Article archive

Explainer: what is gene therapy?

09/12/2013 10:55
By Merlin Crossley Every now and again you might read about gene therapy and efforts to correct serious genetic diseases. But I’m betting that very few readers have had gene therapy, nor have they ever met anyone who has, nor will they ever meet that many. The reasons are simple – while these...

Higgs boson’s decay confirms physics model works

09/12/2013 10:53
By Nitesh Soni Last week, the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, showed evidence for the first time that a Higgs boson decays into a pair of tau particles. It is one of the crucial results that has followed on from the discovery of the Higgs boson. But what makes this...

Selfish gene solves DNA replication puzzle

09/12/2013 10:51
By Michelle Hawkins You were formed from a single cell. To build you, and then keep you alive, the DNA in your cells needs to undergo replication every day to duplicate your chromosomes before cell division. Decades of research have determined that DNA replication begins at specific locations on...

If at first you don’t succeed … part of your brain makes you try again

09/12/2013 10:48
By David Heslin, The Conversation Perseverance is a quality that plays a large role in the success or failure of many pursuits. It has never been entirely clear why this trait seems more apparent in some people than others, but a new piece of research may at least help explain where it comes from....

Male And Female 'Brain Differences' Study Is Neurosexism

09/12/2013 10:42
Cordelia Fine, The Conversation The latest neuroscience study of sex differences to hit the popular press has inspired some familiar headlines. The Independent, for example, proclaims that: The hardwired difference between male and female brains could explain why men are "better at map reading"...

Dennett on freewill

05/12/2013 11:22
Daniel Dennett This chapter is remarkable for Dennett’s style. There can be little doubt that Dennett’s dominance over much of modern consciousness studies is due in part to the beguiling quality of his style of writing. However, his approach in this chapter is markedly different from his seminal...

Do we have freewill

05/12/2013 11:20
Benjamin Libet   The article concentrates on Libet’s own experiments showing that unconscious electrical activity in the brain preceded voluntary actions by up to 400ms. This discovery has been widely seized on, although not be Libet himself, as a proof that freewill does not exist and thus as...

Freewill

05/12/2013 11:18
Sam Harris Libet’s famous experiment is introduced at an early stage in this book, and along with similar experiments, it is essentially the whole basis of the author’s argument. In Libet’s studies, activity in the motor cortex was apparent about 300 milliseconds before subjects were conscious of...

Illusion of conscious will

05/12/2013 11:17
Daniel Wegner The author’s purpose is to demonstrate that conscious will is not efficacious. The Libet experiments suggested that unconscious processing drives trivial actions such as moving a finger. Wegner argues that it is the same for more important activities. To do this, he must separate...

Libet’s Mind Time

05/12/2013 11:15
Benjamin Libet In his introductory chapter, Libet admits that his views on subjective phenomena have altered somewhat since he was a young scientist. He says that he started with a full belief in determinsitic materialism, but has come round to the view that the subjective cannot be derived...
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