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neuroscience. brain. brain mapping.

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accord­ing to spike activ­ity at mind­hacks, the human brain project

…sells itself as aim­ing to “sim­u­late a com­plete human brain in a super­com­puter” but this is clearly bollocks.

It’s inter­est­ing that this claim makes the press kit and the flashy video but the actual report (pdf) has much more sober claims about ‘sim­u­lat­ing brain dynam­ics’ and the like.

But it’s impor­tant to realise that while their big sell is non­sense, the project is likely to gen­uinely rev­o­lu­tionise neu­ro­science in a way that could push the field light years ahead.

What Markram has realised is that the sin­gle biggest bar­rier to progress in neu­ro­science is the co-​ordination, shar­ing and inte­gra­tion of data.

Essen­tially, it’s a prob­lem of infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture but quite frankly, you can’t sell that to politi­cians and they can’t sell it to the pub­lic. Hence the ‘sim­u­lat­ing a com­plete human brain’ fluff.

What the project aims to do is co-​ordinate neu­ro­science teams look­ing at neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy, cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science and com­pu­ta­tional mod­el­ling and give them the tools to eas­ily share data with each other.

One of the big pay-​offs will gen­uinely be the cre­ation of bio­log­i­cally fea­si­ble com­puter sim­u­la­tions of neural net­works with the hope that these can be used for prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions like vir­tual drug test­ing and computer-​based experiments.

Markram has gained valu­able expe­ri­ence of mesh­ing heavy-​duty com­put­ing with work­ing lab teams and has recruited some of the world’s lead­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tists to the project.

Although the spin seems over-​the-​top sci­en­tif­i­cally this is an impor­tant project that, if suc­cess­ful, could be a sci­en­tific landmark.

brain. mind. man-​machine symbiosis. computers.

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birth of the global mind

The web is a per­fect exam­ple of what engi­neer and early com­puter sci­en­tist Van­nevar Bush called “intel­li­gence aug­men­ta­tion” by com­put­ers, in his 1945 arti­cle “As We May Think” in The Atlantic. He described a future in which human abil­ity to fol­low an asso­cia­tive knowl­edge trail would be enabled by a device he called “the memex”. This would improve on human mem­ory in the pre­ci­sion of its recall. Google is today’s ulti­mate memex.

The web also demon­strates what JCR Lick­lider, another early com­puter vision­ary, called “man-​machine sym­bio­sis”. Humans cre­ate the doc­u­ments that make up the web and pro­vide the asso­cia­tive links between them. Search engines fol­low our bread­crumb trail, eval­u­ate the strongest paths, and lead oth­ers to what has been found. When the algo­rithms for find­ing the “right” doc­u­ments improve, we all get smarter; when spam­mers or other mal­ware lead the algo­rithms astray, we all get dumber.

Man-​machine sym­bio­sis isn’t just about knowl­edge retrieval, it’s also about knowl­edge cre­ation. Our com­put­ers have no intel­li­gence with­out us, but they accel­er­ate our col­lec­tive intel­li­gence at a speed that has never been seen before.

social evolution. ritual. group cohesion.

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social evo­lu­tion: the rit­ual ani­mal by dan jones

…neigh­bour­hood friends formed small groups com­pris­ing “the num­ber of peo­ple you could fit in a car”. Later, fight­ers began liv­ing together in groups of 25 – 40 in dis­used build­ings and the man­sions of rich sup­port­ers. Finally, after Gaddafi’s forces were pushed out of Mis­rata, much larger and hier­ar­chi­cally orga­nized brigades emerged that patrolled long stretches of the defen­sive bor­der of the city. There was even a Mis­ratan Union of Rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, which by Novem­ber 2011 had reg­is­tered 236 rebel brigades.

McQuinn inter­viewed more than 300 fight­ers from 21 of these rebel groups, which var­ied in size from 12 to just over 1,000 mem­bers2. He found that the early, smaller brigades tended to form around pre-​existing per­sonal ties, and became more cohe­sive and the mem­bers more com­mit­ted to each other as they col­lec­tively expe­ri­enced the fear and excite­ment of fight­ing a civil war on the streets of Misrata.

