Neuroscience
Carl Zimmer has a piece in tomorrow's New York Times about swarm intelligence. Read Carl's blog The Loom at this link.
From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm
Carl Zimmer
13 November 2007
The New York Times
If you have ever observed ants marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of a highway buzzing with traffic. To Iain D. Couzin, such a comparison is a cruel insult — to the ants.
Americans spend a 3.7 billion hours a year in congested traffic. But you will never see ants stuck in gridlock.
Army ants, which Dr. Couzin has spent much time observing in Panama, are particularly good at moving in swarms. If they have to travel over a depression in the ground, they erect bridges so that they can proceed as quickly as possible.
“They build the bridges with their living bodies,” said Dr. Couzin, a mathematical biologist at Princeton University and the University of Oxford. “They build them up if they’re required, and they dissolve if they’re not being used.”
The reason may be that the ants have had a lot more time to adapt to living in big groups. “We haven’t evolved in the societies we currently live in,” Dr. Couzin said.
[ ... Read the full article ... ]
- First Ever Example Of Teaching By An Animal
A form of teaching by a (non-human) animal has been demonstrated for the first time. No, it wasn’t by a chimp or a dolphin, it was one ant teaching another. Nigel Franks and Tom Richardson at the University of Bristol argue that for a behaviour to be...
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An article written by Carl Zimmer for the September issue of Discover magazine: read the article The Dark Matter of the Human Brain Meet the forgotten 90 percent of your brain: glial cells, which outnumber your neurons ten to one. And no one really knows...
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The November 2005 issue of Scientific American includes an article by Carl Zimmer, The Neurobiology of the Self. Update 26 October 2005 - Carl Zimmer has placed a link to a .pdf version of this article on his blog. - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience...
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From tomorrow's New York Times: Neuron Network Goes Awry, and Brain Becomes an IPod By CARL ZIMMER The New York Times Published: July 12, 2005 [snip] Only a handful of brain scans have been made of people with musical hallucinations. Dr. Tim Griffiths,...
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Today's New York Times included an interview with Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, an eminent neuroscientist who is currently the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth. The article - A Career Spent Learning How the Mind Emerges From...
Neuroscience
Swarm Intelligence: Ants and the Collective Mind
Carl Zimmer has a piece in tomorrow's New York Times about swarm intelligence. Read Carl's blog The Loom at this link.
From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm
Carl Zimmer
13 November 2007
The New York Times
If you have ever observed ants marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of a highway buzzing with traffic. To Iain D. Couzin, such a comparison is a cruel insult — to the ants.
Americans spend a 3.7 billion hours a year in congested traffic. But you will never see ants stuck in gridlock.
Army ants, which Dr. Couzin has spent much time observing in Panama, are particularly good at moving in swarms. If they have to travel over a depression in the ground, they erect bridges so that they can proceed as quickly as possible.
“They build the bridges with their living bodies,” said Dr. Couzin, a mathematical biologist at Princeton University and the University of Oxford. “They build them up if they’re required, and they dissolve if they’re not being used.”
The reason may be that the ants have had a lot more time to adapt to living in big groups. “We haven’t evolved in the societies we currently live in,” Dr. Couzin said.
[ ... Read the full article ... ]
- First Ever Example Of Teaching By An Animal
A form of teaching by a (non-human) animal has been demonstrated for the first time. No, it wasn’t by a chimp or a dolphin, it was one ant teaching another. Nigel Franks and Tom Richardson at the University of Bristol argue that for a behaviour to be...
- Glia
An article written by Carl Zimmer for the September issue of Discover magazine: read the article The Dark Matter of the Human Brain Meet the forgotten 90 percent of your brain: glial cells, which outnumber your neurons ten to one. And no one really knows...
- Self-awareness
The November 2005 issue of Scientific American includes an article by Carl Zimmer, The Neurobiology of the Self. Update 26 October 2005 - Carl Zimmer has placed a link to a .pdf version of this article on his blog. - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience...
- Musical Hallucinations
From tomorrow's New York Times: Neuron Network Goes Awry, and Brain Becomes an IPod By CARL ZIMMER The New York Times Published: July 12, 2005 [snip] Only a handful of brain scans have been made of people with musical hallucinations. Dr. Tim Griffiths,...
- Dr. Michael Gazzaniga
Today's New York Times included an interview with Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, an eminent neuroscientist who is currently the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth. The article - A Career Spent Learning How the Mind Emerges From...