March 27, 2013
Children should be allowed to get bored, expert says-BBC News

wildcat2030:

Children should be allowed to get bored so they can develop their innate ability to be creative, an education expert says.

Dr Teresa Belton told the BBC cultural expectations that children should be constantly active could hamper the development of their imagination

She quizzed author Meera Syal and artist Grayson Perry about how boredom had aided their creativity as children.

Syal said boredom made her write, while Perry said it was a “creative state”.

The senior researcher at the University of East Anglia’s School of Education and Lifelong Learning interviewed a number of authors, artists and scientists in her exploration of the effects of boredom.

She heard Syal’s memories of the small mining village, with few distractions, where she grew up.

Dr Belton said: “Lack of things to do spurred her to talk to people she would not otherwise have engaged with and to try activities she would not, under other circumstances, have experienced, such as talking to elderly neighbours and learning to bake cakes.

“Boredom is often associated with solitude and Syal spent hours of her early life staring out of the window across fields and woods, watching the changing weather and seasons.

2:36pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuuhEyaBh
(Notes: 91)
  
March 27, 2013
neurosciencestuff: Mapping blank spots in the cheeseboard maze IST Austria Professor Jozsef Csicsvari together with collaborators succeeds in uncovering processes in which the formation of spatial memory is manifested in a map representation • Researchers investigate timescale of map formation • Inhibitory interneurons possibly involved in selection of map During learning, novel information is transformed into memory through the processing and encoding of information in neural circuits. In a recent publication in Neuron, IST Austria Professor Jozsef Csicsvari, together with his collaborator David Dupret at the University of Oxford, and Joseph O’Neill, postdoc in Csicsvari’s group, uncovered a novel role for inhibitory interneurons in the rat hippocampus during the formation of spatial memory. During spatial learning, space is represented in the hippocampus through plastic changes in the connections between neurons. Jozsef Csicsvari and his collaborators investigate spatial learning in rats using the cheeseboard maze apparatus. This apparatus contains many holes, some of which are selected to hide food in order to test spatial memory. During learning trials, animals learn where the rewards are located, and after a period sleep, the researchers test whether the animal can recall these reward locations. In previous work, they and others have shown that memory of space is encoded in the hippocampus through changes in the firing of excitatory pyramidal cells, the so-called “place cells”. A place cell fires when the animal arrives at a particular location. Normally, place cells always fire at the same place in an environment; however, during spatial learning the place of their firing can change to encode where the reward is found, forming memory maps. In their new publication, the researchers investigated the timescale of map formation, showing that during spatial learning, pyramidal neuron maps representing previous and new reward locations “flicker”, with both firing patterns occurring. At first, old maps and new maps fluctuate, as the animal is unsure whether the location change is transient or long-lasting. At a later stage, the new map and so the relevant new information dominates. The scientists also investigated the contribution of inhibitory interneuron circuits to learning. They show that these interneurons, which are extensively interconnected with pyramidal cells, change their firing rates during map formation and flickering: some interneurons fire more often when the new pyramidal map fires, while others fire less often with the new map. These changes in interneuron firing were only observed during learning, not during sleep or recall. The scientists also show that the changes in firing rate are due to map-specific changes in the connections between pyramidal cells and interneurons. When a pyramidal cell is part of a new map, the strengthening of a connection with an interneuron causes an increase in the firing of this interneuron. Conversely, when a pyramidal cell is not part of a new map, the weakening of the connection with the interneuron causes a decrease in interneuron firing rate. Both, the increase and the decrease in firing rate can be beneficial for learning, allowing the regulation of plasticity between pyramidal cells and controlling the timing in their firing. The new research therefore shows that not only excitatory neurons modify their behaviour and exhibit plastic connection changes during learning, but also the inhibitory interneuron circuits. The researchers suggest that inhibitory interneurons could be involved in map selection – helping one map dominate and take over during learning, so that the relevant information is encoded.

neurosciencestuff:

Mapping blank spots in the cheeseboard maze

IST Austria Professor Jozsef Csicsvari together with collaborators succeeds in uncovering processes in which the formation of spatial memory is manifested in a map representation • Researchers investigate timescale of map formation • Inhibitory interneurons possibly involved in selection of map

During learning, novel information is transformed into memory through the processing and encoding of information in neural circuits. In a recent publication in Neuron, IST Austria Professor Jozsef Csicsvari, together with his collaborator David Dupret at the University of Oxford, and Joseph O’Neill, postdoc in Csicsvari’s group, uncovered a novel role for inhibitory interneurons in the rat hippocampus during the formation of spatial memory.

