Tools for Thinking - NYTimes.com

Tools for Thinking - NYTimes.com: The good folks at Edge.org organized a symposium, and 164 thinkers contributed suggestions. John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University, wrote that people should be more aware of path dependence. This refers to the notion that often “something that seems normal or inevitable today began with a choice that made sense at a particular time in the past, but survived despite the eclipse of the justification for that choice.”

Dr. Chris’ Autism Journal � Blog Archive � The Importance of Generalization

Dr. Chris’ Autism Journal � Blog Archive � The Importance of Generalization: 2) Train Loosely - Adding variety to skills being taught. This will include using a variety of materials in a variety of ways and in a variety of situations. Ideas and approaches used in incidental teaching or naturalistic ABA tend to foster better generalization because these instructional environments more closely resemble the ultimate outcome. Studies have shown that the more naturalistic instructions and presentations of SDs tend to have better learning outcomes to intensive instruction.

Brains of autistic children grow much slower than their healthy peers

Brains of autistic children grow much slower than their healthy peers: Researchers at UCLA have, for the first time, found that the connections between brain regions that are important for language and social skills, grow much more slowly in boys with autism than in non-autistic children – a possible explanation for why autistic children act and think differently than their peers.

Your DNA may carry a ‘memory’ of your living conditions in childhood | ScienceBlog.com

Your DNA may carry a ‘memory’ of your living conditions in childhood | ScienceBlog.com: They found clear differences in gene methylation between those brought up in families with very high and very low standards of living. More than twice as many methylation differences were associated with the combined effect of the wealth, housing conditions and occupation of parents (that is, early upbringing) than were associated with the current socio-economic circumstances in adulthood. (1252 differences as opposed to 545).


Me: I see this as more possible evidence of Lamarkian-style evolution. If your genetics are changing based on your environment and those changes are passed on to your children, your environment now impacts the genetics of your children.

BBC News - Monkeys' brain waves offer paraplegics hope

BBC News - Monkeys' brain waves offer paraplegics hope: The researchers trained the monkeys, Mango and Tangerine, to play a video game using a joystick to move the virtual arm and capture three identical targets. Each target was associated with a different vibration of the joystick.
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In terms of rehabilitation of patients that suffer from severe neurological disorders this is a major step forward”

Prof Miguel Nicolelis Duke University Centre for Neuroengineering

Multiple electrodes were implanted in the brains of the monkeys and connected to the computer screen. The joystick was removed and motor signals from the monkey's brains then controlled the arm.