Four Stone Effort

fourstonecomplete
moneduloides is hosting the 58th edition of Four Stone Hearth, and he’s gone through the great effort of going out to gather good blogging from all four fields of anthropology. I’ll highlight one post from each area, but there’s plenty more next to the hearth.

Here’s a blog I didn’t know, Ethblography, with the fun title, Don’t twitter on my internet and call it lifestreaming. Bite-sized blandness over substantive writing, and fieldwork on new technology/communication in Spain. A great mix.

On the linguistic side moned tracked down this site documenting oral histories of disability in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Return to Chauvet Cave is a new book on the incredible art work done 30,000 years ago in France.

And here we have competing ideas about the extinction of Neanderthals.

So go on over for a dance by the moneduloides hearth.

Wednesday Round Up #46

An against-the-grain top, then the brain, science and teaching, and anthropology.

Top of the List

The Neurocritic, Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience
Edward Vul and those too remarkable correlations in brain scans make their best appearance yet, along with Sponge Bob and voodoo dolls. A great read.

Philip Dawdy, Study: Psychiatrists Try To Explain Away Huge Placebo Effect In Child Depression Trials
Give drugs to 10 kids to affect just one: “It’s time for researchers and clinicians to face facts: the day of using anti-depressants in kids is drawing to a close and continued use of these drugs in kids and teens must cross some high hurdles or you are coming damn close to engaging in malpractice.”

Jonah Lehrer & Javier Zarracina, Hack Your Brain: How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio
Why should those brain training folks have all the fun?

Greg Laden, Autism Study Examines Cause of Apparent Rise in Rate
Environmental causes get indirect support in some of the latest research on what explains the rise in autism. Greg provides some extended commentary on science, policy and what data mean.

LiveScience, Study: Exercise Won’t Cure Obesity
Dietary intake matters more than energy expenditure – some of the latest research

Brain

John Tierney, Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss
The simple equation, drug=love=marriage. Somehow the real world of relationships got lost along the way. But don’t tell Larry Young and his prairie voles. He’s hooked on oxytocin in a scientific way.

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #46”

Our Very Own Neuroanthropology 2008 Prizes

These are the highs of the past year. Some might call them lows. But we’re handing out our own self-inflicted prizes anyway. Or go traditional and check out our month-by-month summary of 2008 and our popularity contest.

Best One Night Stand
Girls gone guilty: Evolutionary psych on sex #2

Best Soldiering On
Cultural Aspects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Thinking on Meaning and Risk

Best Balancing Act
Balance between cultures: equilibrium training

Best Hook
Studying Sin

Continue reading “Our Very Own Neuroanthropology 2008 Prizes”

New Pages

It’s 2009, and Neuroanthropology is turning a new leaf. As some of you have noticed, we have some new pages. Best of Anthro gathers together all our posts on the Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008 initiative. Conference gives you the compilation of all our pre- and post-San Francisco coverage of the Encultured Brain: Neuroanthropology and Interdisciplinary Engagement session. And Examples & Theory provides you with some of our best examples of neuroanthropological work, as well as some more general statements about neuroanthropology.

As a bonus, our About Anthropology, Popular Posts, and our Web Resources pages have been updated. In particular, the Web Resources now includes stuff we’ve done onsite and has more coverage of anthropology alongside the previous brain links and sites.

Daniel Lende: Top Twenty 2008

If you like addiction, video games, brains both pretty and damaged, biocultural interactions, funny videos, and internet resources, then Daniel is your guy. With some brain mechanisms, obesity, and loose morals thrown into the mix too!

Top Ten
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City
Poverty Poisons the Brain
Brain vs. Philosophy? Howard Gardner Gets Us Across!
Steven Pinker and the Moral Instinct
Dopamine and Addiction – Part One
Psychopharma-parenting
Jeff Lichtman’s Brainbows
Encephalon #48: The Usual Suspects
Anthropology and Neuroscience Podcasts
Decision Making and Emotion

Eleven to Twenty
MMORPG Anthropology: Video Games and Morphing Our Discipline
Genetics and Obesity
Sleep, Eat, Sex – Orexin Has Something to Say
The Neural Buddhists of David Brooks
Jean-Pierre Changeux, Gerald Edelman, and How the Mind Works
The Legend of the Crystal Skull
Video Games, Brain and Psychology Round Up
Cultural Neuroscience
Culture and Inequality in the Obesity Debate
The Allegory of the Trolley Problem Paradox

Greg Downey: Top Twenty 2008

If you like balance, embodied cognition, critiques of evolutionary psychology, neuroplasticity, snarky comments, and language, then Greg is your guy. With meditation, gender, perception and good reporting thrown into the mix too!

Top Ten
Synesthesia & metaphor — I’m not feeling it
Girls gone guilty: Evolutionary psych on sex #2
Identical twins not… err… identical?
Brain doping poll results in
Girls closing math gap?: Troubles with intelligence #1
Bad brain science: Boobs caused subprime crisis
Our Blessed Lady of the Cerebellum
Chicks dig jerks?: Evolutionary psych on sex #1
Psychiatry affects human psychology: e.g., ‘bipolar’ children
We hate memes, pass it on…

Eleven to Twenty
How well do we know our brains?
Get into trance: Felicitas Goodman
Two languages, one brain and theory of mind
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was right… about adults
Neuroplasticity on the radio
Equilibrium, modularity, and training the brain-body
How your brain is not like a computer
‘Innate’ fear of snakes?
Relax your genes
Is evolutionary psychology really rational choice theory?