Vowel and speaker discrimination based on brain patterns alone

Using fMRI and a data-mining algorithm, researchers in the Netherlands have developed a method to make predictions about what the listener is hearing based solely on the fMRI data. There are two predictions that they algorithm can make: discriminations between three Dutch vowel sounds (/a/, /i/, and /u/), and discriminations between which of three different [...]

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Myelin sheathing originated in placoderms

Zalc et al published a paper earlier this year in Current Biology hypothesizing that vertebrate myelination developed in the now extinct class placoderms. It is a horrificly concise paper (that is a good thing), and their evidence is simple. As compared to ostreostaci, a class that preceded them, placoderm fossils suggest oculomotor nerves that are [...]

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Roadmap to brain emulation

The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University released a “roadmap” to brain emulation earlier this month, emphasizing the potential benefits of brain emulation and the numerous challenges that potential researchers would face. Such a prima facie absurd proposal is useful not only because brain emulation may one day become reality, but also because it [...]

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One hundred questions for cognitive scientists

The list was put together by Cal Tech’s Computation and Neural Systems department, and the questions are ones that they expect PhD students ought to be able to answer. This can serve two purposes, either testing yourself to make sure that you are up to speed, or testing other people to weed out imposters! Here [...]

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A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness book notes

V.S. Ramachandran’s book is short and has enough mind-nuggets to make it well worth the read, although I do think that he extends some of his theories with a bit too much alactricity. Here are some of my notes:

Capgras syndrome is where the connection between the visual centers and the amygdala (ie, emotions) are cut [...]

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Electrode in mute man allows vowel production

That is the report from Nature News. They note that:
The electrode is different to others used for brain–computer interfaces, most of which are fixed to the skull rather than within a specific part of the brain. This means that the electrodes can move around, making it difficult to record from the same neurons every time [...]

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Does primacy trump recency?

One of the more nuanced critiques of the literature on human cognitive biases is that some of them posit conflicting effects. Probably the most glaring discrepancy is the difference between the primacy and the recency effect in hypothesis formation. Which factor is more important? Marsh and Ahn take on the challenge in their 2006 paper,
Some [...]

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Ethics in brain scanning continued

What if the US government announced that it had completed a brain scanning technique that could tell within 99.9% of accuracy whether or not the subject was lying? Each subject would probably have to go through some sort of a training session first, and there would obviously be attempts to game the system. However, after [...]

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