The Mirror Test
Rene Descartes (1596–1650) famously opined, "Animals are like robots: they cannot reason or feel pain." Four centuries later, biologists are still arguing about where to draw the line between that which is conscious and that which is merely alive. Even human consciousness has become to neuroscientists what the "cosmological constant" is to astrophysicists.
Chicago: Part 2
I’m still recovering from my whirlwind trip to Chicago, which concluded earlier this week. Definitely planning on a return trip some time in the spring or summer when we can bring our skates and explore the famed Lakefront Trail, Chicago’s version of our Vancouver Seawall, which loops around the shoreline of Lake Michigan with a beautiful scenic walking/biking/skating path.
The Mind and the Brain
I'm absolutely fascinated by how the human brain works, and many of the books I own are some variation on this theme, from Malcolm Gladwell to V.S. Ramachandran, Oliver Sacks, Jill Bolte Taylor and a myriad of other doctors, historians, scientists and popular science writers.
The art and science of emotions, part one
I've been reading about the newest controversy in "emotion science," the branch of psychology devoted to the study and analysis of how human emotions are revealed through facial expressions.