the 58th edition of Encephalon, where we highlight some of the best neuroscience and psychology blog posts from around the blogosphere. This edition includes 20 articles on a variety of interesting topics, including intelligence, belief, neurodegeneration, multi-tasking, memory, grief and consciousness. Go read this excellent grand round. ..read more »

Watch CBS Videos Online In the clip (included in full above), see how a completely paralyzed man, who could otherwise only communicate by moving his eyes, uses his mind to type out thoughts on a computer screen. Of course, the process is very slow going—each letter takes up to 20 seconds to type. Reporter Scott Pelley donned the controller skull cap, and watched a screen of flashing letters to try it out himself. When the letter he was thinking of highlighted, he'd think "that's it!" and that signal of recognition would type the letter on-screen. Thanks Lifehacker ..read more »

Welcome to the 57th edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival, where we have the honour of hosting the best in the last fortnight's mind and brain writing, here on Mind Hacks. Excellent overview of posts on neuroscience on blogs at Mind Hacks ..read more »

Sex differences exist in every brain lobe. For instance in the "cognitive regions" such as the hippocampus, amygdala and neocortex. The hippocampus has an important function in memory, the amygdala in mood. Both structures lie deep within the brain. The cortex is the "outside" of the brain. The part you can look at from the outside. Important for instance for stimulation with rTMS. Red structures that are larger in the healthy female brain, relative to cerebrum size Blue structures that are larger in the healthy male brain, relative to cerebrum size Sex differences in the brain can also be relatively global in .....read more »

The coming week I will post articles about gender and/or sex and neuroscience. Topics with sex or gender and brains will be chocolate, computer game play, depression, medical education and brain sex differences, so stay tuned. Now what is the difference between gender and sex? Sex = male and female Gender = masculine and feminine So in essence: Sex refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs. Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine. So while your sex as male or female is a biological fact that is the same in any culture, what that sex .....read more »

It is the time of the year again. Seasonal Affective Disorder is in the news again. For a description and treatment of SAD see a previous article on this blog from about one year ago: 8 Articles about Seasonal Affective Disorder. You can also watch a video on SAD, with advice about how to cope with this disease. Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter in SAD because in post mortem human brain samples, serotonin concentrations are lowest in people dying in the winter. Also, the concentration of the serotonin metabolite 5-HIAA is lower in jugular blood samples collected in winter. This might .....read more »

In a prior post on this blog about empathy sometimes a distinction is made between cognitive and affective empathy. These two concepts refer to our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of another person, be it in their mental or emotional shoes. These concepts are difficult to differentiate. Especially for cognitive empathy this is a simplification since mental states could in principal also include feeling and emotional states. Affective empathy refers to the process which allows us to experience what it feels like for another person to experience a certain emotion or sensation. The capacity to understand other people’s emotions .....read more »

Researcher Kwabena Boahen is looking for ways to mimic the brain's supercomputing powers in silicon -- because the messy, redundant processes inside our heads actually make for a small, light, superfast computer. The brain is very efficient, they will never be able to copy that, or will they? ..read more »

A robot with empathy sounds like the stuff of sci-fi movies, but with the aid of neural networks European researchers are developing robots in tune with our emotions. The tantalising work of the Feelix Growing project is grabbing the world’s attention. Through the combination of cameras,sensors, artificial neural networks and software development ICT results are developing robots that can respond to human emotions. If someone shows fear or cries out in pain, the robot may learn to change its behaviour to appear less threatening, backing away if necessary. If someone cries out in happiness, it may even detect the difference, and one .....read more »

Why do we crave love so much, even to the point that we would die for it? To learn more about our very real, very physical need for romantic love, Helen Fisher and her research team took MRIs of people in love -- and people who had just been dumped. This talk starts slow but soon the information becomes very interesting. More about the Science of Love on the BBC, thanks Dr Confabula Key Points from the science of love: There are three phases to falling in love and different hormones are involved at each stage Events occurring in the brain when we are .....read more »