Letting the Brain Speak for Itself

Letting the Brain Speak for Itself

Metaphors of Computation and Information tended to detract attention from the intrinsic modes of neural system functions, uncontaminated by the observer's role in collection, and interpretation of experimental data. Recognizing the self-referential mode of function, and the propensity for self-organization to critical states requires a fundamentally new orientation, based on Complex System Dyna...

The case for letting information speak for itself.

Sentence Level Recurrent Topic Model: Letting Topics Speak for Themselves

We propose Sentence Level Recurrent Topic Model (SLRTM), a new topic model that assumes the generation of each word within a sentence to depend on both the topic of the sentence and the whole history of its preceding words in the sentence. Different from conventional topic models that largely ignore the sequential order of words or their topic coherence, SLRTM gives full characterization to the...

Neuromodulation: Letting Sources of Spinal Dopamine Speak for Themselves

A recent study of dopaminergic neurons in the brain of larval zebrafish has important implications for interpreting the natural actions of neuromodulators in the spinal cord.

Should psychology be ‘positive’? Letting the philosophers speak

This is a brief commentary on the value of optimism in therapy. It draws on the philosophical writings of Schopenhauer and Aristotle. It suggests that the modern preoccupation with optimism may be as extreme as the bleak pessimistic outlook favoured by Schopenhauer.