Mind Hacks Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio - review Consciousness has become a hot topic for brain scientists. Once, we were content to leave the interminable mind/brain problem to philosophers and theologians. Speculation remained a CLM – a career-limiting move — for ambitious young researchers. No longer. Armed with novel tools, from genetic manipulation to brain imaging, flush with funding, and convinced that neuroscience has the key to the human condition, the hunt is on. Neuroscientists, especially those of us trained in the Anglo-American tradition, tend to be as mechanically materialist as was "Darwin's bulldog", Thomas Huxley, in the 19th century, when he remarked that mind is to brain as the whistle is to the steam train – a mere epiphenomenon. Consciousness is a term with multiple meanings. For biologists though, consciousness, if not an accidental epiphenomenon, must be an evolved property with a function of some benefit to its possessor. This, briefly summarised, is the latest version of Damasio's theory.
Review of Galantamine: the Lucid Dreaming Pill | The Dream Studies Portal So you’re considering the red pill… Galantamine has emerged as THE lucid dreaming pill. This natural supplement has been used for centuries in China as a memory enhancer, and was even noted by the ancient Greeks for its powerful mind-inducing effects. Now we know that galantamine indirectly promotes dreaming sleep as well as lucid dreaming, which is the art of becoming self-aware in your dreams. There’s a lot of hype about galantamine, so I want to cover the basics about how it works on the brain, the studies that have proven its effectiveness, and my personal recommendations for experimentation with this safe and natural supplement. I also want to be brutally honest about some of the mild psychological and physical side effects as well. Want to cut to the chase? Galantamine & Memory red spider lily (Lycoris radiata) Galantamine is found in the natural world in many plant sources, including the common daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus). How Galantamine Works On your Brain Laberge’s results?
Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience : A transcriptomic analysis of type I-III neurons in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis Abstract The activity of neurons in the anterolateral cell group of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNSTALG) plays a critical role in anxiety- and stress-related behaviors. Histochemical studies have suggested that multiple distinct neuronal phenotypes exist in the BNSTALG. We have addressed this lacuna by combining whole-cell patch-clamp recording together with single-cell reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (scRT-PCR) to assess the mRNA transcript expression for each of the subunits for the four key ion channels in Type I–III neurons of the BNSTALG. An unbiased hierarchical cluster analysis followed by discriminant function analysis revealed that a positive correlation exists between the physiological and genetic phenotype of BNSTALG neurons. Keywords Bed nucleus of the stria terminalis; Ion channels; α subunits; Patch-clamp recording; Single-cell reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc.
Sleep Helps Us Remember What We Need To Sleep Helps Us Remember What We Need To. The jury is back and the verdict is in. The long-term storage of memories occurs during sleep. The brain constructs and reorganizes its circuits while we sleep. The pivotal question is, This past week, a significant study caught my eye, one that can help us eventually answer that question. Sleep researcher Jan Born. In this study, a team of researchers led by Jan Born of the University of Lübeck set up two experiments to test memory. In both groups, half the volunteers were told immediately following the learning tasks that they would be tested in 10 hours. Sleep compared with wakefulness produced a strong improvement on test performance if the subjects had been informed about the test. The researchers also recorded electroencephalograms (EEGs) from the individuals who slept. For More Information: I. F. F. Sleep photo credit.
Theta Wave Brain Synchronization This is a replication of a Theta wave entrainment rhythm first created by scientists in the 1960s to lull patients into a deep, colorful, creative dream state. Listen to it for 10 minutes, longer if you can. The longer it plays, the deeper you’ll go. So go. How It Works The human brain produces different levels of electrical activity depending on the amount of information it is processing. Throughout the day, the brain lingers between four different types of brainwave patterns: Beta (12 -30 Hz): the normal, awake consciousness associated with busy tasksAlpha (8 – 12 Hz): the relaxed and reflective state, like those induced by closing the eyes during waking hoursTheta (4 – 7 Hz): a very relaxed state associated with meditation and some sleep statesDelta (3 and under Hz): deep, dreamless sleep Theta waves (at around 4 to 7 Hz) are the sweet spot for many brain functions.
BBC - Earth News - Monkeys 'display self-doubt' like humans Macaques 'self-doubt like humans' Monkeys trained to play computer games have helped to show that it is not just humans that feel self-doubt and uncertainty, a study says. US-based scientists found that macaques will "pass" rather than risk choosing the wrong answer in a brainteaser task. Awareness of our own thinking was believed to be a uniquely human trait. But the study, presented at the AAAS meeting in Washington DC, suggests that our more primitive primate relatives are capable of such self-awareness. Professor John David Smith, from State University of New York at Buffalo and Michael Beran, from Georgia State University, carried out the study. They trained the macaques, which are Old World monkeys, to use a joystick-based computer game. The animals were trained to judge the density of a pixel box that appeared at the top of the screen as either sparse or dense. When the animals chose the correct letter, they were rewarded with an edible treat.
The Roots of Consciousness: Theory, The Biological Perspective The Biological Perspective In the Introduction, I discussed the evolution of organized matter from the photon through particles, atoms and molecules to living cells which begin to differentiate in structure and function forming a wide variety of tissues and organs that play a specialized function in the human body. It is reasonable to assume all these levels of organization including the whole human being play a role in shaping consciousness. Particularly important are the nervous system, comprising brain and spinal cord, and the endocrine system, comprising a number of ductless glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream. The Nervous System Neuron cells are the principle units of the nervous system. The process by which pulses transmit across the neural membrane is electrochemical. Multi-Polar Neuron Bipolar Neurons Neurons are stimulated to fire by either sensory receptors or other neurons. Neuron cell body with synapses from other neurons Cross-section of the human brain Serotonin
Think time flies? Well actually, you may be right - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets - Gizmodo Time flies when you're having fun. But you're at work, and work sucks. So how is it 5 p.m. already? When we talk about "losing time," we aren't referring to that great night out, or that week of wonderful vacation, or the three-hour film that honestly didn't feel like more than an hour. No, when we fret about not having enough time, or wonder where exactly all those hours went, we're talking about mundane things. Why does that happen? First of all, yes In understanding any complex issue, especially a psychological one, intuition doesn't usually get us too far. But not today. "Philosophers have written on (the perception of time) for a long period, and psychology has been interested in it since its inception as a separate discipline — since the late 1800s," explains Dr. Brown says that common wisdom about how time "flies" is basically correct. This jibes with common experience as well as decades of experimentation. The secret, Brown says, is something called habituation. But why?
The Death Delusion « Kensho By Bard Canning “Afraid of dying? Don’t be. It’s never going to happen to you, and I can prove it.” It’s said that Albert Einstein once commented that the most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether or not the universe we live in is friendly or hostile. Surely death is the greatest threat that we all face. I do not agree. Before outlining my hypothesis, I should make it clear that the aim of my writing is the excavation and study of the truth. To put it simply: I do not believe in death. I do not think that we are immortal, far from it. It has been my experience that once the spectre of death is stripped of its shadowy mask it becomes much easier to contend with as a concept. The Alpha and the Omega “Death, in itself, is nothing; but we fear, To be we know not what, we know not where.” John Dryden Everyone eventually reaches the point in their lives where they become fully aware of the inevitability of their own death. It’s All in Your Mind Morpheus – The Matrix Mark Twain
Subliminal Motivation People often do things and can’t say exactly why they did them. While it might seem that “acting without explanation” is the result of poor attention or irrational impulse, it turns out that our brains are wired to do this. It is possible, researchers at INSERM in Paris found, to motivate half the brain without the other half being aware of what’s going on. The INSERM researchers discovered this by measuring how hard subjects could squeeze a grip with each hand. Here’s where the experimenters got tricky: they showed the coin image only to one eye, and only for 17 milliseconds. Although the subjects could not correctly guess which coin they had seen – confirming that they were not conscious of what they saw – they squeezed harder when presented with the larger coin if the hand grip was on the same side of the body as the eye that had seen it. The neuromarketing implications of this work aren’t clear. effort, inserm, motivation, subliminal
A mind of one's own Soul Dust: the Magic of Consciousness Nicholas HumphreyQuercus, 288pp, £25 Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain Antonio DamasioWilliam Heinemann, 384pp, £25 The republic of letters is in thrall to an unprecedented scientism. The word is out that human consciousness - from the most elementary tingle of sensation to the most sophisticated sense of self - is identical with neural activity in the human brain and that this extraordinary metaphysical discovery is underpinned by the latest findings in neuroscience. These beliefs are based on elementary errors. These pseudo-disciplines are flourishing in academe and are covered extensively in the popular press, in articles usually accompanied by a brain scan (described by the writer Matt Crawford as a "fast-acting solvent of critical faculties"). There are more cautious writers, but even for them the attraction of biologism seems irresistible. At times, the illusion of explanation becomes quite strong.
Weird Wired Science Austrian physician Franz Joseph Gall sought to understand the mind of murderers and other criminals by feeling the outside of their skulls. This practice, which he first used in 1796, later came to be called Now largely discredited, it turned out that neither Gall nor anyone could systematically link the bumps and lumps on the head to any regular patterns of behavior, criminal or otherwise. Psychologists no longer need to use scalp massages as diagnostic tools. They can now look at what's happening inside the skull using one of several types of brain scans. The most successful of these methods is the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scan, particularly the functional MRI (or fMRI). Patients are placed within a scanning device that causes nuclei within the cells to produce a rotating magnetic field detected by the scanner. Brain scans are clearly an advance over phrenology, but they also have their limitations. The "wow" factor is only part of the story.