Category: Biology of Information

• Peter Pan ?

  There is controversy around the mechanisms that guided the change in brain shape during the evolution of modern humans. It has long been held that different cortical areas evolved independently from each other to develop their unique functional specializations. Some recent studies suggest that high integration between different cortical areas could facilitate the emergence of…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-20

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Native language & connectome of the brain

  Investigation towards the question if the neuroanatomy of the language structural connectome is modulated by the life-long experience of speaking a specific language are presented. The current study compared the brain white matter connections of the language and speech production network in a large cohort of native speakers of two very different languages: an Indo-European…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-20

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Perceived time & heartbeat

  This blog entry about the Current Biology article “Perceived time expands and contracts within each heartbeat” relates perfectly to my previous blog on “cardiac activity: its role in perception and action“ Perception of passing time can be distorted. Emotional experiences, particularly arousal, can contract or expand experienced duration via their interactions with attentional and sensory…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-20

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology

  #emergence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Cardiac activity: its role in perception and action

  Patterns of cardiac activity continuously vary with environmentaldemands, accelerating or decelerating depending on circumstances. Simultaneously, cardiac cycle affects a host of higher-order processes, where systolic baroreceptor activation largely impairs processing. However, a unified functional perspective on the role of cardiac signal in perception and action has been lacking. — Patterns of cardiac activity continuously vary…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-17

  Active Inference, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology

  #ActiveInference, #TheInformationLens

• Human innovation depends on our collective brains

  A recent study investigates hunters’ causal understandings of bow design and mechanics among the Hadza, one of the last remaining foraging populations. The results suggest that sophisticated technology can evolve without complete causal understanding. Human innovation depends not on our individual brainpower but on our collective brains, on networks of diverse minds sharing information, lucky…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-17

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #emergence, #TheInformationLens

• “A New Evolutionary Law”

  Revisiting Leigh Van Valen’s “A New Evolutionary Law” (1973) by Ricard Solé, (Biological Theory (2022) 17:120–125) Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass Leigh Van Valen was an American evolutionary biologist who made major contributions to evolutionary theory. He is…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-25

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Science

  #Ecosystem, #emergence, #Entanglement, #TheInformationLens

• Ecosystems – Mutualism – Synthetic biology

  Synthetic Mutualism and the Intervention Dilemma describes how ecosystems are complex networks of interacting individuals co-evolving with their environment. As such, changes to an interaction can influence the whole ecosystem. However, to predict the outcome of these changes, considerable understanding of processes driving the system is required. Synthetic biology provides powerful tools to aid this…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-25

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Science

  #Ecosystem, #Mutualism, #TheInformationLens

• The Niche theory : Compete, Facilitate & Mutualisme

  From competition to facilitation and mutualism: a general theory of the niche by Koffel, Daufresne and Klausmeier explores the niche theory. Niche Theory is a central framework in ecology based on the recognition that most interactions between organisms are indirect, mediated by the biotic and abiotic dynamical environment these organisms live in. Despite its potential…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-25

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Science

  #Ecosystem, #Mutualism, #TheInformationLens

• Can Creativity Be Stored? Yes, and It Should Be

  For those of us who are not creative, it is difficult to imagine how creative people work.The explanation for the messy creative person and the uncreative brainstorming session can be found in research by Poornika Ananth and Sarah Harvey published in Administrative Science Quarterly. They had a big study of creative individuals in theatre and architecture, and…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-23

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Design Thinking, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Neuroplasticity enables bio‑cultural feedback

  The scientific reports article “Neuroplasticity enables bio‑cultural feedback in Paleolithic stone‑tool making” elaborates on the idea described in articles like The comparative neuroscience and neuroarchaeological evidence indicate that functional systems supporting stone tool making have undergone substantial change over human evolution, and that these changes may be relevant to a much wider range of distinctively…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-22

  #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Science, Social-Technical

  #Analogy, #downcausation, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens