Genetics & genomics (incl behav genetics)
ddobbs | July 1, 2010Â
You just never know what'll catch fire. Then again, maybe I should have figured "Ozzy Osbourne" and "genome" would have. In any case, Ozzy simply buried every other contender this past month, racking up 7 times as many hits as any other entry ever did in one month -- and accounting for two-thirds of June's unique pageviews altogether. The power of Stumbleupon. A fifth of those readers went on to other pages. So maybe something good came of it.
Without further ado, here are Neuron Culture's Top 5 from June.
Ozzy Osbourne. Now genomics is getting somewhere. Geneticists hope to figure out how…
ddobbs | June 29, 2010Reading isn't just a monkish pursuit: Matthew Battles on "The Shallows" » Nieman Journalism Lab More on Carr's ideas from "The Shallows"
BoraZ interviews Eric Roston and gets some good ideas about journalism and reporting, past, present and future.
The Cure for Creative Blocks? Leave Your Desk. Or why my move to London is a good work idea.
Razib says what can't be said too often:Â Your genes are just the odds
Also worth many reminders:Â Healthcare: U.S. spends more, but gets less, from the Well
Not again with the sekrit Renaissance brain anatomy! But yes: again. 
I want to see this…
ddobbs | June 23, 2010I'm 'posed to be writing, really writing (insert argument over what's really writing in comments), but hit so many juicy bits in my morning read today I wanted to share. Here's my eclectic mix for the day:
A great rompy scary post from @susanorlean on how her book bounced around many publishers and editors.
Keith Kloor at Collide-a-scape has a round-up of stories on the "credibility of climate experts" report
"memory performance boosted while walking"  Beautiful. Perhaps why walking oft solves writing probs.  via @mariapage:
"Theory Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning" From @kerin at…
ddobbs | June 21, 2010
John Hawks, in his paleodreams. I mean that in the best way.
John Hawks bumps into a prescient estimate of the total gene number in humans:
While doing some other research, I ran across a remarkable short paper by James Spuhler, "On the number of genes in man," printed in Science in 1948. We've been hearing for the last ten years how the low gene count in humans -- only 20,000 or so genes -- is "surprising" to scientists who had previously imagined that humans would have many more genes than this. So here's the next to the last line of Spuhler's article: On the basis of these speculations…
ddobbs | June 17, 2010
Last week's spat between Nicholas Carr and Steven Pinker generated a lot of attention â and, happily, delivered a couple of the more lucid framings yet of the debate over whether digital culture makes us shallow, as Carr argues in his new book, or simply represents yet another sometimes-distracting element that we can learn to deal with, as Pinker countered in a Times Op-Ed last Thursday.
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I sympathize with both arguments; I see Carr's point but feel he overplays it. I find digital culture immensely distracting. I regularly dive down rabbit holes in my computer, iPhone, and iPad,…
ddobbs | June 16, 2010
Ozzy Osbourne, preparing to grasp the meaning of his genome.
There's been much attention lately to the failure of genomics advances to create many medical advances. From rock'n'roll comes  hope.
THE mystery of why Ozzy Osbourne is still alive after decades of drug and alcohol abuse may finally be solved.
The 61-year-old former Black Sabbath lead singer â who this week begins his health advice column in The Sunday Times Magazine â is to become one of only a few people in the world to have his full genome sequenced.
In addition to giving Osbourne information that could help prevent…
ddobbs | June 11, 2010Â
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Unbelieveble! Department, via SciencePunk: Â Giant mayfly swarm caught on radar
NYRB reviews what sounds like an especially moving memoir from Andre Agassi.
Whatever It Takes Department, via Ed Yong:Â Superstitions can improve performance by boosting confidence.
The climate-change doubt industry and its roots - http://bit.ly/an4cAr, via @stevesilberman
RitaRubin: Study: Have bad habits? U r more likely 2 blame health problms on your genes. 'Cause u can't do anything 2 change them http://bit.ly/ad6iRy. Damned interesting if true.
techreview: Genetic Testing Can Change Behavior http…
ddobbs | May 26, 2010Selling a work fiction is difficult; publishing in Nature is a long-shot; yet somehow writer and genomeboy Misha Angrist managed to publish fiction in Nature.
The only way I was ever going to get a first-author publication in Nature [Angrist explains] was if I just made it all up. So thatâs what I did. Hat tip to David Dobbs for providing the scientific inspiration.
The short story/fantasy Angrist publishes actually pulls little, it seems to me, from my story about the orchid/plasticity/differential susceptibility hypothesis, though it does work ground seeded by both genetics and…
ddobbs | May 26, 2010
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Two or three years ago, Emory neurologist Helen Mayberg, whose experiments using deep-brain stimulation for depression I check in on now and then, told me that Karl Deisseroth's work using light to fiddle with brain circuits had huge potential both as a replacement for DBS and for much else. As Lizzie Buchen ably reports in Nature, that potential is now being realized.
This is a very slick tool that seems almost too far out to actually work. It lets you use light to turn brain circuits on and off at will, and with great precision. It's not simple to construct. But once constructed, it…
Gleanings from empathetic ravens, lying brains, dying converence, fading vocabularies, and new books
ddobbs | May 18, 2010
Ravens via PDPhoto
Ravens show that consoling one another is also for the birds, Yet another finding that other species have qualities previously thought uniquely human. Our greatest distinction is that we're highly social. Yet in that we've got a lot of company.  
Human brains excel at detecting cheaters. FMRI's, not so much, says Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks-- though in yet another court case, the fMRI lie detection industry pushes another story.
