Tops on down…

Top of the List

International Cognition and Culture Institute, ICCI – Mini Grant Competition
Up to five grants will be awarded to encourage anthropologists with good ethnographic knowledge of their field sites to perform an experimental study that will help provide comparative cross-cultural data on children’s and adults’ reasoning about human social kinds. The deadline is soon!!

Tom Bowman, WWII Combat Cameraman: ‘The Public Had To Know’
During World War II, Norman Hatch was a combat cameraman who witnessed — and filmed — some of the most bitter fighting in the Pacific theater. Includes his Oscar winning video of actual WWII combat.

Mo Costandi, Fossilized 13th Century Brain with Intact Cells
An extraordinary artifact is astonishingly found intact. How this is so? The brain preserves very well!

Mike Fahey, Accused Game Cheater Gets Knife Through Head and Survives
An argument between Counter-Strike players at a Chinese net café over alleged use of a ‘wallhack’ cheat led to a 17-year-old boy being stabbed through the head with a foot-long knife. This boy ended up living to tell the tale. Includes a graphic photo.

Daniel Carlat, What Is The New Psychiatry?
The field of psychiatry is changing, and we need to change with it. This means utilizing every tool we are given to our advantage, not just the biomedical tool kit.

Mind

International Cognition and Culture Institute, Learn About Social Neuroscience
This article seeks to understand how the brain mediates social behaviors, and how social behaviors influence brain function.

Craig Lambert, Pleasure by Proxy
Consider consulting the experience of another person, a surrogate, in deciding whether something will make you happy.

Mary, Biochemical Personality Change?
How SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors) work, and how they impact your way of being.

Kay Redfield Jamison, Big Think Interview with Kay Redfield Jamison
Big Think sits with the Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Nothing Was the Same.” Talks about her battles with depression.

Frontier Psychiatrist, Pre-Modern and Modern Early Environments
In pre-modern times, it is argued, that the distinct delineation between family and wider society did not exist and as a result the rearing atmosphere much more closely resembled that of later life.

David DiSalvo, ‘The Male Brain’, or How to Write a Pop Science Book without Evidence
How men and women are different – if we just go by stereotypes dressed up as mechanism

Carl Zimmer, The Brain Look Deep Into the Mind’s Eye
We take visual imagination for granted. But the blank inner world of a patient called MX demonstrates the rich neural processes needed to create the images in our heads

Vaughan Bell, One Night in Birdland
The neurological problems of jazz legends.

Desde del Manicomio, Aniversario de Nathan Kline, Pionero de la Psicofarmacología
In-depth análisis (in Spanish) of a pioneer of psychpharmacology

Anil Ananthaswamy, Firing on all Neurons: Where Consciousness Comes From
What is the true definition for consciousness? How can we tell if a person is conscious or not? New Scientist gives some answers

Science

John Tierney, Moral Lessons, Down Aisle 9
How to act fairly and unselfishly toward everyone. Go shopping.

Kimberly K. Barlow, Bio-Artist Interprets Science Through Art
The relationship between art and science, as expressed by one artist.

David Despair, Early Humans Used Brain Power, Innovation and Teamwork to Dominate the Planet
Scholars gather to talk about how an exceptional mixture of human traits helped our species stay alive to inhabit the world.

Health

h-madness, New Issue of Psychiatrie, Sciences Humaines, Neurosciences
Psychiatry in a colonial context. One article is specifically dedicated to the history of the notion of obsession in Germany.

Roni Caryn Rabin, Baby Fat May Not Be So Cute After All
Schools have banned cupcakes, issued obesity report cards and cleared space in cafeterias for salad bars. But new research suggests that interventions aimed at school-aged children may be too late.

Dana Jennings, With Cancer, Let’s Face It: Words Are Inadequate
We like to say that people “fight” cancer because we wrestle fearfully with the notion of ever having the disease. How we have turned cancer into one of our contemporary devils.

Margie Mason, Could Hong Kong Teach China to Quit Smoking?
Cigarettes are tightly woven into China’s culture. Some people believe this habit is impossible to kick there.

Anthropology

Susan D. Blum, Happy News: Censorship, Nationalism, and Language Ideology in China
Blum writes at length on language, identity, and nationalism in China.

Ed Yong, Tree Rings Reveal Two Droughts that Sealed the Fate of Angkor
A description of the city of Angkor and the story of its demise.

Maximilian Forte, Mercenary Humanism
An ad with an extraordinary piece of twisted thinking, and more over at Zero Anthropology

Linda Gordon, Who’s White?
Nell Irvin Painter’s title, “The History of White People,” traces characterizations of the lighter-skinned people we call white today, starting with the ancient Scythians. These characterizations have changed dramatically.

Lorenz, The End of One-Way Communication – Anthropologists Help News Providers and Advertisers
News consumers want a two-way conversation instead of one-way bombardment.

Jean-Sébastien Marcoux, The Dark Side of the Gift
Some researchers interested in the dark side of “the gift” have highlighted the difficulty of receiving gifts, services, or favors.

Eugene Raikhel, “Neuroscience, Power, and Culture”: A Special Issue of History of the Human Sciences
Titles and abstracts of articles in the most recent issue of the History of Human Sciences.

AnthropologyWorks, Cultural Anthropologist Opens Pandora’s Box
The Internet has been labeled a modern day Pandora’s box. It can let loose on the Internet any and all knowledge and opinions. So what do we do with it as anthropologists?

Scott Atran, “Pathways to and From Violent Extremism: The Case for Science-Based Field Research”
The U.S. government’s strategy and efforts to counter violent extremism and radicalization and the military’s role in these efforts.

Addiction

Scicurious, Dopamine and Obesity: The Food Addiction?
Obesity is a major problem in the U.S. What causes overeating and obesity in the brain and body? This article offers an explanation.

All Treatment Blog, Marijuana Withdrawal: Interview with Dirk Hanson
An interview with Dirk Hanson on marijuana withdrawal, which looks at addiction as a chemical disease with biological effects on our psychology.

Dirk Hanson, Cocaine Conundrum
Effective treatment remains elusive for cocaine

Tom Bissell, Video Games: The Addiction
Tom Bissell was an renowned, prize-winning young writer. Then he started playing the video game Grand Theft Auto. For three years he has been addicted to cocaine, sleep deprived and has had serious writer’s block. Surprisingly, he has no regrets.