Category: Neuroscience | Page 15

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post

News
Date
October 27, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Ants (behavior)}

Researchers Still Puzzled: Why Did Human Brains Shrink?

_{Human brain volumes decreased by 10% in the last 40,000 years, coinciding with spectacular intellectual achievements} _{News
October 27, 2021

5

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

We conventionally associate big brains with intelligence. But the evidence from the present day and from history is uncertain: It’s something of a well-known secret among anthropologists: Based on measurements of skulls, the average brain volume of Homo sapiens has reportedly decreased by roughly 10 percent in the past 40,000 years. This reduction is a reversal of the trend of cranial expansion, which had been occurring in human evolution for millions of years prior… For instance, a 1988 Human Biology paper analyzed more than 12,000 Homo sapiens crania from Europe and North African. It showed cranial capacity decreased in the past 10,000 years by about 10 percent (157 mL) in males and 17 percent (261 mL) in females. A similar Read More ›

Illustration of synapse and neuron on a blue background.

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post

News
Date
October 22, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience

Tagged
Neurons, Synapses}

Brain Cells Can Mislead Each Other, Cause Mental Disorders

_{Neuroscientists: When cells talk to each other, due to faulty signals given to proteins, they don’t always say the right things} _{News
October 22, 2021

3

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience}

Recent research in how brain cells talk to one another may help treat anxiety and addiction disorders, as well as dementias. Brain cells talk to each other through synapses, where molecules whose chemistry is interpreted as information are released and travel to the next cell: When people learn or remember things, this signalling is strengthened. When communication between synapses goes wrong, circuits become broken. As more circuits are lost, this changes how people can think and perform everyday tasks. This is seen in cognitive disorders, such as forms of dementia and some mental health conditions. University of Nottingham, “Scientists gain new understanding of how brain cells talk – which could help in the treatment of mental health conditions and memory Read More ›

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post

News
Date
October 20, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience

Tagged
Mouse brain}

What Can Mapping the Whole Brain Tell Us About Ourselves?

_{Researchers attempting to map the brain must contend with massive complexity at every level, as a report in Nature shows} _{News
October 20, 2021

6

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience}

The worm and fly brains have been mapped. The mouse brain has, in part, been mapped. But the human brain offers the real challenge for the researchers working around the clock. Our brains are not just more complex; they are more complex on a number of dimensions: To truly understand how the brain works, neuroscientists also need to know how each of the roughly 1,000 types of cell thought to exist in the brain speak to each other in their different electrical dialects. With that kind of complete, finely contoured map, they could really begin to explain the networks that drive how we think and behave. Alison Abbott, “How the world’s biggest brain maps could transform neuroscience” at Nature (October Read More ›

The Altamira Caves. Spanish rock art. It is the highest representation of cave painting in Spain

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post

Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 17, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith (book), Evolutionary psychology, Subrena E. Smith}

There Is No Such Thing as a Fossil Mind

_{A chapter on evolutionary psychology in Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith (2021) looks at the curious discipline of evolutionary psychology} _{Denyse O'Leary
October 17, 2021

5

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Science}

This month, the The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos (Harvest House 2021) appeared. The basic theme of the handbook, as described by editors design theorist William Dembski and Joseph Holden is “Science and Christianity are often presented as opposites, when in fact the order of the universe and the complexity of life powerfully testify to intelligent design.” I wrote one of the chapters, “What is evolutionary psychology?”. It concerns the effort to understand human psychology by appealing to a prehuman (“evolutionary”) past. As such, it explains a large variety of human behaviours as the unconscious enactment of a Darwinian survival scenario among not-quite humans that is wired into modules in Read More ›

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post

News
Date
October 15, 2021

Categorized
Information Theory, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Global Workspace Theory (GWT), Integrated Information Theory (IIT and panpsychism), Integrated Information Theory (IIT)}

GWT: A Leading Consciousness Theory Depends on Information Theory

_{Not mechanism. If Global Workspace Theory (GWT) is a good approach to consciousness, there is no “consciousness spot” in the brain.} _{News
October 15, 2021

8

Information Theory, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Recently, we have looked at the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of human consciousness, as set out by well-known Allen Institute neuroscientist Christof Koch. Another leading contender (and rival) is Global Workspace Theory (GWT) — it pictures the brain as an orchestra with many conductors. IIT is panpsychist in orientation (the universe participates in consciousness; human consciousness is the most highly developed instance) whereas GWT uses information theory to capture an image of consciousness via observations of the brain at work. A recent essay in Psyche by two GWT proponents, Morten L. Kringelbach and Gustav Deco, introduces us to GWT: … given the distributed nature of the brain hierarchy, there is unlikely to be just a single ‘conductor’. Instead, in 1988 Read More ›