Bell also has a nice write-up of of scintillating RadioLab program on how early dementia shows up in use of language. A stellar program,…
ddobbs | May 12, 2010Traveling. But here's what I'm reading during train, plane, and bus rides -- and over meals:
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Gravity-defying ramps take illusion prize. This contest always produces fascinating stuff. This time, the ball rolls up. Video here.

Vaughan Bell ponders cortisol, dopamine, neuroplasticity, and other things that set off his bullshit detector. Riff launched from a post from Neuroskeptic on cortisol and childcare scare stories, equally read-worthy.
Dan Vorhaus does a wonderful round-up of reactions and implications stemming from the news that genetic testing is coming to Walgreens. Best blog-…
ddobbs | April 29, 2010I had the pleasure of attending the Genomes, Environment, and Traits conference on Tuesday. Was wonderful and strange, with many inspiring, exciting, and/or entertaining moments -- and a few things a bit worrisome.
The twitter feed from the event tracks the talks and agenda pretty thoroughly; it's far better than my own notes. I especially enjoyed the morning's main event, in which a tag team of Robert Krulwich and Carl Zimmer called to stage for interviews different combinations of 13 the 10 "pioneers" who had been among the first to have their entire genomes run. As a journalist, I had…
ddobbs | March 23, 2010Daniel McArthur and Daniel Vorhaus have a beef:
Earlier this month, the Sunday Times published an op-ed piece by Camilla Long critiquing the practice and business of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing ("When DNA means do not ask"). It is Long's right, of course, to express her opinions, but the article is peppered with factual inaccuracies and exaggerations that demand correction.
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While it is regretful that Long herself chooses to remain willfully ignorant of her own genetic information, she is within her rights to do so. However, her attempt to impose that ignorance on her…
ddobbs | March 17, 2010I'll try doing this now and then, maybe regularly, to gather the more notable tweets I get in my twitter feed.
Darwin2009: Population-level traits that affect, and do not affect, invasion success http://ow.ly/1mMUp
jayrosen_nyu: "The New York Times is now as much a technology company as a journalism company." <--- Bill Keller http://jr.ly/2pfz
dhayton: âH-Madnessâ is a new blog on the history of psychiatry, madness, etc. For and by scholars: http://historypsychiatry.wordpress.com/
stevesilberman: The brains of psychopaths may be hypersensitive to dopamine rewards - http://bit.ly/daP9Go…
ddobbs | March 9, 2010
Jonah Lehrer's story on "Depression's Upside" has created quite a kerfuffle. The idea he explores â that depression creates an analytic, ruminative focus that generates useful insight â sits badly with quite a few people. It's not a brand-new idea, by any means; as Jonah notes, it goes back at least to Aristotle. But Jonah (who â disclosure department â is a friend; plus I write for the Times Magazine, where the piece was published) has stirred the pot with an update drawing from (among other things) a very long review paper published last year by psychiatric researchers Paul Andrews and…
ddobbs | January 29, 2010Hits of the week:
Savage Minds (with a spiffy website redesign) asks Why is there no Anthropology Journalism?
Jerry Coyne takes sharp exception to both a paper and a SciAm Mind Matters article by Paul Andrews and Andy Thomson arguing that depression might be an evolutionary adaptation. Dr. Pangloss punches back. (NB: 1. I was founding editor of Mind Matters, but no longer edit it, did not edit the Andrews/Thomson piece, and don't know any of these people. 2. While my recent Atlantic article presented an argument for how a gene associated with depression (the so-called SERT gene) might be…
ddobbs | January 5, 2010'Twas the month of orchidness. I had a spotty month posting in December, as book bidness and then the holidays massacred blog production, but got some good traffic despite. The leaders:
1. Are "orchid kids" the same as "gifted children"? was my blog reaction to Lisa Belkin's' blog reaction at the Times to my Atlantic piece, "The Orchid Children." The short answer to the question was No. See the post for why that doesn't quite cover it.
2. Coming sort of soon to a bookstore near you: "The Orchid and the Dandelion" announced my deal to do a book on the orchid or 'sensitivity' hypothesis. But…
ddobbs | December 21, 2009
Update: Show's done. You can listen to the 8-minute segment via Windows Media or MP3/iTunes.
I'll be on New Hampshire Public Radio's Word Of Mouth" noon-hour show tomorrow, Tuesday, Dec 22, talking with host Virginia Prescott about "Orchid Children," my recent Atlantic article about the genetic underpinnings of steady and mercurial ltemperaments. My segment will run about 10 minutes beginning at or just after noon.
Listeners in and near New Hampshire can tune in live at their regular NHPR stations. Others can open up the live stream or tune in via the iPhone Public Radio Player.
I'll post…
ddobbs | December 14, 2009
Last Friday I was on "To the Best of Our Knowledge," the excellent talk show put out by Wisconsin Public Radio, talking with Anne Strainchamps about my Atlantic article. Strainchamps is a good interviewer and we got some interesting calls. Those who missed it can listen to the hour-long segment here (Look for the "Listen to Archive" link just below the program description.)
And now I'm off to drive across the frozen north. More later.
ddobbs | December 14, 2009
Dear Readers, here's your chance to weigh in:
Over at the Atlantic, David Shenk, a sharp writer who keeps a blog there called "The Genius in Us All," has posted a gentlemanly smackdown ("Metaphor fight! Shenk and Dobbs square off") that he and I had via email last week regarding the "orchid-dandelion" metaphor I used in my recent Atlantic piece, "Orchid Children" (online version title: "The Science of Success"). Every metaphor has its limits, and David Shenk, a highly capable writer, recognizes that well. Yet he thinks this orchid-dandelion metaphor is fatally flawed, at least as I use it…