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| Prep. #11: more supporting evidence |
| As the three people reading this blog know, I'm currently trying hard to somehow establish operant learning in isolated leech ganglia. This is preparation number eleven after some initial trying-out and getting used to t...[more] |
| leech operant nervous system neuroscience learning decision-making |
| Posted on Thursday 16 September 2010 - 05:17:01 |
| is religiosity an operant? |
| Reading the article "Why do we believe in god?" in the British newspaper "Guardian" it occurred to me that religiosity may best be explained by operant behavior. Actually, as a by-product of selection for operant behavio...[more] |
| evolution of religion operant |
| Posted on Wednesday 23 November 2005 - 09:31:36 |
| The final week: the data so far |
| I've skipped blogging about the last two preparations in my seemingly endless quest towards establishing operant learning in isolated leech ganglia, because they both were very frustrating: in contrast to the previous pr...[more] |
| leech operant nervous system neuroscience learning decision-making |
| Posted on Monday 20 September 2010 - 07:46:46 |
| more on religion |
| In my recent post "Is religiosity an operant?", I laid out some quick thoughts on the psychological foundations for being religious. In an essay for the National Review Online, John Derbyshire puts the topic into a conte...[more] |
| evolution of religion operant |
| Posted on Thursday 15 December 2005 - 09:36:24 |
| Prep. #14: if only all experiments worked like this one |
| This was such a wonderful preparation. First, it took me only 2.5h for the dissection instead of the usual 3. Then, I was quickly able to adjust the stimulations such that the isolated leech nervous system would respond ...[more] |
| leech operant nervous system neuroscience learning decision-making |
| Posted on Tuesday 21 September 2010 - 01:40:14 |
| Final day at UCSD: data crunch |
| After catching my last few waves this morning, I'm now sitting at the computer evaluating the last weeks of research in the isolated leech nervous system. The main focus of the project was to do some pilot experiments ...[more] |
| leech operant nervous system neuroscience learning decision-making |
| Posted on Friday 24 September 2010 - 22:19:31 |
| Modulating decision-making in the isolated leech nerve-chord |
| For the last two weeks I've been trying to develop an operant learning paradigm for isolated leech nervous systems. To do these experiments I traveled to visit Bill Kristan's lab at UCSD. After he showed me how to dissec...[more] |
| leech operant nervous system neuroscience learning decision-making |
| Posted on Saturday 04 September 2010 - 02:45:00 |
| 'The neurobiology of self-learning' - the birth of a new field in neuroscience? |
 It's been a while since I've last been so excited about a new finding by someone else  And until today, this paper from last week even flew completely under my radar. I had seen the title and decided it's not relevant. ...[more] |
| self-learning operant mice drosophila aplysia |
| Posted on Monday 31 October 2011 - 13:29:27 |
| Prep #5: making progress in leech operant conditioning, one preparation at a time |
| Let's see how long I can manage to blog each day about each preparation Slowly but steadily I'm making progress in my attempts to find out if one can get isolated leech nervous systems to learn. Here are the problems I'...[more] |
| leech operant nervous system neuroscience learning decision-making |
| Posted on Tuesday 07 September 2010 - 02:12:53 |
| Cognitive Daily: Operant conditioning at the NC Zoo |
| Dave Munger over at Cognitive Daily has a great post on how zoos use operant conditioning for the welfare of their animals. They use operant conditioning on basically all mammals, maybe even most vertebrates there, for e...[more] |
| operant conditioning operant learning zoo |
| Posted on Tuesday 23 September 2008 - 12:48:16 |