CategoryMedicine and Health
Why Was IBM Watson a Flop in Medicine?
Robert J. Marks and Gary S. Smith discuss how the AI couldn’t identify which information in the tsunami of medical literature actually MATTEREDLast year, the IBM Health Initiative laid off a number of people, seemingly due to market disillusionment with the product.
Read More ›
High Tech Can Help the Blind See and Amputees Feel
It’s not a miracle; the human nervous system can work with electronic informationThe electronic devices communicate directly with sensory areas of the brain, bypassing damaged or destroyed eyes and limbs.
Read More ›
If Thinking Can Heal, Why Do We Need Antidepressants?
J.P. Moreland, who struggles with anxiety disorders, likens medications to engine oil for the brain“If you’re driving your car and you’re low or don’t have any oil, parts of the engine are going to rub against one another and it’s going to cause a lot of friction and dysfunction.”
Read More ›
Up! Up! Up! Keep Those Hippocampi Up!
The lighter side of neurobabble about our brains and ourselvesNeurobabble is a full-employment campaign for neuroscientists. Recast obvious social or psychological facts as brain events and you’ll never be out of work.
Read More ›
Can fitter brains help us fight depression?
Philosopher J. P. Moreland continues his account of working his way through a devastating anxiety disorder"Anxiety and depression are largely—not entirely but largely—habit. And those habits are ingrained in the different members of our body," Moreland explains.
Read More ›
J. P. Moreland’s Model of the Human Self Survived the Ultimate Field Test
Could the Christian philosopher rely on his model to help himself heal from psychiatric disorder?
Four Researchers Whose Work Sheds Light on the Reality of the Mind
The brain can be cut in half, but the intellect and will cannot, says Michael Egnor. The intellect and will are metaphysically simpleNeurosurgeon Michael Egnor was featured in a short film as a supplement to the Science Uprising series. There, he mentions four researchers who have shed light on the non-material mind nature of our minds: Wilder Penfield (1891–1976): Some of the earliest evidence came from neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, who was the pioneer in epilepsy surgery in the mid 20th century. Penfield operated on over a thousand epilepsy patients while they were awake (under local anesthesia), and he stimulated their brains with electrodes in order to identify epileptic regions for surgical resection. He carefully recorded their responses to stimulation. In his book Mystery of the Mind, (1975) Penfield noted: “When I have caused a conscious patient to move his hand by applying Read More ›
Do “forced thinking” seizures show that abstract thought is a material thing?
Epilepsy suppresses abstract thought, it does not evoke it
Do Epileptic Seizures Cause Abstract Thoughts?
A psychiatrist argues that “intellectual seizures” can occurSeizures never evoke abstract thought. That is, if a seizure causes you to think about a triangle, it always causes you to imagine a particular triangle, not to define triangles abstractly.
Read More ›
Atheist Psychiatrist Misunderstands Evidence for an Immaterial Mind
Patients with massive brain damage were shown to have a mental lifeHere is one way of seeing it: If someone took a sledgehammer to your computer and pulverized it, yet it still worked fairly well, you would conclude that there was something rather strange about the computer that you had not previously considered.
Read More ›
New Evidence That Some Comatose People Really Do Understand
Researchers found mental activity in response to verbal commands even in some “completely unresponsive” patientsThere is growing evidence that many comatose patients are quite aware of what is going on around them. For example, nurses are often very careful not to say upsetting things that the patient can hear because blood pressure often rises dramatically, even in deeply “unaware” comatose patients.
Read More ›
New Mind-Controlled Robot Arm Needs No Brain Implant
The thought-controlled device could help people with movement disorders control devices without the costs and risks of surgeryBeyond that, such research raises a philosophical question: If the mind is an illusion, how can it act directly on external things, by the force of decision-making alone?
Read More ›
Can AI Combat Misleading Medical Research?
No, because AI doesn’t address the “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacies” that produce the bad dataIn this week’s podcast, Pomona College’s Gary Smith, author of The AI Delusion, talks with Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks about why so many bad research papers are accepted in the science establishment and in media.
Read More ›
How Can AI Help Us With What We Care About?
Instead of making us part of things we don’t care about?Despite the misguided hype, AI is just another tool. So it is encouraging to read about the ways that Japanese firm Hitachi is using AI as a tool to provide services that would otherwise be difficult or unavailable.
Read More ›
Theologian, Battling Depression, Reaffirms the Existence of the Soul
J. P. Moreland reasons his way to the evidence and captures his discoveries in a bookIt’s not often that a theologian admits to personal issues like anxiety and depression. But Biola University’s Moreland has written a book about how he coped by learning more about the nature of our immaterial minds.
Read More ›
Research: Kids’ Phones Steal Sleep
How important might 21 minutes less sleep a night be to a child?If sleep is lost, what will make up for it?
Read More ›
Scientific American: No Consensus on Smartphones’ Effect on Teen Brains
Others continue to wonder why teens seem comparatively fragile
Can AI Make Unique Trail-Blazing Science Discoveries?
It would save us a lot of time but, as Eric Holloway warns, some things can’t be automated, by their very nature