Consciousness

Consciousness Learning and Memory Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders 

When You Split the Brain, Do You Split the Person?

January 10, 2018January 10, 2018 Yaïr Pinto 3 Comments Consciousness, Gazzaniga, Learning, Memory, Neuroscience, Perception, Prefrontal Cortex, Research, Sperry, Split brain

he brain is perhaps the most complex machine in the Universe. It consists of two cerebral hemispheres, each with many different modules. Fortunately, all these separate parts are not autonomous… Read more

Artificial Intelligence Big Ideas Consciousness Multilingual Neuroscience Technologies 

Reverse Engineering the Brain

October 25, 2017November 21, 2017 Joel Frohlich 0 Comments BBP, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bewusstsein, Blue Brain Project, complexity, Consciousness, Das Gehirn nachbauen, David Marr, emergence, emergent properties, emergente Eigenschaften, Gehirn, HBP, Henry Markham, Hirnforscher, human brain project, IBM, Intelligence, Intelligenz, levels of analysis, Mandelbort set, Marr's levels of analysis, models, Neurowissenschaft, Neurowissenschaftler, Nichtlinearität, nonlinearity, orphan receptors, Reductionism, Reduktionismus, reverse engineering, Selbstorganisation, Self-organization, supercomputer, tripartite synapse, Waisenrezeptoren

Can we learn everything about the brain by studying individual brain cells? It started with a simple equation. In 1980, a mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot working for IBM plotted the… Read more

Big Ideas Consciousness Philosophy 

Our Illusory Sense of Agency Has a Deeply Important Social Purpose

September 29, 2017October 6, 2017 Chris Frith 0 Comments agency, choice, Consciousness, Epicurus, Free Will, Illusion, Mopan Maya, morality, Perception, philosophy, stoic

’m trying to concentrate on writing this piece, but my two grandchildren in the room next door have stopped making paper aeroplanes and started arguing. ‘You kicked me,’ yells Freya.… Read more

Big Ideas Consciousness Philosophy Sensation and Perception 

We Are All Brains in Vats

June 28, 2017September 24, 2017 DanielToker 3 Comments Brain in a Vat, Consciousness, Gilbert Harmanm, Hallucination, Illusion, Perception, Rene Descartes, The Matrix

The Matrix made all of us ask the same disturbing questions: How do I know that the world I see, hear, and touch is real? Can I prove that I’m… Read more

Big Ideas Consciousness Philosophy 

Why panpsychism fails to solve the mystery of consciousness

June 14, 2017June 30, 2017 Keith Frankish 2 Comments Consciousness, David Chalmers, hard problem of consciousness, panpsychism, philosophy, philosophy of mind

Is consciousness everywhere? Is it a basic feature of the Universe, at the very heart of the tiniest subatomic particles? Such an idea – panpsychism as it is known –… Read more

Big Ideas Consciousness Philosophy 

Is there Consciousness in Everything?

June 7, 2017June 30, 2017 Philip Geoff 3 Comments Aeon, Consciousness, Intrinsic, Nature, panpsychism, philosophy

Common sense tells us that only living things have an inner life. Rabbits and tigers and mice have feelings, sensations and experiences; tables and rocks and molecules do not. Panpsychists… Read more

Artificial Intelligence Big Ideas Consciousness Neuro SciFi Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders Philosophy 

The Ultimate Thought Experiment Part I: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

May 3, 2017October 29, 2017 Joel Frohlich 3 Comments AI, android, Artificial Intelligence, Blade Runner, China brain, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Gedankenexperiment, Graham Sleight, Hans Christian Oersted, mood organ, Ned Block, Philip K. Dick, pupillometry, Science Fiction, thought experiment

Let’s imagine something crazy. What if each person in China was ordered to simulate a neuron in a brain, making an enormous “China brain?” Every participant in this grand experiment… Read more

Big Ideas Brain Basics Consciousness 

What the Heck is a Claustrum?

April 6, 2017July 10, 2017 Joel Frohlich 1 Comment Anatomy, Christof Koch, claustrum, Consciousness, Francis Crick, Giulio Tononi, Integrated Information Theory, Optogenetics, Rene Descartes, Self-organization

Given its subjective nature, consciousness is already a controversial topic in the world of brain science. While some neuroscientists doubt that consciousness can even be studied, others still endeavor towards… Read more

Brain Basics Consciousness Sensation and Perception Videos 

Garbage Smells Green and Gunshots Are Rainbows

September 15, 2016July 10, 2017 Joel Frohlich 1 Comment associators, Blue, Brain, brain imaging, Color, color-grapheme, Colors, Conscious, Consciousness, diffusion tensor imaging, DTI, Francis Galton, Green, Hear, ideasthesia, Interview, Music, Neuroscience, projectors, Red, See, Sound, Synesthesia, Synethesia, Violin

The minds of individuals are like parallel universes, forever inaccessible to one another.  Never do we truly see through the eyes of another person.  It is common for us to… Read more

Brain Books Consciousness Philosophy 

Double Book Review: The Emperor’s New Mind and Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

January 13, 2016July 10, 2017 Joel Frohlich 1 Comment Artificial Intelligence, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Book, Brain book, Can machines think, cognitive science, Douglas Hofstader, Escher, Gödel, Hofstadter, Is the brain a computer, Kurt Gödel, logic, mathematician, mathematics, mind, Neuron, paradox, physicist, quantum, riddle, Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind, Stuart Hammeroff, The Emperor's New Mind, theorem, Tubulin

“A barber (who is a man) shaves all and only those men who do not shave themselves. Does he shave himself?” If you can’t solve the above riddle, don’t worry… Read more

Consciousness Did You Know? Sleep 

Screensavers of the Brain: The Science of Dreaming

September 2, 2015July 10, 2017 Joel Frohlich 2 Comments Awake, Cycle, Dream, EEG, Hypnogram, K-complex, PGO, ponto-geniculo-occipital, Rapid eye movement, REM, Sleep, Spindle, waves

Each night, you place your head on your pillow, close your eyes, and, barring insomnia, you lose consciousness of the world around you, drifting into blissful oblivion.  Eventually, you reawaken,… Read more

Big Ideas Brain Basics Consciousness Did You Know? Philosophy 

Ghost in the Machine: The Neuroscience of Consciousness

March 4, 2015July 10, 2017 Joel Frohlich 5 Comments A measure for brain complexity: relating functional segregation and integration in the nervous system, A universe of consciousness: how matter becomes imagination, An information integration theory of consciousness, Brain, Cerebellum, Consciousness, Cortex, Edelman, EEG, Giulio Tononi, Idea, IIT, Integrated Information Theory, Neuroscience, Phi, Seizure, Thought, Tononi

Some questions cannot be addressed by science.  Like parallel universes, the consciousness of others is not something that can be directly observed, measured, or experienced.  Rene Descartes famously said, “I… Read more