Neuroanthropology is a collaborative weblog created to encourage exchanges among anthropology, philosophy, social theory, and the brain sciences.
We especially hope to explore the implications of new findings in the neurosciences for our understanding of culture, human development, and behaviour.
If you would like more information, please contact Greg Downey at Macquarie University gdowney (at) mq.edu.au (remove spaces).
Great stuff covering the breadth of neuroanthropology – learning, research, addiction, art and criticism, and thinking about games and game design. One immersive round-up.
Alvaro Pascual-Leone & Lotfi B. Merabet, Take Two Video Games and Call Me in the Morning
Scientific American article on how it can, with some quite context on how to think about plasticity, motivation, and virtuality.
Michael Abbott, Teach Me to Play
Great post at The Brainy Gamer about learning styles and game designs. See also his reporting from the Games for Change conference, Flashes of Light
Ben Silverman, Is Gaming Good for the Mind?
Certainly helps seniors with cognition. And it’s a commercial game, Boom Blox on the Wii.
Wanna Be An Anthropologist is hosting the 69th edition of Four Stone Hearth, rounding up the best of anthro blogging over the past two weeks.
Ordinary ethnography (with video!), paleo-Indians and summer fieldwork, dredging for Neanderthals, internet controversies, linguistic anthro grad programs and more!
Besides the growing number of anthropology blogs, there is an emerging Internet infrastructure aimed at uniting anthropologists to do better work, make connections, and have a wider impact. If you know of more, please leave a comment!
Open Anthropology Cooperative
A place to converse, connect, and make a future for anthropology. Plenty of interest groups, advice and current events. Already 800 members strong.
World Anthropologies Network
Also called La Red de Antropologías del Mundo – linking anthropologists together, particularly in the US and Latin American
Moving Anthropology Student Network
“Students and scholars from more than 80 different countries have already become members of the MASN-community.”
A great discussion on the Medical Anthropology listserve focused on good films for trance. I’ve provided the list below, complete with links to the films, extra notes in brackets, and some YouTube clips.
Joshua Moses asked:
Dear colleagues, I was wondering if people could recommend film footage of trance states of various kinds–rituals, dance, shamanic, church based etc.
The geographical region is not important. I would be grateful for you assistance. Thank you.
Michelle Ramirez (University of the Sciences in Philadelphia): There’s always the classic “Holy Ghost People” by Peter Adair, which shows folks in Appalachia (in what very much looks like trance-like states) handling snakes.
[You can also get this documentary in a series of six YouTube clips starting here; I’ve embedded below another clip that contains some of the most relevant footage]
Cognitive Daily is hosting the 72nd edition of Encephalon, the biweekly round up of mind/brain blogging. This time it’s the i-theme. Yes, Apple is hosting its World Wide Developers conference today, complete with a new iPhone.
We’ve got the iPeople app, the iPlant (imPlant…), the iSmoke, the iFit, and much more! I also found some groovy photos to liven up your day…
Here are all the student posts from this year in the order I put them up. As a group they’ve already proven popular, getting attention from a range of high-power sites and social networks. That’s great, and well-deserved!
Below I also outline how I approached this project with my students. If you want to incorporate something similar into your teaching or comparable work, feel free to use and/or adapt these guidelines. Of course any suggestions or alternative approaches are always appreciated. Leave a comment below or email me at dlende at nd dot edu
These nine posts join the eight from last year, which went from understanding brain imaging to the differences between men and women drinking on campus – those were rounded up in Why A Final Essay When We Can Do This?
This time we’ve got scintillating zigzags and surrealism, the bearded lady syndrome, language as a technology?, miocene apes (don’t you love them too?), the open anthropology collective, and more!
Also, for those of you interested, I found that smokin’ hearth at this site on the Knapdale Hearth Tax of 1694.
Welcome to Encephalon #71 – a Big Night here at Neuroanthropology, as we are hosting Encephalon for the second time (last year it was The Usual Suspects). Enjoy your multi-course mind feast!
Editor’s Selections What is this: ‘Too much’? HEY! It is never ‘too much’; it is only ‘not enough’! Bite your teeth into the ass of life and drag it to you!
For more on the 1996 film Big Night, you can see the IMDb site and Wikipedia. The quotes (with occasional slight modifications) were taken from two sources: IMDb and MovieQuotes.
