Anthropology

Open Anthropology, Anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani, among Top 10 of World’s Public Intellectuals
A true public intellectual, as considered by the journal Foreign Policy

John Hawks, How to Blog, Get Tenure, and Prosper: Starting the Blog
A leader in anthropology blogging brings us his advice in the start of his series on blogging as a university professor

Open Anthropology, Doing Calypso the Right Way in the USA
Nice consideration of cross-cultural influences, complete with You Tube videos

LL Wynn, Cuisines of the Axis of Evil
A culturally informed and funny discussion of the same-titled book.

Mind Hacks, The Implicit Association Test: the basics and on suicide
Any use for this approach to examine culture beyond the cultural consensus/sharing model?

Ed Yong, Language Evolution Witnessed in Lab Experiments
Tracking people’s progress in artificial languages, and the structuring of language

General

David Brooks, The Biggest Issue
Technology and education race each other in the US’ economy—education progress has slowed, and technology has not. Decline and inequality appear as the result.

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #22”

Greg and I have featured plenty of neurocriticism recently. Neurotosh, Neurodosh, and Neuordash, Psychiatry Affects Human Psychology, and Pop Goes the Media are three recent pieces. But I have also been gathering critical pieces from other places, so here they are.

The place to start is with two entries discussing the Critical Neurosciences conference I recently attended, both written by attendees.

Stephan Schleim at Brainlogs, A Critique of Neuroscience
Stephan provides us the overview: the introduction by the organizers, Cornelius Borck’s history of neuroscience’s ever-receding explanatory horizon, Laurence Kirmayer on neuroimaging and the DSM, and Ian Gold on what counts as good reductionism.

Eugene Raikhel at Somatosphere, Critical Neuroscience and Anthropological Engagement
Eugene gives us his general take: critical approaches to the culture of neuroscience and to how culture gets “encoded in the brain”. Then he considers why this critical neuroscience movement is happening in this historical now.

And now for your typical round-up from me. I’ve focused more on the neuroscience side, less on the social science side.

On Industry

Furious Seasons, The Zyprexa Chronicles: Zyprexa Judge Slams FDA, Eli Lilly
“the FDA has arguably failed consumers and physicians by over relying on pharmaceutical companies to provide supporting research for new drug applications; by allowing them, through lax enforcement, to conduct off-label marketing; by acquiescing… [and on and on]”

The Neurocritic, Coming to a Marketer Near You: Brain Scamming
Neuromarketer’s dreams and the neuroscience fallout

Natasha Mitchell, Studying the Species—Beyond the Neurobabble
Tempering the hype to find the good stuff

David Duncan, The Ultimate Cure
CondeNast takes on the neurotech industry for mixed results (it’s CondeNast, after all…)

Ape, Neuromarketing + Ads = Duh, Again
Neuromarketing BS rather than actual confidence and creativity

Mirror Neurons Hype

Social Mode, Mirror Neurons: A Fictionalized Interview
A funny take on Marco Iacoboni and the hype of mirror neurons

Neuroscientifically Challenged, Mirror Neurons May Be Responsible for Global Warming and US Economic Woes
The fanfare about mirror neurons is overblown—the challenge is to put it out

Continue reading “Neurocriticism Round Up”

The Social Science and Research Council hosts a group blog called The Immanent Frame. There they have been hosting an excellent series called A Cognitive Revolution?

The two most recent posts have been Which Cognitive Revolution?, a reflection that builds off David Brooks’ neural Buddhism essay to examine the rise in cognitive research on religion, and The Aesthetics of Neural Buddhism on the aesthetic impulse (even impossible dream) behind the desire for these sorts of “theories of everything.”

Earlier posts include Medical Materialism Revisited, A Religious History of American Neuroscience, and Cognitive Machinery and Explanatory Ambitions. Plus a few more.

SSRC has also started a series of podcasts entitled Societas. They are up to four now, mostly on politics, including Breaking Out of the Iron Cage on Barack Obama, Max Weber and charisma and All Politics Are Identity Politics? on the relationships between politics, possible identities and the search for and imposition of social categories.

The Brain

Gene Expression, Metamorphosis
Remodeling the brain and body in real-time?

Carl Zimmer, How Your Brain Can Control Time
“The three methods your mind uses to reverse, speed, and even slow the minutes”

Adam Keiper, The Synapse and the Soul
Excellent review of Michael Gazzaniga’s new book Human: the good, the bad, and the ugly. For more from Adam Keiper, check out his homepage.

The Evolving Mind, Doctor, My Mind Hurts!
Overcoming mind-brain dualism through bi-directional influences. One blogger’s struggles.

Deric Bownds, Brain Regions Active During Different Economic Decisions
How different parts of the brain handle different parts of decision making

Deric Bownds, Ecocultural Basis of Cognition
“Farmers and fishermen are more holistic than herders.” Cultural ways of paying attention to your environment changes how you perceive the world.

The Neurotic, JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments
Check out the video of an adult rat brain rewiring itself

Erik Sofge, For Future of Mind Control, Robot-Monkey Trials Are Just a Start
Popular Mechanics takes on brain-computer-machine interfaces and the future of cybernetics

Eureka Alert, Laka: ‘Language Exists in the Brain’
Misleading title. Really about research on bilingual processing of language.

On Amir, Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain
“The brain is like a muscle: when it gets depleted, it becomes less effective”

Kim Masters, Neuroscience Helps Marketers Judge Ads’ Impact
Relatively balanced NPR piece on neuroscience and marketing, in this case television ads and “viewer’s attention span, memory and level of engagement”

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #21”

A lot of great sites have linked to us over the past months; we’ve also found plenty of new sites that we like. So finally today I updated our blogroll with 23 new places covering the gamut of anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. Dedicated readers, and purveyors of both Four Stone Hearth and Encephalon, will surely recognize most of them. But in case you don’t, here’s the list below. No particular order, just matching what I started writing on a piece of paper one night and added to over the weeks. And if there are other sites out there that you think we should know about and link to, please leave us a comment!

Neurocritic

Neuroscientifically Challenged

Open Anthropology

Erkan’s Field Diary

Pure Pedantry

Greg Laden’s Blog

Channel N

Mixing Memory

PodBlack Cat

My Mind on Books

Material World

Experientia

The Restless Mind

Purposive Drift

Bioephemera

Not Exactly Rocket Science

remote central

Linguistic Anthropology

Language Log

Brainlogs [mostly in German]

Somatosphere

Life of Wiley

Three-Toed Sloth

Sharp Brains is hosting the 50th edition of Encephalon, the brain and mind carnival. Like compulsive collecting and Dungeons and Dragons? Then check Encephalon out for those and much more at its mid-century.