meta user
network profile
| bio | website | |
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| location | ||
| age | ||
| visits | member for | 1 year |
| seen | 5 hours ago | |
| stats | profile views | 32 |
BS Physics (received)
MS Computational Neuroscience (received)
PhD Theoretical Neuroscience (attending/pursuing)
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Dec 31 |
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How rare is synesthesia? I feel like more initial research could be done on this question. Start by googling synesthesia demographics. I think there's more than one kind of synesthete too (upper vs lower) |
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Dec 30 |
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Any research on right-hand/left-hand based preferences when interacting with an interface? an anecdote: I'm a left-hander (and left-eye dominate) who uses the mouse right-handed and prefers menus and sidebars on the right on the screen. I expect, however, the file menu to be left-most and have open, close, print, etc. So expectations from experience might be more important than (or at least compete with) innate preferences. |
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Dec 30 |
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Are there any reliable self-tests for autism spectrum disorder? I think the first sentence of your "to be clear" paragraph should be emphasized to the point that no answer is sufficient. Auto-tests are simply not reliable. I.e., I think the answer to your question is simply "No". Reliable and auto are contradictory. |
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Dec 30 |
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Is happiness a result of cognitive or a side effect of neurobiological processes? Still, I think the controversial statement is "cognitive process alone", depending on what you mean. Do you mean the processes in the brain responsible for cognition or cognitive processes as separate from the brain? The latter is the controversial statement. Even the former is somewhat of a difficult question. Cognition seems to be distributed across the brain. The processes (functional brain dynamics) themselves aren't all well documented yet; several frameworks are emerging, though. |
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Dec 30 |
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How can I test whether Dorsal Raphe Nucleus(DRN) activity at night is related to variations in mood? Could you use something like fMRI (on the humans) with support from homology studies (in other primates/mammals) that are more invasive? |
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Dec 30 |
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How does one study the effect of a dietary supplement on cognition? I'm glad I could answer your question. I've updated with some links to explain the GABA shunt on modulators a bit. |
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Dec 4 |
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Difference between parallel processing done by human brain and by computers Chuck, graded potentials would be important in gap-junction coupling, probably partiuclarly axo-axonic gap junction coupling (which occurs in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus). They're mostly known for their role in network synchronization. But also, underlying membrane potential is always fluxuation due to passive currents both in and outside the cell; thresholds are kind of a fuzzy value that can be altered by global activity in the body. |
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Dec 4 |
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What regulates the strength of motoric signals? Seems to me you basically nailed it, Chuck. I think a simplified view is that extra recruitment can recruit more muscle, firing rate can make a fixed set of muscles "try harder". So there's spatial distribution and an intensity. To specifically answer about sensory dependence... you're getting feedback sensory from your muscles as you lift, so it's possible the extra input is from the muscles themselves doing work. This is some speculation though, so I keep it a comment. |
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Dec 4 |
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Possibility of perfect virtual reality The generic thought experiment pertaining to this is brain in vat. It's not falsifiable. A lot of signal processing does go straight from mechanoreception to electrical signal. However, is the electrical signal where subjective experience occurs? We have no way of knowing, currently. |
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Oct 21 |
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What stimulus features determine the psychophysical power law exponent? Speculation: (I couldn't find any research to confirm my intuition about this) Negative exponent is for sensory information that's integrated into contextual processing, it's adaptive, so it has less of an effect as more is present and the mind adapts to the stimulus. Positive exponent is more related to an alert system. There's a threshold at which it takes off (similar to a transistor). Note: Wikipedia documents some strong criticisms of Steven's Power Law. |
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Sep 21 |
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What explains habitual or even occasional incidences of self-talk? reminds me of the Dialogical Self. Not sure about the neurobiology off the top of my head but my gut is screaming Wernicke's and Broca's areas. |
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Sep 21 |
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Does breastfeeding lead to increased intelligence? Jeromy, I don't mind edits at all. The way I see it, answers belong to the public domain. But I see a typo in the last inline reference ([25] Weaver IC). Not sure what you were going for there as far as formatting. |
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Sep 17 |
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What is the current “accepted” science behind dream interpretation? I believe that's the nature of the beast. There are so many degeneracies in brain sciences (many different ways to get to the same functionality, sometimes more than one are actually valid, so different brains can arrive at different network architectures that produce the same result). Eve Marder has published some work on this. |
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Sep 14 |
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Is there a correlation between facial features and personality? I didn't really intend to judge Physiognomy, just lay the terms out there for further research (Phrenology is another story.. it made particular now-falsified claims about local functionality being isolated in brain regions). On Physiognomy, The wiki says it's made a little bit of a comeback lately and I can intuit some rationality in the muscular use line of argument. So I withhold judgment for now. But yeah, definitely something to tread carefully with. |
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Sep 13 |
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Is there a correlation between facial features and personality? it's called Physiognomy. It's gained and lost popularity several times in history. There's an excellent science-fiction novel called "The Physiognomy" based on the medievel version of the practice. Phrenology was a similar, less credible idea. |
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Sep 8 |
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What is the mechanism explaining the effect of a positive attitude on immune system functioning? I saw something today about this in an interview with Gabor Mate (near the end, ~40 minutes, but I suggest watching the whole interview, good stuff). Dr. Mate brings up several studies. He called the discipline Psychoneuroimmunology |
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Sep 8 |
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Cultural brain hypothesis and gene-culture co-evolution are you interested strictly in genetics or epigenetics as well (particularly, changes in how genes are expressed)? |
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Sep 7 |
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Does typical duration of Short Term Memory differ between tasks? I'm thinking there's also the problem of association with the task. If the general concepts contained in the new information are somehow comparable to already-known information, association is easier, which may increase duration. Also, straight to your question, I wonder if tasks where you use muscles are more memorable or have longer durations (or tasks that require remembering positions or physical motion). |
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Sep 3 |
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Is religiousness a genetically heritable feature? @Preece, nobody's finding a "a gene for this or that". Instead, think of it as finding "genes associated with this or that". Furthermore, the idea of a social construct like religion "evolving" is confusing language in the context of genetics where the word is already reserved for a specific kind of molecular process. Lastly, the "proneness" of the construct is not being assayed either, and it's more likely that they are simultaneously prone to each other in varying distribution and context. Genetics and environment are a complicated, entangled dance. |
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Sep 1 |
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Is religiousness a genetically heritable feature? Perhaps eventually if somebody else doesn't beat me to it (I'm not calling dibs on it though, so feel free anyone else). I don't want to invest the time into reading it right now. Here is somebody else's summary of it, it looks like they just compared monozygotic to dizygotic. |