But six of the groups evolved into super-​brigades of more than 750 fight­ers, becom­ing “some­thing more like a cor­po­rate entity with their own orga­ni­za­tional rit­u­als”, says McQuinn. A num­ber of the group lead­ers had run suc­cess­ful busi­nesses, and would bring every­one together each day for col­lec­tive train­ing, brief­ings and to reit­er­ate their moral codes of con­duct — the kinds of rou­tine group activ­i­ties char­ac­ter­is­tic of the doc­tri­nal mode. “These daily prac­tices moved peo­ple from being ‘our lit­tle group’ to ‘every­one train­ing here is part of our group’,” says McQuinn.

brain. preservation. identity. immortality.

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paint­ing by joe dragt

upon thy glim­mer­ing thresholds

I have been read­ing about the Brain Preser­va­tion Foun­da­tion (BPF), which hopes that chem­i­cal and other meth­ods, includ­ing a refined ver­sion of plas­ti­na­tion, will enable brains to be pre­served with such fidelity that mem­o­ries, per­son­al­ity, and even iden­tity can be preserved.

This may well seem rem­i­nis­cent of the older cryo­genic preser­va­tion projects which have not always had a good press over recent years, though they still con­tinue to oper­ate and indeed have refined their processes some­what. But although the BPF also has a vision of bring­ing peo­ple back to life after their nat­ural death, it is in many ways a dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish. It does not itself offer any kind of ser­vice but merely seeks to pro­mote research, and it does not expect to see a prac­ti­cal sys­tem for many years. In addi­tion, it makes its case and addresses objec­tions in a com­mend­ably clear and thought­ful way – see for exam­ple this blog post by John M Smart, co-​founder of the BPF. Per­haps this is partly also to do with its impres­sive panel of advi­sors, which includes such names as Chalmers, Seung, and Eagle­man, to men­tion only a few.

I have some reser­va­tions about the project, which fall into sev­eral cat­e­gories; there are gen­eral con­cerns about the prac­ti­cal­ity of preser­va­tion, doubts about per­sonal iden­tity, and doubts about the claimed social value of let­ting peo­ple have a pro­longed or renewed life; but there are pos­i­tive fac­tors, too.

atrocity. trauma. children.

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how and when to help chil­dren cope with trauma?

the lancet

In the long after­math of atroc­i­ties such as the New­town school mas­sacre, fam­i­lies and health-​care pro­fes­sion­als are left try­ing to com­pre­hend the incom­pre­hen­si­ble. Thoughts duly turn to the future, and to pre­ven­tion of such inci­dents, but what hap­pens to the chil­dren left behind? How best to help them cope? The sober­ing answer, accord­ing to a sys­tem­atic review pub­lished in Pedi­atrics last week, is that we do not know.

Valerie Forman-​Hoffman and col­leagues had searched for high-​quality stud­ies that assessed inter­ven­tions in chil­dren or ado­les­cents exposed to non-​relational trau­matic events — includ­ing war, ter­ror­ist attacks, com­mu­nity vio­lence, and nat­ural dis­as­ters. Hav­ing boiled the avail­able evi­dence down to just 22 short-​term stud­ies that tested 20 dif­fer­ent treat­ments, they were left with wor­ry­ingly vague conclusions.

Drugs, it seems, prob­a­bly don’t work. Only three were assessed — imipramine, flu­ox­e­tine, and ser­tra­line — and none showed effi­cacy. Psy­cho­log­i­cal treat­ments fared lit­tle bet­ter. Few showed clin­i­cal ben­e­fit (mainly school-​based treat­ments that incor­po­rated cog­ni­tive behav­ioural ther­apy), with the authors con­clud­ing, as strongly as avail­able evi­dence would allow, that psy­chother­a­peu­tic treat­ment might be more effec­tive than no treat­ment at all.

The authors call for more research into the com­par­a­tive effec­tive­ness of dif­fer­ent inter­ven­tions for this age group. But a focus on obser­va­tional analy­sis of the long-​term well­be­ing of chil­dren and ado­les­cents fol­low­ing a trau­matic event would also be desir­able. Peo­ple cope with trauma in dif­fer­ent ways. It is nor­mal that extreme cir­cum­stances elicit extreme responses, but what is a nor­mal reac­tion to a trau­matic event? With­out knowl­edge of the nat­ural his­tory of reac­tion to trauma, how do we know when to inter­vene, and when such inter­ven­tion might be harm­ful? The answers will vary from child to child, although research might yet reveal gen­eral pat­terns that will be of use to clin­i­cians. In the mean­time, it is impor­tant that evidence-​based sup­port is avail­able when nec­es­sary — which might be some time after the orig­i­nal trau­matic event.

pollution. industrialization. toxic chemicals. china.

