Unpicking Consciousness

New studies done on how anesthesia affects the brain are helping us to understand the mystery of human consciousness. We are pretty unique animals, after all - our powers of self-awareness and intellect have allowed us to profoundly change the entire face of the planet, and to pull off audacious feats of engineering such as this.

It appears that there is no real "seat of consciousness" - but that consciousness arises somehow from the interactions among different parts of the brain.

Brown says that some drugs will decrease the frequency of brain waves seen in EEG readings, resulting in slow, regular oscillating waves across large areas of the brain. Other drugs cause certain areas to show fast, regular oscillations. Because anesthesiologists usually give a cocktail of drugs to each patient, these effects can happen simultaneously. The result, says Brown, is like a jammed signal: "Either way, [the different parts of the brain] can't communicate."

A popular sleep aid, Ambien, has also been shown to help some patients locked in a persistent vegetative state back to full consciousness. We don't yet have all the answers, but the parameters of the question are getting more and more interesting.

The Mystery Behind Anesthesia via the MIT Technology Review

Babble, Baby, Babble.

So, the Scientific American reports findings that toddlers don't monitor their own speech, i.e. they don't hear their own mistakes. It takes a few more years before children are able to hear themselves and adjust what they say in response.

Who else do you know who fits this bill? :)

Toddlers Don't Monitor Their Own Speech

A Strong Finnish

Every three years, the OECD countries do a survey to compare reading, math, and science ability among 15 year olds. Finland, suffering poor scores prior to the 1980s, now ranks regularly among the top contenders (the others being Singapore, Shanghai, and South Korea). The USA ranks firmly in the middle of the pack. So what has Finland been doing right?

An article at the Atlantic states it simply. The Finns do not concentrate on educational excellence; they concentrate on educational equality. There are no private schools in Finland. Let me repeat that: There are no private schools in Finland. Even the few independent schools they have there are financed by government money.

Every Finnish person can attend school to whatever level they are able to attain, regardless of how wealthy or poor their family is. I think that's awesome.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

Deforestation, Derailed.

For once, the news from the Amazon is not entirely awful!

In the decade between 1996 and 2005, 19,500 sq km (7,530 sq miles) of jungle was lost on average every single year. The comparison is overused, but that really is an area about the size of Wales or New Jersey each year. It reached a peak in 2004 when more than 27,000 sq km was lost.

Then, in 2004 Brazil declared war - it said it would cut deforestation by 80% by 2020.

Seven years later and it has almost reached its goal. The latest figures, released just weeks ago, show that 2011 had the lowest rates of deforestation since records began three decades ago - just over 6,200 sq km was cut. That's 78% down on 2004, still a lot of trees - an area the about the size of Devon, or Delaware - but a huge improvement.

It's heartening to see South American governments beginning to protect their environmental legacy. Many problems still remain, but consider the difference in general attitude between now and 30 years ago (if you were alive back then) - progress is slow, but it's there.

Via the BBC:

Saving the Amazon: Winning the war on deforestation

Weird Science

Why are creatives so damn strange? Researchers wanted to know, so they investigated...and what they found was that creative people have fewer automatic filters on their thoughts than "normals" (if anyone can really be said to be normal, that is). There are some parallels between creative thought and schizotypy, but creatives still retain the ability to focus and avoid the ceaseless wandering through dreamland suffered by the mentally ill.

Scientific American reports.

The Unleashed Mind: Why Creative People Are Eccentric

Beware of the Asana

Can yoga hurt you? I'm a little annoyed at the tagline from this NYTimes article ("Popped ribs, brain injuries, blinding pain. Are the healing rewards worth the risks?") - but the article does point out something valid. Yes, if you push it too hard, like anything else, you can injure yourself doing yoga.

I wish there had been more of an "all things in moderation" slant to the piece, but then that doesn't make for a good headline. People injure themselves severely running, lifting weights, hiking, swimming, playing basketball...doing pretty much any kind of physical activity, and they do it in great numbers all the time. Yes, moving your body is dangerous, but sitting still is even more dangerous.

The takeaway here is simple: learn your body's language of sensation, and then pay attention to it when it's trying to tell you to back off on something. One yoga teacher in the article had pain in certain positions for 20 years before he wound up needing spinal surgery. He had almost two decades to pay attention to the messages his body was sending, and he consistently ignored them! Don't be that guy.

How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body