During spatial learning, space is represented in the hippocampus through plastic changes in the connections between neurons. Jozsef Csicsvari and his collaborators investigate spatial learning in rats using the cheeseboard maze apparatus. This apparatus contains many holes, some of which are selected to hide food in order to test spatial memory. During learning trials, animals learn where the rewards are located, and after a period sleep, the researchers test whether the animal can recall these reward locations. In previous work, they and others have shown that memory of space is encoded in the hippocampus through changes in the firing of excitatory pyramidal cells, the so-called “place cells”. A place cell fires when the animal arrives at a particular location. Normally, place cells always fire at the same place in an environment; however, during spatial learning the place of their firing can change to encode where the reward is found, forming memory maps.

In their new publication, the researchers investigated the timescale of map formation, showing that during spatial learning, pyramidal neuron maps representing previous and new reward locations “flicker”, with both firing patterns occurring. At first, old maps and new maps fluctuate, as the animal is unsure whether the location change is transient or long-lasting. At a later stage, the new map and so the relevant new information dominates.

The scientists also investigated the contribution of inhibitory interneuron circuits to learning. They show that these interneurons, which are extensively interconnected with pyramidal cells, change their firing rates during map formation and flickering: some interneurons fire more often when the new pyramidal map fires, while others fire less often with the new map. These changes in interneuron firing were only observed during learning, not during sleep or recall. The scientists also show that the changes in firing rate are due to map-specific changes in the connections between pyramidal cells and interneurons. When a pyramidal cell is part of a new map, the strengthening of a connection with an interneuron causes an increase in the firing of this interneuron. Conversely, when a pyramidal cell is not part of a new map, the weakening of the connection with the interneuron causes a decrease in interneuron firing rate. Both, the increase and the decrease in firing rate can be beneficial for learning, allowing the regulation of plasticity between pyramidal cells and controlling the timing in their firing.

The new research therefore shows that not only excitatory neurons modify their behaviour and exhibit plastic connection changes during learning, but also the inhibitory interneuron circuits. The researchers suggest that inhibitory interneurons could be involved in map selection – helping one map dominate and take over during learning, so that the relevant information is encoded.

(via section5)

2:35pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuuhEyNEL
(Notes: 6,420)
  
March 27, 2013
neurosciencestuff: Brain Size Didn’t Drive Evolution, Research Suggests Brain organization, not overall size, may be the key evolutionary difference between primate brains, and the key to what gives humans their smarts, new research suggests. In the study, researchers looked at 17 species that span 40 million years of evolutionary time, finding changes in the relative size of specific brain regions, rather than changes in brain size, accounted for three-quarters of brain evolution over that time. The study, published today (March 26) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also revealed that massive increases in the brain’s prefrontal cortex played a critical role in great ape evolution. “For the first time, we can really identify what is so special about great ape brain organization,” said study co-author Jeroen Smaers, an evolutionary biologist at the University College London. Is bigger better? Traditionally, scientists have thought humans’ superior intelligence derived mostly from the fact that our brains are three times bigger than our nearest living relatives, chimpanzees. But bigger isn’t always better. Bigger brains take much more energy to power, so scientists have hypothesized that brain reorganization could be a smarter strategy to evolve mental abilities. To see how brain organization evolved throughout primates, Smaers and his colleague Christophe Soligo analyzed post-mortem slices of brains from 17 different primates, then mapped changes in brain size onto an evolutionary tree. Over evolutionary time, several key brain regions increased in size relative to other regions. Great apes (especially humans) saw a rise in white matter in the prefrontal cortex, which contributes to social cognition, moral judgments, introspection and goal-directed planning. “The prefrontal cortex is a little bit like the CEO of the brain,” Smaers told LiveScience. “It takes information from other brain areas and it synthesizes them.” When great apes diverged from old-world monkeys about 20 million years ago, brain regions tied to motor planning also increased in relative size. That could have helped them orchestrate the complex movements needed to manipulate tools — possibly to get at different food sources, Smaers said. Gibbons and howler monkeys showed a different pattern. Even though their bodies and their brains got smaller over time, the hippocampus, which plays a role in spatial tasks, tended to increase in size in relation to the rest of the brain. That may have allowed these monkeys to be spatially adept and inhabit a more diverse range of environments. Prefrontal cortex The study shows that specific parts of the brain can selectively scale up to meet the demands of new environments, said Chet Sherwood, an anthropologist at George Washington University, who was not involved in the study. The finding also drives home the importance of the prefrontal cortex, he said. “It’s very suggestive that connectivity of prefrontal cortex has been a particularly strong driving force in ape and human brains,” Sherwood told LiveScience.

