Neuroanthropology

This summer I am part of a teaching discussion built around the book Good Video Games and Good Learning by James Paul Gee. By luck, during our first meeting in a common space of the student union, we started discussing World of Warcraft. None of us were experts there, but a student overheard us and came up and introduced himself. Turns out, he was a guild leader. He subsequently joined the group, providing plenty of gaming insight.

We had our second meeting yesterday, and our WoW student made the following point: in video games, there is progressive learning, so that you are still using some of the same principles in the end game as you learned in the beginning. These principles often extend throughout the differing domains and challenges of the game. Oftentimes, the repeated iterations and feedback of the game help the gamer develop an ever firmer grasp of those principles. But in most learning, students don’t get that sort of feedback—they get one or two shots, and then they move onto the next thing.

Some of us responded how, as teachers, how we’ve incorporated feedback and revisions and the like into our teaching strategies. And I said that, in principle, faculty in departments do sit down and discuss some of the basic core capacities they want students to have, and create a progression of expertise from introductory to high-level classes. But I was struck at the same time how difficult this same process can be for people attempting to create interdisciplinary approaches.

There is the obvious institutional side—disciplines have histories and sets of standards and expectations, and people who have gone through the process of formation themselves, and the ability to set their own agendas of teaching and learning. Any interdisciplinary effort works against all those social and intellectual structures already in place. However, institutes like the New Humanities Initiative can help provide a critical institutional space to help get people in conversation.

I was struck yesterday that the cognitive or learning challenge is the greater of the two. Institutes are easy to create. But a coherent set of learning principles that can be applied from introductory to expert situations, with a set of individuals who can agree on how and what needs to be debated to get students properly trained in a new type of thinking? Wow, that’s difficult—and a distinct challenge to anything we might try to propose here at Neuroanthropology.

Continue reading “The Interdisciplinary Game”

Paul mentioned this intriguing review, Mind, Brain, Law and Culture, at the end of his post on Norman Doidge. Welcome back from the field, Paul!

Written by Andrew Scull, a sociologist at UC San Diego and an expert in the history of psychiatry, this review appeared in the journal Brain in 2007. In it, Scull took on the books Law and the Brain, edited by Semir Zeki and Oliver Goodenough, and Brain and Culture by Bruce Wexler. I’ll deal as briefly with Brain and Culture as Scull does, before getting to the meat of Scull’s critique.

Scull reviews Wexler’s book favorably, as did Greg back in February, praising it for an integrative approach: “Rather than positing a rigid separation between the biological and the social, Wexler insists that the two interact and mutually influence each other in powerful ways. It makes no sense, in his view, to regard the brain as an asocial or a presocial organ, because in important respects, its very structure and functioning is a product of the social environment.”

Like Greg, Scull likes the first two-thirds of the book, but is less sanguine about the last third, where Wexler moves away from plasticity to speaking of difference. These chapters are more speculative and vulnerable to criticism, evoking generalizations based on selective snippets of anthropological and historical evidence.

Continue reading “Andrew Scull Takes the Law (and the Brain) Into His Own Hands”

For those who speak indonesian, this is a follow-up of Paul Mason on Neuroanthropology defined Posted by gregdowney on December 27, 2007 and  Paul Mason: Slides on Neuroanthropology Posted by gregdowney on January 12, 2008.

The article was published in Gema Seni and I have scanned a copy which can now be accessed here, (I apologise for the poor scanning, most of page 117 is indeed missing):

Mason, P.H. (2007) Alam, Otak dan Kebudayaan: Perkembangan Baru Tentang Pengetahuan Musik dan Tari. gema-seni: Jurnal Komunikasi, Informasi, dan Dokumentasi Seni, Vol 2, no. 4, pp. 108-119.

While passing through Jakarta in early May, I picked up a copy of the Sunday Jakarta Post. I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoy reading The Jakarta Post. It is full of cynical, pessimistic and diplomatic stabs at every shortcoming of the country where it is printed. The front page of the May 11th issue (2008 ) had a particularly funny, yet in reality frustrating, article about pedestrian strips (or the lack thereof) in Jakarta. The article is called, Unnatural Selection in the Concrete Jungle. It’s a very witty piece! The author, Rhiannon Zepol, even manages to take the mickey out of her host-country’s love of acronyms by referring to the ABDPPCDYB (Anak Buah Dari Pohon Pak Charles Darwin Yang Besar = Operation Charles Darwin Citizen Selection Program). 

Zepol’s piece appealed to me because it speaks of some daily frustrations that seem to have been solved in so many other cities of the world. The article alludes to a political ignorance that is reflected in Indonesian lifestyle. The best example I could give is a TV commercial created by the Health Department for people to put a cup of Dettol (a brand of anti-bacterial disinfectant) into their Mandi. A Mandi is basically a large tub/upright-bath from where people scoop water for washing and flushing the toilet (aka hole-in-the-ground). One would think that putting dettol in this water is a good idea. However, the shower-using politicians and council workers have probably neglected the fact that most Indonesians use Mandi water for cooking as well. Dettol tasting rice is not exactly what I would like on my menu.

Continue reading “ABDPPCDYB”

Apologies in advance, but ignore this post if you’re not interested in anthropology. I just had a paper come out in an online conference proceedings, and I don’t think it’s going to get too much notice unless I do a bit of self promotion. So, at the risk of being accused of narcism (or worse), I’ll just post a brief notice and link to the paper:

Continue reading “On-line coaching paper available: shameless self-promo”