I’ve been swamped this week with an ONR Workshop and the new Krasnow construction project. But have been keeping a close eye on interesting netsam floating over the Web-Ocean. I’m really pleased about the new NIH investment in behavioral sciences, OppNet–kudos to colleagues who have been working towards this goal for a very long time!
Author: jlolds
Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University
Big Blue’s Dharmendra Modha and Cat Neocortex simulation
Dharmendra’s team at IBM are making the news this morning. Here’s AP’s Jordan Robertson’s story.
Money quote:
A computer with the power of a human brain is not yet near. But this week researchers from IBM Corp. are reporting that they’ve simulated a cat’s cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, using a massive supercomputer. The computer has 147,456 processors (most modern PCs have just one or two processors) and 144 terabytes of main memory — 100,000 times as much as your computer has.
Steve Pinker hits the Malcom Gladwell’s nail on the head
Here’s Steve Pinker’s spot-on review of Gladwell Inc. (the author of Blink and Outliers).
Watch out for those “igon-values” Gladwell apostles!
Neurogenesis in dentate gyrus and cortical memory transfer
A very interesting finding by Inokuchi et al. in Japan–apparently the well-described phenomenon of hippocampal neurogenesis is required for efficiently moving memories out of the short-term hippocampal “buffer” and into long-term neocortical “consolidation”.
Power Laws
Many readers know that power law distributions are of great interest to our faculty here at Mason’s Institute for Advanced Study…..so I’m really pleased (hat tip to Marginal Revolution) to provide this link.
In my own neuroinformatics research, my graduate student David Cooper has been interested in characterizing the distribution of synchronicity for the wiring up of human neocortical areas over the first six years of life.
Dream are the stuff of…
Harvard’s Allan Hobson’s new paper on dreams is making the news here.
Money quote:
The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking.
Recognition of the internationalization of science
Good news from Secretary of State Hilary Clinton: here.
Jim
The Apollo 8 metaphor for planet earth–rebutted
Hat tip Marginal Revolution. Here’s a really interesting take on just how habitable our blue planet really is.
Very interesting reading for our origin of life scientists at the Institute.
Jim
Statins used for H1N1
As usual, Revere has an excellent post here. Bottom line: statins may reduce the intensity of a flu-induced cytokine storm.
An explanation for all those bad drivers on the beltway
Suggestions of a genetic linkage to awful driving. Hmmm. I wonder if there are interactions with environmental factors?
Abstract is here.
Money quote from the UC Irvine press release:
People with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people without it – and a follow-up test a few days later yielded similar results. About 30 percent of Americans have the variant.
