This week we get Ardi at the top, then go onto drugs (obvious transition, isn’t it?), and then anthro and mind. And hey, there’s good stuff down at the end!

Top of the List

John Hawks, Ardipithecus FAQ
John Hawks answers all your big questions about Ardi, now our earliest hominid ancestor. She’s one interesting biped! For more, Anthropology.net outlines all 11 papers published on Ardipithecus ramidus in Science last week. The NY Times provides a general overview, and Anthropology.net keeps track of reporting across the internet.

Juan Domínguez Duque et al., Neuroanthropology: A Humanistic Science For The Study Of The Culture–Brain Nexus
One of Greg’s student gets a paper into Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Here’s the abstract.

Ilina Singh and Nikolas Rose, Biomarkers In Psychiatry
The application of biomarkers to human behavior and psychiatric disorders brings up social and ethical issues, which must be understood using joint efforts (pdf).

Kerim, Wounds of War and the Dilemmas of Stereotype
The forces of war and military institutions come into everyday life through concepts of attachment, susceptibility and exchange.

Michael Specter, A Life Of Its Own
Where will synthetic biology lead us?

Judith Warner, The Shame Game
NY Times op-ed, which I really enjoyed as it highlights the shift from the idea that critique is enough to something more involved with life

Drugs

R. Douglas Fields, Inhale Or Don’t?: Marijuana Hurts Some, Helps Others
Novel exploration implies that THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its mind-bending assets, kills budding neurons, yet strangely, the same chemical hoards neurons in adults with Alzheimer’s disease.

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #84”

Mind, anthro, and video games, after the ones that most caught my attention this week.

Top of the List

Pierre Jacob, What Do Mirror Neurons Contribute To Human Social Cognition?
Pdf of a 2008 article that proposes an alternative theory of mirror neurons. Rather than mind-reading and cognitive representations, it’s about engaging with the other person’s intentions and activities.

Coturnix, What Is Investigative Science Journalism?
Cortunix tweets “What is Investigative Science Journalism?” to the world and people respond with their thoughts.

Vaughan Bell, Side Effects from Placebos Can Be Drug Specific
No more arguments about this – beliefs matter. Now the side effects from inert pills are related to what the person thinks they are getting, for example, anti-convulsants producing fatigue, sleepiness, and tingling sensations.

Cracked.com, Six Bullshit Facts About Psychology That Everyone Believes
How everyone likes to believe they know something about psychology when they really don’t. For example, “If you let your anger out, you’ll feel better” and “Just believe in yourself, and you’ll succeed.” Bullshit!

Skeptic Wonder, Scientists: Glorified Bureaucrats?
A good take on the sobering PloS Biology article, “Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research.”

Cognition and Culture Institute, How To Think, Say, Or Do Precisely The Worst Thing For Any Occasion
Good coverage on the new Daniel Wegner article, complete with link to the pdf from Science. Under stress we often do just the opposite of what we want or intend to do, and why this happens.

Carl Dyke, Bells And Whistles
Want to improve your teaching? Here’s a consideration of all those bells and whistles we now have available, with plenty of good discussion that follows

Mind

The Veterans Health Research Institute, The Brain At War
Large report on research that deals with traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other neurocognitive consequences of war.

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #83”

So favs, anthro and mind this week. Thanks to my new assistant Casey with help putting together the list!

Top of the List

John Sutton, Batting, Habit and Memory: The Embodied Mind and the Nature of Skill
Pdf of this 2007 paper: “This essay focuses on the distinction between explicit autobiographical remembering and the kind of habitual or ‘procedural’ memory involved in complex embodied skills like batting.”

Stanley J. Ulijaszek et al., Multidisciplinary Obesity Research: A Local Strategy for Breaking New Ground
The authors of this article talk about the different causes of obesity and how new research on this topic must be produced to get to the root of this problem and help fight it.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, How Humans Became Such Other-Regarding Apes
Humans feel, question, critique, problem-solve, and form communities. Apes ape. The evolution of our humanity.

The Neuroskeptic, fMRI Gets Slap in the Face with a Dead Fish
Do a lot of statistical tests, get some remarkable results! Like fish brains lighting up when the results smell as bad as dead fish! For more, see Mind Hacks’ Scientists Find Area Responsible for Emotion in Dead Fish

William Lu, Observation of Tool Use Activates Specific Brain Area Only in Humans
Explores the tool-use of species other than humans.

Dr. X, Last Words
Last words from prisoners executed in Texas since 1982. Haunting.

