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POPSIs Intelligence Sexy? <<<Many traits in many species have evolved through sexual selection specifically to function as fitness indicators that reveal good genes and good health. Sexually selected fitness indicators typically show (1) higher coefficients of phenotypic and genetic variation than survival traits, (2) at least moderate genetic heritabilities and (3) positive correlations with many aspects of an animal's general condition, including body size, body symmetry, parasite resistance, longevity and freedom from deleterious mutations. These diagnostic criteria also appear to describe human intelligence (the g factor).>>> (from abstract). So then, is there some sort of mirror neuron circuitry in the brain that excites a cortical g spot?
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POPSRomantic Science The old artificial polarities of science and spirit persist. Unnecessarily. 'The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science', Richard Holmes http://www.slate.com/id/2222360/pagenum/all
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POPSBrain mechanisms for behavioral flexibility "We hypothesize that single neurons probably cannot switch outputs in a short period of time, so the brain realizes behavioral flexibility by preparing separate pathways for each task through learning, and then chooses the appropriate pathways, rather than switching outputs, in a given trial." That statement would indicate the possibility that our brains increase in plasticity and flexbility via learning
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POPSHypnotic Trances: science confirms benefits According to a new study of the neural mechanisms of hypnosis-induced paralysis, Braid's definition was remarkably accurate. The study, published in the journal Neuron, demonstrates that hypnosis does indeed lead to increased activity in areas of the brain involved in attention, as well as in other areas involved in mental imagery and self-awareness. Hypnosis can therefore exert control over bodily movements by enhancing mental representations of the self (or self-imagery) and focusing attention on them. Read on »
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POPSWhy so many minds think alike? You're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something, but you hold the opposite view. Do you say something? Or do you just go along with the others?
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POPSBill Joy's Worst Nightmare Cont: Nanoscale structures offer the opportunity to interface with cells on their own scale. In that sense, they have the potential to become "a totally new interface for living matter," Lieber says. His vision for nanoscale devices is not just to study cells but to use them to communicate with and control them. That in turn could lead to more precise neural prostheses to treat blindness or neurological diseases. "My overarching interest," he says, "is to ask whether one can blur the distinction between an electronic nonliving device and a living device, which is the cell."
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POPSBrain Cells That Are A Key To Learning Discovered n experiments the researchers directly observed the convergent neurons where learning is suspected of taking place. These neurons responded to both a conditioned stimulus, in this case a novel saccharine solution, and an unconditioned stimulus, in the form of lithium chloride that made rats sick. Convergent activation is considered a key event for subsequent plasticity, according to Bernstein. Until now, however, there has been scant direct evidence of this activation during learning in the mammalian brain.
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POPSNeuroculture There is currently amazing exhibition at FACT, Liverpool, UK. It is based on sound and sisorientation through disruption of senses, but one room is wired via an artificial neuron to many locations in the UK, from football stadia to schools, where sounds are picked up and fed through software set to mimic thalamic thresholds and into the room at FAXT where you walk between a matrix of suspended speakers and through an everchanging soundscape of analogue real time sounds filtered by digital simiulation of fire/not fire neuron. Conceptually fascinating, experientially wonderful.
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POPSI Feel Your Pain: Neural Mechanisms Of Empathy
CIP patients showed decreased fMRI activation of visual regions, a result indicative of their reduced emotional arousal to the view of others' pain. On the other hand, in the CIP patients but not the controls, the capacity for empathy strongly predicted activation of key midline brain structures involved in processes linked to inferring the emotional states of others. These results suggest that in the absence of functional resonance mechanisms shaped by personal pain experiences, CIP patients might rely crucially on their empathetic abilities to imagine the pain of others, with activation of midline brain structures being the neural signature of this cognitive-emotional process. "Our findings underline the major role of midline structures in emotional perspective taking and in the ability to understand someone else's feelings despite the lack of any previous personal experience of it—an empathetic challenge frequently raised during human social interactions," concludes Dr. Danzig
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