TED Community » Azadeh Tafreshiha

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• +1

  A comment on Talk: Andrew McAfee: Are droids taking our jobs?

  Sep 27 2012: Very interesting talk indeed. As Jacque Fresco once mentioned, it is the technology that liberates humans from tedious labor and modern slavery of economic systems. I recommend watching The Zeitgeist movie in which the proposed solution is in line with this talk.
  
  http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
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  A reply on Talk: Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain

  Sep 18 2012: You are right to have your doubts about the fMRI studies. In some cases the drawn correlation between a certain task and observed pattern of brain activity are not very informative or exclusive. For example to attribute complex brain phenomenons such as attention or awareness to just a bain area is not very reliable. However, many of the studies are reliable. For example, the performance of the Alzhimer's patients on a memory task is correlated with their brain activity and structure in their Hippocampus. Another example is the study of very low-level information processing. The perception of contours or colors for instance has a very localized pattern of activation across many studies. Or a certain area of the brain is activated in response to a stimulus in a certain place in the real world. These all have been established using fMRI and further proved by electrophysiology. In conclusion, it is true that some degree of inferential analysis is used in fMRI studies, but strong correlations such as the one presented by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore in this talk are reliable and should be regarded as scientific facts. BTW, fMRI is not taking pretty pictures, it is a method that allows seeing the activation of the brain rather just pictures.
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  A reply on Talk: Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain

  Sep 18 2012: I think what you did not make a note of is, that the rule of "respect if you want to be respected" has a time limit. By that I mean, it is true about children and young adolescents (as indicated in the talk), but when they become adult, the critical time when they can learn "respect" is passed. This also means that while they are at those sensitive ages, their behaviour is different from that of adults.
  
  Another point I want to make is about knowledge. Knowledge is the same thing as brain physiology. Learning and memory happens through the synapses between the neurons in various regions of the brain. When a person is exposed to a behavior (or more generally, a stimulus), the connections and synapses become stronger each time that stimulus is presented. This is how the brain stores the information it receives and will use in later in responses it makes toward its environment, or behaviour if you will.
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  A comment on Talk: Jessica Green: Are we filtering the wrong microbes?

  Apr 19 2012: The difference between the pathogens in the air conditioned rooms and the outdoor can be simply because they were sampling in an environment that has a big population of sick people. A good control would be to repeat the experiment in another public building such as a court. If in that case the same trend holds true the case might be that the effect is merely due to presence of a big number of people in a closed space, hence it might be informative to test an outdoor area with a lot of people present most of the time.
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  A comment on Talk: Shirin Neshat: Art in exile

  Mar 16 2012: She certainly points to some interesting moments in Iran's history which shapes artists and women as a whole. What I don't like is the way she talks about older generation women of Iran, as if because they were covered and silenced they were not influential and that Iranian women today are stronger and more successful. This is indeed not true in many aspects and parts of the society. Modern, educated women whole live in big cities have to deal with paradoxes in a daily basis that stops them to be creative and productive. The traditional women on the other hand have no internal fight and are at peace with their inner self. This makes them perfect as they are, perfect in who they are. As Foroogh Farokhzad once said: "I take refuge to you, the perfect simple women."