Neural variability, or lack thereof

Neural variability, or lack thereof

We do not claim that the brain is completely deterministic, and we agree that noise may be beneficial in some cases. But we suggest that neuronal variability may be often overestimated, due to uncontrolled internal variables, and/or the use of inappropriate reference times. These ideas are not new, but should be re-examined in the light of recent experimental findings: trial-to-trial variabilit...

Neural timescales or lack thereof.

This article aims at making readers, experimentalists and theorists, more aware of the abstractions made by an observer when measuring and reporting behavioral and neural timescales. These abstractions stow away the fact that, above lower boundaries that reflect fairly well understood physical constraints, observed and reported timescales are often not intrinsic to the biological system; rather...

Representing Mental Events (or the Lack Thereof)

This paper focusses upon the level of granularity at which representations for the mental world should be placed. That is, if one wishes to represent thinking about the self, about he states and processes of reasoning, at what level of detail should one attempt to declaratively capture the contents of thought? Some claim that a mere set of two mental primitives are sufficient to represent the u...

Diabetes education...or the lack thereof.

Ecological speciation ! Or the lack thereof ? 1

Ecological speciation occurs when adaptation to different environments or resources causes the evolution of reproductive isolation. This process is now thought to be very important in the evolution of biological diversity. Indeed, support for ecological speciation is so often asserted in the literature that one can get the impression of ubiquity. Eager to ride on the coattails of this exciting ...