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POPSMind, body and goal: the embodied cognition revolution "In one particularly striking study, Proffitt and his colleagues found that we perceive distances as shorter when we have a tool in our hand, but only when we intend to use it. They suggest that we perceive the environment in terms of our intentions and abilities to act within it".
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POPSThe Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling. Why does our brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories? And how do the emotional and cognitive effects of a narrative influence our beliefs and real-world decisions?
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POPSWhen You Look at a Face, You Look Nose First "Understanding how the human brain recognizes faces may help cognitive scientists create more realistic models of the brain—models that could be used as tools to train or otherwise assist people with brain lesions or cognitive challenges, explained Janet Hsiao "The nice thing about models like neural nets is that—unlike computer programs—you can lesion them and they still run, which means you can test them in ways you could never test a human brain,"
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POPSHumor Shown To Be Fundamental To Our Success As A Species The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humour by Alastair Clarke answers the centuries old question of what is humour. Clarke explains how and why we find things funny and identifies the reason humour is common to all human societies, its fundamental role in the evolution of homo sapiens and its continuing importance in the cognitive development of infants.
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POPSThe Mind-BlackBerry Problem - Why we think we can function in two worlds at once?? "If we don't want this two-worlds experiment to be regulated nature's way—by killing people—then we'd better regulate it ourselves. Here are a few proposed rules of the road. Multitasking is a glorious gift. We can't ban it, nor should we. Want to phone your spouse or your office while walking? Fine. The only life at stake is yours. Want to turn on your car radio or music player? Fine. Listening is easier than talking, and you can mentally or physically shut it off when necessary. Want to chat with your passenger? Fine again. Studies indicate that passenger conversations are less distracting than phone calls, apparently because you're sharing and often referring to the same environment.
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POPSIs our emotions that make thought possible? "Before Damasio came onto the scene, most cognitive scientists assumed that emotions only interfered with rational thought. It was assumed that a person without any emotions would be a better thinker, since their “cortical computer” could process information without the hindrance of emotion. Damasio’s research challenged the assumption by showing that people who have suffered brain injuries which prevent them from perceiving their own feelings, are ineffective decision-makers. Most would spend hours deliberating over irrelevant details, such as where to eat lunch. Damasio’s research, among many other studies, is revealing that emotion is what enables us to make up our minds. It is pure reason- not feeling- that is the true hindrance to decision making. So take that, Mr. Spock!
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POPSPoverty and the Brain "The point is that poverty isn't just an idea, or a state of mind: it actually warps the mind. Some brains never even have a chance." deserves a second thought
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POPSMind Beyond Brain Andy Clark’s new book Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Philosophy of the Mind), mentioned as a forthcoming title last March in David Chalmers’s blog, is now available. The foreword by Chalmers is online.
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POPSDo we get wiser with age? "Is age a prerequisite for wisdom, though? We all know a few elderly people who lack wisdom, while we may know few young people that have wisdom in spades. People certainly aren't always at peak brainpower in old age; after all, when wrinkles begin appearing on the face, it usually means that wrinkles have started disappearing on the brain. The brain shrinks slightly with age, and aging leads to a normal decline in cognitive function that may eventually bloom into dementias such as Alzheimer's disease".
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POPSPalin and the fruit fly or just plain ignorance
One might have thought that Sarah Palin would take a more active interest in one aspect of scientific research. Palin's youngest son has Down's syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by the presence of an extra chromosome 21. Although a geneticist by training, I am certainly no expert on the pathogenesis of this condition, nor the significance of Drosophila research into Down's syndrome. So, I typed "drosophila trisomy 21" into PubMed, the scholarly biomedical equivalent of Google. There were 109 results, the most recent published just the day before Palin's gaffe. The concluding sentence of that study — about the genetic cues that steer nerve fibres around during the growth of the fruit fly — suggests that the paper will "have implications for the pathogenesis of Down's syndrome". These two are drops in the ocean of fruit fly research that have clinical relevance. Down's syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, autism, diabetes, ageing research, cancers of all types
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POPSPhiladelphia Inquirer Opinion: White People Shouldn't Be Allowed To Vote It's for the good of the country and for those who're bitter for a reason and armed because they're scared. As a lifelong Caucasian, I am beginning to think the time has finally come to take the right to vote away from white people, at least until we come to our senses. Seriously, I just don't think we can be trusted to exercise it responsibly anymore ... Hey, some people just aren't ready yet, even the governor said so. Just like some people aren't ready yet for computers or setting the clock on the VCR. The writer lists many more reasons, read Exhibits A, B and C.
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POPSAAP encourages "true toys" It has come to the time when we need the academy of pediatrics to tell us that blocks and dolls are both good and important.
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POPSSynesthetes - people who hear colors, see flavors ... "For people of a poetic bent, this is quite useful: You get to tell your date that her eyes glow like the moon, hair ripples like the ocean and skin is smoother than a friendly corporate takeover. (Fine, I'm not a poet.) But life wasn't always so romantic. The arts are a latter-day human characteristic, one that requires a certain amount of security and stability to flourish. So how did it develop? To help our ancestors climb trees, said Ramachandran. Doing so requires a vision-informed mental map of the branches before us, as well as a touch-informed mental map of our limbs' positions. Somehow these have to correlate. Which is quite a trick, when you think about it."
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POPSMemo To Palin: Fruit Fly Research Led To Advances In Autism Palin did not specify what fruit fly research earmark she was referring to (presumably a grant for olive fruit fly research), but she is apparently unaware that scientific research with fruit flies has led to valuable discoveries that have boosted autism research, as a study at the University of North Carolina demonstrated last year: cientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for..nerve cell connections to form and function correctly. The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism. The study of fruit flies has also been used for other autism research and “revolutionize ” the study of birth defects.
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POPSTowards a neuropsychology of religion: 'Doctrinal' rituals help create semantic memories of key concepts and emotional response through associative learning, while 'imagistic' rituals help create episodic memories of specific situations that may involve altered states of consciousness and the experience of other realities.
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POPSAttention and Emotional Self Regulation 1) Alerting: helps us maintain an Alert State. 2) Orienting: focuses our senses on the information we want. For example, you are now listening to my voice. 3) Executive Attention: regulates a variety of networks, such as emotional responses and sensory information. This is critical for most other skills, and clearly correlated with academic performance. It is distributed in frontal lobes and the cingulate gyrus. The development of executive attention can be easily observed both by questionnaire and cognitive tasks after about age 3–4, when parents can identify the ability of their children to regulate their emotions and control their behavior in accord with social demands. Very interesting read.
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POPSDELL Awards Frequently referred to as the “Oscar” of the industrial design world, iF awards are presented by one of the world’s leading design institutions, the Industrie Forum
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POPSBBC on parenting and health This BBC summary of recent child development data shows differences along cultural lines (for which the writer uses the term 'ethnic'). What is clear from the data is that parents matter tremendously.
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POPSNever Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death The common view of death as a great mystery usually is brushed aside as an emotionally fueled desire to believe that death isn’t the end of the road. And indeed, a prominent school of research in social psychology called terror management theory contends that afterlife beliefs, as well as less obvious beliefs, behaviors and attitudes, exist to assuage what would otherwise be crippling anxiety about the ego’s inexistence. Yet a small number of researchers, including me, are increasingly arguing that the evolution of self-consciousness has posed a different kind of problem altogether. This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start.
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POPSWho doesn't need more brain power! Does that mean that in near future we would be having doping tests before exams to filter out those students who have taken these drugs to take (illegal?) edge over those who have not?
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