NicoleCRust

NicoleCRust, 11 months ago to random

Does anyone else make major life decisions while on a run?

It doesn't happen often (they are "major" after all), but when it does, it's always then. A few miles in and poof! - it is decided (and it's never undone).

NicoleCRust, 11 months ago to random

Wow.

@Mer__edith

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/11/signals-meredith-whittaker-these-are-the-people-who-could-actually-pause-ai-if-they-wanted-to

NicoleCRust, 8 months ago to random

Making the point! The shift to complex systems that happened in ecology circa 1970s is what needs to happen in aging research today.

Wonderful figure illustrating:

Ecosystems are not domino chains.
The systems responsible for aging aren't either.

The paper does a great job of laying out why this matters (eg for understanding Alzheimer's).

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37117782/

NicoleCRust, 11 months ago to random

If you missed this brilliant website by @caranha you HAVE to see it.

Hundreds! of metaphors inspiring new data search algorithms:

Cat Swarm Optimization.

DTO: Donkey Theorem Optimization

Spotted hyena optimizer

Optimization of Water Distribution Network Design Using the Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm

(They're real - I checked)

Part of that field just went crazy for it, inspiring Claus + to call for "a
better balance between inspiration and scientific soundness" in one of the best titled papers ever:

Sharks, Zombies and Volleyball:
Lessons from the Evolutionary Computation Bestiary

http://fcampelo.github.io/EC-Bestiary/

https://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/43161/1/main.pdf

NicoleCRust, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

Neurophilosophers - am I getting this right?

Namely: what psychologists call "processes" are what philosophers would call "things" (not processes)

The philosophical distinction between things versus processes is the idea that these are two different ways of thinking about the world. In the things way of thinking, the world is made up of just that: things – dogs, cats, me, you, this book, that pencil. In contrast, the process way of thinking shifts the emphasis from thinking about things in a static way to acknowledge the reality that everything is always changing. It's the famous idea that you can't step in the same river twice because the river you would step into a second time is a changed river and thus not the same as the one you stepped into before. From a process perspective, the idea of a thing called "a dog" or "a river" or "you" is an abstraction that captures some aspects of reality (the static aspects) but fails to capture some others (the changing ones).

One way in which the "things" way of thinking manifests in brain/mind research is the idea that there are modules that our brains flexibly combine to accomplish complex tasks; things like vision, audition, memory, attention and decision making. While these are often called "processes" by brain/mind researchers, philosophers would point out that in the way that most brain researchers think about them, they are very much "things" (I think - is that right?)

@yoginho @WorldImagining @ehud @PessoaBrain @dbarack

NicoleCRust, 8 months ago to random

Wow! What a thread about how scientists are selected for and rewarded.

Prompted by discussion around Katalin Karikó. Quite a remarkable diversity of proposed solutions.

Warning: it's a bit heavy. But I do recommend it.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in.

https://neuromatch.social/@NicoleCRust/111167452886210356

NicoleCRust, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

What’s your take on the “Are mental disorders brain disorders?” debate?

@awaisaftab and I summarize our positions here:

https://awaisaftab.substack.com/p/advancing-neuroscientific-understanding

Curious to hear your thoughts as well. Is it overblown? Even if so, once we set aside the obvious, what interesting questions remain? Top down causation? The right conceptual framework to think about what is going wrong? Something else entirely?

NicoleCRust, 8 months ago to random

Stuck? Go daydream!

That's what August Kekulé did when he was trying to figure out molecular structures, including the benzene ring, in the mid-1800s. In one:

Long lines often fitted together more densely; everything in motion, twisting and turning like snakes. But look, what was that? One of the snakes had seized its own tail, and the figure whirled mockingly before my eyes. I awoke as by a stroke of lightning, and this time, too, I spent the rest of the night working out the consequences of the hypothesis.

And that's how the idea of the benzene ring was born.

https://www.nature.com/articles/465036

NicoleCRust, 8 months ago to random

Nature’s take on the IIT as consciousness debate:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02971-1

NicoleCRust, 11 months ago to random

Terrific Aeon piece about origins of biological agency by master science writer Philip Ball. As a bonus, you can either read or listen (26 min).

https://aeon.co/essays/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life

NicoleCRust, 8 months ago to random

Elaboration of "leading theory of consciousness is pseudoscience"
from the perspective of one (of 124) authors, Hakwan Lau
https://psyarxiv.com/28z3y

(For the 124 author post, see this from yesterday: https://neuromatch.social/@NicoleCRust/111074417017972359)

Among many highlights from Lau's piece:

Defines pseudoscience as

i) a set of important claims with far-reaching implications that are ii) neither currently supported by science nor are they likely to be so in the foreseeable future (perhaps even in principle), and yet they iii) masquerade as being already scientifically tested and established.

