Yasemin Saplakoglu

New York

Biology Writer at Quanta Magazine

Biology writer @QuantaMagazine. Writes tweet, laughs to self, deletes. @UCSC_scicom & @UConn Alum

Articles

Intelligence on Earth Evolved Independently at Least Twice

4 days ago | technewstube.com | Yasemin Saplakoglu

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Intelligence on Earth Evolved Independently at Least Twice

4 days ago | wired.com | Yasemin Saplakoglu

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Humans tend to put our own intelligence on a pedestal. Our brains can do math, employ logic, explore abstractions, and think critically. But we can’t claim a monopoly on thought. Among a variety of nonhuman species known to display intelligent behavior, birds have been shown time and again to have advanced cognitive abilities.
Intelligence on Earth Evolved Independently at Least Twice

4 days ago | flipboard.com | Yasemin Saplakoglu

In Their Final Moments, a Pompeii Family Fought to SurviveArchaeologists unearthed skeletal remains of four people in a well-appointed Roman home, along with signs of their efforts to outlast the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. One day in the year 79, Pompeii came under fire. The explosion of nearby Mount Vesuvius sent a mushroom cloud of ash and rock into the …
AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That’s OK

2 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Yasemin Saplakoglu

9 hours agoGoogle’s NotebookLM Audio Feature Now Supports Over 50 LanguagesGoogle on Tuesday announced that NotebookLM has expanded its Audio Overviews feature to support over 50 languages. Launched in September last year, …2 hours agoElizabeth Warren asks Jeff Bezos if he got any favors for his ‘subservience’ to TrumpWarren asks Jeff Bezos whether his phone call with President Donald Trump changed Amazon’s plans to show the cost of tariffs.
AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That’s OK

2 weeks ago | quantamagazine.org | Yasemin Saplakoglu

These processes are all running across various scales, from single neurons to local networks to networks that span the entire brain and even the entire body. The ever-shifting dynamics of the nervous system are made possible by neuromodulators, a subset of neurotransmitters that are slower acting and diffused more broadly across brain regions. They are “the master switches in the brain,” according to Srikanth Ramaswamy, the head of the neural circuits lab at Newcastle University.
Touch, Our Most Complex Sense, Is a Landscape of Cellular Sensors

4 weeks ago | quantamagazine.org | Ariel Bleicher |Yasemin Saplakoglu |Veronique Greenwood |Viviane Callier

Like many proud parents, David Ginty has decorated his office with pictures of his genetic creations. There’s the prickly one sporting a spiked collar and the wannabe cowboy twirling a lasso. There’s the dramatic one, always reacting to the slightest provocation; the observant one that notices every detail; the golden child Ginty loves to boast about. “They’re like a family,” he said.
Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals

1 month ago | quantamagazine.org | Yasemin Saplakoglu

The findings emerge in a world enraptured by artificial forms of intelligence, and they could teach us something about how complex circuits in our own brains evolved. Perhaps most importantly, they could help us step “away from the idea that we are the best creatures in the world,” said Niklas Kempynck, a graduate student at KU Leuven who led one of the studies. “We are not this optimal solution to intelligence.”Birds got there too, on their own.
O que neurônios 'Jennifer Aniston' explicam sobre como o cérebro guarda as memórias

2 months ago | terra.com.br | Yasemin Saplakoglu

Imagine que você está no primeiro encontro com um cara, tomando um martini no bar. Você come uma azeitona e pacientemente o escuta falar sobre seu trabalho no banco. Seu cérebro processa essa cena dividindo todas essas coisas em conceitos. Bar. Encontro. Martini. Azeitona. Banco. No fundo do seu cérebro, neurônios conhecidos como células conceituais estão trabalhando a todo vapor. Você pode ter células conceituais que disparam para martinis, mas não para azeitonas.
O que neurônios ‘Jennifer Aniston’ explicam sobre como o cérebro guarda as memórias

2 months ago | estadao.com.br | Yasemin Saplakoglu

Imagine que você está no primeiro encontro com um cara, tomando um martini no bar. Você come uma azeitona e pacientemente o escuta falar sobre seu trabalho no banco. Seu cérebro processa essa cena dividindo todas essas coisas em conceitos. Bar. Encontro. Martini. Azeitona. Banco. No fundo do seu cérebro, neurônios conhecidos como células conceituais estão trabalhando a todo vapor. Você pode ter células conceituais que disparam para martinis, mas não para azeitonas.
How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our Personal Memories

2 months ago | quantamagazine.org | Ingrid Wickelgren |Asher Elbein |Yasemin Saplakoglu

Introduction After shuffling the cards in a standard 52-card deck, Alex Mullen, a three-time world memory champion, can memorize their order in under 20 seconds. As he flips though the cards, he takes a mental walk through a house. At each point in his journey — the mailbox, front door, staircase and so on — he attaches a card. To recall the cards, he relives the trip.