Today is Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. The theory of evolution by natural selection might be the single most fertile and elegant scientific hypothesis of all time. To celebrate the bicentennial, I've been reading the two volume biography by Janet Browne, The Tide Turns
Friday, January 30th, 2009
Poverty and Brain Function
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
According to The USA Today:
A new study finds that certain brain functions of some low-income 9- and 10-year-olds pale in comparison with those of wealthy children and that the difference is almost equivalent to the damage from a stroke.
This from a study to be published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience this year. This raises some important questions in political philosophy, and should cause us to seriously question certain free market conceptions of justice that presume… Read More
A new study finds that certain brain functions of some low-income 9- and 10-year-olds pale in comparison with those of wealthy children and that the difference is almost equivalent to the damage from a stroke.
This from a study to be published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience this year. This raises some important questions in political philosophy, and should cause us to seriously question certain free market conceptions of justice that presume… Read More
Scanning the Brain, Finding Pictures
Saturday, December 13th, 2008
In a remarkable use of fMRI technology, researchers in Japan have been able to use brain imaging to map blood flow changes in the brain as subjects viewed images. After "learning" how blood flow changed when subjects viewed one set of images (simple characters, for example) a computer was able to reconstruct what the subjects were looking at when they were shown new images.
Bad ass.
See more at Pinktentacle.com.
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If you absolutely must think when drinking, don’t do it alone
Friday, December 5th, 2008
An interesting study recently showed that while alcohol reduced the competence of individuals performing tasks requiring vigilance (counting the the's in an article), those negative effects were mitigated when the drunks were surrounded by other drunks. One suspects that the presence of the others raised their awareness that they were incapacitated, triggering compensatory attention. Interesting result.
The Hypnotized Brain
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
Hypnosis is a strange phenomenon, bound to invite skepticism. Now, with technologies such as fMRIs, some of that skepticism can be assuaged. A recent study by a group at the Weizmann Institute in Israel confirms the fact that at least in the case of post-hypnotic amnesia ("PHA," in which subjects are hypnotised to forget something until a cancelling command is uttered) pre-conscious brain behavior is significantly modified.
In the study, a group of subjects susceptible to this hypnotism were asked to watch a movie after… Read More
Our Pattern Seeking Brains
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
From Scientific American
When we feel like we don't have command of our own fate, our brains often invent patterns that offer a sense of self-control. Some folks knock on wood or step over cracks in the sidewalk. Scientists call this illusory pattern perception. Work published in the October 3rd issue of the journal Science offers a look inside our heads as they try to make us feel less helpless.
Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin devised six experiments to test students' reactions to different situations… Read More
When we feel like we don't have command of our own fate, our brains often invent patterns that offer a sense of self-control. Some folks knock on wood or step over cracks in the sidewalk. Scientists call this illusory pattern perception. Work published in the October 3rd issue of the journal Science offers a look inside our heads as they try to make us feel less helpless.
Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin devised six experiments to test students' reactions to different situations… Read More
The Big Bounce
Saturday, September 20th, 2008
An interesting article in the new Scientific American discusses the possible implications of quantum gravity theory for Cosmology. In my limited understanding, quantum gravity theory was developed as an alternative to string theory in an attempt to reconcile Einsteins theory of general relativity with quantum theory--both of which are well confirmed but seem to conflict. One of the surprising predictions of quantum gravity theory is that space-time is atomistic--not continuous, as one… Read More
Japanese Foot Pads Debunked
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
Last spring, I was eating dinner in a semi-fancy restaurant that incongruously had flat screen TVs playing news in the corner. (This is very Dallas, by the way.) My taste for food faded as I saw a commercial for Japanese Foot Pads which reportedly sucked various toxins from your feet while sleeping. It was both gross and grossly implausible. Here's the ad:
Fine-Tuning Questioned Empirically
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
One of the more interesting arguments for the existence of God claims that our universe is "finely tuned" so that life will emerge. In other words, with only slight variations in the physical constants the universe could not bear life, and the best way to explain the aptness of this universe is that the constants were set by an entity that wished for life to emerge. There are problems with the argument, of course, but the basic empirical premise is usually accepted--that the conditions under which a universe would bear life are rare. An interesting result to be published in The Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, however, questions… Read More