Locusts aren't a separate species, they are just regular grasshoppers that physically transform when overcrowded.
u/BearNecessitee — 5 days ago
r/MichaelLevinBiology
Beluga stops aquarium smoker with a splash
u/Gjore — 5 days ago
Free Will Is a Superstition: The Neuroscience Evidence | In Vivo w/ Dr. Nicolas Rouleau | Ep. 35
This episode of In Vivo features neuroscientist and bioengineer Dr. Nicolas Rouleau in a deep dive into neuroscience, cybernetics, and the philosophical implications of consciousness.
Key Highlights:
• The Illusion of Free Will (0:02:30 - 0:40:28): Dr. Rouleau argues that free will is a neurobiological superstition. He explains that brain activity predicting an action occurs before the conscious desire to move, suggesting that our experience of choice is a post-hoc story the brain constructs to explain its own actions. He compares this to the misattribution of causality between lightning and thunder.
• Cybernetics & Bioengineering (0:52:45 - 1:00:10): The discussion explores how biological systems, like neurons in a dish, are far more efficient learners than modern AI. Dr. Rouleau discusses his work at the Self-Organizing Units Lab (SOUL), where he builds cognitive systems from the ground up, aiming to understand the “nitty-gritty” of neural computation.
• Mind Blindness & Panpsychism (1:08:28 - 1:15:02): The conversation touches on “mind blindness,” our human-centric inability to recognize intelligence and consciousness in non-neural organisms like plants or single-celled life. Dr. Rouleau expresses his interest in panpsychism as a framework for understanding minds that exist in fields rather than just individual objects.
• Future of Consciousness Engineering (1:41:37 - 1:47:42): Dr. Rouleau explores the potential for “consciousness engineering,” including whether it might ever be possible to transfer consciousness to a machine by identifying and preserving the unique “signature” of a conscious system.
Closing Thoughts:
The episode concludes with a reflection on how viewing our choices as predetermined, rather than expressions of free will, changes our understanding of responsibility and compassion, while fostering a sense of wonder for the biological complexity that makes human experience possible.
u/Visible_Iron_5612 — 4 days ago
Hybrots - neural structures repurposed to drive engineered bodies, such as brains and fungi operating robotic vehicles
link.springer.comu/Radiant-Rain2636 — 3 days ago
Raven Snags Cookies in the Cleverest Way Possible
u/Visible_Iron_5612 — 9 days ago
“Cognition Emerges from Neural Dynamics” by Earl Miller
https://youtu.be/0BS-BzEFTXA?si=wbXUECDs2pwEt67S
In this talk, neuroscientist Earl Miller from MIT explores how cognition and consciousness emerge from neural dynamics, specifically challenging the traditional 20th-century model of the brain as a rigid, connectionist telegraph system.
Key Themes & Concepts:
• Beyond Connectionism (0:00 - 6:35): Miller explains that while the 20th-century view focused on specialized neurons as simple information processors, modern research reveals multifunctional, mixed-selectivity neurons. These neurons change their activity based on context, embodying cognitive flexibility.
• The Role of Electric Fields (12:43 - 22:36): Miller argues that brain waves—rhythmic fluctuations in electric fields—are not just “epiphenomena” or engine noise, but are essential for coordinating neural activity. His research on anesthesia shows that it doesn’t shut the cortex down but instead fragments these wave dynamics, disrupting communication.
• Control via Stencils (23:06 - 30:00): A core model proposed is that the brain uses gamma waves to feed sensory information forward and alpha/beta waves as “stencils” to inhibit specific regions. This allows the brain to exert top-down executive control efficiently without needing to rewire the entire system.
• Wave-Based Analog Computation (32:41 - 42:40): Miller posits that the brain uses traveling, rotating waves across the cortex to perform analog computations. This is significantly more energy-efficient and faster than digital, sequential logic, allowing the brain to recover from distractions and maintain complex, goal-directed behaviors using only about 20 watts of power.
Conclusion:
Miller concludes that while connectionism is useful for long-term memory storage, high-level cognition emerges from these organized, field-based wave dynamics. He suggests that when these patterns become sufficiently organized, they bind the cortex into a unified state, which we experience as consciousness (44:31).
u/Visible_Iron_5612 — 4 days ago
Engineered Living Systems With Self-Organizing Neural Networks: From Anatomy to Behavior and Gene Expression
advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.comu/Visible_Iron_5612 — 8 days ago
This Zhang “spatial ecotype” paper that just made CNN/Jake Tapper is fascinating.
The bigger shift isn’t just AI itself — it’s the idea that tumors may behave more like adaptive ecosystems with recurring spatial organizational states rather than random collections of malignant cells.
AI/spatial biology models are increasingly looking at:
– cellular neighborhoods
– immune localization
– stromal architecture
– signaling environments
– and multicellular organization across tissue.
Feels like oncology is moving away from isolated pathway thinking and toward systems-level organizational biology.
That may also explain why areas involving immune trafficking and chemokine signaling (including pathways like CCR5) are attracting growing attention in tumor microenvironment research.
u/KuneneRiver — 14 days ago
Individual Cells Activate Their Own Heat-shock Response But Turn It Off When In A Collective
High temperatures are detrimental to cellular processes so all cells have response reactions that help mitigate damage. These responses can be detrimental to cellular proliferation though. For this reason, multicellular organisms turn off this native behavior and coordinate the heat shock response from a macroscopic perspective. The individual cells are still capable of initiating the response when isolated.
u/quiksilver10152 — 14 days ago