Recommended reading is a weekly summary of interesting posts and selected links I posted on Twitter [recreading]Related posts: Recommended Reading This Week: Empathy and Neurostimulation Recommended Reading This Week Recommended Reading This Week ..read more »

Chocolate is not an antidepressant. Interaction between chocolate and neurotransmitter systems in the brain, such as serotonin, that contribute to appetite, reward and mood regulation were studied but no antidepressant mechanism of chocolate was found. Most possible psychoactive substances in chocolate are metabolized in the blood by an enzyme (monoamineoxydase A), these substances are unable to pass the blood brain barrier, they are metabolized before they can even reach this barrier. Beta-phenyl-ethylamine is the only possible psychoactive substance in chocolate that passes the blood brain barrier. It is a direct dopamine releasing ingredient. Moreover, cocoa contains caffeine and it's structural .....read more »

This weeks round up on Neuroanthropology has a lot of posts about gaming besides mind and brain, and anthropology. I liked the post Once Upon A Time Narrative in Video Games. Jesper Juul is a video game researcher at the Singapore-MIT Game Lab in Massachusetts, USA. He has been studying video games for the past 10 years, dedicating a large chunk of his early work to video games and narratives. Although his theories fit into the ludology school of thought, Juul also argues that video games can be both narratives and a set of rules at the same time. Another interesting .....read more »

Why do young adults play online games such as First Person Shooters? What are their motives? Communication before, during, and after online gaming is of the utmost importance for these gamers. They like the "togetherness" in these centers. Paying for going to an online game center was far better than the solitude of gaming from their home Gaming is seen as a way of developing relationships: old and new ones. Moreover, new contacts were people who would not normally socially interact. The reputation build during gaming rely on cooperation, generosity, reputation and ability to cooperate. Gamers can express themselves in ways .....read more »

The Grand Rounds is up at The Covert Rationing Blog. The theme is dedicated to exploring the many ways in which the proposed health (insurance) reforms will succeed in all its goals, and most especially in achieving cost containment. It's a long list of excellent posts, witty and well written introductions by DrRich. Check it out. In one post the finest of the MedBlogoSphere. Grand Rounds, Vol. 5.47 - Cost Containment In HealthcareRelated posts: Grand Rounds Vol. 6 No. 30 is up at The Sterile Eye Grand Rounds, Old School Style Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 52 up at Suture for a Living ..read more »

Lombroso believed that 40% of criminals were ‘born criminals’ who could be distinguished by physical features including relatively long arms, prehensile feet with mobile big toes, low and narrow forehead, large ears, thick skull, large jaw, etc. The main objection to his hypotheses were his campaign on the basis of his theory for a preventive criminology: ‘society need not wait for the act itself, for physical and social stigmata define the potential criminal. He can be identified, watched and whisked away at the first manifestation of his irrevocable nature’. As than as well as now the findings in the field .....read more »

Jargon allows people in a certain field to speak succinctly, clearly and accurately to each other. Problems emerge when those who use jargon very often, have to explain what they’re doing to someone who is not part of their field. The medical profession is renowned for its jargon. Jargon has the advantage of talking to one another quickly and efficiently. Slang should be distinguished from jargon, which is the technical vocabulary of a particular profession. Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's dialect or language. Examples of medical slang, .....read more »

Neuroanthropology is back from vacation and treats us with another weekly round up. Check out: How Long Is a Severed Head Conscious For? One of those morbid questions we often ask – well, here’s the answer based on the use of the guillotine, little creepy but nicely done At least 8 links to posts about anthropology. I especially liked the link to an article in The New York Times: For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics At Harvard, Carrie Grimes majored in anthropology and archaeology and ventured to places like Honduras, where she studied Mayan settlement patterns by mapping where .....read more »

Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo. Wonderful time lapse video of the creation of Macworld Magazine. The main three areas involved are the photography, photoshop and design. I always thought it was simple but this video shows otherwise. Not only very high tech equipment is needed but also a high level of perfectionism. On the technical side, for the time lapse video, I used the Canon 5D Mark II with a 24mm-70mm zoom. I chose the 5D because of its great image quality with high ISO's. Canon's sRAW1 gave me the flexibility of a RAW file with the file size of .....read more »

Laikas is a Clinical Librarian working in a University Hospital In The Netherlands. Besides writing an excellent blog: Laika's MedLibLog she is also to be found on Twitter (@laikas). She has made a spreadsheet of medical journals on twitter, It is open to anybody to edit. You will need a gmail or google account to be able to read and edit the list. This initiative has been a great success, so successful that the list has grown beyond medical journals as you can read about in here latest post: Lists of Tweeting Journals. However, some of the journal titles I would .....read more »