Clipmarks | wildcat's evolution collection

Comprehension Climbs When You Slooooow Doooown

Fri, 09 May 2008 10:54:41 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: clipversity, where art though?

It should take you two and a half seconds to read this sentence. Any faster and you won't absorb its meaning. The motor response of the retina, and the time it takes the image of a word to travel from the macula to the thalamus to the visual cortex for processing, limits the eye to about 500 words a minute. (That's peak efficiency; the average college student can expect a rate about half that.) "There is no such thing as speed reading," says Keith Rayner a cognitive psychologist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. "Not if your definition of reading is comprehending text." Studies show that fast readers fare worse than slower ones when questioned about the text. So, to get smarter, slow down. It's even OK to move your lips.

Tags: brain, reading, slowing down, comprehension

Thought control: it's the computer world's latest game plan

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:44:22 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “This is the tip of the iceberg for what is possible,” said Tan Le, another of Emotiv's co-founders, during a recent press demonstration. “There will be a convergence of gesture-based technology and the brain as a new interface - the Holy Grail is the mind.”

Clip Source: technology.timesonline.co.uk

First came the joystick. Then came the motion-sensing Wii remote. Now get ready for another radical and rather unsettling leap in video games technology: thought control.

Satoru Iwata, the president and chief executive of Nintendo - which is expected to sell about 25million units of its successful Wii video games console this financial year - has no doubts about the next gaming boom. “As soon as we think something in our brain, it will appear within a video game,” he told The Times in an exclusive interview.

“You'll probably need to wear some kind of hat or helmet or something.”

As far-fetched as it sounds, Mr Iwata's claim - which brings to mind the plot of Craig Thomas's bestselling 1977 novel Firefox, about a mind-reading Soviet fighter aircraft - is already coming true: the world's first thought-controlled game is expected to be launched by the Sydney company Emotiv by the end of this year.

Tags: gaming, neuroscience, mind, emotiv

Einstein, Newton displayed autistic traits

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:10:01 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Psychiatry tends to focus almost exclusively on the negative side of different forms of mental illness," Fitzgerald said in statement. "I want to show that psychiatric disorders can also have positive dimensions."

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton displayed symptoms of psychiatric disorders that may have been a key to their genius, a Dublin psychiatrist said.

Michael Fitzgerald, Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, said characteristics linked to autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger's syndrome are the same as those associated with creative genius, The Daily Telegraph said.

Fitzgerald, author of the book, "Genius Genes: How Asperger Talents Changed the World," said Enoch Powell and Charles de Gaulle both appear to have had Asperger's syndrome.

Speaking at a meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Academic Psychiatry, Fitzgerald said De Gaulle's Asperger's syndrome was critical to his success. He was aloof, had a massive memory, lacked empathy with other people, and was extremely controlling and dominating.

Isaac Newton was known to work non-stop for days and Einstein worked in a patent office because he was too disruptive to get a university job, the newspaper said.

Tags: einstein, newton, genius, creativity

Faster than the Speed of Light? VSL Theory Says, "Yes"

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:14:12 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

A brilliant young physicist João Magueijo asks the heretical question: What if the speed of light—now accepted as one of the unchanging foundations of modern physics—were not constant?

Magueijo, a 40-year old native of Portugal, puts forth the heretical idea that in the very early days of the universe light traveled faster—an idea that if proven could dethrone Einstein and forever change our understanding of the universe. He is a pioneer of the varying speed of light (VSL) theory of cosmology -an alternative to the more mainstream theory of cosmic inflation- which proposes that the speed of light in the early universe was of 60 orders of magnitude faster than its present value.

Solving the most intractable problems of cosmology in one brilliant leap, Magueijo’s varying-speed-of-light theory (VSL) would have stunning implications for space travel, black holes, time dilation, and string theory—and could help uncover the grand unified theory that ultimately eluded Einstein.

Tags: light, speed, vsl

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:14:59 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: and your answer?

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

A star-studded panel of scientists gathered to discuss those heady themes last night at the World Science Festival in New York City. Here are their answers in convenient nutshell form:

Marvin Minsky, artificial intelligence pioneer: We do something other species can't: We remember. We have cultures, ways of transmitting information.

