None of them knew they were robots
Theodore Berger, a USC biomedical engineer, is working on an artificial hippocampus. The microchip goes in the brain and routes traffic properly to improve patients with Alzheimer’s, strokes, epilepsy etc. Crazy shit. Right now they have a test bed for a “cortical prosthesis”, and Berger estimates implant use in 10-15 years.
Reverse engineer your brain
More than 40 years ago, my father wrote a short story called “Dr. Pettigott’s Face.” The eponymous doctor of the story has a theory that pushing the face into happy expressions will make people happy, and has constructed a machine to do this. I remember that for years he had a correspondence with some neuro […]
Plate O’ Voles
Today I was looking up information on the web about this vagus nerve stuff and the Polyvagal theory and kept running across information about Prairie Voles and monogamy. This was worth a good laugh partly because it’s a lot of fun to say “monogamous prairie vole”. Apparently the research into the psychobiology of monogamy is […]
Interesting news from the phrenology ward
Today in a psychotherapy session I was discussing my problems with relationships, and more specifically my lack of intimate relationships. The working theory is that my own emotional life is too intense to communicate to others and that I shut them out in ways I’m not consciously able to control, mostly nonverbal. This is particularly […]
Elliot Valenstein, the history of lobotomy, and more
“Physicians get neither name nor fame by the pricking of wheals or the picking out thistles, or by laying of plaisters to the scratch of a pin; every old woman can do this. But if they would have a name and a fame, if they will have it quickly, they must do some great and […]