Mind and Brain – Page 78

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Science Discovers the Unexpected and the Obvious

March 30, 2011

Young’s Law jokes, “All great discoveries are made by mistake.” Here are some recent examples. Arch-istan: Think the world’s natural features are all well known? “Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society have stumbled upon a geological colossus in a remote corner of Afghanistan: a natural stone arch spanning more than 200 feet across its base,” […]

Amazing Facts

Neurons Know What to Do

March 27, 2011

Neurons are among the most vital cells in the body: after all, your brain is largely composed of neurons. Neurons are transmission lines of information that keep a body in touch with itself and the world. None of the other body organs would work without neurons. The increasingly powerful tools of microscopy are allowing neuroscientists […]

Amazing Facts

Sensing the World Requires Intelligent Design

March 24, 2011

How do our bodies make sense of the external world? Through our senses, of course; at least they are the entry points of data into the mind. Behind those senses are remarkable mechanisms that we use but do not actively operate. The design in their automatic operations is slowly being revealed with better observing techniques. […]

Mind and Brain

If Pigs Have Wings, SETI Could Be Robots

March 11, 2011

The SETI program is still waiting to catch a sentient signal from deep space, but in the absence of data, people are free to speculate. Michael Dyer, a computer science professor at UCLA, is certain that the first aliens to visit Earth will be robots. He even attached a probability to it, according to Adam […]

Mind and Brain

Is the Mind a Computer?

March 5, 2011

After a computer named Watson beat two contestants on Jeopardy last month, people are asking if the human mind is becoming obsolete. What are the similarities and differences between gray matter and deep blue? PhysOrg asked, “Machines beat us at our own game: What can we do?” For one thing, they should have […]

Media

Philosophy Roundup

February 27, 2011

Philosophy of science is a broad discipline incorporating many sub-disciplines such as intellectual history, sociology, ethics, rhetoric, logic, demarcation of science from pseudoscience, classification, discovery, verification, explanation and more. A dozen recent news stories discussed some of these topics. Medical ethics: PhysOrg reproduced an AP story about medical research on humans in the US in […]

Amazing Facts

This Is Your Brain on Bytes

February 11, 2011

It’s mind-boggling time. Some recent articles have tried to quantify the information capacity of the eye, the brain, and the world. Ready? Think hard. Eye boggle: Your eyes contain about 120 million rods and 6 million cones each. If each receptor represents a pixel, that is 2 x 126 million pixels, or 252 megapixels. And […]

Cosmology

Intelligence as a Cosmic Reality

February 6, 2011

The “I” in SETI takes “Intelligence” seriously. It requires that intelligence is a recognizable, quantifiable property of nature. The origin of intelligence is a question that separates theists from materialists – whether it is a fundamental or emergent property. Before engaging that question, it might be instructive to see how scientists who are not necessarily […]

Amazing Facts

Brain Synapse Machinery Is Finely Tuned

December 23, 2010

The New York Times published a brief article on brain facts that is astonishing, when you think about all that goes on in thinking. Nicholas Wade reported on a new inventory of the proteins involved in the synapses, the key junctions between neurons. The research team, led by Seth Grant of the Sanger Institute near […]

Early Man

News on the Mind

December 6, 2010

Here are a dozen recent stories dealing with brains, the mind, perception, motivation and other aspects of psychology and neuroscience. Nature and nurture: PhysOrg claims that scientists at SMU have resolved the nature vs nurture debate with a hybrid approach. Whether it satisfies critics remains to be seen. Perhaps they are still thinking inside the […]

Amazing Facts

Boggle Your Brain

November 19, 2010

A new animation of a trip through a brain shows mind-boggling complexity in more detail than ever before. The animation, posted by freelance journalist Elizabeth A. Moore on CNET News, represents years of work by Stanford University School of Medicine. Using green fluorescent protein in a mouse brain to light up synapses, and photographing the […]

Amazing Facts

Windows into the Mind

November 3, 2010

What would it be like to see things for the first time? You can watch the reaction on Live Science #1 and Live Science #2. Blind patients were implanted with a microchip that allowed them, for the first time, to roughly sense the visual input of objects in front of them. Amazing as it was, […]

Bible and Theology

Mind Matters

October 22, 2010

The conundrum of how reasoning could have emerged by an undirected evolutionary process persists. Atheists and materialists are convinced that natural selection is up to the task, while theists strongly disagree and use human rationality as evidence for creation by an intelligent source (usually God). Perhaps a few recent findings can illuminate on the options. […]

Intelligent Design

SETI: To the Unknown, Full Speed Ahead

October 16, 2010

This year marks the 50th year of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute and one of its most outspoken spokesmen, made the cover of Sky and Telescope’s November 2010 issue. He stands proudly over his Allen Telescope Array in his feature story, “Closing in on E.T.” celebrating […]

Amazing Facts

Brain Rewires for Lost Senses

October 11, 2010

Born without vision or hearing? The brain can apparently rewire itself to accommodate the loss, reported the BBC News. Dr Stephen Lomber, who led research published in Nature Neuroscience, said: The brain is very efficient, and doesn’t let unused space go to waste. The brain wants to compensate for the lost sense with […]

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