El cerebro, teatro de las emociones Antonio Damasio, neurólogo, premio Príncipe de Asturias El estudio de las emociones desde el punto de vista de las neurociencias es un campo relativamente novedoso. Antonio Damasio es uno de los pioneros en este tipo de investigaciones y una de las personas con más autoridad en el mundo para hablar sobre el tema. Web personal de Damasio en la Universidad de Southern California.Información sobre Damasio en la web de la Fundación Premios Príncipe de Asturias.Entrada sobre Damasio en la Wikipedia (castellano, inglés, portugués). Eduard Punset: Dices que los sentimientos son esquivos, pero también que las emociones preceden a los sentimientos. Antonio Damasio: ¡Es cierto! EP: En las escuelas, en las instituciones o en un estadio de fútbol, a veces podemos encontrar racismo. AD: Estamos en un terreno menos desértico que hace diez años. La reflexión sobre las emociones es un campo menos desértico que hace diez años, Damasio explica a Punset. EP: Claro… AD: Sí, así es. EP: Claro… Así es. AD: Sí.
The Persistence Of Memory | Wired Science The great mystery of memory is how it endures. The typical neural protein only lasts for a few weeks, the cortex in a constant state of reincarnation. How, then, do our memories persist? It’s as if our remembered past can outlast the brain itself. But wait: the mystery gets even more mysterious. This means that every memory – represented as an altered connection between cells – cannot simply endure. The paradox of long-term memory has led neuroscientists to search for a so-called synaptic marker, a protein that would mark a particular synapse as a long-term memory and thus allow that synapse to maintain its strengthened connection for years at a time. In his latest paper, Si and colleagues have shown that this awkwardly named neural protein has a rather special quality, in that forms oligomers, or self-copying clusters. While Si has previously studied CPEB in sea slugs (Aplysia) and yeast, he’s now moved on to fruit flies, looking at an insect version of the CPEB protein known as Orb2.
Involving Physicians in Military Interrogations A recent New England Journal of Medicine article questions the ethics of psychiatrists being involved in interrogations. In 2006 the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the American Psychological Association (APA) issued statements that it is unethical for doctors and psychologists to be directly involved in the interrogation process. Directly involved also includes viewing the interrogation with the “intention of intervening.” Physicians are allowed to train interrogation personnel but are not supposed to tailor interrogation protocols to specific prisoners or detainees. In 2006, the military outlawed harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, hooding, and using military dogs. Some military psychologists have argued that they should be involved to make sure that the detainees and prisoners are treated well. Should medical and health care professionals be directly or indirectly involved in interrogation? Reference J.
The Psychology of Nakedness | Wired Science Editor’s Note: Portions of this story in italics below were found to come from LiveScience. The human mind sees minds everywhere. Show us a collection of bouncing balls and we hallucinate agency; a glance at a stuffed animal and we endow it with a mood; I’m convinced Siri doesn’t like me. The point is that we are constantly translating our visual perceptions into a theory of mind, as we attempt to imagine the internal states of teddy bears, microchips and perfect strangers. Most of the time, this approach works well enough. But this intricate connection between mind theorizing and sensory perception can also prove problematic. Do people’s mental capacities fundamentally change when they remove a sweater? In order to understand why sweaters and tank-tops influence the kind of minds we perceive, it’s important to know about the different qualities we imagine in others. What does all this have to do with nakedness? But the psychological reality turns out to be a bit more complicated. PS.
Exopolitica España - Exopolitics Spain - Documentales Energías Libres Esta es una conferencia dada por el ingeniero e investigador Thomas Valone, Ph.D., sobre la energía libre. Esta es una conferencia un poco más técnica, pero aún así es muy recomendable verla. Thomas Valone es uno de los pioneros a nivel internacional sobre la energía libre, ya que lleva más de 30 años en el tema. Esta conferencia tuvo lugar en el 2004 y básicamente explica cómo extraer la energía del campo de punto cero. Presenta las diferentes tecnologías para extraer la energía del vacío cuántico.
