New research reveals hints of quantum states in tiny proteins called microtubules inside brain cells. If the results stand up, the idea that consciousness is quantum might come in from the cold.
Category: neuroscience – Page 685
Temporal self-compression: Behavioral and neural evidence that past and future selves are compressed as they move away from the present
For centuries, great thinkers have struggled to understand how people represent a personal identity that changes over time. Insight may come from a basic principle of perception: as objects become distant, they also become less discriminable or “compressed.” In Studies 1–3, we demonstrate that people’s ratings of their own personality become increasingly less differentiated as they consider more distant past and future selves. In Study 4, we found neural evidence that the brain compresses self-representations with time as well. When we peer out a window, objects close to us are in clear view, whereas distant objects are hard to tell apart. We provide evidence that self-perception may operate similarly, with the nuance of distant selves increasingly harder to perceive.
A basic principle of perception is that as objects increase in distance from an observer, they also become logarithmically compressed in perception (i.e., not differentiated from one another), making them hard to distinguish. Could this basic principle apply to perhaps our most meaningful mental representation: our own sense of self? Here, we report four studies that suggest selves are increasingly non-discriminable with temporal distance from the present as well. In Studies 1 through 3, participants made trait ratings across various time points in the past and future. We found that participants compressed their past and future selves, relative to their present self. This effect was preferential to the self and could not be explained by the alternative possibility that individuals simply perceive arbitrary self-change with time irrespective of temporal distance.
New metacognition research provides insight into how the brain looks at itself
The Neuro-Network.
𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟
𝙄𝙣 1,884, 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙢𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙚𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙢𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙚𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙚𝙨 𝙋𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙘… See more.
In 1,884, while attempting to define the limits of human perception, Charles Pierce and Joseph Jastrow discovered something else: the limits of our insight into ourselves.
Participants in their experiments systematically under-rated their ability to correctly judge their own sensations, which Pierce and Jastrow offered as an explanation of “the insight of females as well as certain ‘telepathic’ phenomena”. These particular implications have thankfully been left behind (along with the conceptual relationship between telepathy and female insight). But by the late 1970s this approach of asking participants to rate their own performance had emerged as its own field of research: the study of “metacognition”.
Broadly, this ability to self-reflect and think about our own thoughts allows us to feel more or less confident in our decisions: we can act decisively when we’re confident we are correct, or be more cautious after we feel we’ve made an error.
Dr. David Berson: Your Brain’s Logic & Function
Listen: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
In this episode, Dr. Huberman is joined by Dr. David Berson, Professor and Chairman of Neuroscience at Brown University. Dr. Berson discovered the neurons in your eye that set your biological rhythms for sleep, wakefulness, mood and appetite. He is also a world-renowned teacher of basic and advanced neuroscience, having taught thousands of university lectures on this topic. Many of his students have become world-leading neuroscientists and teachers themselves.
Here Dr. Berson takes us on a structured journey into and around the nervous system, explaining: how we perceive the world and our internal landscape, how we balance, see, and remember. Also, how we learn and perform reflexive and deliberate actions, how we visualize and imagine in our mind, and how the various circuits of the brain coordinate all these incredible feats.
New Clues about the Origins of Biological Intelligence
A common solution is emerging in two different fields: developmental biology and neuroscience.
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New Research Finds Potential Mechanism Linking Autism and Intestinal Inflammation
Infection during pregnancy with elevated levels of the cytokine IL-17a may yield microbiome alterations that prime offspring for aberrant immune responses, mouse study suggests.
Though many people with autism spectrum disorders also experience unusual gastrointestinal inflammation, scientists have not established how those conditions might be linked. Now MIT
MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances.
Finding That Connection: Watch Two Neurons in a Petri Dish Sense Each Other and Connect
In this video, Dr. Lila Landowski shares footage of two neurons connecting in a dish. Here’s what Lila had to say about the footage:
You’re watching two neurons that I saw under the microscope sensing one another and connecting.
There are 86 billion neurons in the brain — how do they know how to connect to other neurons or body parts when our bodies are developing?
Findings Challenge Previous Theories About the Relationship Between Two Elements of Consciousness
When the perception of bodily self-consciousness is distorted… See more.
Summary: When the perception of bodily self-consciousness is distorted, the recovery of body ownership can be predicted by different kinds of memories.
Source: University of Tsukuba
Scientists and philosophers have pondered the nature of consciousness for centuries. But now, researchers from Japan have uncovered new information that challenges previous theories about the relationship between two elements of consciousness.
In a study published this month in iScience, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have revealed that when the perception of bodily self-consciousness is distorted, the recovery of body ownership can be predicted by different kinds of memories.