Cognitive Science's topics - tribe.net

stoners forget things and are less aggressive? no way! way

blue-j — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:37:36 GMT

shocking news about people who smoke multiple joints every day for years:

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/brain-and-behavior/2008/06/02/the-brain-on-lots-of-marijuana.html

posted in Cognitive Science - 36 replies

daniel dennett "interview" with robert wright

automatthew — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:04:16 GMT

i just found this "interview," though it's really more of a debate, with daniel dennett and the journalist robert wright.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3133438412578691486&ei=Qr1SSOPtBoT0rQOY0q23DA&hl=en

i find it incredibly irritating.

dennett has this basic, intelligible coherence to his position and the complications and criticisms that wright insists on bringing into it seem totally misguided to me.

here's more about wright and his work...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonzero:_The_Logic_of_Human_Destiny

posted in Cognitive Science - 16 replies

Brain Region for Overcoming Fear, Anxiety Found

Dzikus — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:28:59 GMT

"Special cells in the brain allow animals to overcome fear and anxiety by recalling memories of similar situations when they were unafraid, according to new research. "

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080709-brain-fear.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/07/09/scifear109.xml

posted in Cognitive Science - 3 replies

Scientist Explains Humor

VoodooChild — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:50:53 GMT

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080612150144.htm

"Pattern Recognition Theory is an evolutionary and cognitive explanation of how and why an individual finds something funny. Effectively it explains that humour occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, and that this recognition is rewarded with the experience of the humorous response.”

I don't get it. Lots of patterns surprise us. Only some of them are funny. If you get pulled over by 5 cops on the way home from a bar, you might find the pattern surprising but I dont' think you're find it hilarious.

Oh, and apparently laughter is "fundamental to our success as a species." Gather around kiddies - it's evolutionary storytelling hour!

posted in Cognitive Science - 19 replies

Serotonin Levels Determine Sense of FairnessSerotonin Levels Determine Sense of Fairness

VoodooChild — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:36:42 GMT

"THURSDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) -- Levels of a brain chemical known as serotonin govern the way people react to unfair offers when they play the game of life, a new study indicates.

Serotonin, which carries messages between neurons, is involved in emotional control. One recent study found that the expression of anger in women was affected by variations in a gene governing the receptors for serotonin in brain cells.

The new study, reported in the June 5 issue of Science, had people play what is called the Ultimate Game, which is being used widely in psychological and neurological studies. The game has one player proposing a way to split a pot of money. If the offer is accepted by the other player, both get paid. If it is refused, neither gets a payment.

The researchers had some players make deliberately unfair offers: "I get 80 percent, you get 20 percent." They found that players given a chemical that lowered serotonin levels were more likely to reject an unfair offer.

Serotonin levels have that effect, because the chemical is involved in the activity of the prefrontal region of the brain, explained study author Molly J. Crockett, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge in England.

"One recent study on the Ultimate Game showed that when an unfair offer is accepted, you see activity in the prefrontal cortex," Crockett said. "Down-rating the emotional response makes it more unlikely that an unfair offer will be accepted."

In other words, lower serotonin levels also meant a higher level of resentment, so that an offer that wasn't as good as it might be would be turned down. Conversely, higher serotonin levels would make it easier to live in an imperfect world.

It's hard to apply that knowledge directly, Crockett said.

"What we did was have people fast overnight," she said. "On some days of the study, they took either a pill with all amino acids or a placebo. On the experiment day, they took a pill with all the amino acids but tryptophan. Over the course of several hours, that would have been converted to serotonin."

Knowledge about the role of serotonin in the emotions already is being put to use, sometimes legally and sometimes not, said research team member Matthew D. Lieberman, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Prescription medications such as antidepressants are known to affect serotonin levels, and the same is true of MDMA, the psychedelic drug whose street name is Ecstasy, Lieberman said. It is, he said, "a quick serotonin enhancer."

One everyday implication of the study is that brain chemistry "is going to affect how we judge other people and are treated by other people," Lieberman said.

A proposed experiment would have people play the Ultimate Game inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine that would produce images of brain activity, Lieberman said. "We could see, as we change serotonin levels, how the brain responds in an imaging study to fair and unfair offers," he said.

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/06/05/serotonin-levels-determine-sense-of-fairness.html

posted in Cognitive Science - 14 replies

Resources about "Ego Death"

Allison — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:06:10 GMT

I'm interested in getting to know about the concept of "ego death" a bit better. A lot of the web resources are all about LSD, which is fine, but I'd like to understand it through other avenues as well. Any links or books you can recommend would be wonderful. Primary sources are a-okay, too!

Thanks!
~A

posted in Cognitive Science - 44 replies

john searle talks

automatthew — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:12:23 GMT

so i hadn't gotten into searle that much other than knowing the basics of the chinese room etc. but in my search through google video i came across a few of his lectures and wow! he's a great speaker! funny, clear, precise, fast, powerful. really fun to listen to.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3295448672203577230&q=john+searle&ei=1HlZSOauOKGQrgOQtJzkDg&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=4m3&q=john%20searle&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iv#

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

memory loss from a concussion

blue-j — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:16:00 GMT

my brother-in-law slipped on some water in his company's bathroom, and suffered a grade 3 concussion. months later, he is unable to remember anything after the incident for longer than a couple hours at a time. needless to say, this is a deeply frustrating condition. he keeps a little book similarly to the fellow in the film "memento" to keep track of events. the damage was predominantly to the temporal lobe, i believe.

one of my biggest blindspots in cogsci is memory systems, unfortunately. i just have never gotten around to studying it. my family and i were hoping to find a popular science treatment explaining memory to get up to speed as much as we can. can anyone recommend a good popular book on memory and the brain?

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

steven pinker

Optimus — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:48:02 GMT

The Language Instinct author Steven Pinker

I have read works works by this author, "How the Mind Works" and "The Blank Slate".

Both are good reading in my regard, and I even recommended a gift copy to a professional psychologist friend.

I am interested in the first of the three works, which is "The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language" 2000

Has anyone here read this text? It was published prior to the second and third, and I am wondering if it should be on my list of books to read.

anybody?

http://books.google.com/books?id=ednWUqVRFpgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Steven+Pinker

posted in Cognitive Science - 16 replies

exposure to violence suppresses the brain's check on agression.

Alexyana — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:24:41 GMT

Here is an article i found interesting:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071206093014.htm

a snipet:
"Research Center have shown that watching violent programs can cause parts of your brain that suppress aggressive behaviors to become less active."

I would think this dynamic happens in actually being agressive, not just a passive observer.

Could it be that those who have problems checking their agression here in tribe have a less active part of their brain that suppresses aggressive behavior?

posted in Cognitive Science - 16 replies

Mobile Phones and Brain Tumours

Alexyana — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:35:56 GMT

Recent news of senator Kennedy diagnosis and on going news of possible links between certain brain tumors to electromagnetic radiation (this is the most recent one http://www.brain-surgery.us/mobph.pdf ) got me wondering:

with the plausibility of the dangers to our brains, shouldn't we demand less radiation exposure in our cities?

Are mobile phones the new cigarettes?

I'm thinking.. an ounce of prevention is worth plenty since there is no cure in many cases.

what do you think?

posted in Cognitive Science - 5 replies

Documentary on medicating kids.

Alexyana — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:30:49 GMT

Online documentary on millions of Kids medicated through questionable practices.

PBS Front line documentary: Medicating Kids.

