Some scientists use science to create art. One good example is Greg Dunn, a neurobiologist and visual artist. They are a startling combination of the precise images captured by neuron-imaging technology and the traditional techniques of Japanese ink-wash painting, also known as sumi-e. More recently, I have discovered the impressive image of David Goodsell, who transforms deadly viruses into stunning works of art. Goodsell is a biologist who studies the molecular structure of cells at…

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As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, the results produced by brain-imaging technologies such as fMRI are subject to at least two limitations. First. they detect neural activation only indirectly, by monitoring blood flows in the brain. Second, the methods used to analyze such images are subject to many forms of bias. These limitations were confirmed in a troubling study by Tom Schonberg, Thomas Nichols and Russell Poldrack, entitled “Variability in the analysis of a…

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With his famous Chinese Room Argument, philosopher John Searl raised an important question: can a computer understand Chinese (or French or English)? Probably not, if the results of some of today’s computer-translation programs are any indication. Unlike computers, we human beings can usually grasp the meaning of things fairly effortlessly, while a computer cannot. Many neuroscientists believe that to explain why, we must look more closely at the biological substrate of the brain, and in…

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Affordances are a key concept in cognitive science, first advanced by J.J. Gibson in 1966. As I explained in an earlier post in this blog, an affordance is an opportunity that an object offers to take action. A hammer, for example, offers the opportunity to be grasped by its handle, and a chair offers the opportunity to sit down. What is interesting about this concept of affordances is that the opportunity for action does not…

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In a 2017 article on the chess website chessable, entitled “Beating Magnus after a month of training: the neuroscience of why learning chess is so much harder than learning a language”, author David Karmaley writes: “A fascinating finding from neuroscience is that your brain starts using the fusiform face area to store chess positions! This is the part of the brain usually responsible for human face recognition.” Karmaley seems surprised that a part of the…

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Today I want to tell you about a study entitled “Psilocybin-assisted mindfulness training modulates self-consciousness and brain default mode network connectivity with lasting effects,” which a research team from the University of Zurich published in the journal NeuroImage in August 2019. As the title suggests, this study combined two methods of modulating the brain: engaging inmindfulness meditation and taking the hallucinogen psilocybin, a psychoactive molecule found in “magic mushrooms”. Previous studies had shown that both…

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Today I’d like to talk about the cerebellum. To introduce this topic, I’ll remind you that as animals’ bodies evolved and became more complex, they were subjected to greater adaptive pressures to move more and more efficiently, and the cerebellum is a brain structure that was closely involved in this process. Here’s the most surprising fact about the cerebellum. The human brain as a whole contains about 86 billion neurons. The cerebral cortex accounts contains…

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Les vacances achèvent, comme d’ailleurs ma lecture estivale du dernier numéro hors-série du magazine Pour la science (août-septembre 2020 – No 108) intitulé : À la recherche de l’inconscient. Les nouvelles théories des neurosciences. Un bon numéro qui couvre pas mal d’aspects de ce que notre cerveau passe son temps à faire : travailler pour nous mais à notre insu ! Pourquoi les conceptions actuelles de l’inconscient ne gardent pas grand-chose de celle de Freud ? Pourquoi…

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De retour de quelques jours dans le Bas-du-fleuve québécois, j’ai pu apprécier sa brise maritime mais aussi son silence. Dans ma tente, je n’entendais pratiquement rien les soirs sans vents. Étrange sensation pour un urbain comme moi habitué à la rumeur constante de la ville. Cela m’a rappelé deux articles récents dont j’aimerais vous parler aujourd’hui : l’un sur les vertus du silence pour la neurogenèse cérébrale, et l’autre sur une voie de signalisation du stress…

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When you move through space, your sensory perceptions change constantly, in real time. What we call cognition can be equated with this uninterrupted flow of perception and action through by a body and a brain located in an environment. But as scientists have now told us, the modern human brain contains many neurons that are neither sensory nor motor—so many that it can sometimes be hard to realize that this perception/action loop is still the…

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