neurosciencestuff:

Brain Size Didn’t Drive Evolution, Research Suggests

Brain organization, not overall size, may be the key evolutionary difference between primate brains, and the key to what gives humans their smarts, new research suggests.

In the study, researchers looked at 17 species that span 40 million years of evolutionary time, finding changes in the relative size of specific brain regions, rather than changes in brain size, accounted for three-quarters of brain evolution over that time. The study, published today (March 26) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also revealed that massive increases in the brain’s prefrontal cortex played a critical role in great ape evolution.

“For the first time, we can really identify what is so special about great ape brain organization,” said study co-author Jeroen Smaers, an evolutionary biologist at the University College London.

Is bigger better?

Traditionally, scientists have thought humans’ superior intelligence derived mostly from the fact that our brains are three times bigger than our nearest living relatives, chimpanzees.

But bigger isn’t always better. Bigger brains take much more energy to power, so scientists have hypothesized that brain reorganization could be a smarter strategy to evolve mental abilities.

To see how brain organization evolved throughout primates, Smaers and his colleague Christophe Soligo analyzed post-mortem slices of brains from 17 different primates, then mapped changes in brain size onto an evolutionary tree.

Over evolutionary time, several key brain regions increased in size relative to other regions. Great apes (especially humans) saw a rise in white matter in the prefrontal cortex, which contributes to social cognition, moral judgments, introspection and goal-directed planning.

“The prefrontal cortex is a little bit like the CEO of the brain,” Smaers told LiveScience. “It takes information from other brain areas and it synthesizes them.”

When great apes diverged from old-world monkeys about 20 million years ago, brain regions tied to motor planning also increased in relative size. That could have helped them orchestrate the complex movements needed to manipulate tools — possibly to get at different food sources, Smaers said.

Gibbons and howler monkeys showed a different pattern. Even though their bodies and their brains got smaller over time, the hippocampus, which plays a role in spatial tasks, tended to increase in size in relation to the rest of the brain. That may have allowed these monkeys to be spatially adept and inhabit a more diverse range of environments.

Prefrontal cortex

The study shows that specific parts of the brain can selectively scale up to meet the demands of new environments, said Chet Sherwood, an anthropologist at George Washington University, who was not involved in the study.

The finding also drives home the importance of the prefrontal cortex, he said.

“It’s very suggestive that connectivity of prefrontal cortex has been a particularly strong driving force in ape and human brains,” Sherwood told LiveScience.

2:27pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuuhEwtCo
(Notes: 139)
  
