linkstream2 microblog

The strange link between the human mind & quantum physics
http://www.BBC.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-quantum-physics Wave packet collapse & decision making. A potential connection between #QuantumComputing & #Neuroscience

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“As a result, physicists are often embarrassed to even mention the words “quantum” and “consciousness” in the same sentence.

But setting that aside, the idea has a long history. Ever since the “observer effect” and the mind first insinuated themselves into quantum theory in the early days, it has been devilishly hard to kick them out. A few researchers think we might never manage to do so. …
One particularly puzzling question is how our conscious minds can experience unique sensations, such as the colour red or the smell of frying bacon. With the exception of people with visual impairments, we all know what red is like, but we have no way to communicate the sensation and there is nothing in physics that tells us what it should be like.

Sensations like this are called “qualia”. We perceive them as unified properties of the outside world, but in fact they are products of our consciousness – and that is hard to explain. Indeed, in 1995 philosopher David Chalmers dubbed it “the hard problem” of
consciousness.
…
This has prompted him to suggest that “we could make some progress on understanding the problem of the evolution of consciousness if we supposed that consciousnesses alters (albeit perhaps very slightly and subtly) quantum probabilities.””
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Long-awaited @Yale STEM report calls for new research institutes
https://YaleDailyNews.com/blog/2018/06/14/long-awaited-stem-report-calls-for-new-research-institutes Top recommendation is a new #DataScience institute! Followed by one for #Neuroscience. Cross-cutting recommendations on grad. student support & sci. cores (https://research.Yale.edu/ussc-report)

Blog post itself has some interesting “text evolution”:
http://meetings.gersteinlab.org/2018/06.20/Text-evolution-of-USSC-news-article

Points from the new University Science Strategy Committee Report :

Under Five Ideas for Top-Priority Investment: (University-wide Institute for) Integrative Data Science and its Mathematical Foundations and Neuroscience, from Molecules to Mind

Under Five Additional Priority Ideas: Computer Science, Conquering Cancer, Precision Medicine, Regenerative Medicine

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Mark Gerstein — a professor of biomedical informatics— similarly emphasized the value of a new data science institute that would integrate Yale’s science campuses and discourage research “silos.” …
Another concern is establishing the specific role of the institute amid the various departments and programs at Yale that perform data science research, Gerstein said. For example, he said, Yale’s new Center for Biomedical Data Science, which Gerstein co-directs, might eventually be folded into the proposed institute.
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Long-awaited @Yale STEM report calls for new research institutes
https://YaleDailyNews.com/blog/2018/06/14/long-awaited-stem-report-calls-for-new-research-institutes Top recommendation is a new #DataScience institute! Followed by one for #Neuroscience. Cross-cutting recommendations on grad. student support & sci. cores (https://research.Yale.edu/ussc-report)

Points from the new University Science Strategy Committee Report

Under Five Ideas for Top-Priority Investment: (University-wide Institute for) Integrative Data Science and its Mathematical Foundations and Neuroscience, from Molecules to Mind

Under Five Additional Priority Ideas: Computer Science, Conquering Cancer, Precision Medicine, Regenerative Medicine

Your an adult. Your brain, not so much by @CarlZimmer
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/science/youre-an-adult-your-brain-not-so-much.html Non-obvious ethical implications of developmental neuroscience

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“The human brain reaches its adult volume by age 10, but the neurons that make it up continue to change for years after that. The connections between neighboring neurons get pruned back, as new links emerge between more widely separated areas of the brain.

Eventually this reshaping slows, a sign that the brain is maturing. But it happens at different rates in different parts of the brain.

The pruning in the occipital lobe, at the back of the brain, tapers off by age 20. In the frontal lobe, in the front of the brain, new links are still forming at age 30, if not beyond.

“It challenges the notion of what ‘done’ really means,” Dr. Somerville said.

As the anatomy of the brain changes, its activity changes as well. In a child’s brain, neighboring regions tend to work together. By adulthood, distant regions start acting in concert. Neuroscientists have speculated that this long-distance harmony lets the adult brain work more efficiently and process more information.”
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#Neuroscience, Ethics & National Security http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001289
Interrogations w/ oxytocin truth serum, No-lie fMRI & p300 waves. Scary!

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National security agencies are also mining neuroscience for ways to advance interrogation methods and the detection of deception. The increasing sophistication of brain-reading neurotechnologies has led many to investigate their potential applications for lie detection. Deception has long been associated with empirically measurable correlates, arguably originating nearly a century ago with research into blood pressure [24]. Yet blood pressure, among other modern bases for polygraphy like heart and breathing rates, indicates the presence of a proxy for deception: stress. Although the polygraph performs better than chance, it does not reliably and accurately indicate the presence of deception, and it is susceptible to counter measures. ….

“Brain fingerprinting” utilizes EEG to detect the P300 wave, an event-related potential (ERP) associated with the perception of a recognized, meaningful stimulus, and it is thought to hold potential for confirming the presence of “concealed information” [25]. The technology is marketed for a number of uses: “national security, medical diagnostics, advertising, insurance fraud and in the criminal justice system” [26]. Similarly, fMRI-based lie detection services are currently offered by several companies, including No Lie MRI [27] and Cephos [28]. DARPA funded the pioneering research that showed how deception involves a more complex array of neurological processes than truth-telling, and that fMRI arguably can detect the difference between the two [29]. No Lie MRI also has ties to national security: they market their services to the DoD, Department of Homeland Security, and the intelligence community, among other potential customers [30].

…
In addition to questions of scientific validity, these technologies raise legal and ethical issues. Legally required brain scans arguably violate “the guarantee against self-incrimination” because they differ from acceptable forms of bodily evidence, such as fingerprints or blood samples, in an important way: they are not simply physical, hard evidence, but evidence that is intimately linked to the defendant’s mind [32]. Under US law, brain-scanning technologies might also raise implications for the Fourth Amendment, calling into question whether they constitute an unreasonable search and seizure [33].”

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The New Neuro-Skeptics: Kirk v Spock in the interpretation of brain
fMRI http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/09/09/130909crbo_books_gopnik

http://www.behance.net/gallery/What-have-you-got-in-your-head/614949