Here’s this week – top, mind, teaching & new media, anthropology, and science & life.

Top of the List

David L. Chandler, Rethinking Artificial Intelligence
A broad-based MIT project that aims to reinvent artificial intelligence for a new era. By going back and fixing mistakes, researchers hope to produce ‘co-processors’ for the human mind.

Petra Boynton, Celebrating This Blog’s Fifth Birthday!
“Sex educator, Agony Aunt, Academic” – here’s to five more years!

Sandra Kiume, Brain-Based Sex Differences
Mythbusting sex differences in the brain. Includes a video with Lise Eliot.

Sarah Kershaw, Addiction on 2 Fronts: Work and Home
Explains why Dr. A. Thomas McLellan accepted the nomination to be the government’s number two drug-control official – his life and his research surrounded by addiction.

Jessica Palmer, Beautiful Hunger
A YouTube video on swarming sea creatures. Another great one from Bioephemera is Eat Your Veggies.

ScienceDaily, First Evidence of Brain Rewiring in Children: Reading Remediation Positively Alters Brain Tissue
New white matter from 100 hours of reading – communication matters!

Mind

Benedict Carey, Study Suggests Methods and Timing to Treat Fears
Testing variations in extinction training for traumatic memories/associations – the sooner the better. Ed Yong provides greater depth about the actual research.

Robert Mitchum, The Thalamus, Middleman of the Brain, Becomes a Sensory Conductor
Two more studies showing the thalamus as conductor for the brain’s sensory processing

Stephanie West Allen, Using the Arts in Conflict Resolution: Some More Pieces of the Puzzle?
A call out for the new book The Neural Imagination: Aesthetic and Neuroscientific Approaches to the Arts

Aalok Mehta, Naked Mole Rats Reveal Rugged Brains
Give it up for extreme oxygen deprivation

Neuroskeptic, Testosterone, Aggression… Confusion?
Testosterone makes us aggressive, right? Not exactly. Mind over matter, but matter still matters.

Teaching & New Media

Mixed Media, Visual Literacy by DSJ, Towards a Framework for Visual Literacy Learning
Thinking about visual communication while drawing on insights from brain function

Susi, Are You-ING?
“sometimes we get lost in all the Bling of the tech tools just like our students”

Anthropology

International Cognition and Culture Institute, The Biological Link Between Music and Speech
A new PLoS one article, A Biological Rationale for Music Scales: “the musical scales most commonly used over the centuries are those that come closest to mimicking the physics of the human voice, and that we understand emotions expressed through music because the music mimics the way emotions are expressed in speech.”

Mathilda, Neanderthals ‘Had Sex’ With Modern Man
A Times article says Neanderthals had sex with modern man. Mathilda doesn’t deny this, noting all the physical similarities between modern man and Neanderthals. Provides pictures for viewers. No, not those kinds of pictures.

Novalis, Missing the Forest
Musing on religion, evolutionary arguments, and life’s meaning over at Blue to Blue

Pamthropologist, Empire Zits: Pow, Zap
Compares empires to zits. They grow, then explode, and eventually disappear.

Ed Yong, Envious Capuchin Monkeys React Badly to Raw Deals
Testing out why capuchins favor fairness

Science & Life

Isis, Do the New Breast Cancer Guidelines Discriminate Against Women of Color?
The new guidelines for breast cancer screening are given and their implications for the future.

Bill Yates, Genes, Church Attendance, and Alcohol Consumption
Thinking more seriously about the correlations between church attendance, age, alcohol use, and genetics.

Adiemus Free, Real World Outcomes Still Matter: Why Medical and Psychological is Not Enough in Pain Management
Pain management has become so much more recognized in recent years but serious differences of opinion exist about the approach and priorities among various members of the health care team.

Jonah Lehrer, The Middle Way
Decision-making – how the middle option sometimes confuses us with its temptation of compromise

Ginger Campbell, BSP-62: Warren Brown on “Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?”
Campbell interviews Dr. Brown. They focused on why a non-reductive advance is needed for ideas about moral responsibility and the brain