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water china

photo by reuters

bei­jing unveils blue­print con­trol health risk of toxic chemicals

The cen­tral gov­ern­ment has unveiled its first blue­print to con­trol the envi­ron­men­tal and health risks of toxic chem­i­cals, and for the first time offi­cially acknowl­edged the exis­tence of “can­cer clus­ters” due to such pollution.

The blue­print, cov­er­ing the period from 2011 to 2015 and posted on the web­site of the Min­istry of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion, admits that exces­sive lev­els of chem­i­cal pol­lu­tants are already found in the country’s major rivers and lakes, and even in ani­mal and human bodies.

“In recent years, toxic and haz­ardous chem­i­cal pol­lu­tion has caused many envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters, cut­ting off drink­ing water sup­plies, and even lead­ing to severe health and social prob­lems such as ‘can­cer vil­lages’,” the blue­print said.

In recent years, toxic and haz­ardous chem­i­cal pol­lu­tion has caused many envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters, cut­ting off drink­ing water sup­plies, and even lead­ing to severe health and social prob­lems such as ‘can­cer villages

preventing gun violence. gun control. white house.

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from the white house pre­vent­ing gun violence

1. require back­ground checks for all gun sales

2. strengthen the back­ground check sys­tem for gun sales

3. pass a new, stronger ban on assault weapons

4. limit ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines to 10 rounds

5. fin­ish the job of get­ting armor-​piercing bul­lets off the streets

6. give law enforce­ment addi­tional tools to pre­vent and pros­e­cute gun crime

7. end the freeze on gun vio­lence research

8. make our schools safer with new resource offi­cers and coun­selors, bet­ter emer­gency response plans, and more nur­tur­ing school climates

9. ensure qual­ity cov­er­age of men­tal health treat­ment, par­tic­u­larly for young people

No sin­gle law – or even set of laws – can pre­vent every act of vio­lence in our coun­try. But the fact that this prob­lem is com­plex can not be an excuse for inaction.

semi-​automatic rifles. AR-​15. mass murder.

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how guns became gad­gets — light­weight, easy to use, and more effec­tive than ever by christo­pher mims

It doesn’t take more than a few hun­dred dol­lars and a trip to a Wal-​Mart in the US to cre­ate an assault rifle iden­ti­cal to the one used to mur­der 27 peo­ple in an ele­men­tary school… Under laws that have been on the books since gang­ster Al Capone proved the dev­as­tat­ing capac­ity of machine guns, Amer­i­cans can’t buy fully auto­matic rifles. But the action on mod­ern assault rifles is so smooth that one can still fire four shots a sec­ond, sim­ply by squeez­ing the trig­ger as quickly as pos­si­ble. You only have to reload every 20 shots, or 30 with a big­ger mag­a­zine. Owing to the design of mod­ern bul­let mag­a­zines, reload­ing only takes a few seconds.

Despite being a “long gun,” a prop­erly con­fig­ured AR-​15-​style assault rifle can weigh less than the aver­age lap­top com­puter (about 5.5 pounds) and its longer bar­rel makes no-​look aim­ing eas­ier than with a pis­tol. The optional col­lapsi­ble stock (the part that usu­ally pro­trudes from the back of the gun) is per­fect for maneu­ver­ing indoors, and the gun has very lit­tle kick, allow­ing a user to squeeze off round after round while stay­ing on-​target.

The bul­lets an AR-​15-​style assault rifle can fire are avail­able in a wider vari­ety than those avail­able to the US mil­i­tary. While troops are in many cases lim­ited to solid slugs designed to pen­e­trate both walls and peo­ple, the hollow-​tipped bul­lets favored by many AR-​15 fans are, accord­ing to the mag­a­zine Guns and Ammo, “specif­i­cally cre­ated for defense against two-​legged preda­tors.” These bul­lets frag­ment on impact, trans­fer­ring as much energy to their tar­gets as pos­si­ble, which “cre­ates a very impres­sive wound cavity.”

An AR-​15, in other words, is how you turn a school­room into an abat­toir for six year old children.