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Neuroanthropology Wednesday Round Up #115

At last, another round up is posted on neuroanthropology. Apparently, the author is now safely esconsed in Tampa, and getting started at the University of South Florida.

And now below – some favs, mind, misc, anthro, video games, and addiction. Doing some of my consistent interests this time round. Plus a new surprise at the end. Enjoy!

I especially enjoyed

  • Daphne Merkin, My Life in Therapy. In this NY Times Magazine essay, Merkin describes her encounters with therapy over 40 years of treatment, and reflects on what makes therapy tick and why she continues to go. This is a follow-up piece to her earlier essay, A Journey through Darkness, a haunting account of her life-long struggles with depression
  • Jonah Lehrer, The Personality Paradox. Latest research – genes don’t predict personality. So, are the genes wrong, or the construct of personality wrong? The Neurocritic adds depth on the study itself
  • Sarah Sweeney, What They’re Reading
    Harvard professors share what they are reading over the summer. There are even some beach books!
  • Scicurious, Über Coca, by Sigmund Freud. The story of Freud’s experimentation with cocaine – his original paper sounds quite neuroanthropological from me, going from cross-cultural work to consideration of personal experience to pharmacological properties

But check for yourself, to many links to hard to choose from

 

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Neuroanthropology Round Up

Neuroanthropology

From this excellent weekly round up I especially liked:
Do countries with more mental illness have more suicides? From Neuroskeptic

Although not all suicides are related to mental illness, unsurprisingly people with mental illness do have a much higher suicide rate than people without. So, all other things being equal, the rate of mental illness in a country should correlate with the suicide rate. Of course, all other things are not equal, and other factors might come into play such as the quality of mental health services.

Mapping the Glutamate Receptor
Want to know what it’s all about the glutamate receptor? Should be interesting not only to neuroscientists.

How creativity springs from a choreographed set of mental events from Seedmagazine

Kooper didn’t have time to think — the chorus was about to happen — and so he just started banging on the ivory keys. This same impromptu process defines some of the most famous creations of modern art, from John Coltrane letting loose on “A Love Supreme,” to Jackson Pollock dripping paint haphazardly on a canvas. These are works made entirely in the moment — their beauty is spontaneous.

Tumblr in the class room from Middle Savagery.
I started with tumblr years ago, a very quick and nice blogging tool, easy to use. Read about it’s use in education, very interesting.

In any case, I could recommend using tumblr for both smaller seminar settings, and for larger classes when there is a TA available to follow the discussion with links to examples and salient points. We are not quite to full immersion–live blogging a lecture so that a powerpoint isn’t necessary, but we’re getting closer.

Uphill. Both ways. In the snow. It’s good for the brain from Playthink, Exercising the mind and the body
How walking or bicycling to school can improve the brain of kids.

Walking to school, then, doesn’t seem like such a bad idea—it may help to strengthen students’ bodies and prime their brains for learning.

But there are many more interesting posts gathered on this excellent weekly round up, so see for yourself at Neuroanthropology

 

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Neuroanthropology Wednesday Round Up #82

Neuroanthropology

The new weekly round up at Neuroanthropology is up, again an amazing collection of interesting science posts, have a look and take your own pick or read those I especially liked:

9/11 & Collective Memory at The Prism

Collective memory is clearly a social product, but individual memory also flows from social context.In this post September 11, 2001 and the recent posts after eight years are discussed

This post is overtly about the continuing politics that surround 9/11, and less about remembering or reflecting on the event. Still, I would argue that it is in fact about collective memory and how the event is characterized throughout the nation. Everyone has their take.

Has the blogosphere gone all MSM on us? well yeah duh on Neuron Culture

Has the blogosphere become more like the traditional media?

the blogosphere is becoming more tightly structured in the highest traffic areas, with increasing overlap between networks of favored people and relations in the blogosphere and in mainstream media.

Will ‘Rubi the Robot’ Be the Ultimate Teacher’s Aide? Machine Learning and the Transformation of Education at the Dana Foundation

Social robot designed to serve as a teacher’s assistant in classroom settings.

 

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Neuroanthropology Wednesday Round Up #79

Neuroanthropology

On this weekly excellent round up I especially liked:

Placebo Has Strength in Numbers on Mind Hacks.

The term ‘placebo effect’ is used to refer to two things in the medical literature. The first is a statistical concept and it refers to the improvement in patients given an inactive treatment in a drug trial in comparison to those given the actual drug. The second is a psychological concept and it refers to improvement due to expectancy and belief.

The brain, caught between science and ideology on Research EU about differences between women and men’s brain.

experiments clearly show that self-esteem and the internalisation of gender stereotypes play a decisive role in the scores obtained in this type of test.

Clive Thompson on the New Literacy on Wired Magazine

“I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization,” she says. For Lunsford, technology isn’t killing our ability to write. It’s reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.

Check the others to your liking n Neuroanthropology

 

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Wednesday Round Up #77 Neuroanthropology

Neuroanthropology

My favorite round up this week at Neuroanthropology is again loaded with excellent and interesting posts.

I especially liked:

What makes a paper “interesting”? First of all the subject but this is only interesting to a small, focused audience, all ready aware of the matter at hand. Next is the theory, which has a much broader audience. Most papers are only interesting for the subject. You should make it more interesting for a broad area by framing it in a broader theory. How? Read the post Get a Theory Part 2 on Blue Monster

Read and listen to a more scientific debate about, as far as I am concerned, non existing net addiction on Science Show

Twitter is very dear to me. I’ve written some posts about using twitter during lectures and in higher education. Clarence C. Gravlee wrote a summary and excellent post on twitter in the classroom

It’s really the 700-student part that has me interested in Twitter. Most professors recognize that lectures are not the best way for students to learn—they turn students into passive recipients rather than active participants. The effective use of technology, however, has the potential to make even large lecture classes more engaging.

What is Neuroanthropology?

Neuroanthropology is a collaborative weblog created to encourage exchanges among anthropology, philosophy, social theory, and the brain sciences. We especially hope to explore the implications of new findings in the neurosciences for our understanding of culture, human development, and behaviour.

For more information read the about page

 

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Neuroanthropology Wednesday Round Up

narrative in games

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 post is about An Anthropologist on What’s Wrong with Wall Street

Ho, now a professor at the University of Minnesota, talked with Barbara Kiviat about her findings, presented in Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, and how she thinks the recent financial collapse has — or hasn’t — changed things.

I also liked: When Words Hurt How Depression Lingers

Hooley specifically sought to examine the way subjects’ brains processed criticism. Using the relatively new technology of functional magnetic resonance imaging, she aimed to update an earlier finding from her own 1976 study, which established that patients who’d recovered from depression were more likely to relapse when living in a highly critical family environment.

 

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What Constitutes “Legitimate” Journalism compared to Blogs and Twitter

The number one post on a wednesday round up by neuroanthropology from which the video above came from is an interesting discussion about what constitutes “legitimate” journalism.

How people would/should deal with being overloaded with information and the role of journalists. What place would this changing mediascape have for journalists? Would they be transformed into glorified readers? And would this be a bad thing?

I personally don’t think the new mediascape is a threat to journalism – I think it actually makes them more relevant than before. This post is to be read as essential material to all bloggers and twitter users read it on Betwixt and Between: 2010 Job Posting: Professional Reader, I fully agree with the statement in the video

Haven’t heard of this grand round or round up before but is sure has a lot of awful other nice links about: top, placebo, neuro, anthro, and Colombia.

Links to posts about the placebo effect and how placebo works. Always an important subject for Dr Shock, placebo controlled trials are to few and very important.

Another interesting posts in this round up:

The Intimate Study of Terrorism

This round up is a variety of very valuable posts, get over to this wednesday round up and pray there will be another one next week