Category: general

Podcast on the evolution of language

Friend of Neuroanthropology, Dr. Ginger Campbell, has a new podcast up on the evolution of language. It’s free to download (audio mp3 or through iTunes).

Dr. Campbell’s stuff is great. I tend to load the podcasts onto my little iPod shuffle and listen to them while I’m riding around on the tractor (got a new 4-wheel-drive tractor this week!) and while running the ‘whipper snipper’ (what Yanks call a ‘weed whacker’ or, less prosaically, a ‘line trimmer’). We have a 4 cylinder whipper snipper, and it gets to be a rough ride, so I always enjoy listening to a good lecture while I’m I’m tearing through the unruly grass around the farm. Ira Bashkow, my former writing group mate from Chicago, now on the faculty at University of Virginia (and author of the 2007 Victor Turner Award winning, The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World), turned me on to the podcast-lecture-listening-while-doing-physical-work when he told me that he works out in the gym to them. I’ve put a bit of a farm-related wrinkle on the whole process. But I digress…

The bottom line is that the Brain Science Podcasts are a great resource for anyone interested in Neuroanthropology. In her interviews, Dr. Campbell reminds me a lot of Anne Fausto-Sterling, one of my intellectual heroes (just her enthusiasm, willingness to learn, and humility in spite of knowledge). As soon as I get the slasher (Yanks: mower) on the back of the new tractor and the pastures dry out a bit, I’ll no doubt have stack of the podcasts I haven’t yet had a chance to listen to loaded on the iPod.

Welcome to new readers: Why brain science needs anthropology

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchAfter a couple of really welcome links at places like Mind Hacks (from Vaughn) and at Dr. X’s Free Associations, as well as references from our friend Prof. Sue Sheridan at Life of Wiley (Home of the Daily Skeleton Action Figure), we at Neuroanthropology find ourselves with a lot more visitors over the past few days. Thanks to all of you who are checking us out for the first time and please consider yourself welcome at any time! As a way of welcoming our new readers, I want to reflect on what anthropology is, in my opinion, and why brain science needs it (a later post will discuss why anthropology needs the brain sciences, especially right now in the field’s development).

I was working on this piece before I saw Daniel’s most recent post, but I think it’s a good idea, especially considering the attention we’re getting from the neurosciences blogosphere.  Ironically, we’re probably getting more attention from brain scientists than from anthropologists.  The reasons for this seem to me to be complex, both a sense in the brain sciences of curiosity for things like ‘neuroanthropology,’ or ways of dealing with developmental, social, cultural, ecological, and evolutionary factors in the emergence of the human brain, but also an avoidance trend in cultural anthropology of dealing with psychology, neurology, and biology.  As I’ve discussed elsewhere, fears of ‘reductionism’ in biology in brain sciences and human biology among anthropologists seem to me to be exaggerated, mostly based upon the popularizers of brain sciences (like Pinker, who we’ve taken to task, but others as well) rather than on the more careful and interesting scientists working on the brain (we’ve discussed many examples in previous posts).

Continue reading “Welcome to new readers: Why brain science needs anthropology”

Neuroscience On Out: The Forest and the Trees

Often on this blog we have argued about the relevance of neuroscience to our work as anthropologists.  Today, however, I want to turn the tables.  Neuroscience needs anthropology.  Given the emerging models of neural function, with their emphasis on embodied learning and active interaction with the environment, some of neuroscience’s best ideas can only be tested in the field. 

This thought came to me through my colleague Cameron Hay, an anthropologist at Miami University in Ohio.  I was reading over a near-complete draft of her paper on memory, anxiety and healing among the Sasak in Indonesia.  Cameron wrote: 

“Neuroscientists are well aware that the isolated models of mind and its cognitive processes that they tend to study are invalid and that the person’s social, cultural, and physical environment has ‘an active role in driving cognitive processes’ (Henningsen and Kirmayer 2000: 472-3). Neuroscientific methods do not allow for the kind of holistic exploration that anthropology encourages, therefore, the link between anxiety and memory retrieval is somewhat under explored; however, there are some tantalizing associations.”

 While laboratory research and even ecologically-valid experimentation certainly have a vital role in expanding our current understanding of our brains, the extension from brain research to the workings of the mind and behavior is not a simple step.  Extrapolation is, in effect, bad science, because it is not based on scholarly research. 
Continue reading “Neuroscience On Out: The Forest and the Trees”

Dopamine and Addiction – Part One

By Daniel Lende 

The Pathway 

In your brain you have a system that comes up from some of the oldest evolved parts of your brain to some of the most recently evolved parts.  Reptile parts to ape parts.  In brain research on addiction, it’s generally called the mesolimbic dopamine pathway or system.  All the main addictive drugs affect this system, making the mesolimbic pathway a core component in addictive behavior.  Addictive experiences—gambling, shopping, eating and sex—also impact the mesolimbic dopamine system. 

In both scientific research and the popular press, the dopamine system is often cast in the role of “bad boy,” a hard-wired brain circuit that has gotten out of control, self-indulging in an orgy of pleasure.  That neat story tells us a lot about how we cast our own morals onto the brain, selectively picking out research to provide a nice scientific sheen.  Hard-wired for hedonism, we have to work even harder at self-control.   

It strikes me as the same sort of story that addicts know how to spin so well.  So let’s be blunt.  Denial! 
Continue reading “Dopamine and Addiction – Part One”

The Stress Eraser. Only $299

Sometimes an example comes along that just captures everything you want to say, yet makes it all so horribly funny, sad and real at the same time.  Do culture, biology, the body, and technology all combine?  Look no further than the Stress Eraser, a gizmo with the slogan, “Finally, Stress Relief that Actually Works.”

Do we really need this?  The answer appears yes, at least according to Men’s Vogue.  Here’s the lead-in: “Last fall, the American Psychological Association released a major study that told us what we already knew—21st-century America is the most stressed-out place on Earth. A third of American adults are living with ‘extreme stress,’ and nearly half believe that their stress levels have increased in the past five years.” 
Continue reading “The Stress Eraser. Only $299”

Engaging Anthropology and Social Theory

I was recently reading Kay Warren’s chapter, “Perils and Promises of Engaged Anthropology: Historical Transitions and Ethnographic Dilemmas,” where she discusses different strands of engaged cultural anthropology.  Certain approaches—like critical takes on ladino/Maya relations and inequality in Guatemala—struck me as being at quite some remove from neuroanthropology.  But one strand she describes did seem closer to me: 

Another perspective is that we need to move beyond the antagonisms of the past to grapple with new issues: gang violence, alienation, and the mass marketing to the urban underclasses of commodities from foreign clothing styles to mood-altering drugs; the globalization of popular culture that undercuts local authority and parental status in the eyes of many youths and their parents; and consumer expectations and forms of employment that, as they respond to transnational media and forms of production, are independent of local space (Garcia Canclini 2000).

 This chapter raised the question: What are the on-going theoretical and ethnographic discussions in cultural anthropology that are closest to the work we are doing on this blog? 

Or, to take it further afield and include Todd and sociology, what strands of social science research offer the most immediacy to our work?  Where are the fruitful collaborations and theoretical synergies likely to be found? 

I present this as a question to people who read this blog.  I would love to see plenty of comments, and look forward to a fun conversation.