Lifeboat Foundation

https://paper.li/e-1437691924

What does it take to think beyond the human? Can we imagine our human selves in other lives? And should we? While contemporary answers to these questions have highlighted the desirability and necessity of imagining ourselves as animals, plants, and even objects, others argue that such acts of the imagination are fundamentally flawed. The human, Lynn Festa argues in Fiction without Humanity, is really all we get access to.

The 21st century has seen the rise of what are often lumped together as a variety of “posthumanist” critical approaches: thing theory and “new materialism” (see Bill Brown’s Other Things and Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter), animal studies (see Jacques Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am and Donna Haraway’s When Species Meet), and even a burgeoning plant studies (see Jeffrey T. Nealon’s Plant Theory: Biopower and Vegetable Life). Each of these approaches has asked us to broaden the range of what Miguel Tamen calls “interpretable objects” well beyond the human; to consider what forms of signification, consciousness, or meaning might belong to animals, plants, and objects.¹

Continue reading “The Posthuman Enlightenment” »

In addition to working with the World Health Organization to end smallpox, Larry Brilliant has fought flu, polio, and blindness. He says we will, eventually, get back to normal. But that’s not going to occur until three important things happen first. LARRY BRILLIANT SAYS he doesn’t have a crystal ball. But 14 years ago, Brilliant, the epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox, spoke to a TED audience and described what the next pandemic would look like. At the time, it sounded almost too horrible to take seriously. “A billion people would get sick,” he said. “As many as 165 million people would die. There would be a global recession and depression, and the cost to our economy of $1 to $3 trillion would be far worse for everyone than merely 100 million people dying, because so many more people would lose their jobs and their health care benefits, that the consequences are almost unthinkable.”

Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who warned of pandemic in 2006, says we can beat the novel coronavirus—but first, we need lots more testing.

Circa 2019

Memory loss is usually seen as an inevitable part of ageing. But new research suggests that magnetic pulse stimulation can help older brains recover a little of their youthful vitality.

Intel Corp. is releasing an experimental research system for neuromorphic computing, a cutting-edge method that simulates the way human brains work to perform computations faster, using significantly less energy.

The system, called Pohoiki Springs, will be made available this month over the cloud to members of the Intel Neuromorphic Research Community, which includes academic researchers, government labs and about a dozen companies such as Accenture PLC and Airbus SE.

Others, including International Business Machines Corp., are also researching the technique.

Brian tumors and the coronavirus.

We hope this information will help address some of our community’s concerns about the coronavirus (COVID-19).

Have you ever gotten a whiff of a certain smell that brought you back to childhood? Or maybe a scent that reminded you of a past love affair?

A paper published in Learning and Memory reveals the power scents have to trigger memories of past experiences, as well as the possibility for odor to be used in treating memory-related disorders.

“If odor could be used to elicit the rich recollection of a memory — even of a traumatic experience — we could take advantage of that [therapeutically],” said Boston University neuroscientist Steve Ramirez, assistant professor of psychology and brain sciences and senior author of the study, in a statement.

A theory of how #AI & #brain recognize things. https://bit.ly/2Qnq3RC “In this article, we proposed a hypothesis that we call Switch Hypothesis for explaining how an ANN as well as a real neural network carry out its functions…” #MachineLearning #DeepLearning #NeuralNetworks

Neuroscience and psychology today has advanced significantly. With the use of neuroimaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), human beings have gradually revealed the secrets behind how our brains perceive, recognize and memorize things. However, if you’d like to have a detailed, neuronal-level elucidation on how brains realize its functions, you should be very disappointed because no one is currently capable of doing so. In other words, although our cerebrums are no longer a pitch-black box, it’s still at least a “gray” box, with a lot of enigmas yet to be explained.

A drug developed to combat Alzheimer’s Disease can trigger regeneration of tooth dentin.

A group of neuroscience and neurotechnology researchers have conducted extensive research and developed a new brain imaging technology in two EU projects led by Aalto University. As a result of the successful research, a new project funded by Business Finland just started with the aim of making the devices usable for patients. The project’s budget is one million euros.

“More accurate measurements can be helpful in locating epileptic brain activity before surgery. The new device is also expected to help distinguish brain tumours from healthy tissue more accurately prior to cancer surgery. In addition, the device will increase our understanding of the connections between the different brain regions. This will help us understand abnormal brain activity in connection with, for example, depression or the progress of Alzheimer’s disease,” explains Professor Risto Ilmoniemi, Head of Aalto University Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering.

The improved accuracy can also be useful in the study of stroke, autism and brain injuries; and especially as part of basic brain research.