Author: jlolds

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

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

Thoughts on an academic year passing

Well….it's about a month till commencement. I can tell without looking
at the calendar, because when one walks around campus, the students are
creating “beaches” out of the lawns between the dorms, music blares
forth–except of course when it doesn't, everyone has white ear plugs
dangling, and my colleagues and I are engaged in a frenzy of end-of-the
semester rituals: preparing grades, grant applications and finalizing
hires for the next academic year.

This has been a very satisfying first year of my second term as
Institute director. We've continued our growth and for the first time in
my tenure, I feel as if there are very significant scientific
discoveries right around the corner (both in time and in space). Partly
this has come about from building a real critical mass of scientists
who, while in disparate fields, are willing to collaborate (which
involves a lot of listening and dropping of jargon). From those
trans-disciplinary conversations and subsequent collaborations comes the
low-hanging fruit–and hence truly significant discoveries.

It is impossible of course to predict the details of what progress lies
ahead–the trajectory of science is inscrutable. But having spent a
life-time among scientists who think about “mind”, my intuition is that
Krasnow will soon be associated with paradigm change. I base this on my
interactions with the faculty and trainees, reading the many grant
proposals and manuscripts (in progress) and the general buzz that seems
to permeate this place.

Jim

The Minerva Consortium

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is proposing a new Minerva Consortium which would carry out academic social sciences research connected up with national security.

Money quote from the Chronicle:

Among the group’s tasks could be predicting the likely evolution of jihadist extremism

Scientists gone wild

According to a survey taken by Nature, 20% of scientists admit to using cognitive enhancing drugs. Hmmm.

As a neuroscientist I’d be a bit concerned about what the label “cognitive enhancer” really means. Would you want your air traffic controller to be using these drugs? What about your surgeon?

On the other hand, I wouldn’t think about starting the day without my caffeine jolt.

Jim

Tea on the Institute Mezzanine

This past Monday we moved our 3:30PM pre-seminar tea out onto the beautiful Institute mezzanine and it drew a wonderful crowd of folks who spent the time talking about complexity, neuroscience, consciousness and all the other deep questions that go with tea and cookies in the half hour before we dive into the serious business of our weekly seminar.

Harold Morowitz, the founding director of the Institute once said that everyone should spend 5% of their time on the fringe of the paradigm (at least at an institute for advanced study). Part of the way we can accomplish that is by talking science over tea with an institute colleague whose disciplinary expertise is very different from our own.

I think we’ll continue to have those teas out on the mezzanine—with the institute woods greening up by the day–it’ll be a conducive environment for science at the fringe of the paradigm.

Jim