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post

News
Date
October 13, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience}

Nobel Prize Medicine Win Solves a Mystery in Hot, Cold Sensing

_{Researchers discovered the exact path by which chili peppers feel “hot” and mints feel “cold” when the signals reach our brains.} _{News
October 13, 2021

7

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience}

The 2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to David Julius of the University of California, San Francisco, and Ardem Patapoutian of Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, for “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.” It’s been a longstanding mystery why chili peppers feel hot to the taste: In order to truly appreciate Dr. Julius’ discovery, a bit of context may be in order. Unless you build up tolerance, eating spicy foods is painful. Peppers and wasabi give off a strange sensation that your mouth is on fire, and for the longest time researchers simply couldn’t figure out why this was the case. Failing to pinpoint any immediate benefits of this response, they speculated it Read More ›

young man working freelance in laptop at home

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post

News
Date
September 29, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Neuroscience

Tagged
Amputees, Bionic prostheses (affordability)}

The Bionic Man Was Science Fiction; the Bionic Hand Is Not

_{A recent internet-savvy bionic hand, developed by an American neuroscientist and computer engineer, is the most flexible yet, with sensory feedback} _{News
September 29, 2021

5

Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Neuroscience}

Many people associate bionics with a 70s sci-fi TV series, The Six Million Dollar Man (“After a severely injured test pilot is rebuilt with nuclear-powered bionic limbs and implants, he serves as an intelligence agent”). It’s not science fiction any more: According to the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago, roughly 100,000 Americans — and 10 million people worldwide — are missing a hand. The award-winning Ability hand shown in the video, made by Psyonic, a Champaign, Illinois-based startup, is a useful illustration of how far prosthetics has come via electronic and internet technology. Representative of a new generation of prostheses, it is both electronics and internet-friendly: It charges in roughly an hour and the Read More ›

Blume des Lebens mit Sternenkosmos und Lichtstreifen

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post

News
Date
September 9, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Anil Seth, Consciousness, Materialism}

The Science “Advances” Disproving the Mind Are Ever More Elusive

_{A friendly interview with an important neuroscientist makes that starkly clear} _{News
September 9, 2021

3

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

University of Sussex neuroscientist Anil Seth, author of Being You: A new science of consciousness (October 2021), is quite determined to stamp out consciousness as an immaterial idea. It’s “stubbornly mysterious,” according to Tim Adams for The Guardian. But, we are assured, “Advances in understanding how the brain functions undermine those ideas of dualism, however.” But those advances prove increasingly elusive. From the interview: Anil Seth: It’s the boring answer of continuing to do rigorous science, rather than proposing some eureka solution to “the hard problem” [the question of why and how our brains create subjective, conscious experience]. My approach is that we risk not understanding the central mystery of life by lurching to one or other form of magical Read More ›

Inside the brain. Concept of neurons and nervous system.

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post

News
Date
September 5, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Arjuna Das, Benjamin Libet, Michael Egnor}

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor on the Timing of Sensory Processing

_{One neuroscientist, encountering the timing, made up a theory that didn’t really work, but he was a great neuroscientist anyway} _{News
September 5, 2021

11

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor did a recent podcast with host Arjuna Das at Theology Unleashed, “where Eastern theology meets Western skepticism.” In the previous segment, Dr. Egnor talked about the troubles of being a non-materialist medical scientist, including demands that he be fired and death threats and so forth. In this segment, he talks about the meaning of “soul” in philosophy. Not a “spook” of some kind but common sense reasoning about life and death: Arjuna Das: So there’s a delay in how long it takes for the brain to process visual sensations compared to auditory sensations. So it’s a half second delay and this creates a problem. … We have no free will then. (01:57:50) Michael Egnor: If I can Read More ›

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post

News
Date
September 5, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience

Tagged
Neurons}

How Complex Is a Single Neuron in Your Brain?

_{An artificial intelligence network did not do nearly as well} _{News
September 5, 2021

2

Neuroscience}

Every single neuron in your brain is this complex: Today, the most powerful artificial intelligence systems employ a type of machine learning called deep learning. Their algorithms learn by processing massive amounts of data through hidden layers of interconnected nodes, referred to as deep neural networks. As their name suggests, deep neural networks were inspired by the real neural networks in the brain, with the nodes modeled after real neurons — or, at least, after what neuroscientists knew about neurons back in the 1950s, when an influential neuron model called the perceptron was born. Since then, our understanding of the computational complexity of single neurons has dramatically expanded, so biological neurons are known to be more complex than artificial ones. Read More ›

Electrocardiogram in hospital surgery operating emergency room showing patient heart rate with blur team of surgeons background

