The Blog That Ate Manhattan is hosting the latest Grand Rounds, gathering up the medical blogosphere. Very funny introduction on how Jerry Seinfeld might do a monologue on the Grand Rounds idea itself. Then builds on the Seinfeld theme. Well worth exploring!
Video Game Round Up
On Games
Tom Chatfield, Rage Against the Machines
Do games stunt minds and create addictions? Good overview of what people really do when they sit down to play. “Games are human products, and lie within our control.” See readers’ comments here.
Eric Sofge, Video Games (Finally) Grow Up
Esquire article covers how video games have matured—storytelling, moral complexity, artistry and more
Rob Fahey, It’s Inevitable: Soon We Will All Be Gamers
Video games out of teenagers’ rooms and into everyday life
Louis Bedigian, Professor James Paul Gee Shows the World the Importance of Video Games
Learning doesn’t just happen in school, and that’s a good thing. Or, trying to understand why people put so much effort into mastering a game
Vaio at VG Chartz, Why We Game
Worth it for the starting photo alone. Illuminating discussion by gamers about why they do it
Criticisms
Susan Greenfield, Modern Technology Is Changing The Way Our Brains Work
Neuroscientist presents a critical take—games and pharmaceuticals are changing brain function and creating unhealthy dependencies. For more on Greenfield and her views, click here.
Etelmik, Self-Abuse in Game Play
“We talk about games being therapeutic, educational, beautiful, aesthetic, or enlightening. We also talk of them as being cheap, derivative, or boring. But it occurred to me in the last two weeks that sometimes they can be devastating, depressing, destructive and discouraging.”
Stephen Totilo, Are Games Our Fantasies?
“Let’s talk, finally, about what that means.” Racial imagery, murderous violence, and the debate between “it shouldn’t matter” and “it does matter”
Mike Smith, New Startup Tackles Stereotypes
Gaming just for boys? Here’s a company run by women! “Worldwide Biggies spans the gender gap”
Darwin Does Encephalon
In honor of the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s presentation of the theory of natural selection before the Linnean Society, and the 4th of July, Neuroscientifically Challenged has given us Encephalon #49 Celebrates Indepedence (from Lamarckism).
Given the evolution theme, we have Brain Stimulant discusses gene therapy in psychiatry, Cognitive Daily on attractive voices, Neurophilosophy on the brain’s adaptability (in this case, re-organizing after a stroke), Sharp Brains on something Darwin would have loved–walking book clubs, and the Winding Path on the co-evolution of brain and culture with some complex social interaction added.
And even more than that, so check it out! It might even help you evolve.
Get into trance: Felicitas Goodman
Some readers may have thought I was doing my little anthropologist’s quibble with the research on gene expression in meditation in Relax your genes, when I wrote, ‘I’d be surprised if variations in these techniques (such as those that use chanting or movement, for example) had no effect at all on the resulting neural, cellular, and perhaps even genetic processes.’ Some of you might have thought to yourselves, ‘Sure, Greg, you always say stuff like that — you’re paid to say stuff like that as an anthropologist.’ But one of the things I was thinking about was the work of the late anthropologist, Felicitas Goodman, which I hadn’t really discussed at all on Neuroanthorpology.
I stumbled across the webpages for the Felicitas Goodman Institut (the page is in German), and the English discussion of her work, Ritual Body Postures and Ecstatic Trance, by Nana Nauwald, and the webpage for The Cuyamungue Institute, which Goodman founded, this morning. A bit of searching turned up an interview with Prof. Goodman at Conversations for Exploration.
Goodman’s own biography is pretty fascinating; she didn’t do her PhD in anthropology until she was in her 50s, already a veteran German professor at Ohio State where she emigrated after leaving Germany with an American husband (Glenn). She went on to teach anthropology at Denison University (Ohio), and is best known for her contributions to the study of ecstatic states, including trance and glossalalia (speaking in tongues). She wrote a number of works, including Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences and Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia (now out in a new edition, according to Amazon). After falling in love with the area around Santa Fe, Goodman helped to found The Cuyamungue Institute in New Mexico, which, according to the institute’s website, ‘continues her research into altered states of consciousness and holds workshops about the postures which she admits are but one door to alternate reality.’
Grand Rounds
I’ve just discovered an exciting carnival, Grand Rounds, that brings the best and brightest of health-related blogging to us on a weekly basis. Grand Rounds was started back in 2004, and has continued in force since then. It was created by Nicholas Genes, who runs blogborygmi, covering life in the emergency room and other assorted affairs, such as competitive eating and medical advertising and ethics.
The latest Grand Rounds was hosted at Covert Rationing. A Fourth of the July theme, in the sense of independence, basic rights, limits to government, grievances, and even Tories!
Before that Shrink Rap hosted the iPhone 3G Grand Rounds. An equally impressive execution of a theme, and a great collection.
If you are interested in submitting to Grand Rounds, here are the submission instructions. You can find the upcoming schedule and archives here.
Relax your genes
A recent article on PLoS One by a research team from the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Genomics Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) discusses the genetic effects of the relaxation response, a widespread bodily state induced by different mind-body techniques (such as meditation).
The original piece, Genomic Counter-Stress Changes Induced by the Relaxation Response, was published at PLoS One, and the findings are also discussed on ScienceDaily, Relaxation Response Can Influence Expression Of Stress-related Genes. It’s starting to be a bit of a refrain from genetics research, but it still bears repeating: the team is exploring a way that ‘changing the activity of the mind can alter the way basic genetic instructions are implemented,’ as Dr. Herbert Benson explained (in ScienceDaily).
The relaxation response is a bodily state, found in a variety of contexts, characterized by ‘decreased oxygen consumption, increased exhaled nitric oxide, and reduced psychological distress.’ Long-term effects of relaxation exercises include decreased oxygen intake and carbon dioxide elimination; reductions in blood pressure, heart and respiration rate; prominent low frequency heart rate oscillations; and some changes in cortical and subcortical brain regions, including increased thickness of the cortex (see NeuroReport and here also on the effect of meditation on aging).
For about three decades, dependable clinical studies have shown that relaxation response-producing exercises have a range of positive health benefits. What makes the current research distinctive (at least in my reading) is that the team traced this metabolic process to its genetic effects. As the authors write:
This study provides the first compelling evidence that the RR elicits specific gene expression changes in short-term and long-term practitioners. Our results suggest consistent and constitutive changes in gene expression resulting from RR may relate to long term physiological effects. Our study may stimulate new investigations into applying transcriptional profiling for accurately measuring RR and stress related responses in multiple disease settings.
Neuroanthropology 