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).
I posted some oldies but goodies from Greg a few weeks back when we hit 100,000. So now it’s my turn, even though we’re already at 120,000. The start of the semester has been busy!
These are posts when we were just getting started, and haven’t seen as much love as some more recent or more popular ones. My new student assistant Erin Brennan helped me pick them out, so many thanks to her.
Well not that old, but I thought I might highlight some posts from our early days when our daily visits were pretty low. These posts deserve some attention alongside the top ten I posted on Sunday.
Today I will cover Greg’s posts. I’ve decided to split the posts into three themes: (1) work that comes out of Greg’s main research interests in perception, sport, and skilled activity; (2) his critical takes on ideas of “innateness” (whether in neuroscience or in evolutionary psychology); and (3) his anthropological examination and reflection of recent mind/brain research.
ARC is the Anthropology of Contemporary Research Consortium, focusing on the “human sciences” with the aim “to develop techniques of collaboration, modes of communication, and tools of inquiry appropriate to an anthropology of the contemporary.”
ARC also has a collection of on-line “concept” papers, alongside working papers and web documents within each project. Chris Kelty, one of the directors of ARC, also posts on Savage Minds and wrote recently that “ARC Seeks Passengers and Drivers.” So check that out.
BIOS is the “international centre for research and policy on social aspects of the life sciences and biomedicine.” As another consortium, they have a wide-ranging set of research themes including biopolitics, neuroscience and society, and biomedicine and identity.
There is also a podcast available, “Beyond the Genome: the Challenge of Synthetic Biology“, based on a distinguished panel discussion on “Synthetic biology is heralded as the next frontier. But what is synthetic biology and how do we imagine its future directions?”
Channel N has the latest edition of Encephalon up, and it’s quite a collection of neuroscience and mind-related materials. I also want to plug Channel N–a great resource for brain-related videos!
As befits the site, there is a video theme to this Encephalon, with a Steven Pinker intro, Bjoern Brembs covering spontaneous behavior (in drosophila), Jonathan Haidt on morality and happiness, Laura Collins on anorexia, The Karen Carpenter Story (also anorexia), Albert Bandura and social aggression, and a sleep walking robot all featured onsite!
Also to note, we will be hosting the next Encephalon on June 23rd, so please send in your submissions to encephalon dot host @ gmail dot com before then!
Back in January we discussed the trolley problem when considering Pinker’s proposal for a moral instinct. But here’s a much funnier take on the whole issue! (Click on the image to make it larger if you can’t read the small lettering.)
The hat tip goes to the very cool Bioephemera, or biology + art (also see the old version here for more art & biology). That led me to Saint Gasoline, or a fine mixture of intellectualism and fart jokes, and their discussion of the trolley problem.
We’re young and still experiencing some growing pains, but we’ve gone ahead and gotten our own domain. So if you’re reading this, hopefully you’ve notice that we’re now neuroanthropology.net. WordPress is still hosting the site, but we think that the new address will help us to continue to grow ourselves as a site for exploring the many intersections between anthropology and the brain sciences.
Talking it out has long been considered essential to recovering from a trauma. But new research shows that expressing one’s thoughts and feelings after a traumatic event is not necessary for long-term emotional and physical health, a finding that could change the way institutions devote money and resources to mental health services following collective traumas.
The research looked at the effects of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and found that ‘individuals who communicated their thoughts and feelings about the attacks reported more physical health problems and emotional distress over time, even after controlling for exposure to and distance from the attacks.’
What I appreciated about the release though is that Silver didn’t feel the need to propose that a uniform therapy form need replace the current orthodoxy. That is, she simply acknowledges that people are different, and that different coping and recovery techniques might work for various people. I found the lack of one-solution-fits-all rhetoric pretty appealing. Certainly, we find in different cultures that people cope in a variety of ways; imposing therapeutic techniques, rather than just creating or offering therapeutic opportunities, often is counterproductive.
One of our readers, Fiona King, sent a link to me for the page, Brain Power: 100 Ways to Keep Your Mind Healthy and Fit, by Alisa Miller. Usually, when I get this stuff, it’s someone trying to sell something, like ‘brain health’ online programs or tapes or something, but this list looks legit, and it’s not trying to plug some product (well, there’s some kind words for chai and avocado, for example, and some mild criticism of the blogger’s fuel of choice: caffeine).
The page is provided by the Online Education Database, which appears to be a network of online educational resources.
Thanks to Fiona for providing it, although the anthropologist in me is still squeamish with the notion of ‘brain health.’ I still think that it often encourages an idea that there is a ‘best way’ to have a brain, when, in fact, there are a number of ways that brains are grown, and they likely all have mixed ‘health’ consequences. But I’ll write more on that some other time…
