This week it’s simple – top picks, the brain, and anthropology.

Top of the List

Mo Constandi, Brain’s Response to Fear Is Culture-Specific
Neurophilosophy covers research by Joan Chiao on the differing fear reactions of Americans and Japanese—facial expressions and amygdala reactions unite! Or rather, you fear what you know…

Women in Science, Open Laboratory 2008 Submissions
The best of 2008 science blogging either written by women or relevant to women.

Sean Malin, Itsy Bitsy Auctions
You too can bid on bats! Well, bat names. And check out more from this ND student’s blog, Open Economics. I did, and found this post on David Harvey, an author whose work I admire, as well as entire lecture by Harvey on The Enigma of Capital

Neuronarrative & Ars Psychiatrica
My two new favorite blogs. Just recently Neuronarrative has an interview with Jonah Lehrer on art, neuroscience and decision making; the post Brains Run Better Unleaded on lead poisoning and IQ loss, and the joy of doubt with the writer Jennifer Michael Hecht

At Ars Psychiatrica we find On Psychiatric Overdiagnosis, on psychiatry’s losing its way through its “war on mental illness” approach; an eclectic year in music; Joni Mitchell, Wallace Stevens, and theories of the early earth; and Lugubrious Lucubrations on intriguing parallels between psychiatrists and pain specialists.

Brain

Sean Mackey, The Science of Pain
Podcast over at Scientific American from the Stanford expert

Alvaro Fernandez, Training Attention and Emotional Self-Regulation – Interview with Michael Posner
The professor of neuroscience gives his insights over at Sharp Brains: attention matters!

Natalie Angier, Primal, Acute and Easily Duped: Our Sense of Touch
Haptics? That’s what neuroscientists like to call it

Robert Roy Britt, Is Einstein the Last Great Genius?
Institutional research or individual genius – finding a balance

Lauran Neergaard, Brain-injured Troops Face Unclear Long-term Risks
Traumatic brain injury is the “signature injury of the Iraq war” – how will blast-induced trauma effect soldiers over the long-haul?

Associated Press, Technology May Be Altering How Brains Work
More angst about what we are doing to ourselves

Babel’s Dawn, Testing Two Theories
Cause-and-effect, generative grammar, and brain lateralization

Embodied Talk, Shr-?
So is shr-, as in shrew, shrimp, and shrug, an example of sound symbolism, both linguistic and psychologically real?

Anthropology

Vaughan Bell, Does Going to Mecca Make Muslims More Moderate?
Some cleverly designed research says the answer is yes!

Atomic Entropy, Seething
“Women’s Rights are an essential Family Value”

Ethnografix, Memory
The visual anthro-oriented blog discusses memory, meaning making, and images. For more, check our The Visual and the Anthropological, plus a great image from found film in an old camera

Suzanne Vega, Which Side Are You On?
The songwriter and musician reflects on her mixed ancestry

The Memory Bank, Economic Revolutions Are Always Monetary
Mauss, Polayni and the relevance of anthropology to the present financial crisis

Richard Doner, Thai Politics from an Economic Perspective
Economics leads to politics, in this case instability to even more instability

e-Discovery, What the World Was Searching for in 2007
Searches from Google in 2007: “The results provide an important glimpse into evolving world culture and language.”

Nicholas Humphrey, The View from Afar
The further away you think yourself from something, the more likely you are to categorize it in an abstract or holistic way.

Vaughan Bell, Happiness Ripples through Social Networks
A great study on how friends of friends can even make us happy

Dave Snowden, The Major Obstacle to the Adoption of Social Computing
It’s not participation, it’s the IT department! Lots of great commentary on this one.

Michael Balter, The Long Road to Modernity
Cultural evolution has often been thought of as a Big Bang starting roughly fifty thousand years ago. Accumulating evidence and new dating points to a long-and-slow interpretation over the past 250,000 years, with a focus on Middle Stone Age tools.