syrian war - The Sociable

Facebook reinstates Napalm Girl photo after censoring its historical context

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Facebook reinstates the Pulitzer Prize winning photo of "Napalm Girl" after ignoring the historical significance of the event by censoring the iconic image...

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What Hezbollah and Assad are saying about US ‘illegal war’ in Syria

Tim Hinchliffe4 years ago

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Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah's leader speak out on why they believe the United States is fighting an "illegal war"...

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Turkey takes a bite of the Syrian pie and is hungry for more

Tim Hinchliffe4 years ago

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Turkey continues to push further into northern Syria as it oversteps its boundary in the relentless pursuit of Kurdish rebels and...

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Turkey uses Kurdish rebels as pawns to do its dirty work in Syria

Tim Hinchliffe4 years ago

1.63K

Turkey uses Kurdish rebels like pawns on a chessboard to do their dirty work in expelling ISIS from Syria's northern border...

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Turkey uses terrorist attack as pretext to wage war in Syria despite $10B pipeline proposal

Tim Hinchliffe4 years ago

Turkey is using Sunday's suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding as a pretext to enter the war in Syria despite $10 billion at stake in...

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Ancient Aleppo history, poetry and tragedy in the face of incendiary bombs

Tim Hinchliffe4 years ago

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Human Rights Watch reports that Russia is bombing Aleppo with "illegal" incendiary explosives while UNESCO World Heritage sites are being...

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Lebanon in Israel’s crosshairs as Syria’s war bleeds westward

Tim Hinchliffe4 years ago

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With the march of thousands of refugees flowing into Lebanon the war in Syria is moving westward as Israel prepares to battle...

Brains Byte Back

The weekly podcast looking at how our brains, psychology, and society are impacted by the ever-evolving technology that surrounds us. Every Monday we bring you the best stories and guests from around the world relating to technology, psychology, and society.

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku once said, “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”

Our brain is undeniably an incredibly complex and impressive object, and this is best demonstrated with brain plasticity, a term that refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of experience.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify, Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, Listen Notes, PodBean, and Radio Public.

To better understand how the brain does this and the processes that take place when we learn new skills, we spoke with Alicia Walf, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and a senior lecturer in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer.

Walf studies the brain mechanisms of stress and reproductive hormones as they relate to behavior and cognition, brain plasticity, and brain health over the lifespan. Her specific areas of expertise are memory, emotions, and social interactions and how these functions not only arise from the brain but change the brain itself.

In this episode, Walf explains how the job of London cab drivers impacts their hippocampus (the area of the brain responsible for memory), how capable we are to retrain in tech jobs relating to cyber and coding at a later age, and what studies on frequent video game players vs novices show us about brain plasticity. She also discusses how the olfactory sense can help us better understand dementia and memory.