“Authentic bio-gibberish”
It turns out that one of the 2017 Nobel Laureates is quite a character! “Jeffrey Hall, a retired professor at Brandeis University, shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in medicine for…
The Tao that can be expressed
[This is an essay I wrote in 2008, on an old blog.] The following is the first part of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching — it’s my favourite piece of…
What does the frontal lobe have to do with planning and decision-making?
I was asked the following question on Quora:
Why is planning & decision making situated in the frontal lobe?
Here’s my answer:
Is the mind a machine?
My latest 3QD essay explores the “mind as machine” metaphor, and metaphors in general. Putting the "cog" in "cognitive": on the "mind as machine" metaphor Here’s an excerpt: People who…
Is there a ‘multi-dimensional universe’ in the brain? A case study in neurobabble
I was asked a question on Quora about a recent study that talked about high-dimensional ‘structures’ in the brain. It has been receiving an inordinate amount of hype, partly as a result of the journal’s own blog. Their headline reads:
‘Blue Brain Team Discovers a Multi-Dimensional Universe in Brain Networks’
As if the reference to a ‘universe’ weren’t bad enough, the last author, Henry Markram, says the following: