brain-blogs

Encephalon #61: Brain & Mind Reading for the Holidays

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Wel­come to the 61st edi­tion Encephalon brain blog carnivalof Encephalon, the blog car­ni­val that offers some of the best neu­ro­science and psy­chol­o­gy blog posts every oth­er week.

We do have an excel­lent set of arti­cles today. cov­er­ing much ground. Enjoy the reading:

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Neu­ro­science and Society 

Neu­roan­thro­pol­o­gy,
by Greg Downey		 The Fly­nn Effect: Trou­bles with Intelligence
Aver­age IQ test scores had risen about 3 points per decade and in some cas­es more. Tests of vocab­u­lary, arith­metic, or gen­er­al knowl­edge (such as the sorts of facts one learns in school) have showed lit­tle increase, but scores have increased marked­ly on tests thought to mea­sure gen­er­al intelligence.
Mind­Hacks,
by Vaugh­an Bell		 Med­ical jar­gon alters our under­stand­ing of disease
Under­stand­ing how pop­u­lar ideas influ­ence our per­son­al med­ical beliefs is an essen­tial part of under­stand­ing med­i­cine itself.
Cog­ni­tive Dai­ly,
by Dave Munger		 Is it sex­ist to think men are angri­er than women?
Are we more like­ly to per­ceive a male face as angry and a female face as hap­py? A recent study sheds light on the issue.
Neu­r­o­crit­ic Crime, Pun­ish­ment, and Jer­ry Springer
Judges and jurors must put aside their emo­tion­al­ly-dri­ven desire for revenge when com­ing to an impar­tial ver­dict. Does neu­roimag­ing (fMRI) add any­thing to our under­stand­ing of justice?

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Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and Neu­rocog­ni­tive Health [Read more…] about Encephalon #61: Brain & Mind Read­ing for the Holidays

Aging, neuroscience, psychology blogs

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2 excel­lent recent blog car­ni­val editions:

Encephalon #58 (neu­ro­science and psy­chol­o­gy), host­ed by Wal­ter at High­light Health.
Hour­glass #5 (biol­o­gy  of aging), host­ed by Lau­ra at psique.

Enjoy!

Encephalon #50 Edition: Brain & Mind Research

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Wel­come to Encephalon 50th edi­tion, where you will find anoth­er superb col­lec­tion of blog posts on all things Brain and Mind.Encephalon brain and mind blog carnival

Enjoy these contributions:

Sci­ence & Technology

Mind Hacks reports that Face­book ate my psy­chi­a­trist. We can learn about the ben­e­fits of social net­work­ing sites like Face­book, bring­ing great per­spec­tive to recent and mis­guid­ed media spec­u­la­tion (fuelled by a recent talk at the Roy­al Col­lege of Psy­chi­a­trists). Vaugh­an, will you please report on the ben­e­fits of par­tic­i­pat­ing (and, bet­ter, host­ing) Encephalon?.

Dun­geons And Drag­ons — Or Mazes And Mon­sters?: Pod­Black Cat offers a thought-pro­vok­ing review of the ther­a­py (includ­ing self-ther­a­py) appli­ca­tions of role-play­ing games such as the clas­sic Dun­geons And Drag­ons and the more recent mas­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er online games.

Cog­ni­tive Dai­ly cov­ers anoth­er type of game. [Read more…] about Encephalon #50 Edi­tion: Brain & Mind Research

“Cells that fire together wire together” and Stanford Media X

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That is the goal of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Media X: to fos­ter deep col­lab­o­ra­tions between indus­try and acad­e­mia, as high­light­ed in Busi­ness Week’s recent arti­cle The Vir­tu­al Meet­ing Room. The 5th Annu­al Media X Con­fer­ence on Research, Col­lab­o­ra­tion, Inno­va­tion and Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty served its pur­pose well for the last cou­ple of days: very fun and insight­ful pre­sen­ta­tions by Stan­ford researchers (and a few exter­nal experts) and a great list of par­tic­i­pants to get to know.

No doubt, a great source of men­tal stim­u­la­tion for all of us. Charles House, Media X’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, framed the dia­logue as an effort to gen­er­ate the right ques­tions and then engage the best minds in answer­ing them.

Some of (my) main take-aways

  • “The world does not come to us as neat dis­ci­pli­nary prob­lems, but as com­plex inter­dis­ci­pli­nary chal­lenges” (great quote by Dean John Hen­nessy)
  • Per­son­al Robot­ics is poised to explode soon-and soft­ware will be key (pre­dict­ed by Paul Saffo)
  • An incon­ve­nient truth: Al Gore had to be con­vinced to bring his pre­sen­ta­tion into a movie, since he was very attached to each and every of his X hun­dred slides. We are hap­py it happened!
  • Neu­ro­sci­en­tists know what pat­terns in the brain indi­cate cer­tain inten­tions-and are start­ing to use tech­nolo­gies to help immo­bi­lized patients com­mu­ni­cate with exter­nal devices based mere­ly on their thoughts
  • We need to learn to embrace change- a lot of it is coming!

Now, some key points from sev­er­al pre­sen­ta­tions (there were more than these, but I could­n’t attend all). I encour­age you to vis­it the web­site of each pre­sen­ter if you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about that topic.

a. Paul Saf­fo on Inno­va­tion