Month: July 2008

Letter from Ashwin about studying ‘neuroanthropology’

One of our readers, Ashwin, who’s completing his PhD at UCSD posted the following letter on one of our earlier pieces, Where to study neuroanthropology? (it’s response #5), and I thought I should move it up to the front page and make a few comments. It was quite thoughtful and touched on topics that extended beyond merely the issue of where a person might do a PhD in ‘neuroanthropology,’ which really doesn’t exist as a recognized specialization, not only because it is new but also because of certain blind spots in contemporary cultural anthropology. First, I let Ashwin do the talking (and thanks very much for the letter):

My two cents on this query is that as important than what a department looks like on paper/website, past reputation, is to contact faculty to inquire how feasible integrated work will be and will be tolerated.

I am finishing up my PhD in Anthropology and Cognitive Science at UCSD. Ed Hutchins and Tom Csodas (both mentioned above [ed note: see previous post]) are on my committee. Even though I am doing an interdisciplinary degree through an institutionalized mechanism it does not mean that everyone in either department is supportive or even understands what it is I am up to. There is a lot of buzz about interdisciplinary research these days, but persons like me still run up against a lot of traditional disciplinary boundaries/stigmas/epistemological insecurities.
Unfortunately, mainstream (cultural) anthropology still has its head in the sand.
My own experience is that there are still disciplinary dues to be paid, gods to be worshipped, whatever. So it pays to be resilient and fairly clear of intent.
Just something to look out for.

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Wednesday Round Up #20

Brain Health and Illness

Ed Yong, Is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Caused by a Serotonin Imbalance?
Mice with SIDS, extra serotonin, and environmental stress—a deadly package. Good take from Ed. To see the media’s coverage, here’s a short piece from Yahoo.

John Grohol, Surprise! Mental Health Parity Is Inexpensive
Results in from Massachusetts. Matching the coverage of physical health is very affordable

Alvaro at Sharp Brains, A Multi-Pronged Approach to Brain Health
Interview with Dr. Larry McClearly. Not McDreamy, but he does know his “brain health public education” and what you need to do to keep that brain running smoothly

Alvaro at Sharp Brains, Brain Evolution and Why It Is Meaningful Today to Improve Our Brain Health
The evolutionary rationale for why McDreamy, I mean McClearly, is right

Jonah Lehrer, How Prozac Really Works
“Prozac is simply a bottled version of other activities that have a similar effect, such as physical exercise. They aren’t happy pills, but healing pills.”

Anne Harding, Study Uncovers How Ritalin Works in the Brain
“when groups of neurons in the prefrontal cortex were working in well-organized networks, the small doses of Ritalin enhanced this activity, but suppressed the activity of less organized networks”

Vaughan Bell, Mental Illness: In with the Intron Crowd
The genetics of mental illness from a big, new Nature paper

Shrink Rap, Sunday Morning Coffee Links
One psychiatrist’s round up of the blogosphere—plenty of cool stuff

Tara Parker-Pope, Dance Even If Nobody Is Watching
Dancing helps with depression, anxiety and Parkinson’s—plus the Matt Harding worldwide dance video

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Michael Wesch and Media Literacy

Michael Wesch is an anthropologist who focuses on digital ethnography, student learning, and how new media and technology are changing the way we interact with each other and the world. He has a new lecture covering Media Literacy, an hour from a “master teacher” as one review says. So enjoy:

The hattip goes to Savage Minds. For more on Wesch, we featured his two most famous videos back in April in Digital Ethnography. He also has his own YouTube channel now and an academic website Mediated Cultures covering his and his students’ work. Wired even gave him a Rave Award in 2007, supplemented by lots of video snippets from him talking with Wired.

Mirror neurons: shameless plug redux & publishing regrets

Natinho teaches a capoeira classI’m pleased that a piece I put together on coaching and physical education has appeared in the most recent edition of American Anthropologist. Entitled, Scaffolding Imitation in Capoeira: Physical Education and Enculturation in an Afro-Brazilian Art, it’s behind a subscription wall (sorry about that).

The article is part of my continuing attempt to understand the relation of mirror neurons to actual patterns of imitative cultural learning. The effort is pretty unambitious in comparison to some of the more sweeping declarations about mirror neurons, that they explain all sorts of human capacities. That is, I think some of the discussion of mirror neurons has sped on ahead of both the research and other studies of imitation, including its limitations and odd quirks, to declare that mirror neurons explain all sorts of human abilities. By focusing specifically on a setting where imitation clearly is in play — mimetic learning — I hope to create a model of brain, behaviour, interaction, and even ideology all in interplay to create ability in the individual actor.

Mirror neurons alone do not explain humans’ prodigious abilities in imitative learning; the macaques that first offered evidence of mirror neurons to the University of Parma team do not learn well through imitation. So we can’t just explain enculturation through imitation in humans by reference to mirror neurons. There’s got to be more to the story than mirror neurons. So to think about that, I’m looking specifically at motor learning in capoeira, my original ethnographic study, and am now moving to work on rugby coaching (if I can get some research support).

What I’m thinking is that this careful neuroanthropological modeling of enculturation will likely undermine certain accounts of what culture itself could be. That is, studying how we get encultured will demonstrate limits on what can be learned, how, and under what circumstances.

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Culture and Cognition Workshop in Bristol, UK

Francisco Varela (1946-2001)
Francesco Varela (1946-2001)
Fred Cummins of University College Dublin contacted me to give me a head’s up on a workshop that looks pretty good, covering some of the same topics that we look at here at Neuroanthropology.

The workshop is ‘Cognition and Culture: an enactive view,’ and will especially explore the legacy of Humberto Maturana and Francesco Varela. The meeting organizers explain that they seek to ‘develop a robust vocabulary and set of concepts that are capable of sustaining dialogue between researchers in cognitive systems, cognitive science, arts, media, and culture by using the insights and approaches of the enactive approach to cognition.’

Chilean biologists Maturana and Varela wrote a couple of books together, but they are probably best known for the concept of autopoeisis and the book, Tree of Knowledge. Varela also did work on the embodied mind and directly contributed to some of the current neurosciences research on Buddhist monks (such as the Mind and Life Institute, which Varela helped to found); he passed away in 2001, leaving a very rich legacy (see his ‘focus file’ here). Varela, and his mentor Maturana, were both biologists with philosophical inclinations, doing quite a bit to encourage the study of phenomenology in biology and the embodied nature of the brain. Varela did some early brain imaging research, linking observed changes to perceptions. Although there are some parts of his thinking that we at Neuroanthropology might seek to expand and transform, Varela was a giant in the move to create a synthetic brain science that bridged the gap between biological and sociocultural or psychological research.

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