Google's PageRank Works Like Our Brains
We've joked in the past about how Google effectively acts as a a secondary or "backup" brain for many people. However, perhaps it wasn't so much of a joke. New research on how human memory and recall...
View ArticleStudying Violent Video Games Causes Unnecessary Extrapolations! News At Eleven!
It's hard to go more than a few weeks without seeing yet another article claiming some kind of "dangerous" impact from people playing violent video games. Of course, almost every study that suggests...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Brains Are Like Cracked Eggs On A Hot Skillet?
The question of how brains can think is a fascinating field of study -- since the question is largely unanswered still. But there are bits of information here and there that folks are piecing together...
View ArticleWell Done: CDC Warns Of The Zombie Apocalypse
It's probably not all that exciting to blog for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) blog. It's probably not always easy to get attention from your everyday reader. So, kudos to the CDC for having a...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Studying Gray Matter Before We Hack It...
Our brains are pretty complex bundles of nerves -- that aren't actually like CPUs at all (even though lots of folks make the brain-CPU analogy). We're still trying to figure these wrinkled organs out...
View ArticleNo, Google Is Not Rewiring How We Remember
There are a bunch of reports out concerning a new study claiming that Google is rewiring how we remember. It sounds good, but it's not really what the study appears to be saying. Basically, the study...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Braiiins...
The human brain is a mysterious organ. We don't really have many ways of figuring out what's going on inside people's heads, but there are a few primitive techniques that are starting to delve into...
View ArticleDailyDirt: You Must Un-Learn What You Have Learned... Really?
There is a lot of demand to improve the institutions of education in various ways. Creating an education system in the US seemingly costs a lot, and the results aren't as tangible (or as favorable) as...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Creating Virtual And Artificial Brains
We're a long way away from creating an artificial intelligence from scratch that can perform general tasks. But plenty of researchers are learning some interesting things about AI while they build...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Real Brains
Human brains are amazingly efficient compared to any computer built so far. Previously, we pointed out some projects to simulate brain activity in various ways. But there's nothing like the real...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Misty Water-Colored Memories
There's a lot we still don't know about how our own brains work. Our minds are sufficiently complex that the only practical way to begin studying how they work is to categorize the different processes...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Making Smarter Animals
Animals may (or may not) be getting smarter, but there sure is growing evidence that animals have more cognitive abilities than we might have expected. In some cases, we're actually breeding animals...
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How The Press Misinterprets Scientific Studies
There's an absolutely awesome comic by Jorge Cham of PhDComics (which you should read whether or not you're a PhD student) about the science news cycle, in which a nuanced scientific result showing a...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Braaiiins...
Halloween is here, so what better time to talk about human brains? Zombies are always looking to eat fresh human brains, and evil scientists need to re-stock their supply of replacement organs, too....
View ArticleDailyDirt: Learning More About Our Brains
We've discovering interesting things about the way our brains work all the time. Maybe someday we'll fully understand how our brains actually think, but we're a long way from that now. But in the...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Non-human Intelligence
Humans aren't the only animals on our planet that can communicate with other members of our species. As we study more of our fellow creatures, we continue to find surprising instances of intelligence...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Are You Smarter Than A Dolphin?
We may think we're pretty smart, but animals like dolphins are pretty smart too. For over 30 years, scientists have been trying to determine how smart dolphins really are. Bottlenose dolphins have a...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Augmenting Animals
There are a bunch of people out there who are into turning themselves into cyborgs or adding to their natural-born abilities. Some of them say they're transhumanists, but others are just super geeks...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Why Do We Sleep?
There are numerous hypotheses for how and why sleep is important. The facts show that a wide range of animals need sleep and that a lack of sleep is extremely unhealthy, especially if sleep...
View ArticleDailyDirt: Building Better Brains
Our brains are pretty important organs. Obviously, so are organs like skin and kidneys, but the human brain is what sets people apart from other animals. We still don't know that much about how our...
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