The human brain has a region of cells responsible for linking sensory cues to actions and behaviors and cataloging the link as a memory. Cells that form these links have been deemed highly stable and fixed.
Now, the findings of a Harvard Medical School (HMS) study conducted in mice challenge that model, revealing that the neurons responsible for such tasks may be less stable, yet more flexible than previously believed.
The results, published Aug. 17 in the journal Cell, cast doubt on the traditional notion that memory formation involves hardwiring information into the brain in a fixed and highly stable pattern.
The researchers say their results point to a critical plasticity in neuronal networks that ensures easier integration of new information. Such plasticity allows neuronal networks to more easily incorporate new learning, eliminating the need...
A French team of scientists, led by Physicists Yves Couder and Emmanuel Fort, investigated alternative possibilities in the wave-particle duality interpretation of the double slit experiment by observing bouncing droplets in a vibrating oil bath. The remarkable results have caught the attention of the public eye as this approach may resolve some of the weirdest behaviors of particles at the quantum scale. Couder and Fort demonstrate in a simple experiment that fluid dynamics may be the classical underlying mechanism of quantum particles apparent strange behaviors without resorting to the need for a mysterious and seemingly magical interpretation of modern quantum theory.
It is my firm belief that the last seven decades of the twentieth century will be characterized in history as the dark ages of theoretical physics. Carver Mead – from his book Collective Electrodynamics
I no longer...
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Article by William Brown, Biophysicist, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist
In communicating the progress of scientific theories and tests, experimental results are often presented to the public as concrete and indisputable, therefore proving this-or-that idea. This leads to the common misconception that scientific models can in fact become proven, instead of the more nuanced reality that they are only the most precise (sometimes extremely precise) and accurate models approximating what we can discern, and the very notion of evidence always suggest a degree of interpretation.
The results of quantum entanglement experiments are a case-in-point. The results of data from particle accelerators to optical Bell tests (experiments that test entanglement) are statistical, such that conclusions are drawn based on the probability of a series of measurements being random or “true signals”. This goes for detection of Higgs, W, and Z bosons as well as whether...