Last month I was involved in a fantastic conference: the 26th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. I think it went really well, and some parts got a fair amount of mainstream coverage, with varying degrees of accuracy.
Category: neuroscience – Page 471
Mind over model: Allen School’s Rajesh Rao proposes brain-inspired AI architecture to make complex problems simpler to solve
Break it down: How AI can learn from the brain.
In a recent paper titled “A sensory-motor theory of the neocortex” published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Rao posited that the brain uses active predictive coding (APC) to understand the world and break down complicated problems into simpler…
When you reach out to pet a dog, you expect it to feel soft. If it doesn’t feel like how you expect, your brain uses that feedback to inform your next action — maybe you pull your hand away. Previous models of how the brain works have typically separated perception and action. For Allen School professor Rajesh Rao, those two processes are closely intertwined, and their relationship can be mapped using a computational algorithm.
“This flips the traditional paradigm of perception occurring before action,” said Rao, the Cherng Jia and Elizabeth Yun Hwang Professor in the Allen School and University of Washington Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology.
Brain scans reveal that mindfulness meditation for pain is not a placebo
Pain is a complex, multifaceted experience shaped by various factors beyond physical sensation, such as a person’s mindset and their expectations of pain. The placebo effect, the tendency for a person’s symptoms to improve in response to inactive treatment, is a well-known example of how expectations can significantly alter a person’s experience. Mindfulness meditation, which has been used for pain management in various cultures for centuries, has long been thought to work by activating the placebo response. However, scientists have now shown that this is not the case.
A new study, published in Biological Psychiatry, has revealed that mindfulness meditation engages distinct brain mechanisms to reduce pain compared to those of the placebo response. The study, conducted by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, used advanced brain imaging techniques to compare the pain-reducing effects of mindfulness meditation, a placebo cream and a “sham” mindfulness meditation in healthy participants.
The study found that mindfulness meditation produced significant reductions in pain intensity and pain unpleasantness ratings, and also reduced brain activity patterns associated with pain and negative emotions. In contrast, the placebo cream only reduced the brain activity pattern associated with the placebo effect, without affecting the person’s underlying experience of pain.
Chickadee research finds cognitive skills impact lifespan
While there is no denying ‘survival of the fittest’ still reigns supreme in the animal kingdom, a new study shows being smartest—or at least smarter—is pretty important, too.
Kelsey Martin — How do Human Brains Function?
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What is it about human brains that enable both the regulation of bodily activities and the generation of mental thoughts? What are the mechanisms of human brain function? How do they integrate to give the sense of mental unity? What happens when something in the brain goes wrong—abnormalities, injury, disease? What is the future of brain science?
Dr. Kelsey Martin is Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA as well as a professor of biological chemistry, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. Her research focuses on the cell biology of transcription-dependent forms of synaptic plasticity, particularly those underlying learning and memory.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
UVA Research Cracks the Autism Code, Making the Neurodivergent Brain Visible
Their…
A multi-university research team co-led by University of Virginia engineering professor Gustavo K. Rohde has developed a system that can spot genetic markers of autism in brain images with 89 to 95% accuracy.
Their findings suggest doctors may one day see, classify and treat autism and related neurological conditions with this method, without having to rely on, or wait for, behavioral cues. And that means this truly personalized medicine could result in earlier interventions.
“Autism is traditionally diagnosed behaviorally but has a strong genetic basis. A genetics-first approach could transform understanding and treatment of autism,” the researchers wrote in a paper published June 12 in the journal Science Advances.
Panprotopsychism: Panpsychism
, while an interesting thought experiment, does not seem to account for the fact that many phenomena are materialistic or physical enough to have no resemblance with the qualities we typically attribute to consciousness, such as experience and motive.
Panprotopsychism, by contrast, does not require matter to be intrinsically conscious, only that it be comprised of features equaling consciousness when combined.
If certain kinds of quantum entanglement between particles such as electrons, more aptly described as wavicles, have superposed properties with likeness to the visible light spectrum when arranged amongst molecules and additional corpuscles, mechanisms of superposition may be the basic material unit of qualitative experience. These qualia, as fragments of psychical imagery and feeling, may flit in and out of existence rapidly within the most inorganic conditions, so that components of perception exist on a fundamental level while commonly not giving rise to experience and motive. But when these superpositions are held in prolonged orientations amongst brain matter and in nature generally, consciousness of carbon-based, human and alternative richness can emerge.