March 23, 2013
neurosciencestuff: Reward linked to image is enough to activate brain’s visual cortex Once rhesus monkeys learn to associate a picture with a reward, the reward by itself becomes enough to alter the activity in the monkeys’ visual cortex. This finding was made by neurophysiologists Wim Vanduffel and John Arsenault (KU Leuven and Harvard Medical School) and American colleagues using functional brain scans and was published recently in the leading journal Neuron. Our visual perception is not determined solely by retinal activity. Other factors also influence the processing of visual signals in the brain. “Selective attention is one such factor,” says Professor Wim Vanduffel. “The more attention you pay to a stimulus, the better your visual perception is and the more effective your visual cortex is at processing that stimulus. Another factor is the reward value of a stimulus: when a visual signal becomes associated with a reward, it affects our processing of that visual signal. In this study, we wanted to investigate how a reward influences activity in the visual cortex.” Pavlov inverted To do this, the researchers used a variant of Pavlov’s well-known conditioning experiment: “Think of Pavlov giving a dog a treat after ringing a bell. The bell is the stimulus and the food is the reward. Eventually the dogs learned to associate the bell with the food and salivated at the sound of the bell alone. Essentially, Pavlov removed the reward but kept the stimulus. In this study, we removed the stimulus but kept the reward.” In the study, the rhesus monkeys first encountered images projected on a screen followed by a juice reward (classical conditioning). Later, the monkeys received juice rewards while viewing a blank screen. fMRI brain scans taken during this experiment showed that the visual cortex of the monkeys was activated by being rewarded in the absence of any image. Importantly, these activations were not spread throughout the whole visual system but were instead confined to the specific brain regions responsible for processing the exact stimulus used earlier during conditioning. This result shows that information about rewards is being sent to the visual cortex to indicate which stimuli have been associated with rewards. Equally surprising, these reward-only trials were found to strengthen the cue-reward associations. This is more or less the equivalent to giving Pavlov’s dog an extra treat after a conditioning session and noticing the next day that he salivates twice as much as before. More generally, this result suggests that rewards can be associated with stimuli over longer time scales than previously thought. Dopamine Why does the visual cortex react selectively in the absence of a visual stimulus on the retina? One potential explanation is dopamine. “Dopamine is a signalling chemical (neurotransmitter) in nerve cells and plays an important role in processing rewards, motivation, and motor functions. Dopamine’s role in reward signalling is the reason some Parkinson’s patients fall into gambling addiction after taking dopamine-increasing drugs. Aware of dopamine’s role in reward, we re-ran our experiments after giving the monkeys a small dose of a drug that blocks dopamine signalling. We found that the activations in the visual cortex were reduced by the dopamine blocker. What’s likely happening here is that a reward signal is being sent to the visual cortex via dopamine,” says Professor Vanduffel. The study used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans to visualise brain activity. fMRI scans map functional activity in the brain by detecting changes in blood flow. The oxygen content and the amount of blood in a given brain area vary according to the brain activity associated with a given task. In this way, task-specific activity can be tracked.

neurosciencestuff:

Reward linked to image is enough to activate brain’s visual cortex

Once rhesus monkeys learn to associate a picture with a reward, the reward by itself becomes enough to alter the activity in the monkeys’ visual cortex. This finding was made by neurophysiologists Wim Vanduffel and John Arsenault (KU Leuven and Harvard Medical School) and American colleagues using functional brain scans and was published recently in the leading journal Neuron.

Our visual perception is not determined solely by retinal activity. Other factors also influence the processing of visual signals in the brain. “Selective attention is one such factor,” says Professor Wim Vanduffel. “The more attention you pay to a stimulus, the better your visual perception is and the more effective your visual cortex is at processing that stimulus. Another factor is the reward value of a stimulus: when a visual signal becomes associated with a reward, it affects our processing of that visual signal. In this study, we wanted to investigate how a reward influences activity in the visual cortex.”

Pavlov inverted

To do this, the researchers used a variant of Pavlov’s well-known conditioning experiment: “Think of Pavlov giving a dog a treat after ringing a bell. The bell is the stimulus and the food is the reward. Eventually the dogs learned to associate the bell with the food and salivated at the sound of the bell alone. Essentially, Pavlov removed the reward but kept the stimulus. In this study, we removed the stimulus but kept the reward.”

In the study, the rhesus monkeys first encountered images projected on a screen followed by a juice reward (classical conditioning). Later, the monkeys received juice rewards while viewing a blank screen. fMRI brain scans taken during this experiment showed that the visual cortex of the monkeys was activated by being rewarded in the absence of any image.

Importantly, these activations were not spread throughout the whole visual system but were instead confined to the specific brain regions responsible for processing the exact stimulus used earlier during conditioning. This result shows that information about rewards is being sent to the visual cortex to indicate which stimuli have been associated with rewards.

