Per Karlberg

bits and pieces

How our brains build social worlds

Very interesting article in New Scientist

"There is nothing specifically social about building models of the world. The brain does this when we are alone and unobserved, as it learns about the world and creates perceptions and beliefs. [...]


But what makes human social interactions so fruitful in daily life - and as a subject of study - is our ability to compare our model of the world with other people's. We know something about how the brain models the world, but we need to know a great deal more about how our brains model other people's models of the world.[...]


These shared models are often more robust and longer-lasting than the individual models. We experience them through symbols and words, which work precisely because there is general agreement about their meaning. This is how the paper and base metal we call money, for example, lets us communicate a value that can be applied to any commodity. In the right context, any object can become imbued with meaning. Just think of the collection of graphics now universally understood to indicate good humour (;-)! "


Read the full article here:
newscientist.com >> how-our-brains-build-social-worlds

Yawn - it’s one of the best things you can do for your brain


Andrew Newburg of U Penn writes about his trick to hack the brain.

"Go ahead: Laugh if you want (though you’ll benefit your brain more if you smile), but in my professional opinion, yawning is one of the best-kept secrets in neuroscience.
[...]
Dogs yawn before attacking, Olympic athletes yawn before performing, and fish yawn before they change activities. Evidence even exists that yawning helps individuals on military assignment perform their tasks with greater accuracy and ease. Indeed, yawning may be one of the most important mechanisms for regulating the survival-related behaviors in mammals. So if you want to maintain an optimally healthy brain, it is essential that you yawn.
[...]
My advice is simple. Yawn as many times a day as possible: when you wake up, when you’re confronting a difficult problem at work, when you prepare to go to sleep, and whenever you feel anger, anxiety, or stress. Yawn before giving an important talk, yawn before you take a test"

Read the full article:
UPenn - Yawn

Varumärket i hjärnan

Neurologen Martin Ingvar förklarar hur varumärkesvård hänger ihop med sillstim och lögner.

"Den senaste uppfinningen i hjärnan utveckling, språket, har gett oss ännu mera möjligheter. Nu kan vi säga att vi ska göra en sak och sedan inte göra den. [...] Samtidigt riskerar den förmågan att förstöra vår möjlighet upprätthålla sociala relationer. Vi har därför samtidigt fått en mycket starkt förmåga för att upptäcka om någon försöker lura oss. Hela vårt alarmsystem går igång.
[...]
Det tar lång tid att bygga förväntningar hos mottagaren via kommunikation. Årtionden av slipande och filande krävs för att man skall vara en partner att räkna med. Det räcker med några enkla misstag för att man skall tappa allt."

Martin.Ingvar.com - Varumärket i hjärnan

EDIT:

Detta har hänt: Business Week - The great trust offensive

Secret math of fly eyes could overhaul robot vision

from wired.com:

Secret Math of Fly Eyes Could Overhaul Robot Vision

““We can build a system that works perfectly well, inspired by biology, without having a complete understanding of how the components interact. It’s a non-linear system,” said David O’Carroll, a computational neuroscientist who studies insect vision at Australia’s University of Adelaide. “The number of computations involved is quite small. We can get an answer using tens of thousands of times less floating-point computations than in traditional ways.”

The best-known of these is the Lucas-Kanade method, which calculates yaw — up-and-down, side-to-side motion changes — by comparing, frame by frame, how every pixel in a visual field changes. It’s used for steering and guidance in many experimental unmanned vehicles, but its brute-force approach requires lots of processing power, making it impractical in smaller systems.

In order to make smaller flying robots, researchers would like to find a simpler way of processing motion. Inspiration has come from the lowly fly, which uses just a relative handful of neurons to maneuver with extraordinary dexterity. And for more than a decade, O’Carroll and other researchers researchers have painstakingly studied the optical flight circuits of flies, measuring their cell-by-cell activity and turning evolution’s solutions into a set of computational principles.

[...] “A laptop computer uses tens of watts of power. Implementing what we’ve developed can be done with chips that consume just a fraction of a milliwatt,” said O’Carroll.“