Daniel Dennett, cognitive scientist: We are the first species that represents our reasons, and can reason with each other. "The planet has grown a nervous system," he said.

Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist: The critical unique factor is language. Creativity. The religious and scientific impulse. And our social organization, which has developed to a prodigious degree. We have a record of history, moral behavior, economics, political and social institutions. We're probably unique in our ability to investigate the future, imagine outcomes, and display images in our minds

Tags: question, deep question, human, meaning

10 Important Differences Between Brains and Computers

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:34:22 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Although the brain-computer metaphor has served cognitive psychology well, research in cognitive neuroscience has revealed many important differences between brains and computers. Appreciating these differences may be crucial to understanding the mechanisms of neural information processing, and ultimately for the creation of artificial intelligence. Below, I review the most important of these differences (and the consequences to cognitive psychology of failing to recognize them): similar ground is covered in this excellent (though lengthy) lecture.

Difference # 1: Brains are analogue; computers are digital

Difference # 2: The brain uses content-addressable memory

Difference # 3: The brain is a massively parallel machine; computers are modular and serial

Difference # 4: Processing speed is not fixed in the brain; there is no system clock

Difference # 5 - Short-term memory is not like RAM

Difference # 6: No hardware/software distinction can be made with respect to the brain or mind

Tags: computers, brains, metaphors

Your brain lies to you

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:28:19 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.

Clip Source: www.iht.com

False beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories - and mislead us along the way.

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned

Tags: brain, misleading, false beliefs

Lab Freaks Gone Wild?

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:40:43 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “What was once only science fiction is now becoming a reality, and we need to ensure that experimentation and subsequent ramifications do not outpace ethical discussion and societal decisions.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Scientists plan to make “cybrids” by putting human DNA into cow eggs.

The British government gave the go-ahead this week for two separate groups to experiment with the process. Scientists will “inject human DNA into empty eggs from cows, to create embryos known as cytoplasmic hybrids that are 99.9 per cent human in genetic terms,” according to The Times of London.

The government had planned to ban such cybrid research, but scientists protested, leading to the reversal.

The argument is an emotional and speculative one, scientists would say, conjuring images of lab freaks gone wild that no reputable researcher envisions. Nobody has suggested the cybrids be raised and let loose in London (or Manhattan, for that matter, where the movie will likely be set. I mean, whoever heard of London being taken over by cybrids?).

“Creating human-animal hybrids could irrevocably harm the basic human genetic makeup and intentionally or unintentional change what it means to be human,”

Tags: cybrids, dna, biology

Is Conscious Choice an Illusion?

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:08:27 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

How much of the decision making process do we actually have a say in? That’s the question being raised thanks to new research coming out of the Max Planck Institute. Using brain scanners, researchers were able to predict people’s decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.

The decision is not necessarily one that involves a lot of mental preparation – whether to hit a button with your left or right hand – so whether this study is representative of our own self-direction is up for debate. Nevertheless, questions are naturally going to be raised over whether we have free will at all, or whether conscious choice is just an illusion.

"Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done," said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist.

Tags: consciousness?, choice, free will?, illusion

Genetic 'telepathy'? A bizarre new property of DNA

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:47:42 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: life stranger than sci fi

Clip Source: physorg.com

Scientists are reporting evidence that intact, double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. And then like friends with similar interests, the bits of genetic material hangout or congregate together. The recognition — of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits — occurs in a way once regarded as impossible, the researchers suggest in a study scheduled for the Jan. 31 issue of ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

This recognition may help increase the accuracy and efficiency of the homologous recombination of genes — a process responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity. The new findings thus may shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which underpin cancer, aging, and other health problems.

“Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA,” said the authors.

Tags: dna, telepathy, recognition at a distance

The Extinct Human Species That Was Smarter Than Us

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:49:28 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

The superintelligent Boskops had small, childlike faces and huge melon heads.

“Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams,” says John Merrick in the play The Elephant Man. He might have been speaking for the Boskops, an almost forgotten group of early humans who lived in southern Africa between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago. Judging from fossil remains, scientists say the Boskops were similar to modern humans but had small, childlike faces and huge melon heads that held brains about 30 percent larger than our own.

ust as we’re smarter than apes, they were probably smarter than us,” they speculate. More insightful and self-reflective than modern humans, with fantastic memories and a penchant for dreaming, the Boskops may have had “an internal mental life literally beyond anything we can imagine.”

