Neuroanthropology

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Archive for March, 2010

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Highlights from “Complete This Quote”

Posted by Paul Mason on March 28, 2010

“Complete This Quote” has been running for six months and it is time to wrap up the first season of fun. Thank you to everyone who participated and enjoyed this merry-making mayhem! You may like to browse through the quotes and responses that we have collected over this time. See below for some of the highlights! Feel free to add new responses to these posts. We always enjoy your creativity!

One of my personal favourites was this ending to Dr Seuss’s quote by one of our readers, Stefan:

“You have brains in your head, you have……thoughts in your brain, thoughts control actions which make us insane.”

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Wednesday Round Up #108

Posted by dlende on March 24, 2010

The tops, anthro, mind, health, and then some good stuff at the end – technology and some interesting videos.

Top of the List

Isabelle Winder, It’s Official – Fathers ARE Important to Their Childrens’ Upbringing
Going Ape provides an in-depth review of Lee Gettler’s new American Anthropologist article, “Direct male care and hominin evolution: why male-child interaction is more than just a nice social idea.”
To see the popular version, MSNBC carried the short and not quite so sweet Prehistoric Dads Helped with Child Care

Bill Moyers, Jane Goodall
Great video interview with Dr. Goodall, which explores her career with chimpanzees and her present humanitarian work

Colin Blakemore, Plasticity of the Brain: The Key to Human Development, Cognition, and Evolution
How do our genes program the complexity of our brains? The development of connections in our brains. The Royal Society’s Ferrier Lecture for 2010.

Jovan Maud, Greg Downey in The Australian
Greg gets his Australian interview, and provides his thoughts on the present course of anthropology. Commenting on his experience learning capoeira in Brazil and his research on sports and socialization, Greg also raises the problem of anthropology’s lack of public recognition.

Anthropology

Ciaran Brewster, The Incredible Shrinking Brain
Digitally scanning the inside of the Cro-Magnon skull.

Society for Linguistic Anthropology Blog, Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #2: Our Man at the Times, Ben Zimmer
A special edition of the Linguistic Anthropology Roundup to introduce Ben Zimmer, a Yale and Chicago-trained linguistic anthropologist, linguist and lexicographer, now at the New York Times

Rex, Questioning Collapse
Over at Savage Minds, the professionals take subject with Jared Diamond’s reading of their area of expertise: the Rapa Nui (Easter Island) specialist discusses Diamond’s use of the Rapa Nui data, the Incan specialist discusses Diamond on Pizzaro and Atahualpa, and so forth.

Bruce Bower, Farming’s Rise Cultivated Fair Deals
Market economies may be indebted more to cultural evolution than to Stone Age nature.

Max Liboiron, Genealogies of Garbage: Historical Meanings and Practices of Garbage and their Impacts on Trash Activism Today
The garbage crisis, yesterday and today – it’s a material world

Colin Marshall, What I Can Tell You about Interviewing After Conducting, Editing and Broadcasting 100 of Them
This week’s Marketplace of Ideas, a dialogue about the arrow of time with academic physicist Sean Carroll, marks the program’s 100th meeting. Savage Minds has a running commentary where anthropologists also offer tips.

Drake Bennett, Who’s Still Biased?
“Diversity training has swept corporate America. Just one problem: It doesn’t seem to work.”

Adam Weinberg, “Summit on Global Citizenship: Fostering Global Citizenship in Higher Education”
Get the video of Adam Weinberg, president and CEO of World Learning, giving a popular lecture at Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns

Mind

Joe Keohane, Imaginary Fiends
In 2009, crime went down. In fact it’s been going down for a decade. But more and more Americans believe it’s getting worse. Why do we refuse to believe the good news?

Mo Costandi, Brain Scans Read Memories
The concept of the memory trace, over at Neurophilosophy

Vaughan Bell, Scanning for Murder Raps
Mind Hacks on functional brain scans in court, specifically on people charged with killing people and categorized as psychopaths.

h-madness, An Interview with Jonathon Metzl
Metzl summarizes the main points of his recent book “The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease”

Neurowhoa, 700 Year Old Brain Found Preserved
And it’s rather pickled

Annie Murphy Paul, How to be Brilliant
We have a “latent talent abundance” in each of us, the author of this new book argues.

