boundaries
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No New Neurons? No Problem!
This answer was written in response to the following Quora question: New research has found no neurogenesis in human adults, could this mean there is none or could it mean that neural stem cells are undetectable with the used techniques? What are your thoughts on this? It’s good that you’re thinking of such things, since…
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Perhaps neurogenesis doesn’t happen in adult humans?
A new study suggests that new neurons are not born very often in human adults. Birth of New Neurons in the Human Hippocampus Ends in Childhood “The lab’s new research, based on careful analysis of 59 samples of human hippocampus from UCSF and collaborators around the world, suggests new neurons may not be born in…
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“The first rule of intelligence: Don’t talk about your intelligence”
That line is from an article in The Atlantic about how poor people are at self-assessment: People Don’t Actually Know Themselves Very Well “The first rule of intelligence: Don’t talk about your intelligence. It’s something you prove, not something you claim. As comedian Patton Oswalt quipped about humor, the only person who goes around saying…
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Are mental disorders the same as brain disorders? Maybe not!
I am currently reading an excellent paper that will be published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences soon. It raises some very important issues with popular conceptions of mental illness. Brain disorders? Not really… Why network structures block reductionism in psychopathology research These two figures capture some of the key points: Here is the abstract: “In…
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Why can’t we perceive cells? Or atoms?
I was asked the following question on Quora: Why can’t we see, touch, hear and smell on a cellular level? And what happens if we can? Here’s what I wrote: Essentially, we perceive the visible world in the way that we do because of our overall size, the shape of our eyes, and the sizes…
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The kind of brain training that actually works!
Just saw this on twitter: Here’s the link to the (thus far unreviewed!) study: How much does education improve intelligence? A meta-analysis “… we found consistent evidence for beneficial effects of education on cognitive abilities, of approximately 1 to 5 IQ points for an additional year of education. Moderator analyses indicated that the effects persisted…