When you talk too much for Twitter Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience Marihuana Use and Its Effects - Moderate and Heavy Users The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse Marihuana - A Signal of Misunderstanding. Chapter II Moderate and Heavy Users The final groups of marihuana users are the moderate and heavy users. Heavy users seem to need the drug experience more often. Generally, the heavy marihuana user's life style, activities, values and attitudes are unconventional and at variance with those of the, larger society. Heavy users place particularly strong emphasis on impulsive response in the interest of pleasure-seeking, immediate gratification, and individual expression. The Boston free-access study permitted the Commission to observe a group of individuals whose life styles, activities, values and attitudes are representative of a segment of the unconventional youthful subculture. Individuals who smoked marihuana once a week or less were sought by the researchers but were exceedingly unusual among the population available for the study. The mean age of the subjects studied was 23.
The psychopath in us all - Science Show - 15 October 2011 [Excerpt from The Silence of the Lambs] Psychopaths are known to do well as CEOs, as big bosses of big business, are they not? Well, Alan Saunders says no, or it least they did so in The Philosopher's Zone on ABC Radio National, saying you need to be organised, not just ruthless as a captain of industry. And psychopaths are just too flaky! Well, you're about to hear how there is a spectrum of psychopathy. Adrian Raine: The seeds of sin are sown quite early on in life. A critical part of this limbic system is the amygdala, and there is an 18% reduction in the volume of the amygdala in adult psychopaths. That's adult psychopaths, but what about young children? One type of offender are the spouse abusers. Another form of crime is white-collar crime, and I want to clarify that these data, unlike the others, are not published yet, so I want to be very, very cautious about their presentation. We want to help children and families. Robyn Williams: Robyn Williams from the ABC in Sydney.
Las redes sociales crearán la conciencia universal – (Entrevista a Susan Grienfield, neurocientífica, La Vanguardia, 03/07/2011) | Historias de un practicante zen Tengo 61 años: la edad te hace más tú misma, pero sigo abierta a todo. Nací en Londres: estimulante. Soy profesora de Farmacología Sináptica. Quién es mejor, Mozart o Shakespeare? Si me permite, baronesa, es una pregunta estúpida. ¡Correcto! Porque el talento no se puede medir cuantitativamente. Como si fueran pichichis de la Liga… Porque lo que les hace genios no es su cantidad de genio, sino que el suyo era único e irrepetible. Midamos el esfuerzo y premiémoslo, pero no el talento. Algo que aprendes, pero no te enseñan. Incentivemos, pues, la diversidad de talentos, el genio individual de cada uno. ¿El mediocre no lastra al brillante? No hay estudiantes mediocres, sino personas que aún no han encontrado su talento: ayudémoslos a encontrarse ¡Demonios! Me parece usted muy inteligente. Intento ser yo misma. Nunca tuve tanto talento. Que en Oxford descubren que allí ya no son el más listo de la clase, y se frustran. ¿La mediocridad es la uniformidad? ¿Qué define nuestro cerebro? ¿Por qué? ¿Cómo?
Episodio 1: Assange con el líder de Hezbolá, Sayеd Hasan Nasralá The State of Mental Healthcare in Prison A new report by Policy Exchange reveals over a third of spending on mental health services in prison is wasted and calls for a drastic overhaul in treating mental health in prisons, including mandatory training for prison officers. Mental healthcare in prisons is widely overlooked as being a problem in the justice system, with overcrowding and high costs trumping mental health for column inches. Yet experts agree that there in a link between mental illness and reoffending in the community. Our prison population is at its highest ever. Although treatment of mental illness in prison has improved over the past decade, mental healthcare is not given the attention it deserves. The general public is largely unaware of the amount of mental illness in prison, although data on the subject has been available for some time. There is significantly less public sympathy for prisoners with mental illness than for those in the community. Spending is not only inefficient but also insufficient. Reference
Steven Pinker - La tabla rasa A don, Judy, Leda y John. Hacer alguien tabla rasa de algo: Prescindir odesentenderse de ello, por lo comúnarbitrariamente(Definición del DRAE). La concepción que podamos tener de la naturaleza humanaafecta a todos los aspectos de nuestra vida, desde laforma en que educamos a nuestros hijos hasta las ideaspolíticas que defendemos. Sin embargo, en un momento enque la ciencia está avanzando espectacularmente en estostemas, muchas personas se muestran hostiles al respecto.Temen que los descubrimientos sobre los patrones innatosdel pensar y el sentir se puedan emplear para justificarla desigualdad, subvertir el orden social, anular laresponsabilidad personal y confundir el sentido y elpropósito de la vida.En La tabla rasa, Steven Pinker explora la idea de lanaturaleza humana y sus aspectos éticos, emocionales ypolíticos.
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