Thursday, November 26, 2009

The Brain Series on Charlie Rose: The Perceiving Brain - Sight and Visual Perception

The November 24th airing of the second episode of Charlie Rose's The Brain Series, The Perceiving Brain, is currently on the front page of the Charlie Rose website. I couldn't find an embeddable version of this episode, but I was able to find the transcript, linked below:

Transcript: The Perceiving Brain
Charlie Rose Brain Series

"The Charlie Rose Brain Series explores one of sciences final frontiers, the study of the human brain.  Over the next year Charlie will interview the most knowledgeable scientists and researchers in hopes of illuminating a new topic of study. Each monthly episode will examine different subjects of the brain, including perception, social interaction, aging and creativity.

We will also look at scientific discovery and advances in technology, in the hope that someday terrible illnesses such as depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s will be history. Our special colleague on this journey is Dr. Eric Kandel.  He is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist and professor at Columbia University. He’s also affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2000 for his research into the biological mechanisms of learning and memory."



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2 comments:

Unknown said...

There is another show on PBS about the brain, Brain Fitness: Frontiers, that starts this weekend. It includes Dr. Mike Merzenich, a key figure in the discovery of the brain's ability to learn and change at any age.

That capability has been turned into a series of consumer software products from Posit Science where I am CEO. If you want to learn more, please visit www.positscience.com

Lynn Marentette said...

I plan to do another post on this topic soon. One of my professors from long ago, John Jonides, at U of M, heads a lab that is doing research in this area. Are you familiar with his team's work?

"In two independent studies, we have shown that training on a complex memory task results in substantial improvements in fluid intelligence. Furthermore, we were also able to show that the gain in intelligence increased with increasing training time – the longer the training, the larger the gain. We are now interested in further optimizing our intervention and in finding out about what drives this improvement."

Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory

Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower