Keeping it simple – the top, anthro and mind.
Top of the List
Dana Foundation, Cerebrum 2009: Emerging Ideas in Brain Science
Get a wealth of online articles from some of the top names in the field
David DiSalvo, I Must Be Guilty – the Video Says So
Like the Stanford Prison, except we make ourselves guilty through indirect manipulations by others (in this case, researchers). Sounds like the world we live in: the media says so…
Gillian Tett, Eliminate Financial Double Think
Tett has a PhD in social anth and writes for the Financial Times – a heady combination! Check out this line: “But if regulators and politicians are to have any hope of building a more effective financial system in future, it is crucial that they start thinking more about power structures, vested interests and social silence.”
Stephen Casper, Book Review: Wilson and Cory, The Evolutionary Epidemiology of Mania and Depression: A Theoretical and Empirical Interpretation of Mood Disorders
Praising the good and dissecting the bad in a new effort to explain the high prevalence of mania and depression in the modern world
Fail Blog
Always something amusing here
Ed Yong, Robots Evolve to Deceive One Another
Absolutely amazing research and absolutely amazing outcome. Match artificial neural networks with robots that can move and communicate with one another, let evolution happen, and you get a variety of adaptive behavior. Including patterns of deception.
Eugenia Tsao, The Drug Barons’ Campaign to Make Us All Crazy
“the extent to which our lives and livelihoods have been colonized by the reductive logic of pharmaceutical intervention remains breathtaking.” For more, see Antropologi’s Why anthropologists should politicize mental illness, which links to a longer Tsao article and provides more background
Malcolm Dando, Biologists Napping While Work Militarized
Nature editorial on how mind-altering agents need to be included in our definitions of chemical warfare. The work is being done – will we stand up against it?
Anthropology
Nicholas Kristof & Sherul WuDunn, The Women’s Crusade
Our paramount moral challenge – the brutality and oppression inflicted on women worldwide – and ways to address it. For more, check out their book Half the Sky
Raymond Ho, Homo floresiensis Walked Out of Africa
And it looks to be more than 1.5 million years ago
Jan Dönges, What Your Choice of Words Says about Your Personality
I’m actually more interested in the data analysis techniques here; a program called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count which looks like it could be used many ways. For another method, see “sentiment analysis” of news and linguistic analysis of songs and blogs for clues to “mass psychology”
Sarah Arnquist, Research Trove: Patients’ Online Data
Bringing patient experiences together online – will anthropology be able to do something similar?
John Hawks, Modern Genomics and Race
The old definitions creep back in
NAPA, Religion Not Only Path to Altruism
Just be prosocial…
Kevin Stacey, The Secret to Chimp Strength
It could be in the brain – too much mind over matter for us
Joseph McClain, How Apes Develop Emotions
A profile of work by Barbara King
Pat Vaughan Tremmel, Women May Not Be So Picky After All About Choosing a Mate
Social situations and embodied reactions as playing a role – not abstract “mate choice” theory
Tom Ashbrook, The Skin You’re In
On Point show featuring anthropologist Nina Jablonski, author of the new book Skin, as well as Jane Brody, the journalist, and Carmindy, a make-up artist
Brian @ AAA Blog, Anthropology, Public Health, and National Security
An update from the Ad Hoc Commission on Anthropology’s Engagement with the Security and Intelligence Communities
Rex, Andrew Abbott on How Browsing Work
And it’s not web browsing – why spending time in libraries matters!
John McCreery, Will Academia Survive?
An interesting discussion over at the Open Anthro Cooperative
Maximilian Forte, Like a Diamond Bullet to the Forehead
A clip from Apocalypse Now – really challenges our thinking about what we do and how we understand
Le Blog du Corps, Damien Hirst
Impressive artist featured at a blog I’ve been enjoying – lots of interesting updates and a good mix of art, science and society about bodies, sexuality, gender and more
Mind
Matthew Williams, First US Gaming Addiction Clinic Opens
Get reStarted… A $320 a day reboot in Seattle. As Mind Hacks points out, what irony that reStarted already has its own Twitter stream
Steve Lohr, Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom
Good thing I’ve got my students blogging…
Joseph Zeni, The Reality of the Brain-Computer Interface
A quick overview of where the field is at right now
Carl Zimmer, The Dark Matter of the Brain
Glial cells over at Discover – meet most of your brain
Jonathan Schloz et al., Distinct Regions of Right Temporo-Parietal Junction Are Selective for Theory of Mind and Exogenous Attention
PLoS online article – it’s not one region to rule them all
Diane Rehm, The Price of Perfection
Radio interview with Max Mehlman, author of the new book “The Price of Perfection”, about performance enhancing drugs of all types
Powell’s Books, The Mind-Body Problem: Poems by Katha Pollitt
Perhaps / my body would have liked to make some of our dates, / to come home at four in the morning and answer my scowl / with ‘None of your business ‘
Virginia Hughes, Making Sense of Senses
Looking at how the senses are central to autism
Science Daily, New Science Of Learning Offers Preview Of Tomorrow’s Classroom
Three insights into learning from studies combining computational and developmental research
Deborah Halber, Why We Learn More From Our Successes Than Our Failures
Rewarding successes and ignoring errors – just the way the brain processes things sometimes
Psychological Science Agenda, Evolutionary Theory and Psychology
Lots of material from APA Online – so if this is your thing, here you go
New York Academy of Sciences, A Dangerous Divide
A report on the NYAS conference The Two Cultures in the 21st Century
Ian Weaver, Epigenetic Programming by Maternal Behavior and Pharmacological Intervention
Pdf of a 2007 Epigenetics article with this subtitle, “Nature versus Nuture: Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”
The Situationist, Randomness, Luck, Chance, and other Situational Forces
It’s not all about me? Intriguing video of a talk by Leonard Mlodinow, author of The Drunkard’s Walk
Eide Neurolearning, The Beginnings of Reason – Earlier Than You Think
You mean, Piaget didn’t get it right?
Cosma Shalizi, Review of What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect
An extended and insightful review of James Flynn’s work on IQ testing, the rise in scores over time, and what intelligence actually is
Dan Petersen, For Kid’s Health, Just Let Them Play
Just say no to “no pain, no gain”
Shared Symbolic Storage, Studying the Evolution of Cognition and Language: Are We Wasting Our Time?
Considering arguments for and against an evolutionary perspective
Timothy Stokes, Neurobiology Doesn’t Reduce Human Experience into Mechanistic Meaninglessness.
PsychologyToday blog – neuroscience can’t define us…
