ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind recently broadcast a gripping programme on patients in the coma-like persistent vegetative state ( PVS ) and how new brain imaging techniques might be able to identify people who are conscious but unable to communicate with the outside world.
The programme talks to neuropsychologist Adrian Owen , whose work we’ve featured previously on Mind Hacks, who conducted a brain imaging study on a 23-year-old woman in PVS suggested that she could understand what was being said to her.
The neuroimaging team asked her to practice mental tasks when and could pick up and distinguish the related brain activity using an fMRI scanner.
The programme discusses Owen and colleagues research, including a peak at some ongoing studies to try and turn this into a method of communication, and debates the ethics of dealing with patients who are effectively unresponsive to the world.
It’s also got some striking excerpts from a Kat...
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What do you need to do to be considered an expert?From: mindhacks.com
Post Date: 2008-05-22 18:14:26
Sociologist Harry Collins is interviewed in American Scientist on his fascinating mission to find out what we need to do to be considered an expert and what different types of expertise exist.
Collins has spent many years studying how science works. Not how it is supposed to work, through experiments and falsification and gradual knowledge building, but how it actually works, through social networks, economics and traditions.
He studied physicists who research gravitational waves a...
more Don’t believe the neurohypeFrom: mindhacks.com
Post Date: 2008-05-22 19:00:00
Wired magazine has just published a must-read article on the hyping of neuroimaging technology by companies wanting to sell brain scans on the deceptive premise that they can tell you something about your mood and personality, the effectiveness of adverts or whether you’re being truthful.
Here at Mind Hacks, we’ve covered several highlights in the ongoing parade of brain scan powered bullshit in the past ( FKF Applied Research I’m looking at you) but this new...
more Linguistic feathers ruffled by high tech new schoolFrom: mindhacks.com
Post Date: 2008-05-21 20:00:00
This week’s Nature has a feature article on how a new breed of computational linguists are attempting to understand the evolution of language by using high powered computer models. The traditionalists are not impressed, and accuse the new school of reducing language to numbers and oversimplifying to the point of meaninglessness.
It’s an old debate in the human sciences, and relates to whether aspects of human experience can be meaningfully quantified.
Some psychologists, ...
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