Brain, Mind, Consciousness and Learning

Mother Trees Connect the Forest | Tree Communication in Forest

2012-03-01T23:08:00.000-08:00

Heribert Watzke: The brain in your gut

2011-11-24T12:08:00.001-08:00

Apes and Human | Are we Different from Chimps? Not Much

2011-02-26T04:12:00.000-08:00

Neurologist professor Robert Sapolsky from Stanford talks about the similarities between Humans and Chimps.

Similar idea is explored in this article

For additional information the hour long talk of Professor Sapolsky on this topic is available at FORA TV here

Professor George Lakoff on Non-Conscious Mental Processing

2010-12-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

Prof. George Lakoff - Reason is 98% Subconscious Metaphor in Frames & Cultural Narratives. The rational actor model is not how human make decision.

Brain Sex | Why We Fall in Love

2010-12-05T12:36:00.000-08:00

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Neuroscience meets Magic

2010-12-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

The riddle of experience vs. memory and its effect on happiness

2010-03-07T00:22:00.000-08:00

Dr. Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Memorial prize in 2002 for his work with Tversky, who died before the award was bestowed. In a lovely passage in his Nobel biography, Kahneman looks back on his deep collaboration with Tversky and calls for a new form of academic cooperation, marked not by turf battles but by "adversarial collaboration," a good-faith effort by unlike minds to conduct joint research, critiquing each other in the service of an ideal of truth to which both can contribute.

via ted.com

Why Do We Think Alike

2010-02-13T00:50:00.000-08:00

Thinking Perception Attention Memory

2009-12-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

Chris Atherton at TCUK09

View more documents from Chris Atherton.

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.

Richard O. Brown: The Neuroscience of Nothing

2009-08-03T20:03:00.001-07:00

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