Brain, Mind, Consciousness and Learning

Harvard Profesor Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy?

2009-10-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

Simulated Brain in a Super Computer

2009-09-06T21:25:00.001-07:00

Blue Brain Image from Switzerland

In the microscopic, yet-uncharted circuitry of the cortex, Henry Markram is perhaps the most ambitious -- and our most promising -- frontiersman. Backed by the extraordinary power of the IBM Blue Gene supercomputing architecture, which can perform hundreds of trillions of calculations per second, he's using complex models to precisely simulate the neocortical column (and its tens of millions of neural connections) in 3D. Source

Sir Ken Robinson on Education and Creativity

2009-08-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

Sir Ken Robinson is a creativity expert.

He challenges the way we're educating our children, and champions a radical rethinking of our school systems to better cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. His latest book, The Element, looks at how we find our creative passion.

Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action

2009-08-07T15:27:00.000-07:00

Art, Music, Emotions, Love and Human Evolution

2009-08-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

University of California TV presents a talk by the three world-renowned researchers

1. Antonio Damasio: University of Southern California and Author of several popular books inluding

The Feeling of what Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness‎

2. Helen Fisher Rutger University and author of book

Why we love: the nature and chemistry of romantic love

3. Isabelle Peretz University of Montreal

The Handbook of Cognitive Neuropsychology: What Deficits Reveal about the ...‎ - Page 519

Music Perception and Recognition Isabella Peretz All human societies have music.
As far as we know, they have always had. Unlike other widespread human.

These scientists share their insights and research work into the neural basis of art, creativity, emotions and music and the powerful roles they play in human evolution.

Psychologically Speaking What Does "Free Will" Really Mean

2009-08-02T02:31:00.000-07:00

Dr. John Bargh is a Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His work is in the area of "Automaticity" where he investigate about our Automatic Behavior. His Laboratory at Yale:

The ACME (Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation, and Emotion) Lab at Yale focuses on nonconscious or automatic influences on psychological and behavioral processes. In one way or another, all of our studies address the issue of free will, and how much of it do we as individuals really have. We are interested in the extent to which all social psychological phenomena -- attitudes and evaluations, emotions, impressions, motivations, social behavior -- occur nonconsciously and automatically. Currently, our research is actively exploring how social goals such as to cooperate, achieve, become friends, and so on, are triggered and operate without the person's awareness. We also are looking at the potential sources of these nonconscious motivations in real life settings, for example, the significant others in our lives can be one major source. A related question is how these various sources of nonconscious influence interact with each other, and how much of our 'real life' experience is governed by them. We are also starting to look at emotional experience as a potential internal trigger of goals and future intentions. That all of these effects occur without the person's intention and awareness, yet have such strong effects on the person's decisions and behavior, has considerable implications for the nature and purpose of consciousness. By discovering those domains of social life in which conscious, deliberate processes are not necessary, we can shed more light on what consciousness is needed for -- that is, what its true purpose is. Source

He gave a talk discussing the issue of "Free Will" during a symposium at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Convention in Tampa, FL.

Our Behavior are not as free as we would like them to be.

Prof Richard Davidson: Be Happy Like a Monk

2009-07-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

Professor Richard Davidson describes the brain activity of a monk.

What is Unique about Human

2009-07-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

Robert Sapolsky is currently a professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University. He is also a big time primatlogist who studies Baboons in Africa.

In this lecture he talks about what is unique about human.

Terence Mckenna - Culture is your operating system

2009-07-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

Terence Mckenna, a self taught ethno-botanist uses interesting metaphor of operating system to appeal to the sensibilities of technical types who insist on modeling real life phenomenon.

Left Brain vs. Right Brain

2009-07-11T17:50:00.001-07:00

Source
Click on the image for a bigger picture.

Does Money Affects Happiness

2009-07-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

CBS MoneyWatch talks to Stanford Professor Jennifer Aaker about the psychological toll of ups and down in economy including tips for creating a stress-free life style.

Using Visual Perception in Problem Solving

2009-07-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

Visual Perception is one of the most used cognitive function. It helps us in moving around without running into other objects. It also helps us in finding our position and orientation in space. It is also instrumental in visual problem solving.

Dan Roem wrote a book "The Back of Napkin: Solving Problem and Selling Ideas" The book explains how images and pictures can be used to solve our complex problems and explaining ideas. Here is an example where he describes the difference in finding information between Google and Alltop information aggregator. "How You Find your Information Nuggets" According to him we do not need artistic talent to draw comlex pictures. Simple sketches as shown in this ewample will do the job of visual problem solving.

Dr. Robert Horn is a visiting scholar at Stanford university. He work in the area of Visual Language and wrote a book "Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century" His web page at Stanford University illustrates his approach of Information Modeling using Visual Language. An optimum combination of pictures and words can create a very strong communiaction script. It can even help in developing visual information slides that can communicate across culture and disciplines.

In the video below Information Designer Tom Wujec talks about three areas of brain that are used in word, image and emotion processing. He gives an approach of using visual perception for solving problems using three steps:

1. Creating images that helps us in visualizing problems
2. By allowing interaction with the images
3. By making the results of all the first two steps persistence

He shows an example on how people at Autodesk use this for their internal tasks.

We spend a big part of our time in watching video screens that is constantly refreshed through a computer. With increased computing power and increased video screen resolution and size it will become possible to use icons and imagery to communicate ideas, concepts and collaboration for problem solving among teams. This will allow us to tackle some of the complex problems that seems unsolvable at this time. It will also reduce the over emphasis on the written words we currently have, reducing the burden on verbal part of the brain brain.

