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All About Empathy
What contributes more to creating a person’s identity (i.e. personality, behavior, intelligence)? Is it genetics, or is it the environment in which the person was raised? In other words, as Francis Galton might ask, is it “nature” or “nurture?” When it comes to how empathetic someone is, Frans de Waal, a Dutch primatologist and ethologist, […]
Dream Bigger, Darling.
As my good friend Cobb once told me, “Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” OK, fine, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from Inception isn’t real, but he does make a valid point. Oneirologists, those who study dreams, have traditionally viewed dreams as uncontrollable […]
Piano Teachers Must Be Neuroscientists
The familiar mantra “practice makes perfect” may be taken too literally. The definition of effective practice as the constant repetition of a particular exercise – a golf swing, a tennis serve, a dance step – is faulty, as it turns out. Time has reported on a study published in Nature Neuroscience by neuroscientists at the University […]
Blue Brains
Henry Markram talks about the Blue Brain project
Left=Language in monkey brains, too
I would hate to marginalize the Creationists that may frequent this blog, but, it is becoming difficult to ignore all of the evidence for Evolution piling up higher and higher. This conglomerate of information is contributed to by almost all fields of study- from Archeology to Biology, and in a recent surge in the rapidly […]
Who is John Galt? Obviously, Not a Neuroscientist.
Capitalism gained a solid foundation in the 19th and 20th centuries due to the development of several philosophies of human nature, all of which proposed a rational, self-sufficient individual to be the most important element in any society. One author in particular, the famously arrogant Ayn Rand, who once said “emotions are not tools of […]
Turn on, Tune in, Drop out — Psychiatrists Reconsider the use of Psychedelics
“Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.” With this snappy catchphrase, and an eponymous book, Dr. Timothy Leary boldly endorsed the use of hallucinogens to the American public five decades ago. Citing potential medical benefits, Leary believed that psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin could help patients overcome psychiatric illness and facilitate a higher stage of […]
Forget Me Not
One hundred years ago, when Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) was even more of a mystery than it is now, amyloid protein aggregates were described as black spots that showed up on brain slices after autopsy. These aggregates, commonly known as plaques, denote the telltale sign that a patient has AD. Until recently, these plaques could only […]
Opening Eyes to Learning Difficulties
Learning difficulty and disability has long been a problem for many children, parents and school teachers alike. Dysfunctions such as dyslexia and motor disability have hindered the progress of countless adolescents across the country and continue to do so with every passing day. Now, studies have been performed that may centralize learning difficulties to the […]
Toasters With Feelings
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, or God. It has been a hallmark of faiths and religions worldwide. Humans have a natural tendency to assign intentions and desires to inanimate objects (“my computer isn’t feeling well today – he’s so slow!”), but they also strip “lower” beings (animals) of those […]