Equally surprising, these reward-only trials were found to strengthen the cue-reward associations. This is more or less the equivalent to giving Pavlov’s dog an extra treat after a conditioning session and noticing the next day that he salivates twice as much as before. More generally, this result suggests that rewards can be associated with stimuli over longer time scales than previously thought.

Dopamine

Why does the visual cortex react selectively in the absence of a visual stimulus on the retina? One potential explanation is dopamine. “Dopamine is a signalling chemical (neurotransmitter) in nerve cells and plays an important role in processing rewards, motivation, and motor functions. Dopamine’s role in reward signalling is the reason some Parkinson’s patients fall into gambling addiction after taking dopamine-increasing drugs. Aware of dopamine’s role in reward, we re-ran our experiments after giving the monkeys a small dose of a drug that blocks dopamine signalling. We found that the activations in the visual cortex were reduced by the dopamine blocker. What’s likely happening here is that a reward signal is being sent to the visual cortex via dopamine,” says Professor Vanduffel.

The study used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans to visualise brain activity. fMRI scans map functional activity in the brain by detecting changes in blood flow. The oxygen content and the amount of blood in a given brain area vary according to the brain activity associated with a given task. In this way, task-specific activity can be tracked.

10:06am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuugvVTgy
(Notes: 81)
  
March 19, 2013
"You could double the number of synaptic connections in a very simple neurocircuit as a result of experience and learning. The reason for that was that long-term memory alters the expression of genes in nerve cells, which is the cause of the growth of new synaptic connections. When you see that at the cellular level, you realize that the brain can change because of experience. It gives you a different feeling about how nature and nurture interact. They are not separate processes."

—

Eric R. Kandel, Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist.

A Quest to Understand How Memory Works.

(via scipsy)

(via wildcat2030)

10:13pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuugf1nH2
(Notes: 418)
  
March 19, 2013
Creative Something: This is your brain working.

creativesomething:

This image represents what your brain looks like while working.

More precisely: it’s a visual chart of neural signals firing over time, a representation of how thoughts work in the brain. Compared to a computer, this type of representation resembles that of a digital signal, with 0 and 1…

10:05pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuuge-4Gb
(Notes: 43)
  
March 17, 2013
Five ways to be more creative

rfar:

Most people aspire to be creative and have an original insight which makes them stand out from the crowd.

But is creativity a random process or is it something that can be nurtured and triggered using a variety of techniques? Scientists around the world are exploring what happens in the brain preceding that ‘eureka’ moment.

Their research suggests these five things could help you unleash your creative side.

Here are the five suggestions. Read the article for more details.

Do things differently

If you want to come up with innovative solutions to a problem which is bothering you, then doing something as simple as changing aspects of your daily routine could lead to a creative insight. […]

Cut distractions

[J]ust before [a eureka moment], there is a burst of alpha waves - which are associated with relaxation - in the back of the head.

People take in a lot of information visually but these alpha waves allow the brain to take a slight break - much like what happens when you blink your eyes.

This then allows this very faint idea to bubble up to the surface as an insight.

Work on mundane tasks

Another activity to help you trigger your creative brain waves could be to work on something that requires minimal thought. […]

“If you are stumped, take a break. Allow the unconscious processes to take hold. But rather than just sitting there, you might want to take a walk or a shower or do something like gardening.”

Don’t be afraid to improvise and take risks

“If people think about their daily behaviour - most of it is unscripted. Most of it is improvised. They don’t actually plan every second what they are going to do,” he says.

Just let your mind wander

When there is less activity in the frontal lobes, it is more likely that you can come up with an original idea. […]

He says it is possible to trigger this temporary brain state by meditating or taking a long run.