Synopsis from website:

In recent years, there's been a dramatic increase in the number of children being diagnosed with serious psychiatric disorders and prescribed medications that are just beginning to be tested in children. The drugs can cause serious side effects, and virtually nothing is known about their long-term impact. "It's really to some extent an experiment, trying medications in these children of this age," child psychiatrist Dr. Patrick Bacon tells FRONTLINE. "It's a gamble. And I tell parents there's no way to know what's going to work."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/

posted in Cognitive Science - 1 reply

Weigh in... your opinion, that is

feiruz_al-bnefsagia — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:04:22 GMT

Discuss some interesting topics on CreateDebate like these:

http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Can_Artificial_Intelligence_ever_catch_up_to_the_level_of_performance_of_the_human_brain
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Do_you_believe_in_God_2
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Do_we_continue_to_exist_even_when_our_bodies_die
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Knowledge_-_Can_you_ever__really_know
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Do_you_believe_there_will_be_a_technological_Singularity
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/If_a_tree_falls_and_theres_no_one_to_hear_it__does_it_make_a_sound
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/How_do_Christians_believe_God_loves_us_amidst_such_suffering
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Should_people_take_Power_Naps_at_work
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Are_better_educated_people_less_likely_to_be_religious
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Is_your_brain_capable_of_identifying_sarcasm
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Driving_while_talking_on_a_phone_does_not_impair_my_driving_capabilities
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Do_you_believe_in_Free_Will_for_human_beings
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/What_is_still_missing_in_most_of_the_people_so_they_need_gods

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

sick in the head?

Fifi — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:54:24 GMT

I thought some people in cog sci may find this article about studies that looked at the effect of positive and negative thinking on cancer outcomes.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/fighting-spirit-wont-help-beat-cancer/2008/06/02/1212258694955.html

And a meta-analysis of studies.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/41346q716257u202/

posted in Cognitive Science - 33 replies

rehabilatative reading links

Optimus — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:22:42 GMT

I am interested in resources (online links) to research or others interested in _rehabilatative reading_.

Brain damage (for example: stroke and traumatic brain injury) reading rehab, that might add to organizing a successful program writing for rehabilitation from disability in chronic drug offenders.

I have most all of the tools, and would appreciate anyone who might offer new insight, articles, and/or especially links.

Thanks in advance,

Jon

posted in Cognitive Science - 2 replies

Oxytocin - The Trust Hormone

VoodooChild — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:35:42 GMT

"Oxytocin is a chemical associated with many of the "pleasurable" feelings you have, from basic trust, to love and orgasm. Researchers in Switzerland theorized that people playing social trust games might change their behaviors if given doses of oxytocin, since the chemical might artificially enhance their willingness to trust someone. Indeed, they were right: subjects dosed with Oxytocin were willing to trust people even after they'd been explicitly told that those people had behaved in untrustworthy ways in the past. People who had not been dosed did not trust the "untrustworthy" people."

http://io9.com/392583/the-trust-me-drug-that-makes-you-take-social-risks

posted in Cognitive Science - 26 replies

Neural Buddhism

Fifi — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:14:42 GMT

Some interesting perspectives on Buddhism and neuroscience - from a neuroscience perspective - that I ran across this morning that seemed relevant considering the general discussion going on. Since I'm not interested in flame wars or feeding trolls I'll stay out of any ensuing discussion but I thought this worth posting for people genuinely interested in neuroscience and science in general.

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php?p=293#more-293

posted in Cognitive Science - 108 replies

electroshock therapy

Alexyana — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:13:52 GMT

Surgeon and author Sherwin Nuland discusses the development of electroshock therapy as a cure for severe, life-threatening depression -- including his own. It’s a moving and heartfelt talk about relief, redemption and second chances.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/189

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

Brains vs. Computers

VoodooChild — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:12:06 GMT

An informative and readable article about some of the important differences between brains and digital computers, and the mistakes we can make when we take the computer metaphor too literally.

http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/03/why_the_brain_is_not_like_a_co.php

"Although the brain-computer metaphor has served cognitive psychology well, research in cognitive neuroscience has revealed many important differences between brains and computers. Appreciating these differences may be crucial to understanding the mechanisms of neural information processing, and ultimately for the creation of artificial intelligence."

posted in Cognitive Science - 26 replies

Non-Cartesian Cognitive Science, can you feel it?

Alexyana — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:36:15 GMT

From Kevin's recent post on Mind Science w/ Dalai Lama, I took that:

--the application of that science (I presume non-cartesian cognitive science) may/can be used to influence "positive" emotions, characterized in the brain or mind, to benefit lives
--Since the Dalai Lama is into benefiting lives thought many skilful means (meditation being one), he expects that science can be another means to increase positive emotions and reduce destructive ones, such as hatred and anger

So this brought me to my current interest:

the science of the mind as it relates to thoughts and emotions--particularly the emotions.

While cartesian cognitive science ignore emotions, non-cartesian cognitive science involves them.

To those interested in the emotion part of cognitive science, let's talk!

If you are willing, please share stuff on the science dealing with emotions and thoughts.

Thanks in advance.

posted in Cognitive Science - 14 replies

Dan Rather Mind Science Report w/ Dalai Lama

dimensional_didge — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:33:48 GMT

http://www.hd.net/drr313.html

Dan Rather’s April 8 edition of Mind Science Reports covers the topic of neuroplasticity, and how scientists, with the help of Buddhist monks and the Dalai Lama, are unlocking mysteries of the brain.

The report highlights a visit to Mind and Life board member Richard Davidson’s research center at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, where neuroscientist Antoine Lutz works with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche on various meditation experiments. Film footage clips are shown from the 2007 Mind and Life XV meeting held in Atlanta with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as well as footage from the 2004 Mind and Life XII meeting on neuroplasticity held at the Dalai Lama’s home in Dharamsala, India.

Sharon Begley, Senior Editor at Newsweek magazine, and author of Train Your Brain, Change Your Mind -- the book that came out of the Mind and Life 2004 neuroplasticity meeting -- provides additional insight into the genesis of neuroplasticity research. And the Dalai Lama tells Dan Rather, in a one-on-one interview, that he would consider participating in meditation research in the future.

Real-life success stories in retraining the brain to recover after a stroke are also included in this report.

The live stream report can be seen at http://www.hd.net/drr313.html and the transcript of this report can be found at http://www.hd.net/transcript.html?air_master_id=A5156

posted in Cognitive Science - 60 replies

Brain scanner predicts your future moves (New Scientist Article)

trance-formation — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:56:18 GMT

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/dn13658-brain-scanner-predicts-your-future-moves.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

posted in Cognitive Science - 10 replies

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2008

ultrasonik — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:57:51 GMT

Next week is the bi-annual consciousness conference here in Tucson. If you're in the area you might be interested to stop in for at least parts of it. I'll be there for most of it and can't hardly wait.

More details here: http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/tucson2008.htm

Anyone else planning on going?

posted in Cognitive Science - 1 reply

yay for coffee again

trance-formation — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:54:34 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7326839.stm

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

new related tribe - Positive Thinking (cross post)

StephanieMcWaters — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:21:29 GMT

Hey there, I thought that maybe some of you would be interested in this new, related tribe : D
Please join us, we would love to be able to partake of and share your thoughts, wisdoms, and positive energies with ours
Thanks!
~Stephanie

tribe.net/positivethinking

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

Somewhere in the Upper Cortex

JeanPowers — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:09:42 GMT

Somewhere in the Upper Cortex
_______________________________

“Hume could write Latin with his right hand
While writing Greek with his left”

Somewhere in the Upper Cortex

the intention
to write begins

this is fairly abstract

writing begins with the intention
to want to write

intention converts into action
below the level of consciousness

this is still, fairly abstract

They call it semantic retrieval
A binary code pulled from a hard drive

A bullet from a gun
Letters form a ballistic line along a curved trajectory

Your hand, arm, eyes
A complex process of more than fifty muscles
A push-
pull action

an indiosyncratic security system

the monster in the den –

is out.

