MMRY

Reading the contents of working memory [Neurophilosophy]
by Mo none@example.com
Working memory refers to the process by which small amounts of information relevant to the task at hand are retained for short periods of time. For example, before cellular phones became so ubiquitous, calling someone usually involved first finding the number and then remembering it for a just few seconds by repeating it to oneself several times. Once the digits had been dialled, they are immediately forgotten.

Very little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying working memory, but very recently some advances have been made. Last month, a group from the University of Texas Medical Center described a novel mechanism by which the response of single cells in the prefrontal cortex to a stimulus can persist for many seconds after the stimulus has been removed. They suggested that this could be how cells encode information for short periods of time.
And now, researchers from Vanderbilt University have made another important finding. In an advance publication in the journal Nature, they report that the parts of the visual cortex which carry out the earliest stages of visual processing play an important part role in retaining simple images in working memory, and demonstrate that the contents of visual working memory can be accurately predicted by decoding neural activity from those parts of the brain.



/////////////////More on propranolol - the drug that doesn't erase memories [Not Exactly Rocket Science]
by Ed Yong none@example.com
The mainstream media are just queuing up to fail in their reporting of the propranolol story from a couple of days ago. To reiterate:

Propranolol is commonly used to treat high blood pressure and prevent migraines in children. But Merel Kindt and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam have found that it can do much more. By giving it to people before they recalled a scary memory about a spider, they could erase the fearful response it triggered.

The critical thing about the study is that the entire memory hadn't been erased in a typical sci-fi way. Kindt had trained the volunteers to be fearful of spidery images by pairing them with electric shocks. Even after they'd been given propranolol, they still expected to receive a shock when they saw a picture of a spider - they just weren't afraid of the prospect. The drug hadn't so much erased their memories, as dulled their emotional sting. It's more like removing all the formatting from a Word document than deleting the entire file.



/////////////////////Related research has demonstrated that increased "cognitive load" -- like the mental demands of being in a city -- makes people more likely to choose chocolate cake instead of fruit salad, or indulge in a unhealthy snack. This is the one-two punch of city life: It subverts our ability to resist temptation even as it surrounds us with it, from fast-food outlets to fancy clothing stores. The end result is too many calories and too much credit card debt.

City life can also lead to loss of emotional control. Kuo and her colleagues found less domestic violence in the apartments with views of greenery. These data build on earlier work that demonstrated how aspects of the urban environment, such as crowding and unpredictable noise, can also lead to increased levels of aggression. A tired brain, run down by the stimuli of city life, is more likely to lose its temper.

Long before scientists warned about depleted prefrontal cortices, philosophers and landscape architects were warning about the effects of the undiluted city, and looking for ways to integrate nature into modern life. Ralph Waldo Emerson advised people to "adopt the pace of nature," while the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted sought to create vibrant urban parks, such as Central Park in New York and the Emerald Necklace in Boston, that allowed the masses to escape the maelstrom of urban life.



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//////////////////////........Darwin's big advantage [The Island of Doubt]
by James Hrynyshyn none@example.com
Not to diminish Charles Darwin's brillance in the slightest, but there's a nice little essay in the New York Times by Nicholas Wade that helps explain why the guy managed to get so much so right so long ago. The money quote:

One of Darwin's advantages was that he did not have to write grant proposals or publish 15 articles a year. He thought deeply about every detail of his theory for more than 20 years before publishing "The Origin of Species" in 1859, and for 12 years more before its sequel, "The Descent of Man," which explored how his theory applied to people.



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///////////////////The philosopher Karl Popper is famous for using falsifiability as the basis for separating science from non-science. If a hypothesis can be openly tested and allows for the possibility of being falsified, he said, then it is scientific



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