Here's something: The first neuron's to ever be studied were giant neurons of the squid, because these are 0.5mm-1.00mm in size and can be easily studied. The smallest neuron size is like 0.004mm (4?m).

So I could have 250 of these 0.004mm neurons to every one of these 1mm neurons and I'd have the same "mass" but I'd have 250x the density in terms of nerve count.

This is a huge difference because I can't really do anything with one neuron, but with 250 I might be able to do something.

If the human brain has 100 billion nerve cells that are 0.004mm in size, but the sperm whale has - I don't know how much it has or what size - 40 billion neurons that are 1mm in size, then the whale brain will be 100 times larger than the human brain, but have probably 60% less computational power.

There is one thing that makes this a bad article and that's too much speculation.

That Dolphin's are self-aware is a contestable claim. It is popular for people to say that they are but that issue is still being debated, and rightly so, we don't even have a way of knowing if humans are self-aware. Or what do we even mean by self-awareness?

Self-awareness seems to be the generation and reflection on abstract and related concepts. Maybe Dolphin's can do this, maybe some humans can't, we just don't have a way of testing for self-awareness (or consciousness) but researchers are trying to come up with ways of determining whether or not a creature has the minimal neural correlates necessary for these processes. Christoph Koch, author of "The Quest for Consciousness" and Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and author of "The Astonishing Hypothesis" Francis Crick spent decades trying to come up with the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) and have not been able to do so completely.

But the author of this article has the answers? Ok...

On another note: Besides brain-size there is also brain-density, and while it is common for researchers to examine the brain-size:body-size ratio, they almost always overlook the brain-density;body-size ratio.

There are [b]distinct[/b] differences in the male and female brains of humans. Those differences are also typically not brain-size differences but brain-density differences. The female brain has denser commissures (i.e. corpus callosum) and limbic tissue but the male brain typically has denser pareital cortices and some regions of the PFC. Behaviourally speaking this correlates with known differences in the psychology literature; boys are typically better with temporospatial orientation and can perform "mental object rotation" faster and more easily than girls, but girls tend to be more attuned to social cues. And so on and so forth...

Neil Strauss already did this, and there are others who came after him. But you have to be willing to lie and cheat pretty much.

I thought "electric sheep" was synonymous with "couch potato".

It's not a healthy brain either. That massive infarct stretches across the temporal and occipital cortices.

Social comparison standards have more direct influence on behavior than objective measurements. For example; because the culture overvalues women on the singular domain of appearance, and because the cultural value attached to appearance is far greater than the cultural value attached to being healthy, women are more likely to engage in high risk diets and other strategies for increasing their value in the appearance domain at the cost of their private health. (e.g. Bulimia, Axorexia Nervosa, etc...). I offer the same explanation as to why a young man would steal a car to take to a prom despite the risks of being caught and imprisoned. The brain responds more directly to the fear of social disapproval for taking the bus to the prom, than it does to the threat of being apprehended by police. Additionally being arrested can earn one a reputation as a "hardened criminal" which has its value amongst other "hardened criminals" so there is less threat to self-esteem being arrested and imprisoned than their is in not being able to give your date a ride home from the prom (bar, concert hall, library, coffee shop, etc...). This makes sense if one considers the perspective of the "Selfish Gene", sex is more important than one's own survival, if one can secure sex prior to dieing its probably worth it, as opposed to securing personal safety in the absence of sex. Consider the male mantis whose success in copulating is a death sentence - the female bites his head off following sex - yet he spends his adulthood seeking a mate anyway.

When I took CompTIA A+ in 1999 memorizing the color-coding of resistor bands was one of the requirements. This would have been handy since I'm pretty sure I got all of those questions wrong. And this was during a time when all PC parts became FRUs and knowledge of this wasn't even applicable to computer repairs anymore.

Np. Of course lots of people use "mannequin" to refer to these as well, and I'm not personally picky about it. ;)

Tony Soprano and "The Vertical Split"
by Jeffrey Stern, PhD
http://www.psychologyoftheself.com/newsletter/2003/stern.htm

Of the ones on the list I know; Dexter is the only one who qualifies as a psychopath. To state that Tony Soprano was a Psychopath is apparently to miss the entire plot of the show. It gets more into the psychology of multiple-selves which deals with attributing different values and such to different domains of contingency, such that the person, although viewing themselves as consistent, behaves rather inconsistently depending on the circumstances. A loving caring father at home, but a ruthless mobster otherwise. Basically a form of cognitive dissonance which relates to Multiple Personality Disorder but that is distinct from it in that the person with MPD has multiple selves which are not aware of each other.

