MetaFilter posts tagged with brain and neurology

What's The Question About Your Field That You Dread Being Asked?

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 07:19:35 -0800

"Maybe it's a sore point: your field should have an answer (people think you do) but there isn't one yet. Perhaps it's simple to pose but hard to answer. Or it's a question that belies a deep misunderstanding: the best answer is to question the question."

Intelligence Tests

kliuless — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:40:00 -0800

Is Psychometric g a Myth? - "As an online discussion about IQ or general intelligence grows longer, the probability of someone linking to statistician Cosma Shalizi's essay g, a Statistical Myth approaches 1. Usually the link is accompanied by an assertion to the effect that Shalizi offers a definitive refutation of the concept of general mental ability, or psychometric g." Myths, Sisyphus and g - "Over the years I have not encountered a single endorser of Shalizi's article who actually understands the relevant subject matter. His article is loved for its reassuring conclusions, not the strength of its arguments. I am sure many 'thinkers' resisted Darwinism, the abandonment of geocentrism, and even the notion that the Earth is a sphere, for similar psychological reasons." Nuthin' but a 'g' thang

So I've always had the intuitive hypothesis that there are different types of intelligence; that different people tend to process information in different ways, whether due to habit or nature. But then there are all those people who say that intelligence can be boiled down to a single factor, the mysterious "g" (which I assume stands for either "general intelligence" or "gangsta"). Since this went against years of casual observation, I was somewhat pleased to see the eminent Cosma Shalizi write an essay debunking the notion of "g". But then I saw this blog post defending the notion of "g", and claiming that Shalizi makes a bunch of errors. Basically, the disagreement revolves around the question of why most or all psychometric tests and tasks seem positively correlated with each other. Shalizi points out that this correlation structure will naturally lead to the emergence of a "g"-like factor, even if one doesn't really exist; his opponent points out that if no "g" exists, it should be possible to design uncorrelated psychometric tests, which so far has proven extremely difficult to do. The latter post, by a pseudonymous blogger calling himself "Dalliard", contains a bunch of references to psychometric research that I don't know about and have neither the time nor the will to evaluate, so I'm a bit stumped. Normally I'd leave the matter at that, shrug, and go read something else, but I realized that my intuitive hypothesis about intelligence didn't really seem to be explicitly stated in either of the posts. So I thought I'd explain my conjecture about how intelligence works. In a nutshell, it's this: What if there are multiple "g's"? ...just imagine several dozen hyperplanes, and project them all onto one hyperplane... Remember that psychometric tests are simple mental tasks, but most of the mental tasks we do are complex, like computer programming or chess or writing. And for those tasks, learning and practice matter as much as innate skill, or more (for example, see this study about the neurology of chess players). Therefore, everyone can be "smart" in some way, if "smart" means "good at some complex mental task".

also btw To Make Mice Smarter, Add A Few Human Brain Cells (previously)

the squidgy 1.5kg lump of pink stuff in our heads

cthuljew — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 22:23:58 -0800

NeuroBollocks: Debunking pseudo-neuroscience so you don't have to.

SPAUN of the living

kliuless — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 06:09:00 -0800

The simulated brain - "First computer model to produce complex behaviour performs almost as well as humans at simple number tasks." [1,2,3,4,5,etc.]

What's gonna happen outside the window next?

cthuljew — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 13:51:19 -0800

Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

I would just show you my butt, right now.

lazaruslong — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:44:58 -0800

Ze Frank previously and Rainn Wilson talk about the Teen Brain.

Near Death, explained

anazgnos — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:27:17 -0800

"...Pam agreed to die in order to save her life—and in the process had what is perhaps the most famous case of independent corroboration of out of body experience (OBE) perceptions on record...Pam later said, she felt herself “pop” out of her body and hover above it, watching as doctors worked on her body. Although she no longer had use of her eyes and ears, she described her observations in terms of her senses and perceptions...with considerable accuracy.

NDE studies [such as these] suggest that after physical death, mind and consciousness may continue in a transcendent level of reality that normally is not accessible to our senses and awareness."

Near Death, explained. Excerpted from “The Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives.”

Brain doctors, doing their thing

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 06:20:12 -0800

Brain Tumors: symptoms, types, a man who hunts them (and what drives him) and a vivid video of the removal of one.

