Scientific American - Mind & Brain

Thinking About Mortality Changes How We Act

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

The thought of shuffling off our mortal coil can make all of us a little squeamish. But avoiding the idea of death entirely means ignoring the role it can play in determining our actions. Consider the following scenario:

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Cracks in the Plaques: Mysteries of Alzheimer's Slowly Yielding to New Research

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:30:00 EST

This has been a big week in Alzheimer's news as scientists put together a clearer picture than ever before of how the disease affects the brain. Three recently published studies have detected the disease with new technologies, hinted at its prevalence, and described at last how it makes its lethal progress through the brain.

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Ethical Questions Surround "Electrical Thinking Cap" That Improves Mental Functions

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:00:00 EST

Child using transcranial direct current stimulation

What if a drug could improve learning and cognition and had no untoward medical consequences? Wouldn t it be justified to make it widely available? A group of scientists concluded three years ago that it would be.

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Neuronal transplants for treatment of obesity

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:58:00 EST

There are many different factors which go into whether animals (or humans) develop obesity and diabetes. Different sensitivity to different chemicals, in different areas of the body and brain, can cause major differences in feeding behavior, body weight, fat, and insulin sensitivity. And now we’ve learned that changes in one circuit of the hypothalamus could make a big difference in a certain kind of obesity in mice.

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Willy Chyr's Neuroplastic Dreams - pop!

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:06:00 EST

Willy Chyr is a fine artist and designer interested in emergent properties and systems: and he sometimes works in balloons.

I’ll be presenting an interview with Chyr here on Symbiartic soon; we met recently over coffee and from such fun, complicated work, Willy is refreshingly unpretentious and creatively versatile.

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More Than One Blow for a Concussion in Football

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:00:08 EST

As you watch the Patriots and Giants smash into each other Sunday, consider this.

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Brain Injury Rate 7 Times Greater among U.S. Prisoners

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

A car accident, a rough tackle, an unexpected tumble. The number of ways to bang up the brain are almost as numerous as the people who sustain these injuries. And only recently has it become clear just how damaging a seemingly minor knock can be. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is no longer just a condition acknowledged in military personnel or football players and other professional athletes. Each year some 1.7 million civilians will suffer an injury that disrupts the function of their brains, qualifying it as a TBI.

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Lies We Tell Ourselves: How Deception Leads to Self-Deception (preview)

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1970 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar , a skeptical Judas Iscariot questions with faux innocence (“Don’t you get me wrong/I only want to know”) the messiah’s deific nature: “Jesus Christ Superstar/Do you think you’re what they say you are?”

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#SciAmBlogs - Science of Mysteries, Plan B, green cities, science-art, and more.

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:02:00 EST

- Jennifer Ouellette – The Science of Mysteries: Leave Us the Counterpoint

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Friday Weird Science: The bears smell the menstruation!!!

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:19:00 EST

But CAN they? Head over to Neurotic Physiology to find out whether bears really care if you’re on your period . [More]

Social Clicks: Sounds Associated with African Languages Are Common in English

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

Some Africans click, but English speakers don’t. That’s been the conventional wisdom about click sounds, which serve as regular consonants in Zulu and Xhosa and a few other African languages but which were presumed to just be used in English for encouraging a horse, imitating a kiss, or expressing emotions such as disapproval or amazement. But researchers have recently found that clicks are far more prevalent in the world’s lingua franca than had been thought.

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MIND Reviews: The Righteous Mind

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion [More]

#SciAmBlogs Thursday - tsunami debris, groundhogs, apes in suits, kakapos, butterfly drones and more

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:56:00 EST

- Harold Johnson – Tsunami Debris & North America: Is the Tail Wagging the Dog?

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Remembering the Exception to the Rule: Of Mockingbirds and Morality

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:17:00 EST

This year, To Kill a Mockingbird (the movie) turns 50 (the book itself celebrated its fiftieth birthday in 2010). I actually didn t seen the movie until late in college, when I came across the tape while rummaging through a cardboard box of my parents old films on a snowy evening in Vermont. But I read the book far earlier, when I was around eight years old. It s one of the first real book I remember reading.

Atticus and Tom Robinson, screenshot from 1962 film. Moni3, Public domain, Wikimedia commons.

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Illusion Contest Offers Mind-Warping Visions (preview)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

Jordan Suchow came to three rapid-fire conclusions as he watched his Macintosh laptop plummet toward the floor. First, in approximately 300 milliseconds he was going to be in a heap of trouble--the machine had been given to him by his thesis adviser, George Alvarez of Harvard University. Second, hoping against all hope, he decided that Harvard could probably afford to buy him a new computer. Third, he realized that the most important observation of his life was unfolding right in front of him as his laptop accelerated toward the parquet: the onscreen doughnut that he had programmed to scintillate appeared to have stopped doing so.

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7 Things You Didn't Know About Groundhogs

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:30:00 EST

Happy Groundhog Day! Today is the day each year in which we look towards a giant rodent to find out how much more winter we’ll have to endure. This year, we probably know the answer: winter hasn’t been very wintery, even for Los Angeles. Which, well, isn’t ever really wintery at all.

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Controversy: Can Repeat Concussions Cause Lou Gehrig's Disease? (preview)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:05:00 EST

Kevin Turner was a premier athlete in the National Football League, a fullback who could run, catch and block. At 6' 1" and roughly 230 pounds, he was slightly undersized for his position, but he had tremendous thrust in his legs and used all of it to launch himself into players who were bigger than he was. He played for the New England Patriots from 1992 to 1994, then joined the Philadelphia Eagles, with whom he stayed until his abrupt retirement in 1999. Some called him “the Collision Expert”--a nickname he got because of the gouges he collected on his helmet.

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Inside Story: What Happens When Brain Hits Skull

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST

Concussion, the most common among traumatic brain injuries, which occurs 1.7 million times a year in the U.S., represents a major public-health problem. It occurs when there is a sudden acceleration or deceleration of the head, a process depicted here in this animation.

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Apes in the Suites and the Streets: Participatory Organizing from #Scio12 to #OccupyWallStreet

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:00:00 EST

"@BoraChimp" by Nathaniel Gold

Conferences are social grooming events for relatively hairless apes. A few will stand before the multitude, beaming with pride or shaking with nervousness (as the case may be), and present the latest research in contemporary ape thought. As their vocalizations reach a crescendo, those sitting demurely below will produce flesh-slapping noises that indicate they were paying attention (even if they weren t). Another ape will then rise and this process will continue repeatedly and at length. It looks a lot like the modern political stump speech.

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#SciAmBlogs Wednesday - #scio12 art and video, pigmy hippos, spider webs, sunfish, synchronized eating and more.

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:34:00 EST

Wednesday, the new Video of the Week day – have fun!

LOTS of good reading today:

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