Browsed by
Category: Neuroscience

A theory of reality as more than the sum of its parts

A theory of reality as more than the sum of its parts

Comments 0 Comment

Natalie Wolchover writes: In his 1890 opus, The Principles of Psychology, William James invoked Romeo and Juliet to illustrate what makes conscious beings so different from the particles that make them up. “Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they,” James wrote. “But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite…

Read More Read More

Neurons can carry more than one signal at a time

Neurons can carry more than one signal at a time

Comments 0 Comment

Duke Today: Back in the early days of telecommunications, engineers devised a clever way to send multiple telephone calls through a single wire at the same time. Called time-division multiplexing, this technique rapidly switches between sending pieces of each message. New research from Duke University shows that neurons in the brain may be capable of a similar strategy. In an experiment examining how monkeys respond to sound, a team of neuroscientists and statisticians found that a single neuron can encode…

Read More Read More