___________________________________________________________________

After reading a book on counterfeiting, forging and parody of signatures I thought about this. I guess it is cognitive and don't really know if poet should even go here but thought it would make for a few good posts.

posted in Cognitive Science - 4 replies

a sickness in the land

RusticRambler — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:12:28 GMT

This article is endemic of a sickness in the land - drugging children to keep them under control:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070324/ap_on_he_me/drugged_to_death_9

Setting aside the question of whether these people should have ever been allowed to breed in the first place, a doctor prescribing these medicines to a 2 year old is a criminal. How could they possibly know a 2 year old is suffering from ADHD?

I find it incredible the number of young people diagnosed with attention disorders. I never heard of this when I was young, but it seems like every parent I've talked to in the last 20 years has had at least one child on some kind of medication for it, usually boys. I wonder if it is a result of excess early stimulation from television along a high sugar diet, or is it an easy way of keeping teenagers under control in a school that is not engaging them?

Is this a problem for real with kids, or is it a control method for adults and schools? And if it is for real, why has it become so prevalent in the last couple of decades?

posted in Cognitive Science - 71 replies

a neuroscience blog

Fifi — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:52:48 GMT

I thought some of the people in this tribe might enjoy this blog - I offer it up with the caveat that it won't to be to the tastes of all the participants here. It's very much a neuroscience blog geared towards hard science, skepticism and critical thinking.

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php

posted in Cognitive Science - 14 replies

Exercise as an antidepressant

VoodooChild — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:28:30 GMT

not surprising, but pretty cool!

http://www.newstarget.com/022299.html

"Common wisdom holds that exercise boosts your mood, in addition to benefiting your physical health. Terms such as “endorphins” and “runner’s high” are afloat in the popular lexicon. If you are a person who exercises regularly, or if you know someone who does, you will likely be aware of this bonus that comes along with vigorous physical activity. Ample evidence seems to suggest that exercise might hold great promise in the treatment of disorders such as depression. But anecdotal evidence and personal testimony do not a mental health revolution make. A new anti-depressant medication, for example, must be tested through clinical trials that prove its efficacy and safety before it can be put on the market.

In the last couple decades, there has been some interest in looking at the mental health value of exercise. Until recently, however, studies investigating the effectiveness of exercise in the treatment of mental health have not been conducted with the same level of scientific rigor as the clinical trials used to bring anti-depressant medications to the market. Limitations of previous studies have included the absence of a control group, individuals not being randomly assigned to study groups, and testing the effects of exercise on individuals who were not suffering from a mood disorder.

But a recent placebo-controlled study conducted by James Blumenthal, professor of psychology at Duke University and published in the September issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine compared exercise to a common antidepressant medication in a group of individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder, and found that exercise was as effective as the drug at alleviating symptoms of the disorder. In this study, 202 depressed adults were randomly assigned to one of four groups: one that received the antidepressant sertraline, one that worked out in a supervised group setting three times a week, one that worked out at home, or one that received a placebo pill. Sixteen weeks later, 47% of the group that took the antidepressant, 45% of the supervised exercise group, and 40% of those that exercised at home no longer met the criteria for major depression based on a standard measure of depression symptoms. Although the percent of improvement in the group that exercised on their own was less than that of those that exercised in a supervised group, and the percent improvement in the supervised exercise group was slightly less than that of the group that took the antidepressant, the differences between these three groups were not statistically significant. All groups improved a statistically significant amount over the placebo group, 31% of which no longer met the criteria for depression at the end of the study. This study provides powerful evidence that exercise may be a viable alternative to antidepressant medication in the treatment of major depressive disorder.

Other studies have found that the benefits of physical activity can be realized in individuals who are not depressed, but who feel, as is common in our fast-paced culture, that they are mentally worn out and need more energy. In his book, “Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise” Dr. Robert E. Thayer describes how exercise can be used as a personal mood-regulator, and cites one of his studies in which it was found that as little as ten minutes of brisk walking raised the mood and increased the energy levels of the subjects in the experiment for up to 2 hours after the walk.

More research is needed to replicate these types of studies and further define the mental health benefits of exercise. Questions yet to be answered include what types of exercise (e.g., cardiovascular or weight training), what level of intensity and duration, and what frequency of exercising will produce the most benefits. Additionally, gender or age differences may need to be taken into account when structuring an exercise program aimed at boosting mood.

With this much potential for positive mental health benefits, and with the most likely side effect being better physical health and possible weight loss, it is easy to imagine that if exercise were a marketable drug, it would be at the top of the drug companies’ lists of products to promote. If more research emerges that clarifies and confirms the potential of exercise in the treatment of disorders such as depression, we may soon hear doctors say, “Run two miles and call me in the morning” to their patients who complain of feeling down.

Sources:
Psychosomatic Medicine, September 2007;
Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise. Robert E. Thayer, Ph.D., Oxford University Press, 2001."

posted in Cognitive Science - 20 replies

Memory and Imagination

trance-formation — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:49:11 GMT

The 21st Feb edition of BBC Radio 4's "Leading Edge" had an item discussing newly discovered links between memory and imagination. Seems that we use pretty much the same areas of the brain in the same sort of way for each. It's a short but interesting piece.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/leadingedge.shtml

If you get to this too late (after 28th Feb), you can still search for the 21st feb episode on the left hand navigation system. The item was close to the end IIRC.

Adam

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

Request for comments on an hemispheric neurological experience

Kai_le_Flaneur — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:47:52 GMT

(As an American in Canada, I've learned to put "an" before words starting with an "h", and to spell "colour" correctly. ;-) I'm working on my pronunciation of "about".)

As I have probably mentioned in some thread or other, I'm in a philosophy degree program and taking a number of philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and philosophy of science courses. Currently I'm taking a course with the same prof with whom I took an AI course last term (overview and implications of AI theories from phil. of mind perspective), which he's dubbed "Neurophilosophy", borrowing the term from Patricia Churchland's book Brain-Wise, one of a number of texts we're using.

This week we've been reviewing the implications of split-brain (severed corpus callosum) research, and what it implies for lateralized (and non-lateralized, i.e., diffuse) hemispheric functioning and cognitive modularity and overall integration, and philosophical implications for the notion of self and supposed unitary consciousness. We looked at texts from Nagel and Mortensen, in response to texts by Dennett and Puccetti, as well as Churchland's.

After completing the weekly assignment this past weekend (responses to a list of questions about the texts), I started pondering an incident from my own history which may illuminate in some small way some of the issues, and more importantly, was a watershed event for me in my curiosity about neuroscience and cogsci, as well as linguistics, and set me firmly on the path of seeking answers in the biological rather than in some of the vague new-agey "spiritualist" notions I flirted with in my post-pyschedelic youth.

So I wrote down the following account and included it as an addendum to the assignment, along with some tentative conjectures (which I'm not including here; perhaps in followup) about the implications of my experience. The prof told me today he's going to follow up in email with some comments on it.

What Im curious to hear from members here is what implications it has for *you*, what issues of cogsci it brings up. This incident happened a long time ago, and it's only now, thanks to my readings that I'm beginning to think more deeply about it.

Thanks for any insights you might have.

------------------------
The whole subject of hemispheric functions and cognitive modularity is particularly interesting to me because of my own experience of them, which raises a number of phenomenological, neurological and identity questions.

I've gotten migraines all my life, since early childhood. I'm also left-handed, and an identical twin. (My twin died not long after birth, just like Elvis's. We were premature.) What does this have to do with hemispheric functioning?

