5.26.2005
Sequencing the Brain
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Naqada predynastic slipware, Egypt, 3600-3220 B.C. predates the so-called "Scorpion King."
In an era before modern methods, Sir Flinders Petrie created a method of dating human cultural eras based on relativity.
By carefully mapping the location and stylistic variation of potsherds, Petrie developed several cultural eras that predated recorded history. This analysis of voluminous amounts of raw data is akin to what we do at Cognitive Labs. We develop a snapshot of human cognition as it develops over time, based on various domains of observed reaction to scientifically developed stimuli, all engineered into a scalable archive. Indexing the data creates a search engine for human mental performance.
Classifying the data into the observed themes tells us how cognitive performance changes over time. By juxtaposing with other known information, we will discover for whom it changes over time, and why it changes over time. Indications also are that the observed cognitive decline which impacts people as they age can be at least be monitored, and in some cases influenced directly through lifestyle changes and nutritional intervention. It truly is a scale or meter for the mind, as Slate first suggested.
We also turn our attention to the ascent of cognition as we age, and optimization of cognitive performance, which turns out to have real impact on how we do things like take tests, perform as students, in theworkplace, and perform as a sentient athlete.
There is a depth and richness to optimization as well as to prolongation of cognitive performance It's no surprise that when we ran a halo competition at E3 using brainspeed.com, the champions of the competition scored very highly when compared to the population as a whole in several domains of cognitive function. Some of the same skills are required for piloting an aircraft or spacecraft.
Sequencing the ascent of cognition will be as interesting as sequencing the overall gradual decline of cognitive function associated with age. In fact, they are the two ends of the same thread, interrelated and inseparable.
Making the knowledge available to everyone can be as significant and surpassing a breakthrough as the Gutenberg press in diffusing written information. Please join us in the quest!
Petrie, Sir William Matthew Flinders [pē'trē]
Pronunciation Key
Sequence datiunguce
Petrie, Sir William Matthew Flinders , 1853–1942, English archaeologist, a noted Egyptologist. He excavated ancient remains in Britain (1875–80), Egypt (1880–1924), and Palestine (1927–38) and was (1892–1933) professor of Egyptology at University College, London. In 1894 he founded the Egyptian Research Account, which became (1905) the British School of Archaeology in Egypt. His most important excavations were at Memphis, but he made many other outstanding discoveries. Among these are the sites of Greek settlements at Naucratis (1885) and Daphnae (1886); tombs of the first dynasty at Abydos (1899); the stele of Merneptah at Thebes (1896), inscribed with the earliest known Egyptian reference to Israel;
The Israel stela - first known hieroglyphic reference to phonetic I-s-r-ll; with the reed, open mouth, bolt of cloth, double-reed symbols and the mountains identifier "of foreign nations" phoentically kh-s-wt
and ruins of 10 cities at Tel-el-Hesy (S of Jerusalem). His writings include many works on ancient Egypt, Methods and Aims in Archaeology (1904), and Seventy Years in Archaeology (1931). He edited A History of Egypt (6 vol., rev. ed. 1923–27), of which he wrote the first three volumes. A tireless and meticulous excavator, Petrie was responsible for greatly advancing the methodology of archaeology. He was particularly innovative in the interpretation of deeply stratified deposits, undertaking the seriation of undecorated pottery and demonstrating how ceramics from Egypt could be used to establish the age of archaeological strata outside Egypt, a technique known as cross-dating.