Growing New Senses

nangar — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:58:28 -0800

More evidence of brain plasticity: Some blind people are able to use echolocation to perceive space and objects around them in surprising detail, even though the time differences in echoes necessary to do this are two small to be consciously perceived. An fMRI study by Lore Thaler, Stephen Arnott and Melvyn Goodale revealed that people who are especially adept at this use their calcarine cortex (a.k.a. V1 or primary visual cortex) to process spatial information from the echoes. The original paper. A shorter discussion. (Previously)

political orientation correlated with brain structure

wilful — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 20:58:10 -0800

Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults, Ryota Kanai, Tom Feilden, Colin Firth, Geraint Rees. Current Biology - 26 April 2011 (Vol. 21, Issue 8, pp. 677-680) [Full text .pdf]

Political liberalism and conservatism were correlated with brain structure

Liberalism was associated with the gray matter volume of anterior cingulate cortex

Conservatism was associated with increased right amygdala size

Results offer possible accounts for cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives

Colin Firth's co-authorship explained here, here and here (in his own words).

Shoot it in the head! Shoot it in the head!

cthuljew — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:33:00 -0800

The Zombie Autopsies with Steven Schlozman, MD (SLVimeo)

Squishy Goodness

cthuljew — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 23:07:13 -0800

Charlie Rose: The Brain Series

"Poetry is still beautiful, taking me with it."

zarq — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 07:03:19 -0800

A memoir of living with a brain tumour: "For art critic Tom Lubbock, language has been his life and his livelihood. But in 2008, he developed a lethal brain tumour and was told he would slowly lose control over speech and writing. This is his account of what happens when words slip away." Articles by Tom Lubbock, from Journalisted.

The Neurology of Morality

darkstar — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:41:56 -0800

Researchers at MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences have identified two "morality centers" of the brain. In two separate experiments, they have shown a correlation between a particular part of the brain and the ability to make moral jusgments related to intent to commit a crime. In one experiment, patients with brain damage in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex of the brain don't consider hypothetical perpetrators to be morally responsible for their actions. In another experiment (noted on NPR today) the researchers showed that they could switch off the moral judgment function by applying a magnetic field to the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) of the brain. The TPJ has also been implicated in "out of body experiences", both in cases of brain damage and by artificially stimulating the area.

Me Tarzan. You Jane. He Skeptic.

grumblebee — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:02:46 -0800

This article, about differences between male and female brains, is doing the rounds on various blogs. (I found it via reddit.) Meanwhile, debunkers are doing their best to rip the author a new asshole.

The "boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport."

phrontist — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:55:54 -0800

Does american football unavoidably lead to brain damage over time? Does a culture favoring perseverance at the expense of well being begin in high school?

I await Trepanation with great Trepidation.

phrontist — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:01:21 -0800

We've discussed trepanation, the boring of holes in the head as practiced in antiquity and by a fringe do it yourself-ers, before. There now seems to be research indicating that the procedure may have medical merit, and even help stave off age related cognitive decline. This curious research brought to you by the Beckly Foundation which "promotes the investigation of consciousness and its modulation from a multidisciplinary perspective" and has a sweet logo.

We'll remember you.

dmd — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:45:37 -0800

Henry G. Molaison, known to psychology and neurology students worldwide as "H.M.", dies. Previously.

Maturing brains.

Meatbomb — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:56:31 -0800

Exactly how mental maturity develops—and the anatomy responsible for its emergence—is being revealed.

I, for one, welcome...

delmoi — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 09:43:30 -0800

[scifilter] Scientists use a supercomputer to simulate a biological neural structure "as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain"

Mind control

blahblahblah — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 10:23:05 -0800

Typing with your brain. A new device, picture d here, allows people to type with only their thoughts, though only slowly. Add this to the monkey-brain controlled robot arm (avi), and the soon-to-be commercially available BrainGate implant, [previously], and you've got, well, an interesting future...

Music

adamms222 — Wed, 27 Nov 2002 05:34:56 -0800

Rock n Roll! We know that Sex and Drugs ain't good for us, but researchers at McGill University are using very fancy devices to learn how our brains react to music. (Probably not much to discuss, but it's an interesting article)

Tumor-induced Pedophilia

Irontom — Mon, 21 Oct 2002 08:42:17 -0800

Tumor-induced Pedophilia - the BBC reports on an american man who, at the age of 40, developed completely uncontrollable and ammoral sexual impulses after developing a tumor in the right lobe of the orbifrontal cortex. After the tumor was removed, he returned to normal. More inside...

The discovery of mirror neurons

grumblebee — Thu, 08 Jun 2000 11:38:06 -0800

The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution — which I speculate on in this essay — is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.

--V.S. Ramachandran

(after you read the essay, you might be interested in the responses.)