Explains why IIT is a problem as:

"Flat earth theory is clearly wrong but we don’t see articles appearing in Science11–13, Nature14, The New York Times15,16, The Economist17, NewScientist18,19, etc, repeatedly, over many years, sometimes by authoritative figures, proclaiming that it is a leading, empirically tested, and well established scientific theory. Therefore, flat earth theory is, in a sense, more ‘harmless’ and less threatening than the rise of IIT and panpsychism in the media."

Explains why IIT is pseudoscience as:

IIT shares many common features with other pseudoscientific ideas: that it is unresponsive to empirical challenges4–7; that it uses an unnecessarily complex and impractical4 language that diverges from mainstream science; that its popularity is mainly driven by the opinions by a few authoritative figures, and populist appeal8,23, rather than consensus within the scientific community or empirical success, etc. It is also notable that proponents of IIT publicly engage with religious leaders on the very topic of panpsychism24 and related metaphysical matters, and openly profess the ‘spiritual dimension’ of their ‘science’, together with controversial figures like Sadhguru25 and the New Age alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra26.

Also explains the events leading up to the letter and much more (for that, have a read).

Really curious to hear thoughts!
@WorldImagining, @axoaxonic +++

NicoleCRust, 1 year ago to random

Starting a list of all the amazing early career researchers that have made the wise decision to join us on this worthy platform (but might also take an exposure hit for that). Let's all boost and follow!

Let me start with two:

@WorldImagining

@kinleyid

Please add two more (maybe yourself and 1 other?)

NicoleCRust, 8 months ago to random

How brilliant is this?!

Bridging two insect flight modes in evolution, physiology and robophysics

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06606-3.pdf

Since taking flight, insects have undergone repeated evolutionary transitions between two seemingly distinct flight modes1,2,3. Some insects neurally activate their muscles synchronously with each wingstroke. However, many insects have achieved wingbeat frequencies beyond the speed limit of typical neuromuscular systems by evolving flight muscles that are asynchronous with neural activation and activate in response to mechanical stretch2,3,4,5,6,7,8. These modes reflect the two fundamental ways of generating rhythmic movement: time-periodic forcing versus emergent oscillations from self-excitation8,9,10. How repeated evolutionary transitions have occurred and what governs the switching between these distinct modes remain unknown. Here we find that, despite widespread asynchronous actuation in insects across the phylogeny3,6, asynchrony probably evolved only once at the order level, with many reversions to the ancestral, synchronous mode. A synchronous moth species, evolved from an asynchronous ancestor, still preserves the stretch-activated muscle physiology. Numerical and robophysical analyses of a unified biophysical framework reveal that rather than a dichotomy, these two modes are two regimes of the same dynamics. Insects can transition between flight modes across a bridge in physiological parameter space. Finally, we integrate these two actuation modes into an insect-scale robot11,12,13 that enables transitions between modes and unlocks a new self-excited wingstroke strategy for engineered flight. Together, this framework accounts for repeated transitions in insect flight evolution and shows how flight modes can flip with changes in physiological parameters.

NicoleCRust, 10 months ago to random

The fascinating power of the placebo

Excellent, friendly summary here.

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-expectations-and-conditioning-shape-our-response-to-placebos/

NicoleCRust, 1 year ago to random

For brain researchers who are more genetically/molecularly/cellularly inclined ...

What are you most excited about along a timeline of the next next 10-20 years or so? Is it, say, the ability to manipulate DNA in living creatures (eg CRISPR), leveraging the immune system to tackle disease via antibody based therapies (like the new Alzheimer's drugs), cell type atlases, or something else altogether?

NicoleCRust, 11 months ago to random

(whispering): I so love this time of year. In my (academic) world it’s all so quiet. The inbox; the social media; all of it. I’m so happy to indulge in the energetic headspace of the shhh, knowing the frenetic chaos will soon circle around again.

