Meditation may calm the mind, but a recent study suggests it can also reshape brain activity by profoundly altering brain dynamics and increasing neural connections – somewhat similar to psychedelic substances.
As a result, meditation may help practitioners achieve a hypothesized state known as “brain criticality”, in which neural connections are neither too weak nor too strong, but at an optimal level for mental agility and function.
In the study, led by neurophysiologist Annalisa Pascarella of the Italian National Research Council, researchers used high-resolution brain scans and machine learning to examine how meditation can alter brain activity to achieve an equilibrium between neural chaos and order.
WASHINGTON — Quindar, a startup that provides mission management software for satellite operators, has been selected by satellite servicing company Starfish Space to support the first three missions of its Otter spacecraft.
Under an agreement announced Feb. 5, Quindar will provide software to manage and automate operations for Starfish’s initial Otter missions, which are expected to begin launching this year. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Based in Denver, Quindar offers a cloud-hosted platform that allows satellite operators to track spacecraft, send commands and automate routine ground operations. The company positions its software as an alternative to traditional, custom-built mission control systems that operators typically develop in-house and maintain over the life of a program.
Another system the team Self on was a set of Ni–phosphine complexes, where steric interactions often limit the accessibility of the phosphine ligand’s lone pair. The researchers found that their results correlated well with the traditional method to study this – Tolman’s angles – but also showed that the interaction between the nickel centre and the ligand is smaller than Tolman analysis suggests.
These insights could prove useful for chemists. As Paton notes, ‘you could imagine comparing many different ligands in a library with this tool and using it to, for example, characterise or understand performance, maybe even ligand design… ultimately, that will allow us to think about how we might design better and more efficient systems and reactions.’
Hénon highlights that Self also works inside molecules, not just between them. ‘Previous methods were designed for two separate molecules approaching each other. But what about rotation barriers within a single molecule. That’s intramolecular steric repulsion, and Self handles it naturally. Other methods struggle badly with this. This opens new perspectives.’
AI systems, by contrast, do not cooperate, negotiate meaning, form social bonds or engage in shared moral reasoning. They process information in isolation, responding to prompts without awareness, intention or accountability.
Embodiment and social understanding matter
Human intelligence is also embodied. Our thinking is shaped by physical experience, emotion and social interaction. Developmental psychology shows that learning begins in infancy through touch, movement, imitation and shared attention with others. These embodied experiences ground abstract reasoning later in life.
Theme || the prospect of immortality & human cryopreservation.
Is Death just a Technical Problem we haven’t solved yet?
In this episode of State Change, Kyle O’Brien sits down with Emil Kendziorra, founder of Tomorrow Bio, to explore the science, ethics, and future of cryopreservation — the process that may one day allow humans (and even pets) to be revived centuries from now.
We talk about the brain, identity, consciousness, why people fear death, and what it means to rewrite the social contract when life extension becomes real.
Head to https://brilliant.org/Spacetime/ to start learning for free for 30 days. Plus, our viewers get 20% off an annual Premium subscription for unlimited daily access to everything Brilliant has to offer.
Physicists have long believed that detecting the particle of gravity—the graviton—was fundamentally impossible, with the universe itself seeming to block every direct attempt. This episode explores a new generation of clever experiments that may finally let us detect gravity’s particle, and why even succeeding wouldn’t quite mean what we think it does.
Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! / pbsspacetime.
(A) Neuromodulatory projections of the ascending arousal system project divergent axons across the cortex, including to L6b, providing state-dependent signals. Likewise, higher-order cortical axons project to multiple cortical regions, including L6b, providing top-down volitional signals. L6b integrates the convergent input from these two pathways and directs its output to CTC loops with fast and focused activation.
(B) L6b is depolarized by arousal-promoting neuromodulators (left), and we hypothesize that the addition of higher-order cortical feedback strongly activates L6b (right). Thus, the role of neuromodulation is to bring L6b close to the activation threshold across the cortex so that specific L6b circuits can be more easily recruited by specific top-down cortical input. ACh, acetylcholine; 5HT, serotonin; DA, dopamine; NA, noradrenaline; HIS, histamine.
The STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory demonstrates evidence of spin correlations in $$\Lambda \bar{\Lambda }$$ Λ Λ ¯ hyperon pairs inherited from virtual spin-correlated strange quark–antiquark pairs during QCD confinement.