Amy Lavoie, It’s All in the Cortex
After a domestic fall out, brain activity seems to foretell resiliency

Ed Yong, Pocket Science – A Psychopath’s Reward, and the Mystery of the Shark-Bitten Fossil Poo
A tale of what goes on in the brain of psychopaths.

Jonah Lehrer, Mayan Morality
Moral scenarios are given…you be the judge of if what the person in the situation did is right or wrong around the world

h-madness, DSM-5 – Or What are You and Were They Thinking?
The DSM series – Why each new edition is worse than the last.

LiveScience Staff, Babies are Born to Dance
Babies love a beat, according to a new report that found dancing comes naturally to infants.

Jonah Lehrer, Why We Need to Dream
Why do we dream? How is it beneficial to us?

Health

Kelli Whitlock Burton, Efforts to Prevent Childhood Obesity Must Begin Early
Efforts to prevent childhood obesity should begin far earlier than presently thought, maybe even before birth

The British Psychological Society, Reminder of Disease Primes the Body and Mind to Repel Other People
When it comes to evading infection, a mounting body of facts suggests we don’t just have a physiological immune system, but a behavioral immune one as well.

Gene M. Heyman, Addiction: A Disorder of Choice
Heyman puts forth the notion that extreme drug or alcohol use is a tempting act completely beyond the user’s control, as the term “addiction” is commonly understood as, is a cop out.

Technology

Tim Hunkin, Technology Is What Makes Us Human
The author wants to argue that, “Humans are uniquely talented at ‘thinking with our hands’, and its wrong to discard ‘intuitive’ engineering as a historical curiosity.”

Brandon Keim, Your Computer Really Is a Part of You
Everyday tools become part of ourselves – at Wired Science of course

Patrick J. Deneen, Science and the Decline of the Liberal Arts
A rather more entertaining and interesting version of “science killed the humanities” argument than most, part of The New Atlantis series on higher ed

Michiko Kakutani, Texts Without Context
A review of Reality Hunger: “Mr. Shields’s pasted-together book and defense of appropriation underscore the contentious issues of copyright, intellectual property and plagiarism that have become prominent in the world.”

Josh Rose, SXSW: Life is But a Stream
“Activity Streams, Social Objects and a little glimpse into how the data that is our lifestream will grow. And soon.”

Vaughan Bell, Lords, Ladies, and Video Games
What is the probable impact of technology, such as computer gaming, on the mind?

Niall Gordon, Posthuman Lifestyles: Has the Future Arrived?
“Professor Miah’s inaugural Professorial lecture will discuss his contribution to imagining the future and critiquing the present, by outlining the successes and failures of an emerging technological culture that marks the end of humanism.”

Videos

Leblogducorps, Soumission à l’autorité
A new French reality TV series recreates Milgram’s infamous experiments. For the English review, head over to John Hawks, The dictators will be televised

Joe Brewer, How Video Games Pave the Way to Solving Global Problems
A TED video: How cognitive science is creating a revolution in the ways we think about solving problems.

Henry Barnes, My Bright Idea: Robin Dunbar
Video of Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary anthropologistspeaking with Aleks Krotoski about our social brain, its natural limits, and the nature of Facebook.

Chris Clark, Video Humor for Spring Break
Humorous YouTube videos for people on spring break to enjoy.

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Great Expectations: Plasticity of the Brain Conference

Posted by dlende on March 23, 2010


Back in February, the Danish School of Education at Aarhus University in Copenhagen hosted a fantastic looking conference, “Great Expectations: The Plasticity of the Brain and Neurosciences at the Threshold: Nature and Nurture – And Beyond…” The conference was organized by GNOSIS Research Centre – Mind and Thinking Initiative.

It had a great line-up: Steven Rose, Douglas Hofstader, Maxine Sheet-Johnson, Timothy Ingold, and a host of Danish scholars whose work we can now all expore. The three days of the conference each addressed a different theme: Brain Plasticity, Awareness and Intentionality, and Beyond Dualisms.

You can read the Introductory Statement on the conference. Here’s one paragraph from the end:

Neuroscience seems to have learned from its critics. Reductive and neurocentric positions have to give way to the ideas that the plastic brain is capable of learning for life, and that both bodily movement as well as social activity leaves clearly formed traces in the development of the brain. Whenever we pray, learn to ride a bicycle, or read a book, the brain changes. The brain is not destiny. Are there no limits, human and neurobiological, to how much we can learn and to the extent that upbringing might effect changes in the brain?