NicoleCRust, 1 year ago to random

Alzheimer's went into the textbooks with n=2

Many of you might know (or not) that Alzheimer's disease is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer who first reported that the brains of some patients with age-related dementia had "a peculiar substance" (which today we know as beta-amyloid plaques).

But did you know that he found that in exactly 2 patients that he studied before his boss put it in a 1910 textbook and coined it "Alzheimer's disease"? That substance could have been a complete coincidence! (And in that case, I guess we never would have heard about it again) ...

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546010/how-not-to-study-a-disease/

NicoleCRust, 11 months ago to random

Has this changed? Will it brain research mature with big breakthroughs like molecular biology?

Francis Crick on brain research, circa 1984

(One question here is whether there are universal principles for the brain akin to the universal genetic code).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Mad_Pursuit

NicoleCRust, 1 year ago to random

Ever heard about this trinity?

I'm loving this phrasing for something researchers talk about a lot. Have you ever heard it described as a "trinity" before?

The trinity of understanding, prediction, and control undergirds the dominant fantasies of both science and science fiction.

(To elaborate):

Understanding often involves reducing a complex phenomenon to a set of basic laws or mechanisms ...

Prediction introduces the time dimension in which the future state of a natural phenomenon is specified ...

Control is the third member of the trinity, but understanding does not imply either predictability or control. If you know from observation that horses need pasture and fresh water, you may predict that a wild herd will gather in the grassy fields near the river. Capturing them, taming them, and bending them to your will, however, is a far more difficult undertaking ...

Fleming, James; Fixing the Sky

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/fixing-the-sky/9780231144124

NicoleCRust, 11 months ago to random

Crick: Not quite what I thought

The universal genetic code (DNA > mRNA > protein) has been interpreted by so many as an inspiration for reductionism (complex biological things can be traced back to simpler mechanisms), that I always assumed Francis Crick (involved in its discovery) was squarely on team biological reductionism too.

Not so fast: here he cautions against Ocam's razor in biology. He goes on later to use protein folding as an example (that it's complicated).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Mad_Pursuit
(Available in openlibray if you'd like to read).

NicoleCRust, 1 year ago to random

The story of Evan Moss and epilepsy - both moving and inspiring

Evan was born with a form of epilepsy. When he was 6, he wrote a book to help raise funds for a seizure dog to help alert his parents about when it was happening (you can still buy it here https://www.amazon.com/My-Seizure-Dog-Evan-Moss/dp/1463566719). Evan's book was so popular, he was able to raise funds for many other patients as well.

Evan's seizure dog is named Mindy. When he was 9, he and his mom told his story and described all the ways his seizure dog helps him navigate his condition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_lD5xagBLc

Evan is around 19 now. His family recently co-authored a paper with their doctor explaining epilepsy from a patient perspective. The TL;DR: Evan's dog is great, but patients like Evan need better Seizure Detection and Forecasting

A Patient Perspective on Seizure Detection and Forecasting
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8874203/

NicoleCRust, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to random

Big thanks to @ehud for pointing me to this book on Scientific Imagination (eg metaphors and the realism of models). It's exactly what I was looking for.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-scientific-imagination-9780190212308

NicoleCRust, 1 year ago to random

Any recommended reading about the somewhat bonkers history of weather control?

Weather control has an absolutely fascinating history - it includes events like the US prolonging the monsoon season during the Vietnam war (by peppering clouds with silver nitrate) and China cloud seeding during the 2008 Olympics so it didn't rain on the wrong days. Weather control was a huge goal of science in the 1950 and 60s:
https://www.nsf.gov/nsb/publications/1965/nsb1265.pdf
but has fallen a bit out of favor since we've realized how complicated the weather really is.

Someone must have written an amazing book about all of this history and the science behind it. Any leads? Maybe this one - anyone read it?

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/fixing-the-sky/9780231144124

NicoleCRust, 1 year ago to random

What Might Cognition Be, If Not Computation?

Rather than computers, cognitive systems may be dynamical systems; rather than computation, cognitive processes may be state-space evolution within these very different kinds of system

With a wonderful illustration via "The Governing Problem"

Tim Van Gelder, 1995

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2941061

NicoleCRust, 11 months ago to science

If you missed it, many! amazing responses in this thread about metaphors in science.

Thanks everyone.

https://neuromatch.social/@NicoleCRust/110639412714199900

#science #metaphor