I recently co-authored a short article on Jason Padgett, an acquired synesthete and savant, with Berit Brogaard. After sustaining a concussion from a brutal attack, Jason began to see visual imagery associated with mathematical formulas. Our lab’s research found the imagery is generated in the left temporal, parietal and frontal lobes. That’s a surprising result. You can read more about Jason here.
Those of you interested in synesthesia and savant syndrome should tune into St. Louis on the Air at 11:00 am Thursday, January 24th when Berit Brogaard and I will be talking about our forthcoming book The Superhuman Mind: True Tales of Extraordinary Mental Ability. Link to follow.
Berit Brogaard and I are co-authoring a blog for Psychology Today called The Superhuman Mind. Check it out!
We talked to Katy Edgington at Science Omega about our lab’s research and the subject of our upcoming book The Superhuman Mind: True Tales of Extraordinary Mental Ability. Check out the interview here and then please like the book’s Facebook page!
I am proud to announce I’m coauthoring a book with my AWESOME mentor and friend, Berit Brogaard. You can read the description below and then LIKE our Facebook Page!
From Change.org
*Professional, academic philosophy has a well-documented and ongoing pattern of excluding women. The situation is bad in the English speaking philosophical world, and it is no better in much of Europe. We recognize, of course, the significance and severity of other sources of exclusion.
*One non-trivial way in which the status quo replicates and reinforces itself is through conferences and edited volumes that have only male, invited keynote-speakers and contributors
*Keynote speakers are visible examples of recognized leaders in the field. Among the functions of keynote speakers is to confer prestige on events and topics, and to provide a model for younger philosophers of how philosophy is to be practiced as a profession.
*In light of these considerations, we call on all senior male philosophers to refuse invitations to keynote at conferences with two or more keynotes none of which are women. (There will sometimes be extraordinary circumstances in which accepting an invitation may do more to respond to various dimensions of exclusion in philosophy than refusing, and there is no way to codify every possible circumstance. What we are calling for is a strong defeasible commitment not to participate in exclusionary conference line-ups.) The aim of this call is not the refusal, but the deployment of leverage, where it resides, so that inclusiveness becomes an integral part of conference-planning. Further, we ask senior male philosophers to carefully consider refusing invitations to conferences and edited volumes in which the line-up is disproportionately male.
*We call on all philosophers – male and female, junior and senior – not to organize male-only or male-almost-only conferences,workshops, or edited volumes.
*We call on all philosophers to add to their websites and email signatures the following line: “I am a signatory of the ‘Online Petition in Support of the Gendered Conference Campaign’; please visit [Online Petition] for details;”
*We call on all philosophers to engage in positive steps to educate our community about the Gendered
I encourage philosophy students to submit top-quality papers to this conference that I am organizing:
By Marc Ramirez, Staff Writer, The Dallas Morning News, Published: 17 September 2012 11:38 PM
Nathan Hunsinger/Staff Photographer
Tony Wood gets an experimental infusion to combat his ALS at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He helped develop the oxygen-infused saline in an effort to help grow plants in water.
Here’s how this is supposed to work: Things happen and science explains why. But sometimes things happen that science can’t explain. And serendipity leads the way. It’s when someone like Dallas scientist Tony Wood, struck with a fatal disease, finds himself unwittingly offering hope for his own despair. For years, Wood put his tinkering, connect-the-dots mind to work for companies like Texas Instruments, filing dozens of patents and focusing on improving conditions for the less fortunate. Fifteen years ago, he co-created technology to help grow plants in water that more recently has shown surprising, if mysterious, promise in treatment of neuro-inflammatory diseases such as muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s and asthma.
Last year, safety studies were being conducted to pave the way for medical use of his device when Wood found himself struggling to shuffle cards or use the TV remote. Within months, he found he had ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The disease has progressed unmercifully fast. Wood, 69, cannot lift his arms or move his legs. He can barely speak and uses his chin to operate his wheelchair. So discouraged by the disease’s rapid effects and his inability to tinker anymore, he was ready to give up. Then he realized that ALS was among the set of diseases for which the oxygen-infused saline created by his technology could be potentially revolutionary. Continue reading
Check it out here.