TopLinks: Brain/Mind/Perception

83 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/index.html
This web site offers an array of interactive optical illusions.

A Conversation with Temple Grandin
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5165123
In this NPR broadcast, Temple Grandin discusses how her autism effects her work as an animal scientist

Anamorphic art
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16197-anamorphic-art/
New Scientist presents a gallery of anamorphic art.

Autism Speaks
http://www.autismspeaks.org/index.php
The web site of Autism Speaks, the nation’s largest autism advocacy orgainzation, features information and news updates about autism, details about how the organization is promoting scientific research, and ways to get involved in their causes.

Cognitive Daily
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/
This blog offers almost-daily updates on cutting edge research in cognitive science, digested for the non-academic reader.

Consciousness
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
This Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry briefly outlines the history of attempts to explain consciousness and then explains succinctly the many different problems discussed and positions held by contemporary philosophers.

Dan Dennett on our consciousness
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness.html
In this TED (Technology, Entertainment, Development) talk, philosopher Daniel Dennett explores perception and shows how our brain tricks us.

Daniel Schacter's web site
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dsweb/links.html
Psychologist Daniel Schacter’s web page features some useful links to resources on cognitive science and psychology across the web.

David Chalmers's Online Papers on Consciousness
http://consc.net/online/
Philosopher David Chalmers is famous for offering a rigorous defense of dualism in his 1997 book The Conscious Mind. His web site is a treasure-trove aggregator of information on philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Among the features that may be of most interest to readers are “Web Resources,” a substantial list of links to academic resources on philosophy of mind and cognitive science; “Guide to the Philosophy of Mind,” which collects all the philosophy of mind entries in the (free, online) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; and “Zombies on the Web,” a deceptively lighthearted look at the conscious-less denizens of innumerable thought experiments, complete with links to papers and other resources.

Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
In this TED (Technology, Entertainment, Development) talk, Jill Bolte Taylor talks about her book My Stroke of Insight and explains to listeners what it felt like, from the perspective of a brain scientist, to have a stroke.

Memory, Invention, and the Writer's Search for Immortality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atcxCzxtFz0
The Philoctetes Center, an organization dedicated to furthering the interdisciplinary study of the imagination, sponsors roundtable discussions on a variety of topics from literature to science to intellectual history. In this roundtable Patricia Hampl, Anne Golomb Hoffman (moderator), Arthur Phillips, Matthew von Unwerth discuss the roles of memory and imagination in writing.

National Headache Foundation
http://www.headaches.org/
The web site of the National Headache Foundation features a wealth of information about headaches.

Oliver Sacks's web site
http://www.oliversacks.com/
The "Resources" section of renowned neurologist and author Olvier Sacks’s web site contains a wealth of links to resources covering the wide array of Dr. Sacks’s interests—neurology, autism, hearing, botany, chemistry, and more. You can also find news updates and background information about Sacks, including audio, video, and print interviews.

Qualia
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
This Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry explains the term “qualia,” that je ne sais quoi of conscious experience, and why it is extremely controversial.

Steven Pinker chalks it up to the blank slate
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_blank_slate.html
In this TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talk, Harvard’s Steven Pinker presents some reasons to doubt that the mind is a blank slate, as argued in his book The Blank Slate, and discusses controversies surrounding his conclusions.

The Frontal Cortex
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/
Jonah Lehrer’s blog features commentary on psychology and neuroscience in relation to politics and popular culture.

The Neurocritic
http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/
“The Neurocritic” subjects the latest findings in brain imaging, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopharmacology to the utmost scrutiny.

The Official M. C. Escher web site
http://www.mcescher.com/
The official web site of the late M. C. Escher includes galleries of his famously mind-bending art.