Offensive Squid

if you don't like neurology news what the heck are you doing reading pw?

 

anyway, here are my fixes for cogsci stuff.

 

BPS Research Digest — holy crap this is the coolest blog for this stuff

Mind Hacks — a little too busy for me and no one hangs out in the comments so when I have questions I'm posting into nowhere.

 

I'm trying out some new ones lately, so for now I remain agnostic on whether I would recommend them:

 

Someone linked to these as interesting dev psych blogs. I like lifespan cognitive development anything, including little brains, so woot:

Child's Play

Evidence Based Mummy

 

The Thoughtful Animal

ScienceBlogs Channel: Brain & Behavior

The Echo Inside said:

Not sure if it is exactly up this alley, but I find this interesting reading:

http://www.speedofdark-thebook.com/blog

It's from another author, Elizabeth Moon, speaking on autism and her experiences/the life of her autistic child. She wrote a book by the same name which is also a very interesting read =)

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Oh! I loved that book. It's interesting enough that it falls in to the category of books that I'll re-read when I am in a re-reading phase.

V said:

[...] autism as difference rather than brokenness.

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In Greg Egans stories or books I loved how he explored this idea of different neuro types. There was a section in a story or book about neurotypicality and people in his world would hack their brains and identities along with their bodies. in all sorts of ways. they were able to keep or change their neurotype. and people chose to maintain their un-neurotypicality. I loved how Egan had people hacking their brain and identity. I can't remember the context though.

 

I tried submitting a question for one of the online quiz/dating sites. questions had to be multiple choice, and you only got 4 (maybe 3?) slots. "How would you hack your brain?"

 

one slot is gone because obviously you want to give people an opt-out. which means you have to try and boil down the essence of choices to be able to pack the choices as tightly as possible.

 

I can't remember how I worded it, but it got rejected. How many ways are there to hack a brain?

 

quantitative changes, i.e. change in memory capacity and so on

qualitative changes, e.g.

 experiences and memories, e.g. we can remember it for you wholesale.

 identity, e.g. sexual identity, one of the big five personality ranges, move around on different spectra, etc.

altered states, e.g. dreaming state, stimulating different areas of the brain