Lifeboat Foundation

Please welcome a second posting here at 21st Century Tech Blog, from Katie Brenneman. Katie’s previous contribution looked at how individuals can practice sustainability to mitigate the threat of climate change. Her many interests include writing on lifestyle, mental health, and sustainability. You can follow her on Twitter.

In this contribution, Katie has chosen a timely topic: the increasing consumer interest in electric vehicles (EVs). The recent stratospheric rise in gasoline and diesel prices because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made EVs far more attractive. That plus more announcements about new EV models, i.e., The Ford Lightning (an EV version of the F-150) may prove to be the moment when North Americans begin a rapid move away from fossil-fuel-powered vehicles?

As fuel prices continue to rise around the world, many consumers are taking another look at EVs as a potential solution for their transportation needs. This follows historical trends that show whenever there is a spike in gas and diesel costs it is accompanied by an increase in EV sales. Online searches for EVs continue to double with many in the renewable energy sector wondering if this is the watershed moment that will finally move us to take zero-emission actions seriously.

For years, the brain has been thought of as a biological computer that processes information through traditional circuits, whereby data zips straight from one cell to another. While that model is still accurate, a new study led by Salk Professor Thomas Albright and Staff Scientist Sergei Gepshtein shows that there’s also a second, very different way that the brain parses information: through the interactions of waves of neural activity. The findings, published in Science Advances on April 22, 2022, help researchers better understand how the brain processes information.

“We now have a new understanding of how the computational machinery of the brain is working,” says Albright, the Conrad T. Prebys Chair in Vision Research and director of Salk’s Vision Center Laboratory. “The model helps explain how the brain’s underlying state can change, affecting people’s attention, focus, or ability to process information.”

Researchers have long known that waves of electrical activity exist in the brain, both during sleep and wakefulness. But the underlying theories as to how the brain processes information—particularly sensory information, like the sight of a light or the sound of a bell—have revolved around information being detected by specialized brain cells and then shuttled from one neuron to the next like a relay.

Summary: A new study sheds light on the movement of neurons throughout the brain during fetal development. Researchers also found the two hemispheres of the human cortex separated earlier in development than previously thought.

Source: UCSD

The making of a human brain remains a mostly mysterious process that races from an embryonic neural tube to more than 100 billion interconnected neurons in the brain of a newborn.

Summary: Study reveals the different ways the brain parses information through interactions of waves of neural activity.

Source: Salk Institute.

For years, the brain has been thought of as a biological computer that processes information through traditional circuits, whereby data zips straight from one cell to another. While that model is still accurate, a new study led by Salk Professor Thomas Albright and Staff Scientist Sergei Gepshtein shows that there’s also a second, very different way that the brain parses information: through the interactions of waves of neural activity.

Are quantum events required for consciousness in a very special sense, far beyond the general sense that quantum events are part of all physical systems? What would it take for quantum events, on such a micro-scale, to be relevant for brain function, which operates at the much higher level of neurons and brain circuits? What would it mean?

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Continue reading “Quantum Physics of Consciousness” »

Summary: Suppressing or blocking out physical sensations related to emotions such as sadness can hinder recovery from depression symptoms and may cause a relapse into depression.

Source: University of Toronto.

The physical sensations that accompany sadness can feel as undesirable as they are intense—a constriction of the chest, watery eyes and a raw throat, to name a few.

Tiny capsule that delivers CRISPR gene therapy to the brain could be used to target glioblastoma tumours.

Thoughts, memories, sensations — why are we still in the dark about how they work?

Josh SeehermanI don’t think he’s wrong.

Walter Lynsdale” agreeing with a Twitter user who said the “Woke mind virus is the biggest threat to civilization,”

Continue reading “The art of Aphantasia: How ‘mind blind’ artists create without being able to visualise” »