Evil Monkey from Neurotopia posts on face blindness or prosopagnosia, and how they have found a gene that results in a heritable form. They have not, to my knowledge, found a gene for why I can't remember the girl who woke up in my bed's name. He also has an article on pesticide-induced Parkinson's disease complete with nifty histology. OOOOOOoooo...neat.
Shelley at Retrospectacle covers paralyzed rats that can walk after stem cell therapy. Ummm...Senators, maybe you should keep that in mind when you vote this week. She also provides yet another reason not to go to Kiss concerts: you may have a gene that predisposes you to noise-induced hearing loss.
Mary at Thinking Meat covers a part of the brain responsible for distinguishing reality from hooey. Now if we could only get people to use it. She also has sextastic coverage of recent bedroom-related research.
Vaughn from Mind Hacks has all kinds of examples of psychedelic drug advertising, particularly for psychiatric drugs. I love this quote from a Thorazine ad: "Tyrant in the house? Thorazine can help control the agitated, belligerent senile".
Jenna at Cyberspace Rendevous has personal anecdote about how memory can sometimes be unreliable.
Chris at Myomancy covers some quackery associated with chelation therapy for autism. How many times people like Chris will have to confront this mercury meme with facts before it will just die is anybody's guess. He also discusses research about autism appearing in infants, BEFORE they get vaccinated. Thanks, Chris. I didn't know that, and now I have a good argument.
Our benefactor, the Neurophilosopher, covers scorpion venom as a treatment for gliomas. I knew they were good for something. He also discusses the world's oldest medical literature, from ancient Egypt.
Sandy from The Mouse Trap covers the idea of cognitive maps here, here, and here to a degree I am certain I didn't know and I am pretty certain I didn't know existed. Rock on. Cognitive maps are hot.
GNIF Brain Blogger, Shaheen, has a series of articles on George Engel's BPS model of health and illness here, here, and here. Don't know what BPS stands for. Well then you should read it.
Chris at Developing Intelligence does detailed analysis of serial oscillation models of memory, pruning strategies in infants, and "natural" engineering.
(I like the completeness of the coverage in these last three. Blogging is good for that.)
Joe at Interesting Thing of the Day discusses the surprisingly subtle science of white noise.
Finally, Heather at CJD Talk discusses a study of a CJD variant that runs in her family (yikes!), and goes on to look at possible symptoms of CJD and underestimated CJD risk. I think these posts are awesome combinations of a willingness to discuss personal experiences and science. Thanks, Heather.
Oh wait, I forgot that I get to post something too. Hmmm...let's see. Well here are two posts about crazy lesions that resulted in someone losing their drug addiction. A new model of addiction is also discussed. (Here and here.)
Thanks to everyone for their submission. If you would like to submit to the next Encephalon, check out the main page here.
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