Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Final thoughts on Decade of the Mind 3

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

Blogging from Decade of the Mind III

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.

Jim

David Brooks: The Cognitive Age

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

Decade of the Mind goes international

Manfred Spitzer at the University of Ulm issues a clarion call for the internationalization of the Decade of the Mind project in the on-line journal Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine.

Money quote:

Emphatically, the Decade of the Mind must be a global initiative, and certainly not merely a USA initiative concerning national (USA) science and medicine, the national (USA) economy, and national (USA) security and well-being. Just as global warming affects all of us and needs to be studied and dealt with on a global scale, the mind is something that should be studied from all angles of the globe and within all cultural backgrounds and contexts. Let’s not waste time and let’s ALL get started! All of humankind!

Jared Diamond on the cognitive need for vengeance

I’m up on Wintergreen mountain for the weekend–about the only time I can leisurely read The New Yorker–which I still believe has some of the best writing around. Jared Diamond’s latest anthropological piece about vengeance among New Guinea Highlanders makes for some powerful reading. He concludes that:

We regularly ignore the fact that the thirst for vengeance is among the strongest of human emotions. It ranks with love, anger, grief, and fear, about which we talk incessantly. Modern state societies permit and encourage us to express our love, anger, grief, and fear, but not our thirst for vengeance. We grow up being taught that such feelings are primitive, something to be ashamed of and to transcend.

My question is what is the evolutionary fitness argument for this human trait? How did the need for vengeance get selected for?

Read the entire article. It opens up some interesting questions for neuroscientists.

Jim

Construction becomes a way of life at Krasnow

Yesterday afternoon, the Virginia General Assembly approved the bond authorization that will now lead directly to the next 12,000 sq. foot expansion project (Phase III) of the Institute. We’re going to be headed back into “neuroarchitecture” mode over the Fall and I expect in the next 24 months that we will take delivery. This is wonderful news for mind research at George Mason University and I believe a very strong endorsement of our transdisciplinary research program here. It also should serve as a signal that the Institute will continue its very active recruiting program.

Jim

The Presidential Transition

Those of us who are interested in creating a successful Decade of the Mind initiative are very interested in the rather arcane subject of the presidential transition which will occur after the election in November and before inauguration day in January. I link to a really interesting blog which focuses pretty exclusively on the subject. If you know what the Plum book is, but don’t know what the Prune book is–then this is the site for you.

Jim