Author: dlende

Wednesday Round Up #16

Biocultural Synergies

Harriet Alexander, Social Sciences Robbed of Usefulness
Publish or perish, or the perils of interdisciplinary work over acceptable field-specific crap

What Sorts of People, The Biocultures Manifesto
Co-construction of science and interpretation—but just in a walled garden

Anne Holden, Of Stress and Periods
Peter Ellison and his work on fertility and psychological and physiological stress

Sandra Kiume, Book Club: The Female Brain, by Louann Brizendine
Rips the essentialist pop sci book apart

Ariel David, Mind Reading May Reveal Mother Tongue
Pretty pictures, experimental tasks and language switching

Gualtiero Piccinini, Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic
Review of the same titled book co-authored by a philosopher and a psychologist—learning from research that captures slices of subjective experience

Jeffrey Kluger, The Art of Simplexity
The complexity of simplicity—or the great efforts that go into making things easy

Pierpaolo Andriani, Gaussianitis: A Subtle and (Nearly) Universal Disease
What both biology and culture often forget: real variation, not a cultural or biological norm, or the “compulsive use” of “representative averages” gets us away from “the complexity and ambiguity of life” where humans are artisan pieces, not “standardised mass manufactured items”

Dave Snowdon, Understanding HOW Does Not Mean We Comprehend WHAT or WHY
The perils of eliminative materialism, and why evolution and culture matter

Thomas McDade and Carol Worthman, The Weanling’s Dilemma Reconsidered: A Biocultural Analysis of Breastfeeding Ecology
Pdf describing how to build a nested biocultural analysis of lactation

Psychiatry

The Last Psychiatrist, What’s Wrong with Research in Psychiatry?
Six poignant points on why it’s business as usual

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #16”

Our Top 25: The Next Fifteen

Some of you might be wondering what our other popular posts have been these past six months. Today I’ll take you up through #25, after giving you the top ten yesterday. Enjoy! And again, thanks for the support.

Genetics and Obesity

The Neural Buddhists of David Brooks

Decision Making and Emotion

Two Languages, One Brain, and Theory of Mind

Sleep, Eat, Sex — Orexin Has Something to Say

Cellphones Save the World

MMORPG Anthropology: Video Games and Morphing Our Discipline

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City

Jeff Lichtman’s Brainbows

Brain Enhancement: Beyond Either/Or

Brain-Culture, Memes and Choosing Examples

Moerman’s Placebo

The Allegory of the Trolley Problem Paradox

How Your Brain Is Not Like A Computer

Why A Final Essay When We Can Do This?

Our Top Ten, Six Months In

Both of us, Greg (intro here) and Daniel (intro here), have been posting for six months now. So it’s a good time to get a list of our top ten posts out to everyone. Thanks for all your support!

Poverty Poisons the Brain

Brain Doping Poll Results In

Cultural Aspects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Thinking on Meaning and Risk

Synesthesia & Metaphor — I’m Not Feeling It

Anthropology and Neuroscience Podcasts

Dopamine and Addiction — Part One

Steven Pinker and the Moral Instinct

The Legend of the Crystal Skull

How Well Do We Know Our Brains?

Bad Brain Science: Boobs Caused Subprime Crisis

For authorship, it’s a great mix: Greg wrote four of those posts, Daniel five, and Erin Finley, our newest blogger, also contributed one. We all look forward to providing more neuroanthropology over the next six months!

Science and the City Podcasts

Thanks to Laura over at Psique for pointing out a great source of podcasts, Science and the City, produced by the New York Academy of Sciences.

The podcasts cover the gamut, for example from scotch to champagne, and often have accompanying multimedia (a video clip, parts of the slide show, sometimes a wrap-up article). They are based on “interviews, conversations, and lectures by noted scientists and authors,” truly a diverse and high-quality group with a frequent focus on interdisciplinary topics.

Some relevant neuroanth ones?

Distortions of Memory, based on a public discussion between Deirdre Bair, Bruno Clement, Maryse Conde, William Hirst, and Edward Nersessian. They bring views from linguistics, literature, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychoanalysis to bear on our understanding of memory

Biology of Freedom: “Psychoanalysts and neuroscientists discuss the effect of the environment on brain activity and micro-anatomy” featuring Edward Nersessian, Pierre Magistretti, Francois Ansermet, Cristina Alberini, Daniel Schechter, and Donald Pfaff

Perception through the Five Senses: “A perfumer, a chef, a neurologist, a sound engineer, and a painter discuss how we take in the world” Just wondering, is the neurologist actually a phrenologist? Because he appears to be representing touch…

And for fun, learn about how to forage in Central Park.

Plus lots others ably summarized at Psique—so check them out!

This post also gives me the chance to point that Ginger is moving her Brain Science Podcast. Here’s the new site: http://docartemis.com/brainsciencepodcast/
Ginger’s most recent episode covered Michael Arbib on Mirror Neurons, definitely a relevant topic for us.

Also, the great series on applied anthropology continues, this time on the political construction of global infectious disease.

If you’re looking for more anthropology and neuroscience podcasts, check out my original comprehensive list—definitely one of our most popular posts.

Evolution Round Up

On the Basics

John Wilkins, What Is A Species?
The history and new emerging consensus on an old evolutionary consensus: on the origin of species

Todd Oakley, Coming to Grips with Common Descent
The real biggie in Darwin’s theory—common descent and the importance of phylogeny to understanding life

Robin Marantz Henig, Resolving Evolution’s Greatest Paradox
Marc Kirschner, systems biology, and how to get complexity from small, gradual changes. Also, the constraints on phenotypic variation enable evolutionary change. Includes a video.

PZ Myers, Historical Contingency in the Evolution of E. coli
Complex novelties can evolve, but depend not just on hopeful monsters but also the genetic background of the population

Andrew Brown, The Kindness of Strangers
Excellent biography of Robert Trivers, wunderkind of evolutionary theory

Neil Shubin, Your Inner Fish
Podcast with the author, curator at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, of the same-titled book

Mo at Neurophilosophy, Synapse Proteomics and Brain Evolution
Synapses and their role in the history of life

On Humans and Other Primates

Randolph Nesse & Stephen Stearns, The Great Opportunity: Evolutionary Applications to Medicine and Health
Open-access article by two of the biggest names in evolutionary medicine in inaugural issue of the peer-reviewed Evolutionary Applications

Continue reading “Evolution Round Up”

Addiction Round Up

The posts go from the biological all the way through policy, so pick the spot that suits you best.

PZ Myers, Evolution of Alcohol Synthesis
Yeast fermentation and learning to drink your own poison

NewsWise, New Research Tracks Effects of Addictive Drugs on Brain
Summary of the Science article “Design Logic of a Cannabinoid Receptor Signaling Network that Triggers Neurite Outgrowth”—how signaling driven by drugs can lead to changes in cell connections and cytoarchitecture (surprises? roles for breast cancer proteins and “distributed decision-making” in neurite outgrowth)

Alok Jha, Scans Pinpoint Alcohol’s Effects on the Human Brain
Dampening fear and avoidance, and upping reward

BlogMeister, Genes and Environment Shape Women’s Path to Alcoholism
Study of the transitions towards alcoholism; genetics all the way through, different environmental factors at different stages (see the original study here)

The Neurocritic, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee?
Now this is epigenetics! Smelling coffee gets the genes going

Continue reading “Addiction Round Up”