#neuroscience

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A Review of the Effects of Abacus Training on Cognitive Functions and Neural Systems in Humans

Our review of the existing literature suggests that abacus-based mental calculation (AMC) training has the potential to enhance various cognitive skills including mathematics, working memory and numerical magnitude processing. via @openculture

by Chunjie Wang (from the archives)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7492585/

Japan's ancient secret to better cognitive memory - BBC
https://youtu.be/s6OmqXCsYt8

Line art drawing of an abacus Bi-quinary coded decimal-like abacus representing 1,352,964,708 Structure of this Chinese abacus: Rectangular wooden frame Horizontal divider separating upper and lower beads Vertical wires or rods (10 visible in this illustration) Upper deck: Contains 2 beads per rod (each representing 5) Lower deck: Contains 5 beads per rod (each representing 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus#/media/File:Abacus_(PSF).png

started reading Neurodharma by Rick Hanson

Rick Hanson: Neurodharma (AudiobookFormat, 2020, Random House Audio) No rating

Throughout history, people have sought the heights of human potential—to become as wise and strong, …

Starts off really well with a good "come and see" tone. The introduction includes a powerful #meditation and #reflection on letting be, letting go, letting in. Maybe it's just the mind-state I'm in today, but it seems like Rick has gotten even more skilled at reading his own work.

#Neurodharma #RickHanson #dharma #neuroscience

We're hiring!
Open position for a PhD student studying the role of sleep in mediating sepsis-related brain damage.

https://www.fens.org/careers/job-market/job/124828

Come work with me to figure out why severe inflammatory disease can lead to long-term cognitive problems, and if we can do something about that.

This week's at the library: @princetonupress has a 70% off sale at the moment! I bagged myself four fascinating books:
- The Mirror and the Mind: A History of Self-Recognition in the Human Sciences
- The Network of Life: A New View of
- Zero to Birth: How the Human Brain Is Built
- Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing across Time

@bookstodon

A photo of four books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books, part of the beech-coloured laminate floor, and a red curtain covering the door. From left to right, we have: - The Mirror and the Mind, which divides its cover into a white and silver-coloured half and plays tricks by mirroring the title and author name; - The Network of Life, showing a close-up of a leaf's vein pattern, the colours grading from yellow through green to blue; - Zero to Birth, which shows a diagram of a human embryo inside the capital B of Birth, and the outline of a human brain in coloured dots that are connected by many lines; - and Long Problems, which shows a dark blue background with the title in bold white letters, printed at a ninety-degree angle and narrowing towards the top, imitating the Star Wars title crawl.

Hey Fedi, I need some help. Lately, I’ve been facing some tough challenges in my job search and despite all my efforts, I haven’t been able to land something sustainable yet.

I have a PhD in computational neuroscience, with experience in time-series analysis and whole-brain simulations. I have teaching experience and in parallel to my PhD, I’ve been running a neuroscience blog (https://neurofrontiers.blog) for the past five years. This is my LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-cristiana-dimulescu-8a3a2b15b/

I’m looking for jobs either locally in Berlin (Germany) or remotely.

So far, I’ve been focused on data science roles, because that’s where the hard skills from my PhD would fit, but I’m open to exploring other opportunities, particularly as a medical science liaison or scientific writer.

If you know of any permanent or freelance opportunities, please let me know. Thanks a lot!

New scientist portrait block! Neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-2012) has long been on my radar for a portrait, being so well-known for many years, the oldest surviving Nobel laureate. Pictures abound online of her apparently living her best life, with a knowing smile & signature swirled updo, often with a glass of wine in hand into her 90s & beyond. I had imagined a fun portrait of this delightful, 🧵

Photo of my carved Lino block portrait (on green vinyl, against a white background) of neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini in 1940, at a desk with compound binocular microscope, leaning on an incubator, holding an egg and looking at the viewer. Behind her is a large circular image of a photograph of nerve cells she took with this microscope.

As a non-native English speaker from a not-so-popular language group, learning to read even casual science stuff was an uphill battle. First I had to learn English to a reasonable level. Then I realized that English-Romanian dictionaries hadn’t really kept up with science.

I eventually managed to get my hands on a fancy English-only dictionary (yes, a printed one, this was a while ago), but then I ran into another problem: I'd start from one definition, only to find another unfamiliar word in the explanation, then another one in that definition and so on, until I forgot where I had started. And even when I did understand a concept, I'd often be stuck with the English word and with a lot of frustration about trying to convey that in my own language.

Some of those struggles are outdated now. At least you no longer have to deal with …

replied to Marc-Aurèle's status

@marcaurele@bookrastinating.com Un livre que je recommande fortement à ceux qui s'intéresse sur notre psyché en tant qu'humain pour défaire beaucoup de croyance et rester humble sur ce élément de notre corps très mystérieux.

I ask periodically but haven't found an answer yet. My partner has dyslexia, and I definitely don't have that (I can easily help her spell any word she asks), but I when typing I transpose S/2/5, 1/L and of course 0/O. I also substitute words like suitcase/briefcase. I also reverse the order of letters. When reading, numbers in particular, the digits seem to shift around, and if a digit is repeated I struggle to count how many times it is repeated. Is there a name for this?