Tag: brain

Experiencing Digital Culture KCL 7th March

Experiencing Digital Culture

Anatomy Lecture Theatre

6th Floor, King’s Building, King’s College London

Strand, WC2R 2LS

7th March, 2017

7-9pm

 

Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson’s work has threaded its way through the digital cultures field by means of a series of radical interventions, drawing on such concepts as anomalies, accidents, assemblages, contagions, events, nonrepresentation, affect and neuroculture, in order to critically rethink how the power of the digital age is experienced and embodied.

In this discussion the two theorists follow some of these fibrous conceptual strands as they intersect and overlap with each other in two recent publications: the new revised edition of Parikka’s landmark Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses (Peter Lang, 2016) and Sampson’s new book, The Assemblage Brain: Sense Making in Neuroculture (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).

The discussion will be followed by a joint book launch and drinks in the Somerset Café.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/experiencing-digital-culture-tickets-31933122830

Cat parasite toxoplasma impacts GABA transmission

Cat parasite toxoplasma uses ‘Trojan horse’ to infect human brain and may cause suicidal thoughts and risk-taking…vesalius

A nice article in the Independent today about research into toxoplasma, which can manipulate, it seems, GABA neurotransmitters – GABA being an inhibitor of the action potential as opposed to glutamate, for example, which is an excitatory transmission. So in effect, the virus could, potentially, influence behaviour in a similar way to neuropharmaceuticals (benzodiazapenes e.g.) or drugs like liquid ecstasy or GHB. Makes cat shit slightly more appealing perhaps. But only potentially…

Read on