Greg Laden's Blog

Culture Shapes How We Look at Faces

Category: Anthropology

Constructivism. Determinism. It is all a bunch of hooey. A recent paper published by PLoS (Culture Shapes How We Look at Faces) throws a sopping wet blanket on widely held deterministic models of human behavior. In addition, the work underscores the sometimes spooky cultural differences...

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Posted by Greg Laden at 11:12 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Human Brain Size: Does it matter? And has it decreased?

Category: Neurobiology

Sometimes people walk around with only half a brain, or a large portion of their brain disconnected, or simply having never developed, or an extra large brain, and we usually take little notice. But when there is a five or ten or twenty percent difference...

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Posted by Greg Laden at 1:07 PM • 39 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The Synaptic Cleft Rap

Category: Neurobiology

Ion channels, chica.

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Posted by Greg Laden at 4:21 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography: A comparison between single subject and group analysis

Category: Neurobiology

The raw material for Miriam Sach's solo contemporary dance was her 2004 Ph.D. thesis at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, titled "Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography: A comparison between single subject and group analysis."...

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Posted by Greg Laden at 12:30 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Precarious Pettiness of Sexual Politics In the Blogosphere: An uppity response to the perspicacious Dr. Isis and an appeal to get serious about sexual aggression and exploitation

Category: Anthropology

Dr. Isis at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess has written an open letter to our sister, Zuska, regarding (in part) the exchanges between my Sbling and myself. Dr. Isis points out that she has had a long term academic interests in breasts, which...

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Posted by Greg Laden at 9:10 AM • 54 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

What is the sound of one hypothesis clapping?

Category: Neurobiology

Read the following text. As you read it, try to empty your mind. When you encounter grammatical errors or jargon that is impossible to understand, do not try to translate what you are reading. Rather, become one with the obscurity. Read slowly, thoughtlessly, with emptiness...

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Posted by Greg Laden at 3:24 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

A Portrait of The Brain by Adam Zeman

Published by Yale University Press A Portrait of the Brain by Adam Zeman is a new book describing how the brain works (and does not work) in something of an Oliver Sack's experiential manner, but with a twist. Zeman is a Professor of Cognitive...

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Posted by Greg Laden at 6:51 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Unbelievable Magic Illusion Thingie

Category: Neurobiology

Look at the following image. Look in particular at squares A and B. A appears to be dark grey, B appears to be white or whitish. But in fact, they are the same exact color. Don' t believe it? Me neither! Or at least, I...

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Posted by Greg Laden at 4:07 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Fun And Instructive Classroom Exercise

Your brain ... to explore the nature of the conscious mind. You are the teacher, and you've got a classroom full of reasonably well behaved students. Tell them: "I want you to close your eyes, and I'm going to ask you a question. ......

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Posted by Greg Laden at 5:13 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Christopher deCharms: Looking inside the brain in real time

Category: Neurobiology

Neuroscientist and inventor Christopher deCharms demos an amazing new way to use fMRI to show brain activity while it is happening -- emotion, body movement, pain. (In other words, you can literally see how you feel.) The applications for real-time fMRIs start with chronic pain...

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Posted by Greg Laden at 7:04 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks