Loligo Blog - News

Rest In Peace, Oliver Sacks

nospam@example.com (John R) — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 21:27:00 +0000

Oliver Sacks: 9 July 1933 — 30 August 2015

Oliver Sacks was a neurologist who has been a great contributor to the converging fields of cognition, neuro-science, , and, indirectly, to the science of mind, and to furthering our understanding of consciousness.

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Video

MIT Expands Brain Tissue for Better Microscope Imaging

nospam@example.com (John R) — Sat, 24 Jan 2015 23:37:04 +0000

New technique enables nanoscale-resolution microscopy of large biological specimens.

Most microscopes work by using lenses to focus light emitted from a sample into a magnified image. However, this approach has a fundamental limit known as the diffraction limit, which means that it can’t be used to visualize objects much smaller than the wavelength of the light being used. For example, if you are using blue-green light with a wavelength of 500 nanometers, you can’t see anything smaller than 250 nanometers.

“Unfortunately, in biology that’s right where things get interesting,”

MIT team enlarges brain samples, making them easier to image

Leftover Links (lightly annotated)

nospam@example.com (John R) — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 12:07:00 +0000

Here are some related links I have found interesting while surfing the Internet. These have been laying around for a while, so this entry—designed to clear out some cobwebs— may contain some stale data. I've tossed some, but others may be interesting to you, as well.

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Groups, Journals, Forums

Open Access Papers

journal PLoS Computational Biology (open access)

Un-caegorized

[yt] TED^x Talk on Why We Feel Pain by an Interesting Talker (Lorimer Moseley)
A discussion of how the possibility of pain is transmitted, and how those possibilities are evaluated by the brain when determining whether something should be perceived as pain... or not. I do agree with the basic premise, but not sure about that first example. It would be nice to see some experimental confirmation on that one.

[yt]Davos 2010 - IdeasLab with MIT - Sebastian Seung
Basic instructional re: memory ("contectome" in this vid) vs. genome. I think I follow this guy on twitter.

[yt]Severed Corpus Callosum
A Scientific American (Frontiers) segment with Alan Alda and Dr. Michael Gazzaniga

Slime Mold
This concept is discussed in the book using a "Seven Step Explanation" (in the chapter on Consciousness). Breaking it down into a pithy statement for you: Adaptation is required to produce neurons — Neurons are NOT required to produce adaptation.

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