INDIA, September 10, 2008: This site features a short film by Pia Scov on the conversion tactics of Christian missionary groups in India. Catholics, Protestants, and groups masquerading as Christian to further their own ends are the main abusers. With promises of money, healing and advantages these groups prey on the illiteracy, poverty and innocence of villagers to convert them from their Hindu faith.
Remembering The Past Is Just Like Reliving It, Scientists Say
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/science/05brain.html?_r=1
USA, September 4, 2008: Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it. The recordings, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing.
This is what I would call a foundational finding, said Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research. Its a really central piece of the memory puzzle and an important step in helping us fill in the detail of what exactly is happening when the brain performs this mental time travel of summoning past experiences.
In the study, a team of American and Israeli researchers threaded tiny electrodes into the brains of 13 people. The patients watched a series of 5- to 10-second film clips, some from popular television shows and others depicting animals or landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. The researchers recorded the firing activity of about 100 neurons per person. In each person, the researchers identified single cells that became highly active during some videos and quiet during others. More than half the recorded cells hummed with activity in response to at least one film clip; many of them also responded weakly to others. After briefly distracting the patients, the researchers then asked them to think about the clips for a minute and to report what comes to mind. When they recalled a specific one, the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the memory to come.