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All Blogs

May 12, 2013

Will pollution isolate us?

A problem that commonly is pointed out in newspapers, television, politicians and scientists is the abundance of garbage that our society is creating and the immediate and long term damage that all this pollution will cause to the environment.
One of the most common cases is global warming, caused by the pollution produced by all the factories and the petrol burning machines that we have built.

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May 1, 2013

The boy who saw without eyes

 

A few years ago I saw a documentary about “The boy who sees without eyes”. The episode of the series “Extraordinary people” tells the story of Ben Underwood, a boy who taught himself to see with sound. Ben lost both eyes to retinal cancer when he was three years old. Yet, he could bike, throw a ball into basket and beat his friends in video games. While making sharp clicks with his mouth that bounced back off nearby objects, Ben was able to pick up echoes with his ears and could precisely locate where things were.

April 29, 2013

Forgetting and Stereotypes

Forgetting, which seems to be a memory failure, is in fact a routine knowledge maintenance procedure. We mainly forget information either because it has not been used for a long period of time or because some information seems to contradict with newly attained information, hence the old information needs to be overwritten with the newer one. Ever wondered, why do you forget where you put the keys to your apartment whereas you still remember how to drive a car, although you learnt it years ago? An important concept here is the distinction between explicit and implicit memory.

April 29, 2013

Neurological Processes, Mirror Neurons and Free Will

      Mirror neurons are among the neurological causes for behaviour and imitation

 

How free is our will? How free are our choices?

 

From a neurophysiological standpoint, the more that is discovered about mirror neurons, the more we must realise that we are not independent, free-acting agents as we want to be- but we rather imitate others without consciously being aware of it.