Category: Mechanistic view
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Itching brain. Gods becoming mice.
Itching is a highly contagious behavior. When we see someone scratch, we’re likely to feel itchy, too. A research shows contagious itching is hardwired in the brain. For this study, Chen’s team put a mouse in an enclosure with a computer screen. The researchers then played a video that showed another mouse scratching. “Within a […]
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Knowing. Bacteria’s memory (x 100). Humans…
Researchers have identified a mutation that prompts bacterial cells to acquire genetic memories 100 times more frequently than they do naturally. This discovery provides a powerful research tool and could bring scientists one step closer to developing DNA-based data storage devices. (1) We insist on making the cosmos a big computer. We want to make […]
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Computers listening to humans. Humans becoming like computers…
Speech recognition software isn’t perfect, but it is a little closer to human this week, as a Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research team reached a major milestone in speech-to-text development: The system reached a historically low word error rate of 5.9 percent, equal to the accuracy of a professional (human) transcriptionist. The system can discern […]
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Why things happen? [OR: The vanity of the mechanistic view]
Forgetting. When it comes to maintaining sanity, forgetting is at least as important as remembering. Without it, the constant stream of stimuli – faces on the street, words read, items glanced at – would quickly overwhelm the mind. But the neural basis underlying the act of forgetting isn’t well understood. A new study found that […]
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