Watch Your Musical Brain

2009-07-02T18:08:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart of the daily show interviews Neurologist Oliver Sacks who is the author of the book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007) -- Revised & Expanded (2008). He has appeared on PBS program "Musical Instinct"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Oliver Sacks

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Jason Jones in Iran

How Chaos Drives the Brain

2009-06-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

Brain neuron constantly fire in response to the internal and external stimulus. Most of the time Brain is stable but there are times when it operates as a chaotic system. The video shows the animation of the brain's behavior

Neuroscientists have long suspected as much. Only recently, however, have they come up with proof that brains work this way. Now they are trying to work out why. Some believe that near-chaotic states may be crucial to memory, and could explain why some people are smarter than others.

In technical terms, systems on the edge of chaos are said to be in a state of "self-organised criticality". These systems are right on the boundary between stable, orderly behaviour - such as a swinging pendulum - and the unpredictable world of chaos, as exemplified by turbulence.

The complete article is here.

Twitter in The Classroom

2009-06-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Changing Mathematics Education

2009-06-30T03:08:00.000-07:00

Mathematician and magician Arthur Benjamin talks about changing the Mathematics education by reducing the emphasis on the Calculus curriculum and covering more Statistics to make mathematics curriculum more interesting.

Chimpanzee Learning to Eat Japanese Food

2009-06-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

Philip Zimbardo on Time and Temptation

2009-06-24T17:14:00.000-07:00

Philip Zimbardo bio

A past president of the American Psychological Association and a professor emeritus at Stanford, Zimbardo retired in 2008 from lecturing, after 50 years of teaching his legendary introductory course in psychology. In addition to his work on evil and heroism, Zimbardo recently published "The Time Paradox", exploring different cultural and personal perspectives on time.

He talks about the two modes of time perspective. The first perspective is about "Here and Now" that is I want everything now. Not much thinking goes on about future consequences of the choices made in present. The second perspective is all about delayed gratification. Some one constantly working for future goals and postponing the gratification indefinitely. He thinks that both perspective are not ideal choices. An optimum approach between the two time perspective will lead to a balanced healthy life choices.

What Makes Us Happy

2009-06-21T16:49:00.000-07:00

Humans have been searching for happiness since they became human.

The US "Declaration of Independence" document mostly authored by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 explicitly mentions it in the following famous phrase:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It makes pursuit of happiness a "Natural and Legal" right of every US citizen raising an interesting question "What is Happiness?" It is sort of assumed that we intuitively know what it is. Is it the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure? or "The calm contentedness of a sage?" or a "Hearty laugh at a joke?". It seems that the word "Happiness" may in fact have several meanings and it may refer to many mental states depending upon the context in which it is being used.

Harvard University has a long running study to learn the "Secrets of Good Life". The study is running for seventy years starting in 1937 and follows lives of its participants from the time they studied at Harvard till recent times. It is one of the longest running longitudinal studies.

The Harvard Psychiatrist George Vaillant is managing the work on this research for the last forty years. In the video from Atlantic magazine below he describes the findings of his work:

It is interesting to note from his comments that there is no single recipe that everybody can follow to attain happiness.

The complete article "What Makes Us Happy" from Atlantic magazine here, is worth reading. It is quite humbling in many ways describing how lives of people twist and turn as move through different stages of their lives.

Daniel Kahneman on Behavioral Economics

2009-06-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

Dr. Daniel Kahneman is a professor of Psychology at Princeton University. He is one of the few psychologhists who received nobel prize for economics. He questioned the assumption of rationality behind the human decision making process. He also showed that human decisions are not rational.

He is the speaker at the Georgetown University at the graduation ceremony.

We are also seeing that the efficient market theory for stock market prediction is also being questioned recently. The new thinking is that the markets are not efficient.

Steve Pinker with Richard Dawkins On Charles Darwin

2009-06-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins interviews Steve Pinker for "The Genius of Charles Darwin". Steve Pinker bio

Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

The interview was done for the Channel 4 UK TV program which won British Broadcasting Awards' "Best Documentary Series" of 2008.

Parrot Messages a Cat's Head

2009-06-09T21:40:00.000-07:00

Animal Consciousness

Loving Lions

2009-05-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

Lions are known for their ferociousness and killing. They also have a soft affectionate side where they remember their human rescuers. On meeting them they show extreme love and affection towards them.

Lion rescued in Columbia kisses rescuer (via Rehan)

London Lion Reunion in Africa

Watch Seth Godin on Tribes

2009-05-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin talks about Tribes and how to be instrumental in bringing about change in the future.

Source

Obedience: Phil Zimbardo on Colbert Report

2009-05-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

Dr. Zimbardo is a professor at Stanford. He wrote a book titled "Lucifer Effect" that goes into obedience behavior, when it is appropriate and under what conditions it becomes a moral hazard.

He discusses his book here with Stephen Colbert in this video

His expriments are similar to the experiments conducted by Yale Psychologist Stanely Milgram in which he studied the willingness of the subjects to obey the authority figures.

An excerpt from an article by Stanely Milgram

The Perils of Obedience

by Stanley Milgram

Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to. Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living, and it is only the person dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, with defiance or submission, to the commands of others. For many people, obedience is a deeply ingrained behavior tendency, indeed a potent impulse overriding training in ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct.

The dilemma inherent in submission to authority is ancient, as old as the story of Abraham, and the question of whether one should obey when commands conflict with conscience has been argued by Plato, dramatized in Antigone, and treated to philosophic analysis in almost every historical epoch. Conservative philosophers argue that the very fabric of society is threatened by disobedience, while humanists stress the primacy of the individual conscience.
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Source