Blog introspections

At the end of this month and year, our stats are indeed looking promising. We have only started to gather statistics from 11. December, and we have already had a good amount of visits. Close to 600 in all in about 20 days — and doing so without any deliberate ads anywhere (well, except a [...]

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Cognitive literary studies

Every year the American Modern Language Association stages a conference where English professors and students from all over the US gather to discuss the state of literary criticism and theory. Think Society for Neuroscience, if you need a comparison.
This year, as Nick Gillespie tells us in this report, the talk focused on cognitive approaches to [...]

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Anterior cingulate cortex

The structure of today is the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Two new studies jointly illuminate the function played by this intriguing part of the brain. In many imaging studies the ACC lights up in connection with cognitive processing, especially when something goes wrong. Some researchers have speculated that the ACC may work as a cognitive [...]

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Culture I: Chimps have it

The most fascinating scientific result of 2005 – to my mind, at least! – was the sequencing of the chimpanzee genome, reported in the September 1 issue of Nature. (Remember also to read the many accompanying articles on chimp research in the same issue.) Although not the first genome to be sequenced, the chimp genome [...]

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Tononi’s conscious mind

An article on Giulio Tononi’s work on the brain basis of consciousness has just been published in Science & Consciousness Review. Henri Montandon reviews some of the recent publications by Tononi. Excerpt from the article:
“Tononi’s writings are noteworthy for his grounding in phenomenology, and his lucid style of presentation. He has noticed three aspects of [...]

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Seven seconds to dementia

Yes, every seventh second a new case of dementia develops in the world. Medscape.com reports this from a just published report in The Lancet. Such a number pinpoints the necessity of finding viable solutions to fight degenerative brain disorders. Such an effort must work on many levels; devising new and improved methods for detecting dementia [...]

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Steps to dethronement III – The unconscious agent

Normally, we humans think of ourselves as rational beings. A decision is made by me – the Agent – and I know perfectly what I want and how to get there. Enter cognitive neuroscience. From a multitude of studies, there is a consensus today that many decisions are not made through overt, conscious processing. A [...]

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Dennett on Darwinism and ID

The American philosopher Daniel Dennett – an outspoken atheist – is interviewed by German newspaper Der Spiegel (in English, though!) on the whole ID affair. Find it here.
Also, look out for his forthcoming book, to be published by Viking in February, Breaking the Spell, which takes on religion. We will probaby return to that book [...]

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Social cognitive neuroscience

I didn’t mention it in my post below on Fiddick, but his is only one out of eleven papers composing a theme on social cognitive neuroscience in the recent issue of NeuroImage. This exiting new field has only been around for 5-10 years, but it will surely be one of the major research areas to [...]

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Evolution takes gold

Just out today, the well-esteemed journal Science has judged the science of evolution to be the top scientific breakthrough of 2005! The ideas of evolution, of course, traces back to Darwin, and even further. So why is 2005 such an interesting year?
As this story from BBC reports, there have been many vital scientific publications that [...]

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