The feeling of being in control of one's own actions is a strong subjective experience. However, discoveries in psychology and neuroscience challenge the validity of this experience and suggest that free will is just an illusion. This raises a question: What would happen if people started to disbelieve in free will? Previous research has shown that low control beliefs affect performance and motivation. Recently, it has been shown that undermining free-will beliefs influences social behavior. In the study reported here, we investigated whether undermining beliefs in free will affects brain correlates of voluntary motor preparation. Our results showed that the readiness potential was reduced in individuals induced to disbelieve in free will. This effect was evident more than 1 s before participants consciously decided to move, a finding that suggests that the manipulation influenced intentional actions at preconscious stages. Our findings indicate that abstract belief systems might have a much more fundamental effect than previously thought.

Entoforms are life, grown in the computer, printed in 3D, collected by macouno.

Scientists have for the first time created laser light using living biological material: a single human cell and some jellyfish protein.

There has been quite a furore over some remarks made by Chomsky at the recent MIT symposium Brains, Minds and Machines; Chomsky apparently criticised researchers in machine learning who use purely statistical methods to produce simulations without addressing the meaning of the behaviour being simulated – there’s a brief account of the discussion in Technology Review. The wider debate was launched when Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig issued a response to Chomsky. So far as I can tell the point being made by Chomsky was that applications like Google Translate, which uses a huge corpus of parallel texts to produce equivalents in different languages, do not tell us anything about the way human beings use language.

Impossible color

"The deadline for early career participants in our deviant color workshop and conference in Vancouver in August has been extended. Go ahead and apply."

I hope the phrase "deviant color" catches on.

the cognitive influence of intestinal flora

In this paper, we connect Life and Mind by simulating metabolism-based behaviour. More specifically, the concentration of a product of the metabolism directly modulates running/tumbling behaviour of simulated bacteria-like agents, producing a variety of sometimes surprising adaptive behaviours.

thinking about certain foods acually makes you consume less of that food, contrary to conventional wisdom.

So, how often did she feel fear? Zero percent of the time. At no point during those three months did she even feel the slightest twinge of fright. All her other emotional responses were normal.

An international governing body has adopted a new definition of atomic mass (aka atomic weight) changing from specific values to intervals of masses to resolve 15 years of debate on one of the most fundamental of scientific concepts.

The pilots showed superior cognitive control and greater accuracy, despite being more sensitive to distracting minutiae. The MRI showed the structure of their brains differed from the control, with relevant areas of the right side of the brain being larger, and connections between key areas in the brain laid out differently.

People can be made to see reddish green and yellowish blue—colors forbidden by theories of color perception.

Here's a simple guide to seeing impossible and imaginary colors.

"It seems the placebo effect isn't just valid on drugs. It's also a fact on elevators, offices and traffic lights. An article by Greg Ross says: 'In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003. Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat," said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. "Guess what? They quit calling you." In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 "walk" buttons in New York intersections do nothing. "The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on."'"