The best thing is that you can get the videos from all the talks. So here is Steven Rose on The Future of the Brain – Promises and Perils of the Neurosciences (preceed by an intro to the conference), Jesper Morgensen on Any Limits to Neuroplasticity?, and Tim Ingold on The Social Brain.

You can access the entire program and all the videos at the Great Expectations conference website.

Posted in Conferences | 2 Comments »

Complete this quote: “In collaborative research with dancers, scientists can…”

Posted by Paul Mason on March 21, 2010

Reply below and let us know how you would complete this quote:

“In collaborative research with dancers, scientists can…”

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Posted in general | 3 Comments »

St. Patty’s Hearth

Posted by dlende on March 20, 2010


Ad Hominin just hosted the anthropology carnival Four Stone Hearth, the Saint Patrick’s edition.

Ad Hominin features a new list of 100 Best Anthropology Blogs for Students from OnlineDegrees.net You can find a lot there if you’re not familiar with anthropology online.

Then you get archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology – something from all the major sub-fields, including abbeys, dispersal of early Homo, Siberian languages on the verge of extinction, and educational malpractice.

So go enjoy Four Stone Hearth #88.

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Wednesday Round Up #107

Posted by dlende on March 17, 2010

This week it’s the tops, mind, compulsions, fMRI, and anthropology. Enjoy.

Top of the List

Nicolas Baumard, Cognition and Culture Reader
Great collection of articles that cover the field of Cognition and Culture.

John Rich, Doctor Works to get Young Man out of ‘Wrong Place’
NPR show featuring the author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men. Rich explores the reasons why so many young African American men are ending up in hospitals with various injuries. He seeks to find a better life for these men.

Dan Hope, iPhone Addictive, Survey Reveals
The anthropologist Tanya Luhrman surveys Stanford students. Looks like the iPhone can be addictive. Like seriously. And the story even makes it to the always funny radio show Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me – check out the Limericks!

Elizabeth Green, Building a Better Teacher
I liked this thought-provoking piece on how to improve schools through improving teaching skills.

John Pavlus, The Science (Fiction) of Embodied Cognition
Embodied cognition demonstrated through Avatar!

Rob Nixon, Literature for Real
The draw of the real – can anthropologists learn something from creative nonfiction? For more on the fiction/nonfiction debate, head over to Blue to Blue’s Sometimes a Fantasy

Mind

Marcus Raichle, The Brain’s Dark Energy
At Scientific American, one of the main researchers on the brain’s default network explains its importance

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Finding a Voice: Establishing a Support Network for HIV+ Women

Posted by dlende on March 15, 2010

By Katie, Laura, Matt, and Claire

Diane was diagnosed with HIV at eight months old. She was infected through her mother, who was not aware that Diane’s father, her husband at the time, had HIV. He left before Diane’s mother found out that she had HIV and that she had passed it on to her newborn daughter.

Infected with HIV for her entire life, Diane “acts like she doesn’t have it” and “tries to go on with her life” even though she thinks about it everyday.

HIV has had a huge impact throughout Diane’s (a pseudonym) twenty-one years of life. One summer she was given just months to live, and her family, doubtful she would live until December, celebrated Christmas in July. She has survived several health scares, and although her health is currently not great, it is improving as her new medication begins to bring her viral load under control.

The Challenges of Being HIV-Positive… and a Woman

HIV-positive women cope with their disease in ways that are strikingly different from HIV-positive men. Women’s roles as caregivers, mothers, wives, and daughters make their experiences with HIV unique. These roles shape how much they are willing to deal with the disease on a daily basis as many women put the needs of their children and families before their own. Furthermore, their identities as caregivers may conflict with their identities as recipients of care that their HIV status necessitates. Consequently, these women, many of whom are in difficult socioeconomic situations, may not seek the support they need.

To help these women, last year a group of students helped to establish a much-needed HIV/AIDS women’s support group in our Midwestern city (see their post, Just A Place to Talk: Women & HIV/AIDS). It was a success initially. However, the student who helped facilitate the support group moved away this summer, and the support group lost its impetus.

