Posted on 3rd December 2008 by Judy Breck in Connective Expression
apple, brain, images, mac, MRI, science
Who cares that these “Science” pages on apple.com promote Macs when what can be learned here is accurate, authoritative, and compelling? The image above is from an article called “Breakthrough: Unmasking Early-Stage Alzheimer’s Disease.” Featuring the work of Professor James Brewer of the University of California at San Diego, the text explains how he uses Mac technology in brain analysis. Included is a QuickTime movie of a 256-slice brain MRI.
Instead of being put off by the advertising implications of these pages, why not look at them as apprentice pages. This spot on the Web is a marvelous small tutorial from the real world of medicine on how to obtain and manipulate images of the living brain.
Posted on 14th August 2008 by Judy Breck in Connective Expression
brain, connect, learn_node, node, phone, synapse
Google has a new free service:
You can call from any phone, state a business (think: order pizza) and location, connect to the business, and get that business’s service (pizza delivery). I have posted recently on how the synapse in the brain and the connectors (nodes) in the Internet are a major key to creating learning patterns in the open Internet. GOOG-411 is an Internet node that functions just like a synapse in the brain, connecting remote stuff.
Educators could think of GOOG-411 as a model for a learning network synapse/node. With a future edu-service, could a student input a query for current data for oceanography, astronomy, electoral polling — any of many location based subjects — and get the current data as quickly as Google now delivers your pizza? Sure. Somebody just needs to do it.
Posted on 13th June 2008 by Judy Breck in Connective Expression and Networks
blue_brain, brain, cerebral, cortex, learning, Learning Handbook, network, standards
Blue Brain Project models and images simulate, as they describe it: “The cerebral cortex, the convoluted “grey matter” that makes up 80% of the human brain, is responsible for our ability to remember, think, reflect, empathize, communicate, adapt to new situations and plan for the future. ”
The Learning Standards we impose on children are in little boxes, as the superimposed image above illustrated in a post I wrote a couple of days ago. As a follow up to that post, I suggest you view Blue Brain Project’s video called Flying through the column!
One can only wonder how ideas packaged in little boxes could become become useful in the awesomely networked structure the Blue Brain Project lets us fly through.
Posted on 3rd January 2008 by Judy Breck in Networks
blue_brain, brain, cerebral, cortex, network
For the purposes of GoldenSwamp’s core message, these images of the cerebral cortex give striking insight into the knowledge patterning within Internet. They are a visual analogy: they represent for us the closest images I know of for what the Internet looks like. There is not much of a leap here because both the cerebral cortex and the Internet are networks that process information.
The 3 parts of the image above are screenshots posted this month in the Gallery at the Blue Brain Project. The originals can be seen by clicking the following links to the Blue Brain Project website: Left image, middle image, right image. They represent, left to right, a single neuron, inside the network, and an entire neocortical column. In effect, they let us zoom out visually from a single brain cell to a view of the rich network of brain cells such as the neuron, to a “microcircuit” in which the first 2 images are located within within the cerebral cortex. The images are copyrighted by the Blue Brain Project. GoldenSwamp refers you to that website to examine these and other still images in the Gallery, along with video clips that provide new ways to visualize the mammalian brain.
Here is the sort of analogy these images support: When you want to relate the ideas in the 3 books shown here, you must read the books and then use your brain to connect what they say in various patterns. When the content of the 3 books is within an open interconnected network such as the brain or the Internet, the connectivity is already built-in.
In the top image, let’s say the red neuron is United States history, the yellow British history and the pink native American history. At Saratoga the US won a battle against the Brits with native American participation. The connections can be linked in the network of the brain and the network of the Internet. When the books are stacked or together on a shelf, there are no links available among the ideas within the books except in the mind of someone who reads all three of them.
The Internet does that connecting of ideas in near real time, mirroring (primitively) what the brain does. Though the mirror is primitive, it is essentially accurate. I understand that what this post says is no more than analogy. The Blue Brain Project has this disclaimer: “Although we may one day acheive insights into the basic nature of intelligence and consciousness using this tool, the Blue Brain Project is focused on creating a physiological simulation for biomedical applications.” About the Blue Brain Project
What is extremely interesting here is that quite literally, nodes of American, British and Native American history DO CONNECT within the Internet. My Learnodes.com website is dedicated to showing examples of those kinds of connections.
Posted on 3rd March 2007 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
brain, cells, communicate, nerve, neuroscience, synapse
The Society for Neuroscience offers an online series of six brief articles here that answer basic neuroscience questions related to the brain. Biology
Posted on 6th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge
brain, heart, practice, simulation, surgery, virtual
If a surgeon were going to operate on my brain, I would hope he or she had practiced in every conceivable way. The article here from Case Western Reserve University describes a virtual reality simutlation to train brain and heart surgeons. Including virtual training for surgeons is a growing practice.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if kids in high school and in lower grades could use these same tutorials? Too young? I don’t think so. Did you ever have a classmate — say in the sixth grade — who had decided long ago to become a surgeon? I think of my friend David, who did just that when we were students together at Crockett grade school in El Paso. He is a professor of orthopaedics and wrote the standard hand surgery textbook used in medical schools. I can tell you that by the sixth grade he would have been a whiz at the tutorial descibed in this above link.
Posted on 20th February 2006 by Judy Breck in Schools We Have Now
brain, kids, neurogenesis, school
Once again, Kathy Sierra of Passionate Users writes here a profound and penetrating analysis of the workplace, and the analysis equally or better explains why our kids are stagnating in schools. In discussing Elizabeth Gould’s work in the discovery that new brain cells are created through our lifetime, she says:
One of the most interesting (and, in hindsight, “doh!”) discoveries was that one of the main reasons researchers kept finding NO evidence of new neuron development in their test primates is because they kept them in an environment which shut that process down. In other words, it was the caged-living that stopped the neurogenesis process. By giving her animals a rich, natural environment, Gould “flipped the switch” back on, allowing their brains to work normally, and sure enough–the happier, more stimulated animals showed a DRAMATIC increase in neurogenesis as well as dendrite density.
Kathy is explaining why workers grow dull when they work in cubicles. But what about sending kids for 12 years of lock-step learning in (“doh!”) cookie cutter classrooms where by golly we all learn the same standard stuff or we go back and try to learn it again.
Kathy’s writing is a terrific explanation of what happens in the cubicled workplace — but when you read it substituting traditional classrooms that prohibit the digital excitement of our kids’ lives outside of school, it is even more important. If we want our kids to grow new neurons, we had better face up to getting them out of the school cubicle routine. That is an unscientific way to put it, but my guess is children’s brains really do end up producing less neurons in boring environments.
Posted on 1st February 2006 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
anatomy, animation, brain
There is an attractive and informative animation here that illustrates the parts of the brain. General Science