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post

News
Date
September 3, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
brain, Consciousness, mind, Sam Parnia}

Why Some Scientists Think Consciousness Persists After Death

_{We should not assume that people who are near death do not know what we are saying} _{News
September 3, 2021

4

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

A very significant change that happened in the last century or so has been the ability of science professionals to see what happens when people are thinking, especially under traumatic conditions. It was not a good moment for materialist theories. Here is one finding (there are many others): Death is a process, usually, not simply an event. Consciousness can persists after clinical death. A more accurate way of putting things might be that the brain is able to host consciousness for a short period after clinical death. Some notes on recent findings: The short answer is, probably, yes: Recent studies have shown that animals experience a surge in brain activity in the minutes after death. And people in the first Read More ›

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post

News
Date
September 1, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience

Tagged
Memory}

Our Brains Break DNA in Order to Learn More Quickly

_{Memory loss in old age may be easier to understand if we know more about the mechanisms our brains are using to keep key memories intact} _{News
September 1, 2021

5

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience}

An interesting 2015 discovery sheds some light on memory issues: The urgency to remember a dangerous experience requires the brain to make a series of potentially dangerous moves: Neurons and other brain cells snap open their DNA in numerous locations — more than previously realized, according to a new study — to provide quick access to genetic instructions for the mechanisms of memory storage. David Orenstein, “Memory-making involves extensive DNA breaking” at MIT News (July 14, 2021) The paper is open access. Jordana Cepelowicz explains an “unsettling” discovery made by Li-Huei Tsai’s team at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory: … to express learning and memory genes more quickly, brain cells snap their DNA into pieces at many key Read More ›

Ultrasonic transducer on the blue background

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post

Michael Egnor
Date
August 30, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Featured, Robert Epstein}

A Neuroscience Theory That Actually Helps Explain the Brain

_{Robert Epstein’s “transducer” theory is an instance of getting something right} _{Michael Egnor
August 30, 2021

4

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Many of my posts here at Mind Matters News entail debunking nonsensical materialist theories of the mind–brain relationship. It is altogether fitting and proper that I do so. But, at times, thoughtful and very promising ideas are proposed by modern neuroscientists. One of those ideas is discussed in an essay in Discover Magazine by neuroscientist Robert Epstein. Epstein, the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today Magazine, is a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California and holds a doctoral degree from Harvard University. He proposes that we re-examine a theory that has had a number of prominent proponents over the past several centuries. It is the theory that the brain is a type of Read More ›

AI (Artificial Intelligence) concept. Deep learning. Mindfulness. Psychology.

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post

Michael Egnor
Date
August 30, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Religion

Tagged
Featured}

Is Brain Science Helping Us Understand Belief in God?

_{To the extent that materialist researchers are still looking for a God switch in the brain, no, it doesn’t} _{Michael Egnor
August 30, 2021

5

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Religion}

A recent article about a Harvard neuroscientist’s research on the correlates of religious experience in the brain raises many familiar questions about the relevance of neuroscience to religious experience. Michael Ferguson is a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School. He grew up as a Mormon and was quite religious. But, he reports, his beliefs have changed. That’s probably fairly common at Harvard –- there is a pervasive and palpable bias against serious religious beliefs in many of our leading universities. Nonetheless, Ferguson thought, As a scientist, I can’t help but wonder what it is about these types of [religious] experiences that made them feel so rich and so profound. Emma Yasinski, “Religion on the Brain” at The Scientist (Jul 13, 2021) Read More ›

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post

News
Date
August 28, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Brain size (impact)}

Can Science Really Engineer a Bigger Human Brain?

_{Computational neuroscientist Daniel Graham wonders why we would bother. There is no strict relationship between brain size and intellectual achievement} _{News
August 28, 2021

4

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

In a three-part series at Psychology Today, Hobart and William Smith College computational neuroscientist Daniel Graham, author of An Internet in Your Head: A New Paradigm for How the Brain Works(2021), tackles that question: First, most parts of the human brain are already larger than they should be for an animal life form of our size. But the difference is hardly commensurate with average human intelligence vs. average chimpanzee intelligence. Sure enough: Neuroscientists have struggled to explain what our extra brain mass actually accomplishes. The best guess seems to be that, at the species level, our extra brain mass allows us to store more lifetime memories. One piece of evidence for this is that bigger-brained (and therefore bigger-bodied) mammals also Read More ›

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post

Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 26, 2021

Categorized
Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience

Tagged
Memory, Octopus (and pain)}

Cuttlefish Have Good Memories, Even in Old Age

_{They are cephalopods and many types of cephalopod show a number of intelligent characteristics which we are only beginning to investigate} _{Denyse O'Leary
August 26, 2021