A couple of years after I graduated from Berklee (College of Music, in Boston), I was working at my day job (database tester) one morning when I suddenly felt very odd, with a gradual numbness spreading on the left side of my body. As I later found out from the doctors, I was experiencing an hemiparetic migraine (one doctor also used the term hemiphlegic), where bloodflow to one hemisphere only is severely constricted, leading to a temporary mildly stroke-like condition. Since it was the left side (and only the left side) of my body that felt numb, it was therefore the right hemisphere that was so affected. (There was no pain, only the other symptoms which came on gradually.)

I was functional enough to walk down to the company clinic, and as I was starting to explain to the nurse what I was feeling, I tried to say “I'm feeling numb on the left side of my body” - but what came out was “I'm feeling numb on the *second* side of my body.” It was, as I also found out later, the first bit of a form of aphasia (there are quite a few varieties) affecting my speech, just as happens in many stroke victims. (Just a few years ago, my godfather, prior to his retirement an extremely articulate English professor whose highest praise was “you said that correctly”, suffered permanent severe post-stroke aphasia, in which he constantly struggled to find other words to express the most basic sentences, in obvious frustration. I was probably one of the few people around him who could say I had some idea what he was experiencing.)

What was interesting was that I was clearly thinking “left” but saying “second”. I remember thinking, why did I just say 'second' when I meant to say 'left?' As I tried again to keep describing my condition, the condition worsened and soon I couldn't make verbal sense at all, while still thinking rationally in clear sentences. I was not internally confused; I just sounded like it. Very frustrating. The nurse at this point realized something neurological was going on, and called up to my department to get someone to drive me to the Lahey Clinic, a research hospital that happened to be in the next corporate park over along Boston's Route 128 tech corridor. I was quite aware during all of this of what was going on, why they decided to send me over there (no doctors on staff at my company who could deal with this), and all the rest.

When I got there, a doctor had the bright idea that although I could no longer communicate verbally, perhaps I could write instead. (I remember thinking, yes, good idea, Sherlock. Let's try that.) But no dice there either. I took the pen in my left hand as usual – they'd asked me to try to write my name, and then my telephone number (nice remembering of the script for what to do in these cases, guys), and then to try to do some simple math problem, but I just couldn't make the characters, though I understood what I was being asked and knew the answers mentally.

So while they “kept me under observation” (doctor-speak for “stall for time while we figure out what to do”) for a couple of hours, the symptoms thankfully subsided and my abilities to speak and write returned. It's never recurred. (For a few years I carried around prescription cafergot migraine pills everywhere in a state of preventive paranoia.)
---------------------------

posted in Cognitive Science - 13 replies

brain culture

Fifi — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:31:33 GMT

In another thread I was asked about a study that shows cultural differences influence brain function. It seemed to deserve it's own thread since it is a topic far from the original topic. Here's an article about the study :-)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080111102934.htm

posted in Cognitive Science - 25 replies

dreaming

maryellenmarshall — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:55:55 GMT

from http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=20071029-000003&page=1
<thanx, metafilter!>

The Dream Robbers

What happens when a rat stops dreaming?
In 2004, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison decided to find out. Their method was simple, if a bit devilish.

Step 1:
Strand a rat in a tub of water. In the center of this tiny sea, allot the creature its own little desert island in the form of an inverted flowerpot. The rat can swim around as much as it pleases, but come nightfall, if it wants any sleep, it has to clamber up and stretch itself across the flowerpot, its belly sagging over the drainage hole.

In this uncomfortable position, the rat is able to rest and eventually fall asleep. But as soon as the animal hits REM sleep, the muscular paralysis that accompanies this stage of vivid dreaming causes its body to slacken. The rat slips through the hole and gets dunked in the water. The surprised rat is then free to crawl back onto the pot, lick the drops off its paws, and go back to sleep—but it won't get any REM sleep.

Step 2:
After several mostly dreamless nights, the creature is subjected to a virtual decathlon of physical ordeals designed to test its survival behaviors. Every rat is born with a set of instinctive reactions to threatening situations. These behaviors don't have to be learned; they're natural defenses—useful responses accrued over millennia of rat society.

The dream-deprived rats flubbed each of the tasks. When plopped down in a wide-open field, they did not scurry to the safety of a more sheltered area; instead, they recklessly wandered around exposed areas. When shocked, they paused briefly and then went about their business, rather than freezing in their tracks the way normal rats do. When confronted with a foreign object in their burrow, they did not bury it; instead, they groomed themselves. Had the animals been out in the wild, they would have made easy prey.

The surprise came during Step 3.
Each rat was given amphetamines and tested again; nothing changed. If failure to be an effective rat were due to mere sleep deprivation, amphetamines would have reversed the effect. But that didn't happen. These rats weren't floundering because they were sleepy. Something else was going on—but what?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

sleep & dreaming has always fascinated me ~ it's nice to read about research being done in this mostly unknown (or un-agreed upon) area!

love all-ways,
mem

posted in Cognitive Science - 39 replies

Story on veterans' PTSD lawsuit

Kai_le_Flaneur — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:08:45 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/oneworld/20080117/wl_oneworld/45361569161200532986;_ylt=Akyw4aZAr3vceJuP9nNOQq70kPUI

I wonder if this might raise the profile of PTSD any more and lead to more research $$.

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Kryssa — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:05:25 GMT

We already know that traumatic experiences can lead to certain forms of brain damage. The BIG question here is if there are no-invasive methods capable of reversing said damage.

http://www.emdr.com/briefdes.htm

It stands to reason that if something can be done, it can also be undone. In the case of neurological damage and compromised cognition, this particular form of therapy suggests that neural responses can be effectively re-wired without the use of invasive practices. It's really nothing more than re-conditioning the immediate response. Over time this method can and will re-condition the individual's perception, with the added benefit of re-conditioning the immediate response.

-K

posted in Cognitive Science - 30 replies

Free Abundance

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 00:36:30 GMT

The Institute for Noetic Sciences is an amazing institution in California that conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness. Very, very interesting stuff!

For the next couple weeks they have opened up their repository of documents, audio, and video for free browsing... enjoy the search!

http://www.ions.org/emails/SIA/jubilee.htm

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

MindPapers online resource

maryellenmarshall — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:43:58 GMT

http://consc.net/mindpapers
<thanx metaFilter!>

About MindPapers

MindPapers is a bibliography of work in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of cognitive science, and the science of consciousness. It consists of 18087 entries, and is divided into 8 parts, each of which is further divided by topic and subtopic. Both online and offline material is included, with links wherever possible.

History

MindPapers started life as an annotated bibliography in the philosophy of mind when I (David Chalmers) was a graduate student at Indiana. The first public version was a 645-entry version circulated by e-mail and ftp in November 1990. In 1994 I made the transition to the web. In ensuing years, the bibliography followed me from Washington University to UC Santa Cruz to Arizona to ANU. In 2005, David Bourget (then at Toronto) added a search facility and links to the bibliography, along with other functions such as proxy browsing. In 2007, thanks to further work by Bourget (now a Ph.D. student at ANU), the system was overhauled, doubled in size, and relaunched as MindPapers.

love all-ways,
mem

posted in Cognitive Science - 3 replies

if...

orpheus — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 10:54:53 GMT

Electrodes were planted in the part of the brain which controls speech...

"Paralysed man's mind is 'read' - Scientists say they may be on the brink of translating the thoughts of a man who can no longer speak into words after a pioneering experiment..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7094526.stm

posted in Cognitive Science - 9 replies

Feeling vs Emotions

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 09:00:08 GMT

Feelings are like that ever-changing little child inside of us that can feel scared, angry, or excited. A feeling can be taken care of internally, comforted away. "It's ok... relax, I'm here for you". Feelings can learn and grow and progress. When we learn to take care of our feelings internally, we gain patience, kindness, and understanding. We can create helpful feelings from our harmful ones.

