Are Researchers Taking Mystical Experiences More Seriously Now?
One challenge is that many people know only the materialist dismissals, not the evidence that is ignored or dismissed.
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How Quantum Theory Relates To Consciousness
Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon explains the background to Hameroff and Penrose’s contested quantum consciousness theory, which is beginning to be tested“Penrose consciousness,” in Sheldon’s view, escapes the paradoxes of non-computable problems that plague the trendy Universal Turing Machine model of the brain.
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The Theory That Consciousness Is a Quantum System Gains Support
Hameroff and Penrose’s Orch Or Theory sees consciousness as the outcome of a quantum collapse of a wave functionHow a quantum theory of consciousness will work out is anyone’s guess but here’s a prediction: It won’t help the cause of materialism much.
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Forget Stuff? Relax. Your Mind Is Likely Functioning As It Should
Recent research suggests that memories can sometimes be in a “dormant” stage due to interferenceOne group that worries a lot about memory loss is seniors fearing dementia. In most cases, their memory lapses likely originate in other causes.
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New Studies Point to Ways We Might Reduce the Effects of Dementia
What’s becoming clear is that, while dementia itself may not be preventable, its severity may potentially be mitigated by timely health care interventions.
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Consciousness Wars Still Simmer, Despite Peacekeeping Efforts
If neuroscientists are looking fruitlessly for a material basis for the human mind, progress may always be measured in conflicts, not insights.
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New Findings About Our Mysterious “Second Brain”
This “chat” among neurons, glia, and microbes could be important for research into the digestive system in relation to mood disorders, anxiety, and depression.
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Does the Brain Constrain the Mind Instead of Creating It?
There is no systematic, science-based reason today to think that’s not true and plenty of evidence suggests that it isTo insist that the mind is not real and can’t be constrained amounts to taking a philosophical position, not one based on science. There is no relevant science.
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You Can’t Always Be Happy
Our dopamine system both excites and tames pleasureHumans cannot achieve permanent happiness. Earthly pleasures do not ultimately satisfy us. The Bible said it. The neuroscientists have proved it.
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Human Brain Tries Immediately to Compensate for Language Loss
Neurosurgeons recently had a unique opportunity to observe brains undergoing the loss of the speech area and compensating in real timeThe observations showed that the brain needs specific lobes for normal processing but also — good news for rehab — that it compensates naturally.
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On the Limitations of Cutting-Edge Neuroscience
Neuroscientist Joseph Green separates the hype from reality when it comes to current brain research.The current dogma that pervades neuroscience is established by intellectual pressure rather than solid scientific evidence.
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Mice Pass the Mirror Test — Not a Self-Knowledge Test
Whether an animal recognizes its own image surely has less to do with self-awareness than with the role that sight — as a sense — plays in its lifeThe researchers, refreshingly, made clear that they were NOT making unsubstantiable claims about mouse self-awareness; they were studying neural wiring.
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Neuroscience Must Be Dualist, Whether or Not “Science” Allows It
Riccardo Manzotti and Paulo Moderato set out the dilemma: The human mind makes no sense apart from the forbidden dualist perspective.
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Researchers: Human Cerebellum Aids Higher Cognitive Functions
At one time, the cerebellum was thought to facilitate only functions like movement. But recent research shows that it’s more complexIt’s not wise to bet against complexity in the brain. Or to bet that no differences will be found between the human brain and, say, the mouse brain.
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Night Shift: The Brain’s Extraordinary Work While Asleep
Lie down, close your eyes, lose consciousness, and the brain undertakes the heavy lifting that sleep demands.Sleep deprivation and sleep interruptions such as occur with sleep apnea are not mere annoyances but actually damage a whole array of functions.
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Study: Babies Start Learning Their Home Language Before Birth
Neuroscience researchers found that newborns responded better to a folk tale in French than in Spanish or English — when French was their mothers’ native languageBefore birth, the child is hearing the rhythm of speech rather than individual words, through the amniotic fluid; that may speed learning later.
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Claim: What consciousness studies needs is more Darwinism
The Darwinian view of the evolution of the human mind is, at best, a ladder with no upper rungsResearchers seem to have honed their skills in presenting failure as success and in portraying more of what hasn’t worked as a solution.
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Our Brains Don’t Really Rewire, Neuroscientists Caution
Professors Tamar Makin (Cambridge) and John Krakauer (Johns Hopkins) say that when the brain adapts to losses, it uses “latent capacities,” not new onesMakin and Krakauer caution that brain adaptation to overcome a disability is hard work. Perhaps it is driven, not by the brain alone, but by the restless mind.
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Will Neuroscience Ever Accommodate Immaterial Consciousness?
Joseph Green offers an informative account in Minding the Brain of the current state of neuroscience. What we now know is remarkable — but so is what we don’tJust what will neuroscientists do if — even in their own minds — they do not succeed in showing that the mind is merely what the brain does?
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Will the Octopus Ever Find Its Way Into a Tidy Evolutionary Tree?
New finds in genetics and neuroscience both shed light and deepen the puzzle of the almost "alien" speciesOctopus information-gathering is fundamentally different from that of intelligent mammals. Are comparisons in intelligence even meaningful then?
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