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How does consciousness happen? Anil Seth speaks at TED2017

How does consciousness happen? Anil Seth speaks at TED2017

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A year ago, for the third time in his life, cognitive scientist Anil Seth ceased to exist. He was having an operation, his brain filling with anesthetic, and he was feeling a sense of detachment, falling apart and coldness. And then he was back — drowsy and disoriented, but definitely there. “Anaesthesia is a modern []

What happens in the brain when we hear stories? Uri Hasson at TED2016

What happens in the brain when we hear stories? Uri Hasson at TED2016

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We may, as Joan Didion once wrote, tell ourselves stories in order to live—but Uri Hasson is looking for a few more reasons. The neuroscientist based at Princeton University researches the neurological basis of human communication and storytelling, and in session 11 at TED2016, he shows off some surprising findings. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) []

Remembering Oliver Sacks

Remembering Oliver Sacks

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Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks died on Sunday, August 30, at age 82. He’d announced in February that he was in the final stages of terminal cancer, and wrote a beautiful essay in the New York Times about what that meant to him: Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life []

The hierarchy in your brain: Ray Kurzweil at TED2014

The hierarchy in your brain: Ray Kurzweil at TED2014

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Ray Kurzweil returns to the TED stage to explain his new (kind of old) theory of the mind. He first wrote his theory as a paper 50 years ago, but today there’s a plethora of new evidence to support it. First, a refresher on the story of the neocortex, which means “new rind.” Two hundred []

7 TED Talks about memory

7 TED Talks about memory

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Experiences we have all had: walking into a room with a tremendous sense of purpose, only to realize that you have completely forgotten what the purpose was. Talking to someone in a restaurant and losing the thread of your conversation because you’re distracted by the juicier one at the table next door. Slowing down as []

4 talks on a strange phenomenon we all experience: consciousness

4 talks on a strange phenomenon we all experience: consciousness

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John Searle studies consciousness — which, as he points out in today’s talk, is a “curiously neglected subject in our scientific and philosophical culture.” Curiously — because it is, after all, a pre-condition for anything else we think about. And yet neglected — because consciousness is a subject that makes scientists huffy (they see it []

The neuroscience of sleep: Russell Foster at TEDGlobal 2013

The neuroscience of sleep: Russell Foster at TEDGlobal 2013

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Neuroscientist Russell Foster opens a session of TEDGlobal all about … us, asking the question: Why do we sleep? Thirty-six percent of our lives are spent asleep, which means, if you live to 90, you’ll have slept for 32 years. But we don’t appreciate sleep enough, says Foster. He quotes Thomas Edison — “Sleep is []

TED Weekends investigates why we judge others

TED Weekends investigates why we judge others

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Above and slightly behind your right ear, exists a part of your brain many scientists believe is specifically dedicated to thinking about other people’s thoughts – to predicting them, reading them, and empathizing with them. It’s called the temporoparietal junction, and this is the area cognitive neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe focuses on in her research. At TEDGlobal []

TEDsters, get ready to play <em>Brain Games</em>

TEDsters, get ready to play Brain Games

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Your brain is three and a half pounds of tissue — and yet it’s the key to everything you experience. The National Geographic Channel show Brain Games seeks to give a better understanding of it – by looking at how the brain focuses, processes fears, makes decisions and much more. The show is hosted by []

Your weekend reading: Simple secure passwords, an invisible brain

Your weekend reading: Simple secure passwords, an invisible brain

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Some staff picks of smart, funny, bizarre and cool stuff on the interwebs this week: Super-duper useful mandatory homework: Get a secure password now. As xkcd explains, most people’s approach to secure passwords (a word bastardized with “random” capital letters and punctuation that’s difficult to remember) is wrong. Now go get yourself a good password. []

7 talks on mapping the human brain

7 talks on mapping the human brain

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In his State of the Union address, US President Barack Obama teased the importance of mapping the human brain, hinting that it could be a good investment in the future. According to The New York Times, the president will soon announce a decade-long plan to support the comprehensive rendering of the brain as part of []