This year our community-based research project explored why women stopped attending the support group, women’s interest in participating in a new support group, and how to develop a support network that addresses the many needs of HIV-positive women. The two most important lessons we learned this semester include the importance of emotional support and the value of resources, such as transportation and childcare, that enable these women to care for themselves and their families while living with HIV.

Seeking Solidarity and Support

Several women expressed a desire to learn from others who are willing to share their experiences with HIV. They think that sharing their stories with other HIV-positive women will lessen feelings of isolation and better equip these women to handle the burdens of the illness. As Joyce, who has been HIV-positive for twelve years, reported, she is interested in the group because she “wants to feel supported.”

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Posted in Applied Anthropology, Medical anthropology | 2 Comments »

Complete this quote: “From a systems standpoint, what cities are doing is…”

Posted by Paul Mason on March 14, 2010

Do you ever think about urban populations in terms of sustainability, Complex systems analysis or Resilience theory? Do you ever think of human communities in terms of Dunbar’s Number, cognitive health or overpopulation? Okay, before I overwhelm you: Free your mind. Reply below and let us know how you would complete the following quote:

“From a systems standpoint, what cities are doing is…”

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Posted in general | 5 Comments »

“We Pregame Harder Than You Party!”

Posted by dlende on March 12, 2010

By Annette Esquibel, Thomas Mumford, and Jocelyn Rausch

“Why do I pregame?” The third year American History student repeated our question with a bit of sarcasm in his voice. He put down his textbook and then delivered his jovial response:

“Why wouldn’t I pregame?! It makes everything better- bars, parties, dances, football, class, work…”

This is the pregaming mentality expressed by a current undergrad at our mid-Western university. This mentality can be summarized: if you have to go to something, why not be buzzed when you do it?

Across the country, on any given weekend night, college students are often consuming four or five, sometimes even 10 drinks, before they even make it out of their dorm room for a night of partying, the dorm dance, or even the latest sports event.

They consume what many medical professionals construe as dangerous, sometimes lethal, amounts of alcohol in a short period of time. Then students often find themselves passing out, throwing up and even being taken to the hospital. And that’s before they even make it to the party.

From an outsider’s point of view, this may not sound like a lot of fun. For college students, pregaming is often the best part of the night. Our question as student researchers was, Why?

Our Research

Due to the recent emergence of pregaming, little is known about the mentality behind it. Working with the university group in charge of helping to prevent and treat alcohol abuse, we aimed to understand the social and cultural bases for high-risk drinking and pregaming. Previous student research on pregaming focused on gender differences, and can be found in the post “College Drinking: Battle of the Sexes?”

The statistics were already clear for the university office in charge of alcohol education and prevention – almost 80% of students who have gotten in trouble for alcohol-related events were pregaming on the night of the incident. Counselors there feared that the high-risk drinking habit of pregaming has become synonymous with students social lives.

Our project aimed at both understanding students’ general attitude towards pregaming as well as why students stop drinking on a given night. These questions could offer insight and clues to effective handling of the problem of pregaming by students and the university alike.

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Posted in Addiction, Applied Anthropology, Medical anthropology | 8 Comments »

Obesity Meets Family Medicine

Posted by dlende on March 11, 2010

By Kelsey Hitchcock, Anna Pavlov, Ryan Shay, John Villecco and Sara Yusko

For several hours we talked about obesity with the resident doctors at the local family clinic. After covering the typical recommendations for losing weight, such as eating healthy and increasing exercise, Dr. B informed us of the most practical treatment method they use. “I usually ask the patient to complete a food journal.”

According to Dr. B and the other residents, a journal can provide concrete evidence of successes and areas in which adolescents could improve their diets. So we asked about the success of such an assignment. Dr. B chuckled and said, “I’ve never had a patient complete a food journal.”

As soon as he said this, two other doctors in the room added their own experiences. One echoed Dr. B’s statements, and the other told his one and only success story:

“The patient was fourteen years old. He didn’t like how big he was becoming and decided to play sports. After he started playing sports he lost thirty pounds.”

As we explored the issue of adolescent obesity within our community, we found that while the recommendations for losing weight may appear simple, successful results were not easily obtained. Our goal was to better understand the prevalence and treatment of adolescent obesity through patient observation and interviews with resident doctors in this mid-Western city.

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Posted in Applied Anthropology, Food & Eating | 5 Comments »

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