Once again, it’s time for the annual science retreat at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study. During my introductory remarks, looking out at the assembled group, it’s clear how rapidly we are growing. First lab up is Ted Dumas’ lab. Ted’s group focuses on plasticity and learning in juvenile animals using molecular biology, electrophysiology and very sophisticated behavioral designs.
Academic summer is here. I’m off to Providence tomorrow for a quick meeting, then back to focus on the two construction projects that are now getting off the ground here. In the meantime we still are in the middle of three separate faculty recruitment efforts and I hope to have news on that front soon.
One of the big complaints from academic (research) physicians is that their medical school debt acts as a financial deterrent to doing translational science. Apparently Cleveland Clinic is going to do something substantive about that.
Jim
David Brooks on the revolution going on within the neuroscience revolution–the notion that something mysterious emerges out of functional brain activity….
Money quote:
Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.
Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.
I have a collaborator in India (we share a graduate student) who thinks along these lines. It’s quite exciting.
Jim
I left the conference with a tremendous appreciation for ape
research–particularly the complexities of their cognitive capabilities.
Having sponsored ape research in collaboration with the National Zoo, I
had thought I was fairly sophisticated in terms of understanding what is
going on in the field–I now know I'm not.
I think it is fair to say that ape research, both in the field and with
animals in captivity, is undergoing a similar revolution to what
happened in neuroscience over the past decade–the methodologies are
becoming ever more sophisticated which allow for asking more interesting
questions.
Our next Decade of the Mind symposium will be in January out at Sandia
National Laboratory. The focus will be robotics. Stay tuned.
Jim
Things are about to get underway here in Des Moines. I’ll be blogging my way through it. This evening, Decade of the Mind steering committee member Giulio Tononi will be giving the keynote lecture, “Consciousness and the Brain”. For those of you who missed him last May at the first Decade symposium, this is a great opportunity. He is one of the very best scientist speakers in the world.
A great article by Oxford’s Nick Bostrom from the MIT Technology Review. Following up on Fermi, why do we seem to be alone in the Universe? Is the “Great Filter” behind us or worse, ahead of us? Or both?
Actually the piece from today’s NY Times suggests that from an evolutionary standpoint, being smarter isn’t necessarily a winning strategy for animals. That idea may be worth bringing up in my talk at the Third Decade of the Mind symposium–I’m flying out to Des Moines this afternoon.
Jim
From David Brooks’ column in today’s NY Times:
The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.
The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?
Read it all.
Jim
Here’s the EurekAlert from AAAS on the Decade of the Mind III Symposium coming up next week in Des Moines.
Jim
