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Neuroscience/psychology special interest?

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dreamingofhome
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11 Dec 2013, 1:30 pm

Just wondering how many of us have a neuroscience/psychology special interest? Thought maybe this could be a place to share interesting finds or discuss like most of us don't get to do with the people around us.



Last edited by dreamingofhome on 12 Dec 2013, 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

IrishJew
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11 Dec 2013, 3:01 pm

I'm interested in the more philosophical aspects of it. For example, why do we experience time as going faster as we get older vs. when we were younger? I have two theories on that: either because, for example, at age 1 day, a day is the entire length of your life and at age 100, a day is 1/36,524 of your life. That's the ratio theory. In fact, the ratio theory solves the paradox/koan: "what was it like for you before you were born"? And the solution would be, "The question is meaningless because the experience of any segment of time, say one second, increases to infinity the closer you get to time-zero of your actual birth, so your question implies a time that precedes an infinite time."

The other theory I have is that your neurons start firing more slowly the more you age. The effect would be the same as when one slows down the speed of a movie camera: More events are happening between each "frame" and so things seem to speed up.



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11 Dec 2013, 3:28 pm

Neuroscience/psychology definitely at the top of my 'special interests' list. I would say I am completely obsessed, in fact. Running out, however, looking forward to checking out how this thread evolves . .



Epsilon
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11 Dec 2013, 4:14 pm

I have become interested in it but would like to find good resources to get a better foundation in neuroscience-any suggestions?


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Aoi
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11 Dec 2013, 6:55 pm

I just tell people I'm interested in brains. In reality, I enjoy neuroscience when I'm not absorbed in math or scifi.



dreamingofhome
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11 Dec 2013, 9:59 pm

IrishJew wrote:
I'm interested in the more philosophical aspects of it. For example, why do we experience time as going faster as we get older vs. when we were younger? I have two theories on that: either because, for example, at age 1 day, a day is the entire length of your life and at age 100, a day is 1/36,524 of your life. That's the ratio theory. In fact, the ratio theory solves the paradox/koan: "what was it like for you before you were born"? And the solution would be, "The question is meaningless because the experience of any segment of time, say one second, increases to infinity the closer you get to time-zero of your actual birth, so your question implies a time that precedes an infinite time."

The other theory I have is that your neurons start firing more slowly the more you age. The effect would be the same as when one slows down the speed of a movie camera: More events are happening between each "frame" and so things seem to speed up.


It could be a combination of both.



dreamingofhome
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11 Dec 2013, 10:07 pm

Epsilon wrote:
I have become interested in it but would like to find good resources to get a better foundation in neuroscience-any suggestions?


I haven't found any one good resource yet. I just find information wherever I can.



Aoi
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12 Dec 2013, 12:52 am

Epsilon wrote:
I have become interested in it but would like to find good resources to get a better foundation in neuroscience-any suggestions?


For free college-level courses available online, try MIT OCW and start with their general biology class, philosophical issues in brain science, introduction to psychology, and brain structure and its origins. Also work through Stanford's human behavioral genetics, Yale University's introduction to game theory, and UCTV's series on the brain.

For books, anything by Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, Robert Sapolsky, Patricia Churchland, among others, is worth sampling. Temple Grandin's recent books come to mind too.

Other suggestions?



dreamingofhome
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12 Dec 2013, 1:17 pm

Aoi wrote:
Epsilon wrote:
I have become interested in it but would like to find good resources to get a better foundation in neuroscience-any suggestions?


For free college-level courses available online, try MIT OCW and start with their general biology class, philosophical issues in brain science, introduction to psychology, and brain structure and its origins. Also work through Stanford's human behavioral genetics, Yale University's introduction to game theory, and UCTV's series on the brain.

For books, anything by Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, Robert Sapolsky, Patricia Churchland, among others, is worth sampling. Temple Grandin's recent books come to mind too.

Other suggestions?


I didn't even know they offered free online classes like that. This is really helpful, thank you.



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12 Dec 2013, 3:17 pm

There are courses on coursera.org. E.g.:
Drugs an the Brain
Computational Neuroscience

In edX there is a course of neuroscience hosted in mcb80x.



jrjones9933
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12 Dec 2013, 3:32 pm

There are good lectures available on Book TV about psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics, a branch of microeconomics which takes a lot from Social Psychology, and which interests me greatly. Go to http://www.c-spanvideo.org and select Book TV content, then search for behavioral economics to hear lectures from non-fiction authors.



Leanne96
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01 Mar 2014, 12:53 pm

I'm quite interested in psychology, particularly behavioural and developmental psychology at the moment. :D