I’m in New York for the 2007 annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. CNS alternates between San Francisco and New York; this year it’s in the latter city. I suppose if you have to pick two cities to have a conference in, those are pretty good ones. Still, one of the things I like […]
Archive for the 'musings' Category
brains in the elevator: notes from CNS 2007, pt. I
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10 May 2007 |
0:04 |
musings, academics |
No Comments »
Is expertise under genetic control?
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15 August 2006 |
23:32 |
musings, behavioral genetics |
3 Comments »
Jonah Lehrer has a post over at Frontal Cortex today that follows up on his article in Seed a couple of weeks ago arguing that exceptional abilities are the result of extensive practice rather than genetic predisposition. My own view is that they’re probably not; or at least, I’m not sure the question is a […]
Jonah Lehrer has a post over at Frontal Cortex today that follows up on his article in Seed a couple of weeks ago arguing that exceptional abilities are the result of extensive practice rather than genetic predisposition. My own view is that they’re probably not; or at least, I’m not sure the question is a […]
Mirror neurons aren’t really all that bad…
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25 July 2006 |
21:48 |
musings |
No Comments »
I’ve been too busy writing manuscripts and teaching to blog much lately, but since The Evil Monkey over at Neurotopia insists everyone should post about mirror neurons, I feel compelled to oblige. Mirror neurons seem to be getting the short end of the stick, so I’ll play devil’s advocate and try to convince you they’re […]
I’ve been too busy writing manuscripts and teaching to blog much lately, but since The Evil Monkey over at Neurotopia insists everyone should post about mirror neurons, I feel compelled to oblige. Mirror neurons seem to be getting the short end of the stick, so I’ll play devil’s advocate and try to convince you they’re […]
The cognitive neuroscience of religion vs. religion in cognitive neuroscience
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16 July 2006 |
23:54 |
general, neuroimaging, musings |
2 Comments »
On a lark, I googled the phrase “cognitive neuroscience of religion”. I’m not really sure what I expected to find; maybe a few press articles on Michael Persinger’s “God machine” (a fancy name for TMS applied over the temporal lobes). As it turns out, Google returns only 3 hits for the phrase, which surprised me, […]
On a lark, I googled the phrase “cognitive neuroscience of religion”. I’m not really sure what I expected to find; maybe a few press articles on Michael Persinger’s “God machine” (a fancy name for TMS applied over the temporal lobes). As it turns out, Google returns only 3 hits for the phrase, which surprised me, […]
more on fMRI
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9 July 2006 |
18:51 |
fmri, musings |
2 Comments »
Developing Intelligence has a nice post today summarizing last week’s flurry of posts on the utility of functional neuroimaging. I should point out that while these posts offer a nice introduction to some of the issues involved, they by no means offer a comprehensive assessment of the pros and cons of fMRI. For one thing, […]
Developing Intelligence has a nice post today summarizing last week’s flurry of posts on the utility of functional neuroimaging. I should point out that while these posts offer a nice introduction to some of the issues involved, they by no means offer a comprehensive assessment of the pros and cons of fMRI. For one thing, […]
Sokal, in reverse
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9 July 2006 |
0:06 |
musings, news articles |
4 Comments »
Update 08/01: Harry Collins left a comment below (be sure to read it!) noting some inaccuracies in this post, on the basis of which I’ve made some changes.
Remember the Sokal affair? Back in 1996, physicist Alan Sokal submitted a paper full of clever-sounding gibberish to Social Text, a leading postmodern journal. Shortly after the paper […]
Update 08/01: Harry Collins left a comment below (be sure to read it!) noting some inaccuracies in this post, on the basis of which I’ve made some changes.
Remember the Sokal affair? Back in 1996, physicist Alan Sokal submitted a paper full of clever-sounding gibberish to Social Text, a leading postmodern journal. Shortly after the paper […]
How much should scientists worry?
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30 June 2006 |
20:45 |
musings |
4 Comments »
No, this isn’t a post about the incidence of anxiety disorders among scientists. The question I want to ask is more circumscribed: how much do scientists need worry about the possibility of the assumptions that make their research possible failing?
Here’s how this question came up. In response to my last post, in which I argued […]
No, this isn’t a post about the incidence of anxiety disorders among scientists. The question I want to ask is more circumscribed: how much do scientists need worry about the possibility of the assumptions that make their research possible failing?
Here’s how this question came up. In response to my last post, in which I argued […]