Category: Decade of the Mind

All is well at the NSF

Just got back from an NSF review panel–although getting back is really the wrong word–the National Science Foundation is located in Arlington Virginia, about a mile down Glebe Road from my house. What’s becoming ever more clear to me is that while there are indeed many parts of the US government that seem to be broken, the Foundation is one agency that works well. Every time that I return from panel or just a visit, I’m impressed with the institutional shared vision: funding the very best science with transparency and rigor.

Monday I’m off to New Mexico for the Fourth Decade of the Mind Conference. I’ll be blogging from the road if I can manage a decent internet connection. Then off to California for a quick visit to my Mom and the house I grew up in, about a block from Caltech in Pasadena.

Jim

President-elect Obama and science policy: I

The Obama administration will face some immediate science policy challenges when it assumes power on January 20. To my mind, first among them is the urgent need to return to the notion that Vannevar Bush put forward mid-20th century that federal R&D investment is dual use: it can improve the national and public health and serve as a primer to the US economic engine. Given the current economic crisis, Keynesian-type government spending might be targeted both at infrastructure (think: mass transportation, green energy, bridges–hopefully to somewhere) and science R&D.

The Decade of the Mind project is a perfect example of how such a priming investment could be implemented. New federal investment across multiple agencies would support cross-cutting initiatives that would heal, model, enrich and understand the emergence of “mind” from brain. The public health aspects of the Project might be centered at the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs. One might imagine the the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense playing the central role in supporting research to reverse-engineer brains for better robotics, while the National Science Foundation would aim directly at the basic science questions–with implications for understanding the deep links that extend all the way from physics to intelligence. 
While the “Decade” Initiative might lead to cures for diseases of the mind (such as Alzheimer’s), the technology developed along the way (for example autonomous “intelligent” vehicles or brain-machine interface prosthetics) could serve to prime the economic pump–as those inventions are transferred to the private sector. At the same time, the advances in K-20 education made possible under the Decade Project–as neuroscientists begin to collaborate fruitfully with educators–will improve the “national health” in terms of competitiveness in the global economy.
This is not to say that there aren’t other daunting science policy challenges. Energy and Climate Change will certainly be at the fore. But, as I’ve argued before, many elements of these other challenges thread tightly into a Decade of the Mind project.  Certainly understanding the national security elements at the intersection of Energy and Climate Change requires a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that subserve human behavior. These cognitive mechanisms once understood, can lead to more predictive computational models that may give us better insights into how Climate and Energy-use might lead to mass perturbation of human social behaviors.
Jim

Election Day 2008

Well today we elect a new President. Hopefully we’ll have a clean election and clarity by morning. Here at George Mason, it’s been wonderful to watch the voting shuttle vans taking students to the polling places. You can feel the excitement.

Tomorrow (if the results are clear) we’ll begin to analyze the science agenda of the new administration. We’ll be paying close attention to what information we can glean of the transition team, particularly in the context of the science agenda and how that agenda may play out for the Decade of the Mind initiative.
The economic crisis of course intersects with our scientific agenda and will certainly constrain our new President.
Jim

My take on the neuroethics of the "Decade" project

I write about Decade of the Mind project in today’s Sunday Washington Times….

Selected quote:

As a neuroscientist, I urge Americans to embrace the neuroscience revolution but soberly discuss the ethical and legal implications of what these changes might mean. We can do this by urging Congress and the new administration to endorse the National Decade of the Mind Project and the concomitant investment into a healthier and more prosperous nation

Last day of vacation

I am back in Washington. Tomorrow I’ll return to Krasnow for what will turn out to be quite a busy rest of the summer. There are real challenges ahead–the new construction as we continue to expand, the acquisition of a cellular imaging facility that I believe will complement our MRI and the now accelerating momentum of the Decade of the Mind project as we approach the US general election.

My own take on Science 2.0 has been accepted for publication at The Biological Bulletin. It will be in the August issue.

Jim

Back to the grid

Later this afternoon, I’m headed back to DC from Wintergreen. It’s been an incredibly relaxing week (I finished Obama’s book “Dreams from my Father”) and greatly enjoyed the fact that Ken DeJong, our Associate Director, was running the Institute for Advanced Study with a fine steady hand.

I’m pleased to report that there were no bear sightings this time around, just lots of deer and of course the diversity of warblers that makes the Blue Ridge famous.
In the coming week, I’ll be thinking a lot about the Decade of the Mind initiative in the context of what’s now being called Science 2.0–analogous to Web 2.0. What might “mind sciences” accomplish through greater collaborations, better data-sharing and some powerful databases (like NeuroMorpho.org).
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