05Nov 2024 by Post

Getting Stoned: Did It Shape Human Origins?

abstract thinking, anthropology, Aristotle, behavior, Big Think, Bobby Azarian, consciousness, Entropic Brain Hypothesis, Evolution, evolutionary psychology, Food of the Gods, human mind, Human Origins, magic mushrooms, Neuroscience & Mind, neuroscientists, New Stoned Ape Theory, panpsychism, psilocybin, Roger Penrose, Stone Age, Stoned Ape Theory, Terence McKenna
For a really wild excursion, nothing beats efforts to explain the evolution of the human mind. Source
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02Nov 2024 by Post

Putting AI to the “Tolkien Test”: Could It Pass?

3 Quarks Daily, algorithms, art, Books, cathedrals, ChatGPT, Creativity, Culture & Ethics, human beings, intelligence, large language models, materialism, Middle-earth, music, music theory, nature, Neuroscience & Mind, On Fairy Stories, Oxford University, sentience, soul, sub-creators, The Lord of the Rings, theists, Tolkien test, Turing test, War and Peace
Could ChatGPT ever hope to get close to the creative depth found in Tolkien’s Middle-earth? Source
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26Oct 2024 by Post

Soul Survives Death? ER Doc Faces Skepticism

Baram Elahi, brain function, cardiac arrest, clinical death, Closer to Truth, consciousness, death, doctors, Faith & Science, John Eccles, Lord Kelvin, Lucid Dying, near-death experiences, Neuroscience & Mind, Nobel Prize, physics, post-death consciousness, Psyche, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Sam Parnia, skepticism, soul
In discussion with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Dr. Sam Parnia stuck to his clearly defined evidence, avoiding religious digressions. Source
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07Sep 2024 by Post

A Quarter of Comatose Patients May Be Aware But Unable to Communicate

brain activity, brain responses, brain scans, cognitive motor dissociation, comatose, communication technologies, consciousness, Elon Musk, fMRI, Julian Nowogrodzki, Medicine, Neuralink, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, Noland Arbaugh, patient assessment, patients, Technology
“Covertly” means that the patients were not able to respond directly but brain activity showed that they understood what was asked of them. Source
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02Sep 2024 by Post

Biophysicist Proposes “Spiritual Particle”

beetroots, consciousness, Daniel Dennett, Darwinian evolution theory, Darwinism, Douglas Youvan, eliminationism, Energy, Evolution, Galen Strawson, illusion, matter, natural selection, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, panpsychism, Physics, Earth & Space, psychology, random mutation, snakes, spiritual particle, universe
It has, Douglas Youvan suggests, a dual nature, interacting with both matter and consciousness. Source
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24Aug 2024 by Post

What 1,000+ Brain Surgeries Taught About the Mind

brain, Christof Koch, consciousness circuit, David Chalmers, epilepsy, materialism, mathematics, Medicine, Michael Egnor, mind, music, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, neurosurgery, Pat Flynn, philosophy, promissory materialism, seizures, Stony Brook University, Wilder Penfield
Michael Egnor continues his discussion with Pat Flynn, noting that neither seizures nor Penfield’s brain stimulation provoked abstract thought. Source
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08Aug 2024 by Post

Research with Mice May Explain How the Placebo Effect Works

Adam Kovac, animals, brain, brain circuits, cruelty to animals, expectation, Gizmodo, humans, illness, imagination, medication, Medicine, mice, neurons, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, pain, pain control, placebo effect, researchers, sugar pill, University of North Carolina
The mice had to be placed in a painful situation in order to trigger a placebo effect. With humans, it is often just a matter of communicating orally. Source
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