Emotions, however, are when the feelings get out of control. When the child loses our hand and runs wild. When we forget that the feelings aren't us and believe them to be reality. When we act out of the feeling and directly identify it as "me". At these times we are lost from the reality and things get dangerous. When dealing with negative feelings, we potentially can act out in very harmful ways. We become like wild animals.

Remembering to take care of negative feelings before they become emotional states is very important and easy to practice. During the day we can just keep checking in on ourselves. "How are you?". When we feel the fears or sadnesses arising we can ourselves comfort the feelings. "I promise to find out what you need. I am here for you." When the feelings change and kindness arises, then we can let our child go and really let the positive emotion flourish and allow our goodness to perpetuate. This practice is very beneficial and deeply healing. The mind and heart unite and we are allowed a wonderful and more wholesome contact with our true selves.

"To refrain from all evil
To do what is good
To cultivate the mind
This is the teaching of the Buddha"

posted in Cognitive Science - 34 replies

Right Brain/ Left Brain test

maryellenmarshall — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:06:42 GMT

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22492511-5005375,00.html

check it out ~ once you have the dancer twirling in one direction, focus on the shadows below her & change her direction ~ all in your mind

love all-ways,
mem

posted in Cognitive Science - 75 replies

fastest way to create postitive habits

still_shiney — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 02:13:51 GMT

What is the fastest way to create positive habits and eliminate negative ones? I've been struggling with undesirable habits and a lack of desirable ones. Can someone please point me in the right direction?

posted in Cognitive Science - 74 replies

philosophy of mind

VoodooChild — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:18:25 GMT

Is there any role for philosophy of mind in this age when cognitive neuroscience has taught us so much about brain function?

Do philosophers of mind have anything to contribute to our understanding of how the mind/brain works or any related issues?

I'd be especially curious to hear from people who have some familiarity with the traditional issues/problems/theories in philosophy of mind and epistemology (e.g. mind/body problem, intentionality, consciousness, the nature of truth, qualia, etc.).

posted in Cognitive Science - 35 replies

Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio

Incinerama — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:44:28 GMT

Being laid up has given me some reading time. For those who are interested in cognition (in Buddhist psychology this is "abhidharma"),
insight about how the mind works. Interestingly to me, there seems to be a good convergence between the "inner" experience gained from insight meditation, and the "outer" observation by neuroscientists.

I just read "Descartes' Error" by Antonio Damasio. Although it is
filled with a lot of Latin anatomy, and it would have helped to have a "visible brain" model, his style is otherwise quite readable.
He comes up with some results and conjectures from a scientist's viewpoint about
how the body, brain, and mind work together to create
consciousness.

The interesting points to me are:

(1) Emotion is always involved in reasoning and decision-making, and plays a role in biasing the materials that one has to work with. This makes timely decisions possible, especially in the social realm.

(2) The body is intimately involved, in its current state.
Patients who have lost these updates from the bodyare unable to fend for themselves very well. Some of this is hypothesis, the so-called somatic marker. Together (1) and (2) lend substance to the phrase "gut reaction."

(3) The sense of self is continuously recreated moment by moment. My image of it is like a throwaway pad (albeit one of very high dimension and connectivity) that keeps being reinstantiated by stimuli from
inside or outside the body. It emerged from the body's regulatory mechanism that are already present in primitive life forms.

Which all points up to Descartes' famous "I think therefore I am" being wrong, as well as the idea of disembodied human minds. Being proceeded thinking evolutionarily, and the physiology involved never went away, but rather got built upon, nature never throwing away useful bits of design, and consciousness emerged.

I

posted in Cognitive Science - 10 replies

prime green

blue-j — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:49:44 GMT

i just made a film with naomi bock called "prime green" which attempted to incorporate lexical priming. i'm somewhat new to the literature and would love any feedback on the film, or any information any of you would like to share on the subject.

here's where the film is online, along with links to the research i used:

http://www.colorhythm.com/primegreen

posted in Cognitive Science - 2 replies

Got Self?

Od — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:05:23 GMT

You're invited to join a new tribe called "Self or No-Self, or...."

http://tribes.tribe.net/selfnoself

We are hoping this will serve as a forum for discussion of all concepts of "self and other," as a central issue common to Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and other religions, and to philosophy and science, as well.

All viewpoints are welcome.

posted in Cognitive Science - 10 replies

In case you hadn't seen this

trance-formation — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:02:02 GMT

Podcast

http://www.nature.com/neuro/podcast/rss/neuro.xml

from http://www.nature.com/neurosci/neuropod/index.html

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

Humor Bots in AI news

Optimus — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:24:19 GMT

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1994873.htm

Ctrl, Alt, Del if you've heard this joke before
Agençe France-Presse
Thursday, 2 August 2007

Experts in artificial intelligence have built a computer program that can understand simple jokes, which they say marks an important step in making robots seem friendlier.

Previous attempts at getting machines to understand humour have failed miserably, because what is funny to humans is subjective and complex, and fiendishly difficult to program.

But Julia Taylor and Associate Professor Lawrence Mazlack of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio have devised prototype joke-detection software, which they describe in New Scientist.

They began by loading a program with a database of words, extracted from a children's dictionary to keep things simple.

The researchers then supplied it with examples of how the same word can have different meanings depending on the context.

When presented with a text, the program uses that knowledge to work out how new words may relate to each other, and what they probably mean.

If it fails to find a word that matches its context, it rummages around in a digital pronunciation guide for similar-sounding words.

And if any of those words are a better fit for the rest of the sentence, the passage is flagged, ha ha, as a joke.

So far, the joke-bot only understands rather leaden puns and still delivers a blank look when facing more complex stuff or dead-pan humour.

Even so, the researchers hope it will add a kindlier touch to robots of the near-future which will act as human companions or helpers.

Computer humour

Here's an example of what a computer thinks is a joke:

Mother to boy: My, you've been working in the garden a lot this summer.

Boy: I have to, because teacher told me to weed a lot.

Apparently, this is a pun on working the soil and doing schoolwork.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1994873.htm

posted in Cognitive Science - 6 replies

change blindness

fdbn — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:53:00 GMT

hi, i have been looking around for studies looking at change blindness and in-group biases, but having a great deal of difficulty. are anyone aware of any such studies??? or any change blindness and facial recognition??? please could someone let me know

posted in Cognitive Science - 1 reply

racism and cog sci

Fifi — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:03:55 GMT

I found this study to be very interesting and to confirm what my visibly non-white friends have shared about their experiences of racism, and what I've found to be true about insidious and covert misogyny. I can also extrapolate it easily to experiences where someone does something hurtful for no apparent reason which can cause one to ruminate in an attempt to make sense of the experience. I also think this study's interesting in that it points out that the white subjects are clearly unaware of not only other people's covert racism but obviously by extension are also unaware of their own unconscious or ingrained racism that isn't overt.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070919093316.htm

posted in Cognitive Science - 1 reply

communication styles and cog sci

Fifi — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:52:18 GMT

I thought it appropriate to move my question into it's own thread...

The use of random Capitalization as a writing style in another thread made me wonder if there are certain writing and communication styles that are a result of different kinds of brain activity...does anyone know if there are any studies on this? Granted these things also become fashionable and are consecrated into being styles, and are sometimes just a result of expediency, but are there certain kinds of written and spoken cues to specific conditions?

I ask this because of some recent studies regarding music and an upcoming one regarding the relationship between music choice (and composition) and the listeners (or composers) brain activity. I'm just wondering if there are any studies regarding this and language use, partially because music is related to spoken language. And, well, mainly I''m an art/science geek and I like looking at how biology influences (defines?) aesthetics and the creative process and final result.

posted in Cognitive Science - 46 replies

Singularity Summit in SF - Sat, Sept 8th

dsnider0909 — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:00:01 GMT

http://www.singinst.org/summit2007/
For $50 you can network with some of big academics in AI.

