The Mind Hacks blog does a very good job in covering a story I wanted to touch on, but haven’t had a chance to comment on yet.
Evidence for ‘grandmother cells’:
that single brain cells may be specialised for recognising specific faces.
Now I’ve not yet read the article (or its abstract) in Nature yet, but part of the reported findings don’t suprise me too much.
It’s known that there’s an area of the brain involved in face recognition–the fusiform gyrus
Studies of people who have suffered damage to this region of their brains (usually stroke patients) have shown an inability to recognize faces.
Other studies, usually performed in primates, have found areas of the brian (more specifically groups of neurons) around the f’usiform gyrus, primarilly iin the temporal lobe that respond with higher activity to specific facial features. For examples, certain neurons have been found to fire faster in response to a picture of eyes, while another neuron will fire more in response to a picture of a nose.
Integrating all of this eventually leads to the ability to detect the features of faces and then through higher-level [cognitive] processing, we’re able to recogize different faces.
In as much, it’s not surpsing that there are neurons that fire in response to faces. However, if there are specific individual neurons that display activity specifically for certain (specific) faces, that would be a really interesting finding–and this is supposively what the results of this study are to show.
I think Michele describes what it’s like on the Island right now in her post from this morning:
We’re gearing up for a hot and humid one today. You know it’s going to be bad when two minute after stepping out of the shower you already feel like you need another. Heat, I can deal with (though don’t like). Humidity? Sucks donkey balls. Big, honking donkey balls.
It’s going to be an A/C kind of day.
Yeah–heat I can take–the heat + humidity combo is another thing all together. Ugh
Woah! Anyone else fondly remember all the good (and well, some not so good) old Nintendo stuff?
Those were the days
Well I’m wrapping up my experiment today in the lab…so things are naturally very hectic as I bounce from location A to B then back to A and do a million things inbetween.
Then there’s the fact that I’ve also been in the lab since 7 this morning (don’t ask).
NYT: Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign Teacher Said
I can start rattling off examples of this….where do I begin?
A blog post that is actually in favor of today’s court ruling in New London v. Kelo (Court ruling)
In short–I think it stinks! (And that’s being nice)
Karl Rove last night:
“Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.” Citing calls by progressive groups to respond carefully to the attacks, Mr. Rove said to the applause of several hundred audience members, “I don’t know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble.”
Except for some liberals, who had their heads on straight (though by the standards of many of the self annointed “progressives” these people aren’t liberal enough to be liberals) that’s ‘whay I remember the attitude to be like at school in the aftermath of 9/11…and it’s one of the reasons I jumped ship from the left…
What’s that saying: “let dead ducks lay [dead]” or something like that.
Democrats find 2004 voting problems in Ohio
They seem to be trotting out this same old canard again…
Don’t ‘they know that elections are run by each county independently in the state?
And that’s the tip of the iceberg…
Get over it already people!
So AFI has put out a list of it’s top 100 movie quotes
I usually hate these kinds of lists, because they always seem to omit things that deserve to be on them and so on and so forth.
But what suprised me is how many of the quotes I recognized both from movies I’ve seen and just from every day life–quotes from movies I’ve not seen.
A quote from a bookseller on the new Hillary Clinton book thingy:
“‘Why are we wasting trees with this?’
I’ve asked the same thing about many other books too, like the one by “Washingtonette” among others.
What wastes of dead tree!
I’m going to be performing operations all day today.
Let’s just say I’m not looking forward to it–if you know what I mean.
As a result, free time will be scarce, and blogging will be very light as a result (as I may not get computer access).
It’s going to be such a long day, I doubt I’ll be leaving the lab while the sun is still up.
Speaking of the lab, I got some great pictures of deer here on the campus. I shoud get a flickr account perhaps?
Sorry about the lack of blogging today, I was busy working in the lab and working on my manuscript.
And I got home late….
But what’s with the lack of anything’ good on TV this season? I know it’s summer and all but still…
I think I’m going to go read a book for a bit
Our lab’s server is down….meaning no access for me to my documents. Sigh.
Too bad it’s a slow day thus far, I could’ve actually been blogging about stuff!
Regarding the President’s poor approval numbers–there’s a reason behind it…and Ryan Lizza of TNR hits the nail on the head
All of these conventional reasons for Bush’s troubles are no doubt contributing to the early onset of lame duckitis and the accompanying blizzard of articles describing it. But the most important explanation for Bush’s problems is what might be called his bait and switch. Bush campaigned in 2004 on one set of ideas, but he is pursuing a radically different agenda. His program has been inverted. The issues he talked about the most last year, such as terrorism, are off the radar, while those he rarely highlighted are front and center.
ocial Security was a peripheral issue in the 2004 campaign, buried in a laundry list of proposals in Bush’s speeches. The Bush campaign spent millions of dollars buying commercials, yet somehow never devoted an ad to the issue that Bush now spends the majority of his time talking about. Bush ran on security, not Social Security.
When the President was talking about all his “political capital” that he’d earned and wanted to spend, I feel that he blew alot if not all of it on issues that most of the people who voted for him don’t much care for (or at least not high-priority topics).
Like Lizza said, the theme of the past election seemed to be National Security and the WoT, something the President has talked about in his second term, but not as often and not as much in the public light (which in my opinion is a mistake politically speaking).
The President would also be better off going on issues that interest/appeal to more people. At least that’s what I think.
(h/t Jeff at Have Coffee Will Write)
Been here in the lab since 8:20ish (yeah, I get here early and leave late–I’m a workaholic–what can I say?).
I think I’ve finally gotten all of my stats squared away once and for all! Hooray! Now I don’t know what’s next–making graphs or typing up my results…oh boy, what fun awaits, no?
Not sure what else is going on today in these parts, so perhaps I’ll get a chance to blog later. I’ve gotta get back to work now
I had a conversation with an individual who holds a PhD in Neuroscience this past weekend, and we were talking about science and the like.
One thing that she mentioned, is that while she no longer works in a lab setting, she said her experiences in the lab taught her how to think differently and approach evidence in a different manner than she previously did.
So I’m throwing out the question to people; do people in different disciplines think about things differently?
That is to say, are people’s approaches to questions/challenges/dilemas/puzzles heavily influenced by their work-enviroment or carreer training?
Just to follow up on this topic from recent posts,
there’s two good posts up at Respectful Insolence by “Orac” who himself is a scientist (a cancer surgeon and researcher to be exact).
His first posttitled: Salon.com flushes its credibility down the toilet takes on the original RFK Jr. article.
Then he has another good follow up piece, responding to some of the comments he’s received (both pro and con) titled: Swimming through the thimerosal
I’d also suggest visiting the medical literature (should you have the chance) esp. to read some review articles on the topic, like this one from the Journal Pediatrics: Thimerosal-containing vaccines and autistic spectrum disorder: a critical review of published original data.
And a quote from the abstract:
Epidemiologic studies that support a link demonstrated significant design flaws that invalidate their conclusions.