Scientists crack brain's codes for noun meanings

From PhysOrg.com:

Two hundred years ago, archaeologists used the Rosetta Stone to understand the ancient Egyptian scrolls. Now, a team of Carnegie Mellon University scientists has discovered the beginnings of a neural Rosetta Stone. By combining brain imaging and machine learning techniques, neuroscientists Marcel Just and Vladimir Cherkassky and computer scientists Tom Mitchell and Sandesh Aryal determined how the brain arranges noun representations. Understanding how the brain codes nouns is important for treating psychiatric and neurological illnesses.

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Consciousness is the brain's Wi-Fi, resolving competing requests, study suggests

From PhysOrg.com:

Your fingers start to burn after picking up a hot plate. Should you drop the plate or save your meal? New research suggests that it is your consciousness that resolves these dilemmas by serving as the brain's Wi-Fi network, mediating competing requests from different parts of the body. Published today in the journal Emotion, the study also explains why we are consciously aware of some conflicting urges but not others.

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Scientists Model Words as Entangled Quantum States in our Minds

From PhysOrg.com:

When you hear the word “planet,” do you automatically think of the word’s literal definition, or of other words, such as “Earth,” “space,” “Mars,” etc.? Especially when used in sentences, words tend to conjure up similar words automatically. Further, human beings’ ability to draw associations and inferences between words may explain why we’re generally able to communicate complex ideas with each other quite clearly using a limited number of words.
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“We think it is odd that entanglement occurs at all,” he said. “As a phenomenon, it suggests that the world is not the separable and reducible place that we have always taken it to be. If entanglement is found in other types of (non-physical) systems, it will suggest that the quantum formalism is modeling non-separability per se, and this will indicate that quantum theory could provide a whole new approach to the study of complex systems, i.e. non-separable and irreducible systems.”

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Compare and constrast with The Laws of Form

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A computer that can 'read' your mind

A computer that can 'read' your mind from PhysOrg.com

For centuries, the concept of mind readers was strictly the domain of folklore and science fiction. But according to new research published today in the journal Science, scientists are closer to knowing how specific thoughts activate our brains. The findings demonstrate the power of computational modeling to improve our understanding of how the brain processes information and thoughts.

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