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

a chemical romance

Fifi — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 13:11:03 GMT

I just ran across an article on some new discoveries about viagra that I thought were worth thinking about (though if anyone else will, I don't know :-) Basically the study shows that viagra (and similar drugs) also boosts the amount of oxytocin released. I find it interesting in light of how addictive oxycontin can be, and the similarity with E which isn't considered to be physically addictive (though I haven't looked at this closely enough to see if the oxytocin flooding is the same in and obviously there are other things going on with E). Anyway, I wonder if viagra can be addictive in ways or if there are other implications of this understanding of how viagra functions (though, I do find it interesting that they go to some length to try to claim that it only enhances feelings already there but can't create them...which may be one way to head off speculation about any addictive aspects of the very profitable drug).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=477896&in_page_id=1774

posted in Cognitive Science - 3 replies

Is there a place for altruism in psychology's patients?

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:31:38 GMT

::By Hue Gioi::

I recently visited the DBU the Deutsch (German) Buddhist Union where there was alot of 'healthy talk'...What is health or healing? How can we know we are really helping another? The third sibject that I found prevelent to this issue is how can we both strengthen the ego and help the patient to let go of the unhealthy or illusionary concepts that they are holding onto. How do we free them from their Psychosis and motivate them to keep progressing?

In Buddhism we have the goal of complete liberation. But this liberation comes from freeing ourselves from not only psychosis but our ego grasping. And in Buddhism this letting go of ego grasping is directly results in becoming selfless and developing a more altrustic attitude towards the world.

Is there a place for the development of this 'Buddhist Altruism' in the patients of Psychology? Does this 'selflessness freeing one from psychosis' concept fit in the Psychological theory? If not should it? or is this idea too religious or far fetched? Comments and more questions are welcome.

Hue Gioi

posted in Cognitive Science - 3 replies

Are we living in the "Matrix"?

Kevin — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:55:55 GMT

I don't want to get involved in the recent Matrix-related brouhaha in this tribe, but reading through some of those postings made me think of this article I read the other day in the NYTimes. I don't think this is technically "cognitive science", but it seemed related enough, and I'm interested to hear what ya'll think of this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

From the article:

"Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation."

posted in Cognitive Science - 48 replies

"The Political Brain"

Incinerama — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:15:19 GMT

by Andrew ? Westen of Emory University.

I am about half way through this book which is at the intersection
of cog sci (recent work by Damasio and others about the emotional correlates
of cognition) and U.S. presidential politics (viewed from the left). It is rather depressing reading, going
into the kind of emotional rhetoric the author believes the left needs to do to counteract the emotional
manipoulation of that Rove and company have perfeced, while still remaining ethical. What's depressing
to me is how anti-intellectual the muddlemurrican is, and how emotionally attached to god and guns...

The NY Times reviewed it and says Bill Clinton is highlighting it for Hillary.

posted in Cognitive Science - 4 replies

cognitive sociology

orpheus — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:19:00 GMT

" The fable of the Emperor's New Clothes is a classic example of a conspiracy of silence, a situation where everyone refuses to acknowledge an obvious truth. But the denial of social realities--whether incest, alcoholism, corruption, or even genocide-is no fairy tale.
In The Elephant in the Room , Eviatar Zerubavel sheds new light on the social and political underpinnings of silence and denial-the keeping of "open secrets." The author shows that conspiracies of silence exist at every level of society, ranging from small groups to large corporations, from personal friendships to politics. Zerubavel shows how such conspiracies evolve, illuminating the social pressures that cause people to deny what is right before their eyes. We see how each conspirator's denial is symbiotically complemented by the others', and we learn that silence is usually more intense when there are more people conspiring-and especially when there are significant power differences among them. He concludes by showing that the longer we ignore "elephants," the larger they loom in our minds, as each avoidance triggers an even greater spiral of denial.
Drawing on examples from newspapers and comedy shows to novels, children's stories, and film, the book travels back and forth across different levels of social life, and from everyday moments to large-scale historical events. At its core, The Elephant in the Room helps us understand why we ignore truths that are known to all of us."

posted in Cognitive Science - 7 replies

more illusions

maryellenmarshall — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 22:58:08 GMT

seeing is just your mind's best guess...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6jI0AmtMGU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULJTob9yNQY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-fYSyb982I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HIMvpMJJ5Y
<Yay!! Ghostly floating heads for everyone!!>

love all-ways,
mem

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

solipsistic species

mottledcrow — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:17:01 GMT

The matrix thread got me thinking a bit - invisible pink elephants keep rearing their (presumably) ugly heads...

Whence the need to invoke supernatural/otherworldy explanations for the way the world is? A lead brick dropped on a foot should suffice to convince anybody of the reality of what our senses tell us is out there, but no: be it gods, fairies, serpents or a computer simulation, there are numerous voices that proclaim that our sensorium is not telling us telling us the whole story, how the world *really* is. That we are imagining reality, which in reality is totally different, or at least that we are missing huge chunks of it. That we're victims of a snow job on the grandest scale. The butts of a cosmic joke. And this point of view seems to appear in many societies and cultures, present and past, and so would seem (obligatory link to cog sci) to be hard wired into our brains somehow. Believing that you're seeing just the shadows on the wall of the cave isn't all that different from the world-view of a solipsist: you're all figments of my imagination or, in this case, the world is a figment of our collective imagination. Any hypotheses as to why this attitude would arise? Is consciousness paired with healthy paranoia and the sorry state of the world enough to sustain the idea that there *must* be more to reality out there? And from an evolutionary point of view: do the literal-minded have less offspring than poets? (...that's a rethorical question...)

posted in Cognitive Science - 10 replies

Fallacies of implication and intent (minor topic)

Kai_le_Flaneur — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 19:53:35 GMT

"I don't see how capitalizing certain words could be considered a fallacy. A fallacy is a bad argument. Capitalization is a stylistic choice. It might be a choice we disagree with, or one we find annoying, but that doesn't make it a fallacy, any more than a bad joke is a fallacy."

Fallacies can be things that aren't even failed logic (failures of logic could be faulty premises, lack of grounds for an assertion, etc) but rather things which attempt to make an end run around logic in order to sway the listener. Just watch any Republican...

It's a fallacy similar to an appeal to force (agree or I'll whack ya), an appeal to sympathy (you should agree with the position of the speaker because he/she is a sympathetic character), or an appeal to authority (agree because the person professing the position is a figure of authority.)

Perhaps it's most similar to to the appeal to authority. "These words are important and profound because they're capitalized" is the implication.

It's not just a stylistic choice to capitalize, there is also the intent by its user to imply something by its usage, something which may be quite separate from the meanings of the actual words written. An additional and possibly incongruent layer of meaning is placed on the words so emphasized. This intent is key.

