan share the senses of touch and taste and even control one another’s limbs. Tatiana can see out of both of Krista’s eyes, while Krista can only see out of one of Tatiana’s. Tatiana controls three arms and a leg, while Krista controls three legs and an Read More ›

According to those who have been resuscitated from clinical death. From Fox News: The evidence reportedly suggests a surge of brain activity immediately after a near-death experience. “What tends to happen is that people who’ve had these very profound experiences may come back positively transformed — they become more altruistic, more engaged with helping others. They find a new meaning to life having had an encounter with death,” Parnia said. “But there isn’t like a sudden magical enhancement of their memories,” he added. “That’s just Hollywood jazz.” More. The best evidence for near-death experiences is, in fact, the changed priorities of those who have them. But then, pop culture acknowledges that no one on their deathbed ever wishes they’d spent Read More ›

  From Denyse O’Leary at Evolution News & Views: Naturalists (who say nature is all there is) have recently sought to jimmy the rules around evidence to accommodate their strong belief that a multiverse really exists. Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel offers a glimpse of the future they propose, in a piece at Forbes titled “The multiverse is inevitable and we’re living in it”: “What is the Multiverse, then? It may go well beyond physics, and be the first physically motivated “metaphysics” we’ve ever encountered. For the first time, we’re understanding the limits of what our Universe can teach us. There is information we need, but that we’ll never obtain, in order to elevate this into the realm of testable science. Until Read More ›

From Ari N. Shulman at Big Questions Online: Is human perception a controlled hallucination? That was the claim advanced in a pair of talks at the Human Mind Conference in Cambridge, England in June, one by Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex, the other by Andy Clark, a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh. They were not advancing the radical thesis, made by some overeager neuro-philosophers, that all experience is an illusion. Rather, Seth and Clark made the case that there is no bright dividing line between hallucination and ordinary perception. … The terms “controlled hallucination,” and related ones like “inferred fantasy” and “virtual reality,” are useful rhetorical devices for illustrating what is distinctive about the theory Read More ›

From Sam Kriss at Atlantic: Among philosophers, biologists, and cognitive scientists, this nightmare is an exciting new field of study, known as embodied or extended cognition: broadly, the theory that what we think of as brain processes can take place outside of the brain. In some cases, this isn’t a particularly radical idea. The octopus, for instance, has a bizarre and miraculous mind, sometimes inside its brain, sometimes extending beyond it in sucker-tipped trails. Neurons are spread throughout its body; the creature has more of them in its arms than in its brain itself. It’s possible that each arm might be, to some extent, an independently thinking creature, all of which are collapsed into an octopean superconsciousness in times of Read More ›

It’s amazing we perceive as clearly as we do, given the situations that confuse us and the tricks we can think up to confuse ourselves. Here: Our senses are remarkable. They have evolved to enable us to accurately perceive a huge variety of things in very different conditions. However, occasionally our senses let us down, and we fail to perceive the world accurately. The resulting illusions give us great insight into how our senses work, and how they usually manage to do so astonishingly well. Illusions intrigue us. It is fascinating to observe our senses getting things wrong, and to continue to do so, even when we know the nature of the illusion. And it is intriguing to ponder what Read More ›

Says neuroscientist Anil K. Seth at Aeon: Let’s begin with David Chalmers’s influential distinction, inherited from Descartes, between the ‘easy problem’ and the ‘hard problem’. The ‘easy problem’ is to understand how the brain (and body) gives rise to perception, cognition, learning and behaviour. The ‘hard’ problem is to understand why and how any of this should be associated with consciousness at all: why aren’t we just robots, or philosophical zombies, without any inner universe? It’s tempting to think that solving the easy problem (whatever this might mean) would get us nowhere in solving the hard problem, leaving the brain basis of consciousness a total mystery. But there is an alternative, which I like to call the real problem: how Read More ›

Remember that if you are stuck for something to say.  From Suzan Mazur at HuffPost, interviewing neuroscientist Paul Silvia: Paul Silvia: The 2015 paper was our first toes-in-the-water. The whole brain view is really a good way to think about it. Traditionally with creativity and brain work, investigations have addressed: What’s the creative part? Where’s creativity in the brain? What’s the part that lights up? And traditionally, the view has been: The right side is the creative part. But there’s really no part or piece or even single system. Creativity is a very complex thing. Our earlier study was really a pilot study. We had a small number of people and we were pretty limited in how we were looking at Read More ›

  From David Snoke at the Christian Scientific Society: Jack Collins presented a compelling argument for an “attribute” view of the image of God, that is, a view that the image of God means that we have attributes that are like God in some ways that animals aren’t. … Jeff Schwartz presented a lively and controversial discussion of mindfulness. We all learned what it is, how it is being taken very seriously by modern psychiatrists of all stripes, and how the data shows that it involves distinct states of the brain that can be identified. In a nutshell, mindfulness has three parts: Mike Egnor gave a talk full of brain science data in support of his position of Aristotelean dualism. Read More ›