Many serious people are projecting that within ten to fifteen years we’ll be able to start on a significant program of cognitive enhancement. To craft drugs, hormone cocktails, neurointerfaces, and neuroprotheses that will significantly make their users smarter and more […]
Michael Edward Johnson
Posts by Michael Edward Johnson
Learning and Memory: location, location, location!
Not long ago, we knew very little about learning and memory. Sure, we understood the basic concepts– people could learn things, and then recall them later– but they were black box processes, obfuscated by the complexity of the brain. Everyone […]
SS2010 Highlights: Day 1
SS2010 Highlights: Day 1: The Future of Human Evolution Michael Vassar: The Darwinian Method A solid talk about the scientific method and rationality. People can be rational without being scientific; good organizational structures can protect against bias (but may be […]
SS2010
I’ll be at the Singularity Summit this weekend in San Francisco. Look for M. Edward Johnson. I’ll also have rocking sideburns.
Toward a new ontology of brain dynamics: neural resonance + neuroacoustics
The brain is extraordinarily complex. We are in desperate need of models that decode this complexity and allow us to speak about the brain’s fundamental dynamics simply, comprehensively, and predictively. I believe I have one, and it revolves around resonance.
Gene Expression as a comprehensive diagnostic platform
I’m pretty sure I’ve found the future of medical diagnosis– it’s elegant, accurate, immediate, mostly doctor-less, comprehensive, and very computationally intensive. I don’t know when it’ll arrive, but it’s racing toward us and when it hits, it’ll change everything. In […]
Neuro musings, part 1: neurobiology, psychology, and the missing link(s)
I’m flying out to Salt Lake City tomorrow for a month of thinking about neuroscience; I process ideas by writing, so I’m kicking off an open-ended series of pieces dealing with the stuff I’m thinking about. Part 1: Neurobiology, psychology, […]
Quote: on the evolution of reading
Here, I am reminded not of the recent past but of a huge change that occurred in the middle-ages when humans transformed their cognitive lives by learning to read silently. Originally, people could only read books by reading each page […]
A simple and cheap proposal for improving American health
Earlier this summer a pediatrician friend of mine was asking about ideas for health care reform since Olympia Snowe was going to stop by her hospital and talk with the doctors there. Unfortunately Snowe cut her visit short, but this […]
Quote: China on China
Via a NY Times article on the US-China financial relationship: Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who ushered in its market reforms starting in the late 1970s, famously gave his country the following advice: “Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with […]