The philosopher of language & mind Colin McGinn talks about the Oxford philosopher H.P. Grice's concept of "conversational implicature":

"This is a distinction between two sorts of implication - the sort that words have and the sort that people convey. If I am asked for my opinion of another philosopher's abilities, and I don't think much of them, I might reply, pseudo-tactfully, 'Well, he certainly has a clear speaking voice.' Here I obviously imply that I have a low opinion of his philosophical talents, though I utter no words that say this. The words I utter simply express the proposition that he speaks clearly, which I may well sincerely believe; but I know that by *not* explicitly expressing a belief about his philosophical abilities I will lead my audience to believe I think poorly of them. My words do not in themselves logically imply that the person has questionable philosophical talents, but *I* certainly imply this by using these words as I do. Grice called this 'conversational implicature," and distinguished it from ordinary logical implication, urging that we not confuse the two. His point was that we can *say* what is perfectly true in a conversational context and at the same time *imply* something quite false, and the latter does not contradict the former. Suppose I actually think very well of someone's philosophical abilities, but I dishonestly wish to downplay this opinion, perhaps because I am a rival of this person's. I am asked what I think of him and I reply with my sentence about his excellent speaking voice. Here I *say* nothing false, but I *convey* something that is quite false - that I think he isn't very bright. Say something you can't be faulted on, but conversationally imply something that you want to put across. That way if someone contradicts what you intentionally put across you can always craftily reply 'but I never *said* that.' " (pp. 140-141 in "the making of a philosopher", by McGinn.)

So using elements of language other than the words themselves to convey independent, unwarranted, and sometimes even contradictory meanings alongside those words' explicit meanings is similar to this example of saying one thing while implying another by the combination of what one did say with what one did *not* say - the omission of words which might have explicitly expressed a favorable opinion of the other philosopher.

The capitalizer doesn't actually come right out and say "this is an important concept", he just implies it by capitalizing it. Capitalization in common usage has often been used for just this function of denoting significant concepts.

Then when he's caught out in that pretentiousness, he backpedals and says something like, oh, I was just trying to indicate that these were terms up for discussion. (Tentativeness rather than importance.) When in fact there is already a commonly used way to indicate tentativeness or at least a certain ironic distancing from the word in question: just put it in quotes.

posted in Cognitive Science - 16 replies

The Living Matrix

I-P — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 22:42:39 GMT

The Living Matrix (cognitive coordinants for wholistic thinking)

By Piankhy Thompson
{note: Just curious about what hard-nosed cognitive science types will make of this. I can imagine somebody like George Lakoff digging it, though he might have to read it a few times. anyway, tell me what you think--p}

Part of what a cosmology of Togetherness in a healthy culture does is coordinate and integrate problems and areas of life, in such a way as to avoid the typical result of trying to understand issues and solve problems in isolation, which is of course just the creation of other problems in other areas of life not considered when “solving” (and usually only temporarily) the original problem. Cultures all over the world which are or have been relatively more healthy than the dominant culture today have all had some more or less developed variants of the kind of integral categorical understanding I am describing below though they often differ from it and from each other in important details. What I have worked out and try to share in what follows amounts to an up-dated, individual and personal version of what I suppose to be part the “perennial cosmology” of us human beings, conceived and articulated in a way that is appropriate to the practice of Healthy Culture in our own time.

The Living Matrix is, among other things a set of cognitive coordinates in terms of which Togetherness and Living Wholeness can be understood and so enabled. The Coordinates can be usefully introduced in two parts. First is the 7-fold Static Matrix which takes its nature from the 7 directions of orientation ( 1-north, 2-east, 3-south, 4-west, 5-up, 6-down, and 7-center) and which constitutes the coordination of the Integral (as center) with the Indefinite, Finite, Definite, Transdefinite of the “horizontal plain” ( also called the “nexus”, and corresponding to "north, south, east, and west"), with the Subjective and the Objective on the “vertical” axis (corresponding to "up and down").

I am mapping these categories of cognitive orientation onto the familiar categories of spatial orientation because, among other things, this serves to show the analogously paradoxical nature of the 7 categories. The existence of the "Indefinite", for example, implies that of the "Finite" and the "Definite" and the "Transdefinite", in the same way that the existence of North implies and involves that of East, South, and West. And just as with a Compass, finding north implies that the compass itself is relatively vertical (and so brings in that dimension and its relative up and down), so the existence of the Indefinite also implies the existence of the “vertical” axis of Subject and Object. As in the case of spatial (we will ignore the idea of “true north" for the moment), the implications here are perfectly mutual and correlative; Indefinite is not absolutely Indefinite any more than north is more than relatively north in practice…

To demonstrate these categories and to illustrate their inherent co-implication I ask the reader to imagine the following:

Imagine (or remember) seeing a friend approach you from a far distance, on the beach say. In the beginning the person is too far away to even be sure that it is a living being, they are a mere point or dot on the horizon that may or may not be moving toward you at all. This is the relatively Indefinite aspect of your experience of them. It is an aspect of experience generally, one from which the intuition of abstraction and its schematic content of mathematics both derive. The Infinite, for example, as a point on the horizon as well as a theoretical and mathematical concept is essentially Indefinite. Counting itself is an inherently indefinite process which abstracts and dissociates the qualitative, existential and other aspects of the thing counted. When we deal with the Indefinite we are generally dealing with the “Itness" of Being.

[It is worth noting parenthetically here that, although it is essentially only one variation on the theme of "General Matrix Dysmutuality" or "General Cognitive Disorientation" (that is, only one way of "getting Lost" cognitively and morally), the dissociation and privileging of "Itness" and abstraction over the other categories in our time is a symptom of our sick culture which is involved in our excessively anesthetic "Life-Styles". Anesthesia often numbs and represses our full experience of self, other and world, in a way allows for the tyranny of abstraction and the various forms of coercion, callousness, and direct and indirect exploitation, repression fear, and violence that come this. But more on this topic in another post]

Continuing with our beach encounter; as the point in the distance gets closer, we begin to distinguish it from various things; a living thing rather than a piece for wind blown debris, a human being rather than a dog, a woman lets say rather than a man etc…With each distinction we Limit the thing; its becomes less indefinite and less abstract and more Finite and so qualitative. Sooner or later, you recognize that your friend Susan is running towards you very happily in a striking sea-green bathing suit that sets off her skin it such a way that…With all of this we enter the essentially Finite aspect of reality, the qualitative, image and memory based “morphic field” which is part of the substance of the way things are. This Finite aspect of the world one could also describe as the “Thatness” of Being.

Now suppose Susan has reached you now, she has given you a hug, you have sat down together and you are exchanging words; news of how things have been since you last saw each other how things are now etc…Already your knowledge of Susan is becoming more Definite (relatively speaking) than before and you are acquiring relatively Definite knowledge of each other. This Definite aspect of reality is more essentially existential and less essentially “aesthetic” than the Finite aspect and certainly much less abstract than the Indefinite aspect of reality with which we began. This relatively Definite aspect of reality one can describe as the “Thisness" of Being.

It is now necessary that you and Susan approach (and even transcend) the deepest level of Intimacy, (or relatively Definite knowledge) of each other. I will leave it to you to insert the details regarding how this came about, or how long it took, or even what it means exactly (accept to suggest that the example will be more credible if—assuming you are imagining something sexual--that you imagine Tantric or Daoist form of sexuality) and rejoin you again on the beach where you gazing into her eyes, or perhaps even at the back of her neck as she sleeps, and that at some moment you experience the point at which definite knowledge leads into Transdefinite Mystery; the point at which you know her so well that you realize you don't know her at all, and that you yourself, who you presumably know even better, are just as much--and even more--of a mystery, and that Definite Knowledge (which is only relatively definite anyway) itself does not diminish Mystery, or Enigma but ultimately reveals it more clearly. This inherently enigmatic, mystical and Transdefinite aspect of reality can be described as the “Whatness" of the Being.

Now in all of this story both the Objective, outer world, and the inner, Subjective one, have been involved from the beginning and the whole experience not only presupposes them both but presupposes the essential Integrity (“Togetherness”) of them both. For Being is itself this very Togetherness, the Togetherness of subject and object. And while it is true that the subjective memory of some woman other than Susan might have, at a certain distance, imposed itself on the person coming toward you, this does not imply some inherent dichotomy of inner image and outer reality, so much as illustrate their paradoxical togetherness in the Living process of Distinction (the Finite Process) within the 10-fold Living (rather than 7-fold static) Matrix itself. But to understand this we must introduce the other 3 aspects of that Living Matrix. We will return to the Beach after we have done so.

