Psy News

September 4, 2010

Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness

Edited by Anil Seth, and Geraint Rees. How do conscious experience, subjectivity, and free will arise from the brain and the body? Even in the late 20th century, consciousness was considered to be beyond the reach of science. Now, understanding the neural mechanisms underlying consciousness is recognized as a key objective for 21st…ISBN: 9781848727397Published Sep 01, 2010 by Psych

10 Vote(s)

June 24, 2010

Coming out of left field

The Health Editor of The Independent has written a baffling article where he seems to confuse transcranial magnetic stimulation, a technique used in cognitive neuroscience to induce current in the brain through the use of large electromagnets, and dodgy 'magnet therapy' which involves wearing magnetic pendants that are advertised as curing various ailments.Transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS

10 Vote(s)

December 23, 2009

Dealing with data of the damned

There's an interesting article in Wired about how scientists deal with data that conflicts with their expectations and whether biases in how the brain deals with contradictory information might influence scientific reasoning.The piece is based on the work of Kevin Dunbar who combines the sociology of science with the cognitive neuroscience of scientific reasoning.In other words, he's trying to un

17 Vote(s)

November 15, 2009

I Feel Your Pain, I REALLY Do: Synaesthesia for Another's Pain

"I feel your pain"Empathy for another person's pain is a hot topic of study in the glamorous field of social cognitive neuroscience. The capacity for empathy supposedly involves mirror neurons, those media darlings of The Young, [The Not-So-Young], and The Neuro:A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus,

7 Vote(s)

October 20, 2009

Inhabiting a robot hand

BBC News has a fascinating short video report of a robotic hand that is connected to the nerve fibres of an amputated arm and which allows the patient to actually feel touches with the robot fingers.Although it doesn't mention it in the report, the technology is from the SmartHand research group who are attempting to use knowledge about the cognitive neuroscience of action and body sensation to m

12 Vote(s)

September 2, 2009

Developmental Social Cognitive Neuroscience

Edited by Philip David Zelazo, Michael Chandler, Eveline Crone This volume in the JPS Series is intended to help crystallize the emergence of a new field, "Developmental Social Cognitive Neuroscience," aimed at elucidating the neural correlates of the development of socio-emotional experience and behavior. No one any longer doubts that infants are born with a biologically based head start

6 Vote(s)


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