[source: BBC Science]

6:00pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuugU0e2O
(Notes: 6)
  
March 11, 2013
wildcat2030: This is a cartoon illustrating the idea that at a cocktail party the brain activity synchronizes to that of an attended speaker, effectively putting them ‘on the same wavelength.’ Credit: Neuron, Zion-Golumbic et al. In the din of a crowded room, paying attention to just one speaker’s voice can be challenging. Research in the March 6 issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron demonstrates how the brain hones in on one speaker to solve this “Cocktail Party Problem.” Researchers discovered that brain waves are shaped so that the brain can selectively track the sound patterns from the speaker of interest and at the same time exclude competing sounds from other speakers. The findings could have important implications for helping individuals with a range of deficits such as those associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, and aging. “In hearing, there is no way to ‘close your ear,’ so all the sounds in the environment are represented in the brain, at least at the sensory level,” explains senior author Dr. Charles Schroeder, of Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry. “While confirming this, we also provide the first clear evidence that there may be brain locations in which there is exclusive representation of an attended speech segment, with ignored conversations apparently filtered out.” In this way, when concentrating hard on such an “attended” speaker, one is barely, if at all, aware of ignored speakers. (via Solving the ‘Cocktail Party Problem’: How we can focus on 1 speaker in noisy crowds)

wildcat2030:

This is a cartoon illustrating the idea that at a cocktail party the brain activity synchronizes to that of an attended speaker, effectively putting them ‘on the same wavelength.’ Credit: Neuron, Zion-Golumbic et al.

In the din of a crowded room, paying attention to just one speaker’s voice can be challenging. Research in the March 6 issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron demonstrates how the brain hones in on one speaker to solve this “Cocktail Party Problem.”

Researchers discovered that brain waves are shaped so that the brain can selectively track the sound patterns from the speaker of interest and at the same time exclude competing sounds from other speakers. The findings could have important implications for helping individuals with a range of deficits such as those associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, and aging.

“In hearing, there is no way to ‘close your ear,’ so all the sounds in the environment are represented in the brain, at least at the sensory level,” explains senior author Dr. Charles Schroeder, of Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry. “While confirming this, we also provide the first clear evidence that there may be brain locations in which there is exclusive representation of an attended speech segment, with ignored conversations apparently filtered out.” In this way, when concentrating hard on such an “attended” speaker, one is barely, if at all, aware of ignored speakers. (via Solving the ‘Cocktail Party Problem’: How we can focus on 1 speaker in noisy crowds)

5:11pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuug1Dfqk
(Notes: 67)
  
March 11, 2013
How Art Can Be Used To Enhance Your Mind

rfar:

Music, dance, painting and other forms of art have shown to have an incredibly significant and positive effect on both children and adults. Art therapy has been used to awaken the senses of underprivileged children through both the viewing and creating of art. Through their artistic endeavors, they subconsciously associate themselves with their past. The memories come more freely since they are not elicited by direct objects, but indirect thought instead.

Due to many past experiences many children begin to develop nervousness, anxiety, sleeping excessive or too little, a lack of verbal, social and language skills. Many times depending on the color within a piece, or may be some other quality of the artwork, different emotions can be evoked by the observer unknowingly. Awakening of the senses through experimentation with the different types of art these children experience an untapped emotional world within themselves and with this association with their own inner being, they are able to show increased abilities in their cognitive, motor and social skills.

[source: Edudemic]

5:06pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuug1ChWn
(Notes: 8)
  
March 11, 2013
explore-blog: Marie Curie, reconstructionist. 

explore-blog:

Marie Curie, reconstructionist. 

5:03pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuug1C4Ak
(Notes: 598)
  
March 11, 2013
the psychology blog: The Nine Types of Intelligence

the-psychology-blog:

1. Naturalist Intelligence (“Nature Smart”)

Designates the human ability to discriminate among living things (plants, animals) as well as sensitivity to other features of the natural world (clouds, rock configurations). This ability was clearly of value in our…

The 9 types of intelligence…

5:02pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuug1ByHx
(Notes: 4,207)
  