The 7-fold Integral Matrix I have described so far (named for its center) is, as I’ve implied, only a model of Static wholeness and not the Living Wholeness that actually pertains. A Living Matrix requires that we transcend our static and perfect cognitive “sphere” (and so also our exclusively spatial analogy) and
integrate “apart-ness” or the “dis-integral” (or “non-being) as a paradoxically included 8th element in our Matrix. Simultaneously we then also imply a 9th element as the “Living Integral” (as opposed to the 7th “static integral”) that reconciles and integrates the Paradoxical Togetherness of Apart-ness (8) with Togetherness (7) because it is itself this Paradoxical Togetherness. And for such a reconciling factor to be a truly dynamic and Living integral, it must be such as leads towards, rather than away from the necessary 10th element of the Living Matrix. This 10th element, which cannot really be named, described, understood, or situated in any particular way vis-à-vis the rest of the Living Matrix, I never-the-less, I call “Freedom” and consider to be in some sense almost the Final Cause of the Living Matrix as a whole as well as both a part of it some how also beyond it.

To return now to the beach: It is the dance, Living Integral; the living paradoxical interaction of the integral and the Disintegral (of Togetherness and Apart-ness) that accounts for the possibility of “mistaking” Susan for someone else. In one sense, such a “mistake” is only a part of necessary process by which the relatively indefinite becomes the relatively Finite. In another sense as we have seen, Susan is only “relatively” Susan at anyway, either subjectively or objectively. In the circumstance that you should hold to your “mistaken” identification when “outside”/objective voices say otherwise, there is always both agreement (in this case that someone is there, and perhaps that that someone is female) as well as disagreement (what the females name and social identity are) in the situation. (By the same token, even subjective/objective agreement--and so “fact”--is not absolute, since you and another will still disagree in many ways—and probably in many ways unknown to yourselves-- about the details of this “Susan” that you agree is “Susan”). It is the constant togetherness of this agreement and disagreement that confirms both the paradoxical existence and validity of the subjective and the objective worlds in themselves, (as Being). But essential to this is also the involvement of Non-being mediated by in the paradoxical togetherness/apart-ness of the Living Integral.

And this is not quite the whole of it. The Living Integral makes the matrix dance, and so allows our story of the Beach to happen or even be imagined, at all. In a way, the Living Integral Is the Soul of the living Matrix which is Life, Experience, Reality itself, and yet our Life-Logic of paradoxical Togetherness implies something further still. It Implies something Beyond both the Static and the Dancing Integral; beyond Togetherness; and Apart-ness, and the living Dance between them. I call this necessary thing, which both is and is not an aspect of the Living Matrix; which both is and is not The Living Matrix itself, Freedom. Nor do I want to qualify this Freedom as either Living or Static or in any other way since it is primarily neither Finite nor Indefinite; neither "Freedom from", nor "Freedom to" nor even "Freedom of". There is nothing much to say about such Freedom. If the Living Integral is the Soul of the Living Matrix, then Freedom is its Spirit. It is that which inspires the Dance; that which gives it direction that which... more I will not say now because Logic, even Life-Logic, fails me at this point...

Altogether then, the Living Matrix has Ten aspects, expressed in their more abstract form (there are many less abstract correspondences) as the Indefinite, (“itness”, the abstract) the Finite (“thatness”, the qualitative), the Definite (“Thisness”, the "existential"), the Transdefinite (“Whatness” the "mystical"), the Subjective (“Insideness” the "Psychological"), the Objective (“Outsideness” the "physical"), the Integral (“Togetherness”, Being) , the Disintegral (“Apart-ness”, Non-Being), the Living Integral ("Life", Becoming) and Freedom .

It will be seen in other posts (and in practice should you choose to come and participate) the Part the Living Matrix plays in the choreography of the Life-Dance and in the practice of Healthy Culture Generally.

posted in Cognitive Science - 53 replies

The Terrorism Meme

☼Sunshine☼ — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:40:31 GMT

Parasidic Brain Worms .... enducing suicidal behaviour ... infectious ... Memes to die for .... The great fundamental islamic virus ... an information packet with attitude .... toxic ideas .... spreading around the world .... consider the long term implications .... what kind of meme would mutate this Death Meme?

www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/116

posted in Cognitive Science - 25 replies

New England Buddhist tribe

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:53:01 GMT

Trying to start up a new New England Buddhist tribe, please come, post, and get some energy moving to the Northeast

posted in Cognitive Science - 0 replies

New study on information flow in the brain

VoodooChild — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:48:52 GMT

http://www.physorg.com/news105631403.html

Excerpts:

“Traditional methods of analysis are insensitive to the true directionality of information flow. Here, for the first time, we investigated object recognition in humans by applying a new method, which in fact represents a measure of causality. With this measure, we were able to distinguish between feed-forward and feed-backward information flow and quantified the interaction between brain areas in greater detail”

"Together with the new method of directional coupling analysis these results may open a new perspective on brain processes. For the accurate execution of brain functions it might be crucial not only which brain areas are involved but, perhaps even more importantly, how they cooperate with each other."

posted in Cognitive Science - 3 replies

Implants offer hope in brain injury cases

maryellenmarshall — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:49:51 GMT

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/02/implants_offer_hope_in_brain_injury_cases/?page=1

excerpt:

Researchers say the 38-year-old is the first patient in a "minimally conscious state" to be im planted with a Deep Brain Stimulator, a device that uses tiny electrodes to send electrical signals into precisely targeted areas of the brain.

love all-ways,
mem

posted in Cognitive Science - 1 reply

Cognitive Science's topics - tribe.net

stoners forget things and are less aggressive? no way! way

daniel dennett "interview" with robert wright

Brain Region for Overcoming Fear, Anxiety Found

Scientist Explains Humor

Serotonin Levels Determine Sense of FairnessSerotonin Levels Determine Sense of Fairness

Resources about "Ego Death"

john searle talks

memory loss from a concussion

steven pinker

exposure to violence suppresses the brain's check on agression.

Mobile Phones and Brain Tumours

Documentary on medicating kids.

Weigh in... your opinion, that is

sick in the head?

rehabilatative reading links

Oxytocin - The Trust Hormone

Neural Buddhism

electroshock therapy

Brains vs. Computers

Non-Cartesian Cognitive Science, can you feel it?

Dan Rather Mind Science Report w/ Dalai Lama

Brain scanner predicts your future moves (New Scientist Article)

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2008

yay for coffee again

new related tribe - Positive Thinking (cross post)

Somewhere in the Upper Cortex

a sickness in the land

a neuroscience blog

Exercise as an antidepressant

Memory and Imagination

Request for comments on an hemispheric neurological experience

brain culture

dreaming

Story on veterans' PTSD lawsuit

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Free Abundance

MindPapers online resource

if...

Feeling vs Emotions

Right Brain/ Left Brain test

fastest way to create postitive habits

philosophy of mind

Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio

prime green

Got Self?

In case you hadn't seen this

Humor Bots in AI news

change blindness

racism and cog sci

communication styles and cog sci

Singularity Summit in SF - Sat, Sept 8th

a chemical romance

Is there a place for altruism in psychology's patients?

*Are* we living in the "Matrix"?

"The Political Brain"

cognitive sociology

more illusions

solipsistic species

Fallacies of implication and intent (minor topic)

The Living Matrix

The Terrorism Meme

New England Buddhist tribe

New study on information flow in the brain

Implants offer hope in brain injury cases

Are we living in the "Matrix"?