John Hawks and Biology of Mind

John Hawks, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Madison – Wisconsin who brings us his paleoanthropological, genetic, and evolution expertise over at his own blog, has set up a new blog Biology of Mind run by his students.

The blog is part of John’s same-titled class which covers “the evolution of human cognition and behavior in a comparative context.” For the most part, the students in their posts provide description and critical commentary on relevant articles. So here’s one on Social Intelligence and Self Awareness, building on the 1998 Gordon Gallup article on that topic.

Besides the students covering and commenting on a wide range of literature, John also puts up weekly readings in pdf format. So this week we have Northcutt on Understanding Vertebrate Brain Evolution and Streidter on Progress in the Study of Brain Evolution.

Last semester I also worked with students blogging. For my medical anthropology class, we ran a student-only blog here at WordPress, where students posted materials, worked up introductions to main readings before discussing them in class, and generally commented on life. It was very easy to set up, and was a closed entity (just for the class and me). So that is one option.

Another option is to have more formal posts done by students, who develop original posts for a public blog (namely this one!). In my class on addiction, groups of students worked on creating some very successful posts on topics ranging from brain imaging to post-conventional outlaws (see them all described here).

So there are lots of ways to get students involved! If you have any more ideas, please let me know with a comment.

Mind Hacks Spike Activity

Most of you are probably aware of the weekly round up or “Spike Activity” appearing every Friday at Mind Hacks. But for those of you who don’t, today’s version was really a great one.

First up, no pun intended, is the study over at Cognitive Daily on condoms: “Cognitive Daily covers a sobering study on sex education that found ‘among sexually active teens, actual condom use bears no relationship to intention to use a condom or belief that using condoms is a good idea. The only factors in their study that correlate with using condoms are buying and carrying condoms’.”

Probably not a big suprise to most anthropologists, where the difference between what people say versus what people do is ground into aspiring ethnographers. It also reminded me of my work with teenage drug users – carrying drugs around was always a good indicator of a real problem, despite many teens’ assertions to the contrary.

Channel N is featuring a video on how obesity spreads through social networks. For those of you looking for research on this topic, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler published a landmark article in the New England Journal of Medicine on “The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years” (full text).

PLoS Biology has an important article just out entitled “On Mice and Men, and Chandelier Neurons” (full text) aiming at what makes human brains different, with a focus on short-axon neurons in the frontal cortex.

Then we have cognitive neuroscience in relation to freewill and in relation to philosophy of the mind, as well as Newsweek’s recent article on cognitive neuroscience itself.

Plus even more, so hack into this spike or even those in the past.

Neuroplasticity on the radio

Dr. Norman Doidge
Dr. Norman Doidge
Stephanie West Allen, who runs the blog Brains On Purpose, alerted me to the fact that the Australian ABC has posted audio files of a couple of interviews with Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz and Dr. Norman Doidge, the author of The Brain That Changes Itself (see her post, NeuroMediators: Understanding the brain is a critical key to resolving conflict (both within a culture and between cultures)). Dr. Doidge has been in Australia, attending several writers’ festivals and a workshop on ‘neuro-leadership.’ My wife caught his interview on The 7:30 Report, one of the better in depth news analysis programs on ABC TV, but I have not been able to attend any of the events where he spoke (what can I say? It’s a really really bad semester here…).

The original radio shows, audio recordings and transcripts (!) are available on the ABC All in the Mind website:
Part 1 of 2: The Power of Plasticity
Part 2 of 2 – The power of plasticity
See especially Part 2 as there are links to a host of other resources, such as the video of an interview Dr. Doidge did on ABC television while he was here in Australia, and discussions of the work of Prof. Paul Bach-y-Rita, one of the pioneers in work on neuroplasticity, including his research on technological prostheses for missing sensory information.

The material is great, and I’m nearly finished with Doidge’s book, but I still have several reservations about it even though I share the fascination with neuroplasticity and enthusiasm for Doidge’s work:
Continue reading “Neuroplasticity on the radio”

Ptak Science Books

John Ptak runs an interesting blog where he explores the “History of Ideas–unusual connections in the history of science and mathematics with the arts and social history.” His musings and reflections, his use of striking imagery, and his grounded historical approach make for some enjoyable online reading.

I ran across it while looking for an image of Darwin’s “branching tree” diagram, which he handily included in this post The Wrong Stuff, Righted–the Attack on Darwin’s Descent, 1871.

Ptak Science Books features in the same month of March this striking image of Albrecht Durer’s Geometrical Man, a creation that astounded me for dating to the 1500s.

More recently he’s explored the building and use of the atomic bomb, the hidden geography in old prints, and historical breakthroughs in astronomy.

Race and Racism in Latin America Videos

The journalist Lucia Newman and Al Jazeera English (yes, I was surpised too!) put together some good reporting on race and racism in Latin America. I used the two videos below in my Intro to Anthro class last week, the first on Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic and the second on Quechua Indians in Peru. There are two more that I saw in the same series, one on racial tensions in Brazil and another on linguistic equality in Paraguay.

Overall, I really enjoyed showing my students some examples from outside the US. One of my students was even from the town mentioned in the DR, and was able to tell everyone more about the discrimination and stereotypes that Haitians face there. Some great confirmation!