6

Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience}

Octopuses have been called a “second genesis” of intelligence, that is, they are invertebrates with high intelligence, instead of vertebrates. But their close relatives, squid and cuttlefish (they are all cephalopods), are not far behind, according to recent research. One unusual finding is that cuttlefish have very good memories: Can you remember what you had for dinner last Tuesday? Or on this day last year? It turns out that cuttlefish can, right up to old age – the first animal we’ve found that doesn’t show signs of deterioration in memory function over time. David Nield, “The Incredible Brains of Cuttlefish Hold Memories That Never Seem to Fade” at ScienceAlert (18 August 2021) Of course, cuttlefish live only a couple of Read More ›

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post

Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 24, 2021

Categorized
Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience}

Do Brains Really Evolve? The Horseshoe Crab’s Brain Didn’t

_{It’s very rare to find an intact fossil brain but a rare combination of minerals preserved one from 310 million years ago} _{Denyse O'Leary
August 24, 2021

4

Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience}

Recently, paleontologist Russell Bicknell and colleagues found a fossil horseshoe crab in the Yale Peabody Museum, originally from the Mazon Creek fossil beds near Chicago. That, in itself wasn’t spectacular but, for geological reasons, the creature’s brain was preserved, an extremely rare situation. So how much had the horseshoe crab’s brain changed in 310 million years? Not at all, really: A new beautifully preserved fossil of a horseshoe crab has now revealed that their brains have hardly changed since at least the Carboniferous Period… The brain structure of the ancient crab is almost identical to that of living species. In fact, it is this extraordinary similarity that meant the researchers could be confident that what they were looking at was Read More ›

Adult and child hands holding encephalography brain paper cutout, Epilepsy and alzheimer awareness, seizure disorder, mental health concept

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post

News
Date
August 24, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Arjuna Das, epilepsy, Featured, free will, Michael Egnor, Promissory materialism}

Epilepsy: If You Follow the Science, Materialism Is Dead

_{Continuing a discussion with Arjuna Das at Theology Unleashed, Dr. Egnor talks about how neurosurgery shows that the mind is not the brain} _{News
August 24, 2021

12

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor did a recent podcast with Arjuna Das at Theology Unleashed, “where Eastern theology meets Western skepticism.” In the previous segment, they discussed the way in which people’s minds sometimes become much clearer near death (terminal lucidity). Dr. Egnor suggested that that may demonstrate that the brain constrains the mind (rather than creating it). In this segment, they look at objections raised to the view that epilepsy provides evidence for the mind as not merely a function of the brain. Dr. Egnor begins by focusing on the work of Wilder Penfield, the founder of epilepsy surgeries, who worked in Montreal in the mid-twentieth century, “a wonderful scientist, one of the best scientists that neurosurgery has produced”: Here is Read More ›

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post

Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 20, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Defending the Mind’s Reality at a Materialist Cocktail Party

_{What to say when you find yourself among self-assured elite sloganeers} _{Denyse O'Leary
August 20, 2021

11

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Most of the university cocktail set is quite sure that the mind is simply what the brain does. To doubt that, in their view, is to part company with science. And yet the evidence points in the opposite direction. If you are stuck with them, here are some snatches of their usual brilliance, along with suggested replies and their sources. Arguments from evolution Claim: We are just animals so, as we might expect, the human brain is not really unique. The human, mouse, and fly brains all use the same basic mechanisms!1 Response: That’s the remarkable part. What we do with our brains sets us apart. And greater size doesn’t really account for that. Lemurs, whose brains are only 1/200th Read More ›

Caregiver supporting sick woman with cancer dying in the hospital

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post

News
Date
August 17, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Arjuna Das, Featured, John Searle, Michael Egnor, Stephen Post, Terminal lucidity}

Why Do Some People’s Minds Become Much Clearer Near Death?

_{Arjuna Das and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discuss the evidence for terminal lucidity at Theology Unleashed “where Eastern theology meets Western skepticism.”} _{News
August 17, 2021

9

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor did a recent podcast with Arjuna Das at Theology Unleashed, “where Eastern theology meets Western skepticism.” In the previous segment, they discussed the way in which the brain actually constrains the mind (rather than creating it). In this segment, they look at how the human mind often becomes much more sharp and clear near death. Here is a partial transcript and notes for the 1 hour 26 minute mark to the 1 hour 32 minute mark: Arjuna Das: You’re either doing science or you’re defending your dogma. (01:25:59) Michael Egnor: Exactly. John Searle, a philosopher of mind, who is an atheist and not a dualist has a tremendous distaste for materialism. And he commented one time, ”When Read More ›