The Neurocritic, Tortured Brains Tell Tall Tales
“Neuroscience shows why torture doesn’t work”

Anthropology

Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon
The first chapter to Lara’s book, “AL-DAHIYYA: SIGHT, SOUND, SEASON,” which brings to life this suburb of Beirut

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #82”

Back on Wednesday with a beefy one. Favs up top, drink and drugs, mind, anthropology, and then health. Enjoy.

Top of the List

Beatrice Golomb, This Is Your Brain on Politics
See Beatrice’s talk on how politics and drug company money trump science in the development, use and marketing of pharmaceuticals

Pamthropologist, Those Pyramid-Building Aliens
Frontal assault on bad archaeology and stupid cultural beliefs

Scicurious, Never Go Grocery Shopping Hungry: The fMRI Study
Those fMRI magnets really play havoc with your credit and debit cards… Or, actually, how being hungry or not changes what parts of your brain lights up when you imagine a restaurant menu

Lorenz Khazaleh, The Anthropology of Suicide
A call to research and examination of what we do know from something that takes a million lives a year

Raymond Tellis, Darwinism without Darwinitis
Looks like a brilliant talk – get the lecture and the slides here

Bird Dog, Don’t Ever Talk to the Cops
A police investigator tells you why you shouldn’t talk to the cops. Lots here about verbal interaction, besides the reflections on law and police procedure

Drink and Drugs

Michael White, The Science of Scotch
Good science, sublime taste

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #81”

Wednesdays this semester are busy. Yesterday it was teaching two classes, office hours, meeting with a thesis student, a reception, and then school information night. Not a lot of time in there for this…

Top of the List

Rex @ Savage Minds, Anthropology, ‘Internet Addiction’, and Care
World of Warcraft and thinking through addiction, treatment, and engagement. A most worthy read.

Keith Oatley, Changing Our Minds… by Reading Fiction
Reading fiction “measurably enhances our abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves.”

Neededalj, Recognizing and Responding to Legitimate and Illegitimate Researchers
A guide to recognizing good researchers and research, in response to the SurveyFail debacle

The Neurocritic, Rule 34: What Netporn Tells Us about the Brain
The Neurocritic also covers SurveyFail and the Ogas/Gaddam debacle – sorry for not catching that earlier in the week! As always, great coverage, including Ogas playing Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire? and of course some great visuals

Sharon Begley, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: Claims of Sex Differences Fall Apart
“Why parents may cause gender differences in kids” – a Newsweek piece

E. Blair Bolles, Three Years On: Voluntary Redirection of Attention
Babel’s Dawn hits three years of exploring language and language evolution, and Blair reflects on one of his main insights, that humans can voluntarily redirect attention and that this supports language use

Francisco Ortega & Fernando Vidal, Mapping the Cerebral Subject in Contemporary Culture
Online paper outlining much of the Brainhood project: “The ‘cerebral subject’ refers to the anthropological figure that embodies the belief that human beings are essentially reducible to their brains. Our focus is on the discourses, images and practices that might globally be designated as ‘neuroculture’.”
The paper can’t be accessed directly, so click on Online Texts on the left hand side. Mapping the cerebral subject is the first paper listed.

Anthropology

Rebecca Atwood, Institutions Slap Down Those Who Speak Up, Argues Campaigning Scholar
Public anthropology and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, via Times Higher Education

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #80”

It’s a day late and a dollar short. But at least my tenure package is in!

Top of the List

Gardiner Harris, Document Details Plan to Promote Costly Drug
The selling of Lexapro, a popular antidepressant, by Forest Laboratories. The marketing plan? “finding many ways to put money into doctors’ pockets and food into their mouths.” For more on how this sort of thing shapes research and expert opinion, see Furious Seasons’ More Possible Non-Disclosures For Depression In 3-Year-Olds Researcher

Research – EU, The Brain, Caught Between Science and Ideology
An interview with Catherine Vidal, with illuminating comments about men, women, and their brains

Neurocultures Workshop
You can get videos of talks by Nicolas Rose, Emily Martin, Allan Young, and Fernando Vidal

Brandon Kohrt, Returned: Child Soldiers of Nepal’s Maoist Army
A feature on the award-winning documentary film by Brandon and Bob Koenig. You can also go directly to the Returned’s website.

Vaughan Bell, Placebo Has Strength in Numbers
Excellent piece on how to understand the varied things meant by “the placebo effect”

Mind

James Winters, Continuity or Discontinuity: Are Our Minds Purely Shaped by Natural Selection?
A good piece covering some of the recent debates (even if some might call them debacles). For another rich post, see Iterated Learning and Language Evolution.

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #79”