Tara Maya's Tales

    If you've ever wondered (as one does), "Why don't I have a map of all the neurons in my brain?"  ...Well, now you can. If, that is, like me, you have a brain the size of a fruit fly. That's right.  All of the nerve cells and connections between them in a larval fruit fly brain have been fully mapped out by scientists. Granted, a fruit fly brain (like my brain) is not that large, but this it IS larger than the "brains" of sea squirts and worms. Before this, scientists had only been able to fully diagram the brain circuitry of three organisms - a sea squirt and two types of worm. Those buggers have only have a few hundred neurons, while fruit flies have--as we now know--t hree thousand. They used a fancy microscope to capture pictures of the brain, and then pieced them all together like a puzzle. They even traced each individual nerve cell to create a 3D model of the brain. "Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) share a wide range of behaviors wi...

  What is a cat aware of when it chases a bit of string?  When my cat is busy doing anything else, except eating or mating, he can be easily distracted by a piece of string. He seems not only fascinated by it but almost compelled to pounce on it.  I myself am not so compelled to pounce on wiggling string. However, I am fascinated, almost compelled to watch, if someone waves a video in front of me that shows an adorable kitten pouncing on wiggling string. Sometimes I have thoughts (like this one) while watching cats play with string, but mostly, I think my brain temporarily does into a mode that is a thoughtless feeling of, "Awwww, how cute!"  Is either of these states--pouncing cat or human in cute-overload--really conscious? Or do I become conscious only when I become aware of myself watching the cat and thinking how cute it is, consciously comparing my state of mine and trying to project myself into the cat's frame of mind? It is easy to personify the cat and imagi...