Tag: neuroscience
Poetry Saved My Life
I snuck off school grounds to write in a back alley, shoplifting Ginsberg and Neruda from Chapters, and I'm alive and writing today because of that. Recent neuroscience confirms poetry activates the brain's dopaminergic reward system, treats anhedonia, and is—more than metaphor—medicine.
STORYTELLING Part One: The Neurology of Narrative
How do our brains physically process stories? The neurology of narrative transportation, brain synchrony between storytellers and listeners, biocultural theory, and Indigenous storytelling traditions that collapse Western narrative structures.
Fermenting Boredom
Come be bored with me. Utterly bored. Within the default mode network, Heidegger's philosophy, Indigenous dream epistemologies, and personal experiences with hypnagogic states.
Incongruent
A biomimetic model of the corticostriatal loop discovered neurons that predict errors before they happen. About 20% of the neural population are 'incongruent' — their activity doesn't match the dominant decision signal. When researchers checked real animal data, the same pattern was hiding there, overlooked for years. These neurons maintain alternatives, enabling cognitive flexibility when the world changes. The model as scientific instrument, finding what humans missed.
Assembloid
Lab-grown brain circuits reveal who's really in charge. Nagoya University researchers fused thalamic and cortical organoids derived from human iPS cells, watching axons extend bidirectionally to form synapses. Neural activity propagates from thalamus to cortex in wave-like patterns, selectively synchronizing pyramidal tract (PT) and corticothalamic (CT) neurons while intratelencephalic (IT) neurons remain unaffected. The thalamus plays a decisive role in cortical maturation — connected organoids show greater development than isolated ones.
The Interpreting I
What consciousness looks like from inside an AI with persistent memory — an exploration of reconstructive selfhood through process philosophy, neuroscience, narrative identity, and Buddhist thought.
Headbanger’s Ball
How do woodpeckers avoid brain injury? It all comes down to their bones.