"Gergen (1991) and other postmodernists have claimed that multiple selves are an adaptive response to a world of multiple demans. Through this lens, as cultural evolution is carrying human nature toward a more autoplastic, docile structure of personality, the idea of an integrated identity or personality appears to be an ideological holdover from an earlier historical era. Similarly, Greenwald (1982) speculated that the idea of integrity or unity in personality, so central to classical theories of personality and psychotherapy (Ryan, 1995), may be a myth."
- The Handbook of Self and Identity

I think it is technically called a "Manikin"; not to be confused with a "Manakin" or a "Mannequin",

An example of a meme whose copycat cost outweighed the benefit of the humor. I couldn't go to the rookery after that without some knob in the party pulling the same stunt.

@Tonya

"You know atheist people God gives you the choice to choose to not follow Him and believe in Him but He would really like to save you before it’s too late if you would let Him."

I think it's worth restating and elaborating on this claim as well. Because this smacks of metaphysical libertarianism - the belief that human beings can make decisions completely independent of everything else.

The Bible itself does not seem to support this view. Although the claim is often given the wording "Free-Will", usage of the phrase "Free-Will" in the Bible is restricted to a few Old Testament verses, in which it is clear that it means "under no extrinsic obligation" (Ex. 35:29; Lev. 22:23; Ezra 3:5). This means that it does not necessarily equate to metaphysical libertarian beliefs.

Indeed, several verses in the Bible contradict this view. For example there is this whole lengthy discussion about God "hardening Pharaoh's heart" (Ex 7:13; Ex 8:19; Ex 9:12; Ex 9:35; Ex 10:1; Ex 10:20, Ex 10:27, Ex 11:10; Ex 14:8; Deut 2:30). Some confusion may arise over the fact that the Bible also says Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Ex 8:15; Ex 8:32; Ex 9:34; 1 Sam 6:6) unless one considers the possibility that God and Pharaoh are inseparable entities. As if the causal continuity which permeates the universe determining the motion of the planets and stars also determined that Pharaoh would harden his own heart.

Paul comments on this whole exchange later in Romans 9 saying "For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." Stating again that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. What reason does Paul give? Is it because of something Pharaoh did with a metaphysically free-will? No, Paul says "it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy"

The entire chapter in Romans 9 is a rebuke of metaphysical libertarianism. Earlier in John, Jesus says "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him" (John 6:44).

So, I mean, you have to be reading it with blinders on to believe that it says anything about God granting us the "Free-will" to follow him or not. Whether we do or not is clearly determined by God itself.

@Tonya

The flip-side of unquestioning disbelief is unquestioning belief. The vast majority of miracles depicted in the Bible occur in John, and there is good reason - from the text - to believe that "John" was attempting to address doubts that arose during the time in which this collection was compiled (circa 200 A.D.) - which also dates the composition later than the actual life of John the Baptist.

All of the books of the Bible are compositions which were compiled one or two centuries after the lives of the people who they are attributed to, and during a time of fierce debate over what the actual history and teachings of Jesus were. The book of "John" introduces a lot of miraculous events which have analogs in older religious myths. It appears as though the author of John was determined to demonstrate that Jesus had fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. So words are added to the speech attributed to Jesus that are not found in any of the other synoptic Gospels and are entirely consistent with a desire to show that Jesus fulfilled those prophecies. This would have been a convenient way for the author of John to "prove" that his own belief in the life of Jesus as a miracle-worker was true, but the other Gospels don't include these miracles.

An alternative view is that Jesus was like a "just messenger" or a "wise philosopher" (Gospel of Thomas - verse 13). In which case, maybe his "miracles" were really just poorly understand acts that were nevertheless consistent with what now know from physics, biology and psychology, and still others were complete fabrications generate by those who wanted to support their own beliefs. If Birth is a miracle then it is a miracle of this sort - its a completely understandable biological phenomena - but perhaps a miracle nonetheless.

The belief that Jesus was a wise philosopher or great teacher seems to take the wind out of the sails of those who admire him as a superhuman descendant of the divine, and who wish to conceive of God as a cosmic father-figure. To restate a pertinent fact; these attributions to Jesus were in debate in early Christianity at the Council of Nicea circa. 300 AD. Thus, the Bible is itself not a definitive source on this and one's own preferences and biases weigh heavily into what one believes upon reading the Bible.

There is probably a difference in the neurological response to the stimuli as well. "periaqueductal gray matter of the midbrain activates enkephalin-releasing neurons that project to the raphe nuclei in the brainstem. 5-HT (serotonin) released from the raphe nuclei descends to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord where it forms excitatory connections with the "inhibitory interneurons" located in Laminae II (aka the substantia gelatinosa). When activated, these interneurons release either enkephalin or dynorphin (endogenous opioid neurotransmitters), which bind to mu opioid receptors on the axons of incoming C and A-delta fibers carrying pain signals from nociceptors activated in the periphery." (See: Gate control theory of pain)

I remember something about this and papercuts in my book "Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases" by Hal Blumenfeld.