They also explore what the Boskops’ big brains tell us about evolution (why didn’t they survive?) and about the future of human intelligence (can we engineer bigger brains?

Tags: boskops, brains, intelligence

The Duplicates Paradox

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:38:52 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Personal identity is perceived as continuous through time. Yet this perception cannot be instantaneous, and must be based on memory. Given the fact that memories can be forgotten, altered or even fabricated, the question arises as to whether memories are essential for personal identity. Certainly no specific memory seems necessary for identity, but a perception of a continuity of the memory process is often believed to be. Subjective experience involves not just memory, but thoughts, desires, feelings and personality. Even when subjectivity is focused on the "outside world", this focus necessarily has a point of view. Any attempt to describe personal identity impersonally will lose an essential element. A self has both sensation and will.

Clip Source: www.benbest.com

The idea that personal identity (mind, self, will) is entirely contained in the molecular and biological structure of the brain (ie, is entirely material) implies that a duplicate identity could be created that is identical in every way except physical location

It is said that most molecules in the body are replaced every few years, presumably also including the molecules of the brain. This implies that the exact atoms and molecules of which our identity is constituted are not essential to that identity. Thus, lives and minds are much like a candle flame -- life, consciousness and selfhood continues with a material basis despite the fact that the exact material (atoms and molecules) change.

Personal identity is perceived as continuous through time. Yet this perception cannot be instantaneous, and must be based on memory

Tags: mind, philosophy, duplicates, paradox

Words in your brain

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:36:35 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.sharpbrains.com

Brain Teaser: Words in your brain, learn as you exercise!

Do you know where words are stored in your brain...?

In your temporal lobe! Here is a drawing of the brain so you can see where your temporal lobe is (in green) on a profile view of the right side of your brain.

As you know your brain has two sides (two hemispheres) connected by the corpus callosum. So you have one temporal lobe on each side of the brain.

Words in the brain are not stored randomly. They seemed to be quite organized. Research has shown that words that are often heard together (such as salt and pepper) or words that share some meaning (such as nurse and doctor) are connected or associated in the brain. Once you hear one, the other is activated.

Here is a brain exercise whose aim is to stimulate the connections or associations between words in your temporal lobe.

Ready to stimulate connections in your temporal lobe(s)? Enjoy! (Solutions are below. Please don't check them until you have trid to solve all the pairs!)

Tags: brain, words, training

Human culture subject to natural selection

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:10:33 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: physorg.com

The process of natural selection can act on human culture as well as on genes, a new study finds. Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that cultural traits affecting survival and reproduction evolve at a different rate than other cultural attributes. Speeded or slowed rates of evolution typically indicate the action of natural selection in analyses of the human genome.

"Biological evolution of inherited traits is the essential organizing principle of biology, but does evolution play a corresponding role in human culture?" said Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California-Los Angeles and author of Guns, Germs and Steel. "This paper makes a decisive advance in this controversial field."

The field of cultural evolution is controversial because not all historians, social scientists or even biologists agree that cultural change can be understood in an evolutionary context. Some say that human beliefs and behaviors are too unpredictable.

Human skin cells hide circadian clock

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:11:18 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

An internal clock hidden in human skin cells could reveal whether your body clock is out of sync with your lifestyle, say researchers.

Steven Brown of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and his colleagues knew that the brain’s circadian clock causes a gene called Bmal1 to be more active in the body’s other cells during the daytime.

To find out how closely matched this activity was, they used a virus to equip skin cells taken from 11 early-rising people dubbed "larks" and 17 late-rising "owls" with a firefly gene that would produce a visible glow whenever Bmal1 was active. “The result is light coming out of the cell in a 24-hour rhythm,” says Brown.

By monitoring the times when the cells glowed, they demonstrated that skin cells showed the same sleep-wake patterns as those reported in questionnaires by at least half the donors.

“Knowing that skin clocks ‘tick’ in the same way as brain clocks provides a nice tool to address whether a person is likely to be an early or late riser,”

Tags: internal clock, skin cells