Extended Mind

Andy Clark, Natural Born Cyborgs?
The noted philosopher of mind delivers his Edge piece on the extended mind, embodiment, and technology

Paul Rabinow & Gaymon Bennett, A Diagnostic of Equipmental Platforms
Working Paper #9 of ARC: Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaborative.
The paper, through focusing on “equipment” (what mediates method and technology), aims to “bring the biosciences and the human sciences into a mutually collaborative and enriching relationship.”

Lambros Malafouris, The Cognitive Basis of Material Engagement: Where Body, Brain and Culture Conflate
Neuroarchaeologist on cognition, brain and material culture

Taede Smedes, Review – Mind in Life
A philosopher gives his take on Evan Thompson’s massive new book, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of the Mind

M. Wheeler, Final Report – The Interactive Mind: A Series of AHRC Workshops
The Arts and Humanities Research Council sponsored a series of meetings on the interactive mind. This final report, while also filled with technical information about the meetings themselves, contains a nice summary of the major cross-disciplinary themes of the workshop. A good guideline to how to think about the extended mind.

Tim Ingold, Culture from the Ground: Walking, Movement and Placemaking
Homesite for this integrative project. The research is now out as a new book, Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot.

Andy Clark and David Chalmers, The Extended Mind
Online paper that lays out the case for “active externalism”

Theresa Sheft, Reading Notes for Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”
Background and summary to the iconic essay, which you can read in full here

Robert Logan, The Extended Mind Model of the Origins of Language and Culture
How the extended mind relates to hominid evolution, particularly the emergence of language and culture. For more from Logan, see his website.

Robin Prior, Extending the Extended Mind
Past, present and future of the extended mind – a worthwhile MA thesis. For the summary and lots of useful links, see Prior’s site.

Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, The Bounds of Cognition
Recent book that critiques embodied cognition and the extended mind. For the book summarized into a paper, check out their online essay, Why the Mind Is Still in the Head.

Brain

Mind Hacks, The Best Is Yet to Come: Reward Prediction in the Brain
Computation, dopamine and the reward model considered

Neurophilosophy, The Eye Tells the Brain When to Plasticize
A great post on plasticity in the visual cortex

Alvaro Fernandez, Can Google Kill Neurons and Rewire Your Whole Brain?
A good reaction at Sharp Brains to the neuro-lite The Atlantic Monthly article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Ginger Campbell, Alice Gaby Talks about Linguistics
Another great podcast: “Dr. Gaby is a linguist who studies the role of language in cognition as well as the aboriginal languages of Australia. In this episode Dr. Gaby introduces some of the basic areas of linguistics. We also talk about why linguistics is important to understanding brain function, as well as the importance of interdisciplinary communication to advancement in both fields.”

Doctor Spurt, Neural Encoding of the Concept of Nest in Mice
Not quite culture, but it’s a start…

Anthropology

Neurophilosophy, Cannibalism and the Shaking Death
Mo covers kuru, including film clip of the Fore and the neuropathology behind kuru. For more on the anthropology, see the famous anthropology book Kuru Sorcery.

LL Wynn, The Disciplinary Terrain of Objections to HTS
Are only anthropologists deeply concerned by Human Terrain Systems? Plenty of reader debate over at Culture Matters

John Jackson Jr., Anthropology: The Softest Social Science?
Why the present dismissal of anthropology? Thoughts on method and theory and intellectual status

Teaching Anthropology, What Being an Anthropologist Means to Me: Apparently, It Means a Long Post
A nice reflection on being an anthropologist and why. Savage Minds also had a recent discussion with Anthropology as Personal Transformation.

Reihan Salam, Eclecticism and Class
Sets of references, cultural omnivorousness, and exclusion. Reihan highlights one reader’s comments on public identity here. David Brooks featured this blog in his related op-ed Lord of the Memes.

Evolution

John Hawks, Complete Neandertal Mitochondrial Sequence, and Selection on Human (not Neandertal) mtDNA
Great overview and consideration of recent research on the first complete sequence of Neandertal mtDNA and what that tells us about human evolution

Aaron Rowe, Semen Proteomics Sheds some Light on Loyalty and Evolution
Male flies not only get it on but keep it on with some hormonally active peptides in their semen

PZ Myers, The Genius of Darwin
Nice video clip of Richard Dawkins speaking of Charles Darwin and the theory of natural selection

Nathan Schneider, Despite Overwhelming Evidence, Creationists Cling to Unreality
Creationism as an American institution

John Skoyles, What I Believe But Can’t Prove
“humans beings alone however have discovered the advantages of off-loading much of the responsibility for managing their sickness behaviors to other people; the result is that for human beings the very nature of illness has changed—human illness is now largely a social phenomenon.”

Ed Yong, The Fiery Taste of Chillies is a Defence against a Fungus
Nice summary of plant-parasite dynamics

General

John Hawks, How to Blog, Get Tenure and Prosper: A Very Useful Engine
#2 in the series, this one on how blogging can and cannot help your academic career

TEDBlog, 100 Websites You Should Know and Use
If you are rich and famous and want to be an intellectual player

David Michaels, It’s Not the Answers that Are Biased, It’s the Questions
“If Two Similar Studies Completely Disagree, Look at How the Funders Framed the Issue”

James Randerson, Science Weekly: Magic, The Brain, and Doping at the Olympics
Great podcast over at the Guardian Weekly

Mary Roach, Slow Moving Vehicle
Review of the new book Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us).

Obesity

Olivia Judson, Honey, I Plumped the Kids
Obesity during pregnancy, and its possible effects on the baby

Swivel Chair, Obesity Research Update: Ramping Up Your Metabolism without Getting off the Couch
Some fun speculation