Friday, December 29, 2006

Challenging the link between the human microcephalin gene, evolution, and cognition.

›
Michael Balter writes an interesting account in Science Magazine over the controversy over the interpretation of data on the microcephalin ...
4 comments:
Thursday, December 28, 2006

Actions speak louder than brain images.

›
There is growing concern over the pseudoscientific use of brain imaging to predict behaviors or assign a character type. Apoorva Mandavill...

Brain self repair

›
Jan's laboratory at UCSF (Cell Volume 127, Issue 6, 15 December 2006) has looked at an area of the brain known as the subventricular zon...
1 comment:
Wednesday, December 27, 2006

A bull market in Brain Fitness and Calisthenics

›
I've been meaning for some time to do a post on the avalanche of interest in aging baby boomers not loosing their marbles any faster tha...
6 comments:

Synchronies to bind our brains... check out the movie

›
A commentary by Sporns and Honey and an article by Bassett et al in PNAS delve into (quoting Spors and Honey) "explaining how functi...

A review of MindBlog

›
A colleague recently pointed out this review of MindBlog , which I had completely missed. And to lay on another bit of self-promotion, let...
Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Thought without language - metacognition in Animals

›
The Dec. 15 issue of The New Scientist has an interesting article by Helen Philips, "The Known Unknown," about game playing in m...
4 comments:

In defense of order....

›
Check out this response by Jessica Duquette to the NY Times article on disorder that was the subject of yesterday's post. She argues &...
Monday, December 25, 2006

Disorder as the detritus of a creative mind...

›
This is the subtitle title of a recent essay in the New York Times, "Saying Yes to Mess", by Penelope Green. Being a tidy cont...
1 comment:
Friday, December 22, 2006

The giving season: food and money -an evolutionary link?

›
This short note from the Editor's choice section in the Dec. 22 issue of Science: "Although the giving of gifts is a common activit...

During sleep: a brain memory dialogue

›
It has been known for some time that specific patterns of nerve firing in "place cells" of the rat hippocampus occur during learni...
1 comment:
Thursday, December 21, 2006

Mind Wars

›
I would like to recommend to you an interesting, authoritative, and well written book on the massive amount of research being conducted by t...
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Abolishing pain with a single sodium channel mutation

›
Even though this blog is mainly about nervous systems, brains, and behaviors, I'm occasionally drawn back to my roots as a molecular bio...
Tuesday, December 19, 2006

When the "why?" isn't crucial...

›
I would like to point you to a brief article by Sally Satel in today's New York Times Science Section that mirrors my own sentiments abo...
3 comments:

An auditory-motor 'mirror" system is engaged by positive emotions.

›
More on mirror systems from Warren et al in Journal of Neuroscience. Edited clips from their paper: Social interaction relies on the abili...
Monday, December 18, 2006

Sleep deprivation slows the generation of new nerve cells

›
An interesting finding from Mirescu et al .... It is known that prolonged sleep deprivation is stressful, has adverse effects on cognitive...
Sunday, December 17, 2006

The Meerkat wars and synchronicity

›
It is the year of the Meerkats. These engaging foot long denizens of the Kalahari desert show behaviors that mirror the best and the worst ...
1 comment:
Saturday, December 16, 2006

The decline of civility and etiquette on the web.

›
Having been the recipient of some rather amazing invective comments on this blog (which I didn't permit to be published), not to mention...
3 comments:

A "mind reading" prosthesis for autistic people?

›
Another clip from the NYTimes Magazine "Ideas" issue: "The Emotional-Social Intelligence Prosthesis, developed by Rana el Kal...
1 comment:
Friday, December 15, 2006

Sporno

›
I can't resist passing on David Haskell's piece in the NYTimes magazine "Ideas" issue in its entirety. When approached to ...