Category: Science
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Saw this in my Facebook feed (posted on Art's page) and wanted to pass it along. It's an article about Fermilab's ongoing attempt to establish whether or not the spacetime universe is a hologram. A lot of stuff in here seems (to my layman's eye, anyway) to be possibly consistent with the idea that physical…
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My last two posts covered the discovery of an electrical surge in the brains of lab rats subjected to cardiac arrest or asphyxiation. The study has been touted as a possible explanation for near-death experiences. Arguments about the study quickly become technical, as people debate whether the spikes in certain brainwave frequencies (in the context…
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In my last post I linked to a study of electrical activity in the brains of lab rats undergoing cardiac arrest. The study's authors suggest that this end-of-life electrical surge may help to explain near-death experiences. I've since had a chance to read the study and some critical arguments and counterarguments more carefully. I find…
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Someone emailed me to ask about a study in which the brains of dying rats showed a burst of activity. The question was: What implications, if any, does this have for NDEs? I gave a general answer, but also forwarded the email to Chris Carter, because my email correspondent had asked me to. Chris replied…
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Roger Knights points me to an article at a site called io9.com summarizing studies of memory retention after anesthesia. The studies show that, in general, people under sedation retain only the simplest memories of stimuli to which they were exposed while unconscious. As readers of this blog know, some skeptics (notably anesthesiologist G. M. Woerlee)…
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A new study on psychedelic mushrooms claims that their ingestion activates certain parts of the brain and suppresses other parts, creating a state of consciousness akin to a "waking dream." The effect is said to persist for months. A mind-altering compound found in some 200 species of mushroom is already being explored as a potential…
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Facebook friend Tracey Domalik points me to this interesting story on the possible limits of artificial intelligence. Excerpt: Giulio Tononi, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has proposed an integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness…. One of the axioms of IIT is "Each experience is unified; it cannot be reduced to…
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Today I came across a short article on a science site arguing that thinking about one's own mortality may actually improve mental health. This interested me, in part because of the frequently heard objection that thinking about death (or life after death) is inherently depressing and a sign of an unhealthy obsession. The article's author,…
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Yale scientists recently demonstrated that MRI technology can be used to determine what mental image a test subject is concentrating on. Apparently such tests had already shown that a brain scan can show whether the person is thinking of, say, a building or an animal. But the new tests allow much more precise results, establishing…
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Hmm. At a hospital in Pittsburgh, surgeons are now allowed to place patients into a state of suspended animation. If a patient arrives with a traumatic injury, and attempts to restart their heart have failed — if they’re on the doorstep of death — they will have their blood replaced with a cold saline solution,…