MachineMachine /stream

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Quite the opposite, so long as we grasp the fresh routes to knowledge, and connection, that technological change brings, says Nick Harkaway. These are old, old fears in a new…

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A copying error appears to be responsible for critical features of the human brain that distinguish us from our closest primate kin, new research finds. When tested out in mice,…

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Officially, the Swiss Academy of Sciences meeting in Bern on 20 January was an overview of large-scale computer modelling in neuroscience. Unofficially, it was neuroscientists' first real chance to get…

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A peculiar experiment inspired by the Enlightenment sheds light on the age-old question of what makes us human.

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Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his…

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Evidence has emerged that the brain's capacity to absorb information is limiting the amount of data humanity can produce

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Do we have free will? It is an age-old question which has attracted the attention of philosophers, theologians, lawyers and political theorists. Now it is attracting the attention of neuroscience,…

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A stonishing animals show up everywhere these days. Cooperative apes, grief-stricken elephants, empathetic cats and dogs crowd our bookshop shelves. It’s all the rage to plumb the cognitive and emotional…

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This is my take on the singularity: we're not going to see a hard take-off, or a slow take-off, or any kind of AI-mediated exponential outburst. What we're going to…

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Eleanor Longden started to hear voices in her head when she was at university and was diagnosed as a schizophrenic - a label she totally rejects. Now she is a…

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Is studying the brain a good way to understand the mind? Does psychology stand to brain anatomy as physiology stands to body anatomy? In the case of the body, physiological…

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Imagine it: a flower blossoming inside the brain, nanometer stalks splitting away from a micrometer stem. Expanding into every available capillary, touching every cubic millimeter of the brain, collecting terabytes…

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Neuroscientists have yet to find anything in the brain they are happy calling consciousness, and philosophers are far from agreement over a way of talking about what happens after we…

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We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the…

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Parasites commonly manipulate host behaviour, and among the most dramatic examples are diverse fungi that cause insects to die attached to leaves. This death-grip behaviour functions to place insects in…

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There he goes again, making up nonsense and making ridiculous claims that have no relationship to reality. Ray Kurzweil must be able to spin out a good line of bafflegab,…

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Two summers ago, the Atlantic published an essay by Nicholas Carr, one of the blogosphere's most prominent (and thoughtful) contrarians, under the headline "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". "Over the…

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You may have heard of determinism, the theory that absolutely everything that happens is causally determined to happen exactly as it does by what has already gone before — right…

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There’s a struggle inside the brain of David Eagleman for the soul of David Eagleman. That is, there might be such a struggle if Eagleman’s brain believed that Eagleman had…

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Enter Nicholas Carr, a technology writer and Silicon Valley’s favourite contrarian, whose book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (Norton) has just come out in the…

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In the past, daydreaming was often considered a failure of mental discipline, or worse. Freud labeled it infantile and neurotic. Psychology textbooks warned it could lead to psychosis. Neuroscientists complained…

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Look closely at what you're reading right now. See those little spaces between the words? They may look unimportant, but the invention of word spaces, back in the Middle Ages,…

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While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with…

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A recent study provides intriguing information about the neural dynamics underlying behavioral changes associated with the development of new problem solving strategies. The research... supports the idea of "a-ha" moments…

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This layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinking — of mind reading — is both a common literary device and an essential survival skill. Why human beings…

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The recent fatal attack of a SeaWorld trainer by the orca Tilikum has led to renewed questions about how humans should deal with potentially intelligent animals. Was Tilikum’s action premeditated,…

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Some animals can instinctively solve navigational problems that have baffled humans for centuries. Now, researchers are uncovering how. The nervous system of the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis, with around 100,000…

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SYNAESTHESIA is a neurological condition in which there is a merging of the senses, so that activity in one sensory modality elicits sensations in another. Although first described by Francis…

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Disturbing experiences that feel both familiar and strange are instances of the “uncanny,” an intuitive concept, yet one that has defied simple explanation for more than a century. Interest in…