March 11, 2013
brucesterling: Joi Ito of MIT Media Lab: Ito: There are nine or so principles to work in a world like this: 1. Resilience instead of strength, which means you want to yield and allow failure and you bounce back instead of trying to resist failure. 2. You pull instead of push. That means you pull the resources from the network as you need them, as opposed to centrally stocking them and controlling them. 3. You want to take risk instead of focusing on safety. 4. You want to focus on the system instead of objects. 5. You want to have good compasses not maps. 6. You want to work on practice instead of theory. Because sometimes you don’t why it works, but what is important is that it is working, not that you have some theory around it. 7. It disobedience instead of compliance. You don’t get a Nobel Prize for doing what you are told. Too much of school is about obedience, we should really be celebrating disobedience. 8. It’s the crowd instead of experts. 9. It’s a focus on learning instead of education. We’re still working on it, but that is where our thinking is headed.

brucesterling:

Joi Ito of MIT Media Lab:

Ito: There are nine or so principles to work in a world like this:

1. Resilience instead of strength, which means you want to yield and allow failure and you bounce back instead of trying to resist failure.

2. You pull instead of push. That means you pull the resources from the network as you need them, as opposed to centrally stocking them and controlling them.

3. You want to take risk instead of focusing on safety.

4. You want to focus on the system instead of objects.

5. You want to have good compasses not maps.

6. You want to work on practice instead of theory. Because sometimes you don’t why it works, but what is important is that it is working, not that you have some theory around it.

7. It disobedience instead of compliance. You don’t get a Nobel Prize for doing what you are told. Too much of school is about obedience, we should really be celebrating disobedience.

8. It’s the crowd instead of experts.

9. It’s a focus on learning instead of education.

We’re still working on it, but that is where our thinking is headed.

(via futurescope)

5:00pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuug1BUAm
(Notes: 1,318)
  
March 11, 2013
10 Brain Myths Debunked: Great Article!

3:16pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuug0u1Pe
March 11, 2013
Smart phones : Silly Users!

Great article on how smart phones aren’t making us that much smarter..

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/smartphones_silly_users.html?cm_sp=blog_flyout-_-cs-_-smartphones_silly_users

3:00pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuug0rR7X
March 11, 2013

neurosciencestuff:

Affecting Perception

When most of us admire a piece of art, it triggers a cascade of complex neural activity; a wash of emotion and meaning that fills our brains and prompts deep thought. But does that happen for people with neurological conditions, too?

Forthcoming Oxford-based exhibition Affecting Perception seeks to explore that very question, through a combination of art, seminars and school workshops. Organised by Martha Crawford, Cosima Gretton and Rachel Stratton, who together form the AXNS collective, the aim is to understand how artists and their work are affected by neurological conditions.

The team is working with the University’s Department of Experimental Psychology and artists who suffer from conditions ranging from dementia to brain damage, in order to help the public understand how art and neuroscience are intertwined. “We’re trying to engage the community with the kind of learning usually kept in the University,” explains Martha Crawford.

Helping them achieve that are Prof. Glyn Humphreys and Prof. Charles Spence, both from the University’s Department of Experimental Psychology. Individually, they’ll be leading seminars during the exhibition which explore the overlap between academia and art. “There’s a coarse level of understanding of neuropsychology outside of academia, which means people are sometimes scared of neurological conditions,” explains Professor Glyn Humphreys. “I think anything we can do to raise awareness has to be a good thing.”

During the course of the four-week exhibition, Prof. Humprheys will talk about visual agnosia: a condition where patients can’t associate visual stimulus with meaning. It’s a rare condition, but it’s of interest to artists and scientists alike. Separating meaning and aesthetic is a trick used by artists to explore the two more thoughtfully; Humphreys’ patients still have little choice but to face the world that way.

Elsewhere, Prof. Spence will talk about subtle forms of synesthesia, called cross-modal correspondences, which affect us all. Synesthesia is that odd condition where stimulating one sense leads to automatic experiences in a second; cross-modal correspondences are more subtle, like the way red stars make many of us think of bitter flavours. Plenty of famous creatives have used the phenomenon to great effect — and during his talk, Spence will explain how it can help amplify our enjoyment of art.

There’s no denying that these are weighty subject indeed. But by understanding them just a little better we can achieve a better grasp on the neurological conditions that many suffer — and break down the stigma attached to them, too.

Affecting Perception runs from 4th-31st March 2013 at venues across Oxford. Admission is free. For more information, visit http://axnscollective.org.

10:44am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLNEuug0M5pe
(Notes: 160)
  
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