Links
neurophilosophy | July 18, 2007BioMed Central has just launched Open Access and the Developing world, a portal that focuses on the benefits of open access to scintific and medical literature for developing countries.
neurophilosophy | July 16, 2007Via email: International Psychoanalysis.
Specially for Caledonian, who was disappointed that I didn't explicitly state the unscientific nature of Sigmund Freud's theories in my post about the psychology of Alfred Hitchcock.
neurophilosophy | July 15, 2007 From the Wall Street Journal:
We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: "I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word "weblog."
neurophilosophy | July 14, 2007Books for the summer, as recommended by the editorial staff at Seed Magazine.
Reviews of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours, by Noga Arikha, and The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, by Michael J. Sandel, from last weekend's New York Times.
A gargantuan textbook of neuropsychopharmacology, made freely available online by the ACNP (via Mind Hacks).
My own reviews of Jonathan Moreno's Mind Wars and Eric Kandel's In Search of Memory, both of which are now displayed in the sidebar on the left.
neurophilosophy | July 10, 2007
The Maze by William Kurelek (1927-1977); on display at the Novas Gallery in Southwark as part of an exhibition called Redefining Bedlam: The Art of Healing the Mind, which features more than 200 works by artists with mental illnesses, and runs until August 18th.
The Maze was painted just a few miles away from the Novas Gallery, in 1953, while Kurelek was a patient at the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill. Read his own description of the painting, and see Out of the Maze, which he painted in 1971, below.
(Click both pics to enlarge)
The subject, seen as a whole, is of a man (…
neurophilosophy | July 9, 2007 The Democratic presidential candidate answers questions about climate change, science education and health care, but there's no mention of stem cells or of evolution/creationism.
Nevertheless, it's well worth reading both the interview and the comments.
neurophilosophy | July 8, 2007
This print shows the "brain of someone described as an idiot". Published in the Journal of Mental Science, the illustration is by George Edward Shuttleworth, who was Superintendent of the Royal Albert Asylum in Lancaster, U. K., between the years 1870-1893.
Shuttleworth's drawing comes from a huge database of images released recently by the Wellcome Trust Library under a Creative Commons Licence. The database contains old and new images depicting 2,000 years of medical history and human culture.
(via Boing Boing)
neurophilosophy | July 6, 2007The blogroll toward the bottom of the sidebar on the left displays 15 random links from the list below.
10,000 Birds
3 Quarks Daily
Abu Aardvark
Acephalous
Ad Hominin
Advances in the History of Psychology
All in the Mind
Anna's Bones
The Annotated Budak
Bad Astronomy
Bad Science
Bering in Mind
The Beautiful Brain
BibliOdyssey
The Big Picture
Bioethics.net
Biology in Science Fiction
Bjorn Brembs
BLDGBLOG
A Blog Around the Clock
Blue Ridge Blog
Body in mind
Bogbumper
Botany Photo of the Day
BPS Research Digest
Brain Ethics
Brain Hammer
Brains
Brain Windows…
omnibrain | July 2, 2007Check out the 1st Anniversary edition of the Encephalon Blog Carnival at the brand spanking new home of the great blog Neurophilosophy!
omnibrain | May 17, 2007A great abstract I found via improbable research blog:
How to write consistently boring scientific literature
Kaj Sand-Jensen (ksandjensen@bi.ku.dk), Freshwater Biological Laboratory, Univ. of Copenhagen, Helsingørsgade 51, DK-3400 Hillerød, Denmark.
Abstract
Although scientists typically insist that their research is very exciting and adventurous when they talk to laymen and prospective students, the allure of this enthusiasm is too often lost in the predictable, stilted structure and language of their scientific publications. I present here, a top-10 list of recommendations for how to…
omnibrain | April 26, 2007
source
Skull #11 ('80s Metal), 2006. by Brian Dettmer
Currently on display at the International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago.
And of course a video ;)
Brain Surgery - Scrubs Style
omnibrain | April 19, 2007Usually we feature visual illusions since they seem to be the easiest to make and of course nearly a third to a half of our brain is dedicated to vision so we may just be more interested. In any case here are three auditory illusions from Mighty Optical Illusions.
Shepard's ascending tones (MP3) - This is a recording of Shepard's paradox synthesized by Jean-Claude Risset. Pairs of chords sound as if they are advancing up the scale, but in fact the starting pair of chords is the same as the finishing pair. If you loop this sample seamlessly then it should be impossible to tell where the…
omnibrain | March 26, 2007I just added two new blogs to the blogroll (which I hate doing for some reason).
The first is Ginny's who is a staffer here at ScienceBlogs and is a freelance science writer. Her blog is named Sequitur. You can also find links to all her science writing on the sidebar. What's that blog name about Ginny?
The second blog I discovered when Kate left some good comments on some of my posts :)
The Anterior Commissure "was started as a new year's resolution with the intention of developing a better understanding of the field of science in a more global context. It has become a horrible…
omnibrain | March 25, 2007If you hadn't noticed, the posting was pretty light last week. Here's why:
You can visit my flickr page for the whole set - which should actually be growing by hundreds of photos in the next week or so as I add the other peoples pictures to the set.
omnibrain | March 20, 2007It was one year ago today that I made the first post to Omni Brain. I never imagined we would do this well.
In the last year Omni Brain has undergone many many changes, the biggest of which have been Sandra of Neurofuture fame joining the blog, and moving to ScienceBlogs.
We started with not-even 3000 page views in our first full month and now receive tens of thousands of page views and visitors - which is pretty great for a smart ass little science blog! Our Technorati ranking has also grown by leaps and bounds; near 14,000 today.
Thanks everyone, for reading and for all your lively…
omnibrain | March 11, 2007There is a great article today in the NYT about the impact neuroscience is having on the field of law. Here's a little snippit:
Carter Snead, a law professor at Notre Dame, drafted a staff working paper on the impact of neuroscientific evidence in criminal law for President Bush's Council on Bioethics. The report concludes that neuroimaging evidence is of mixed reliability but "the large number of cases in which such evidence is presented is striking." That number will no doubt increase substantially. Proponents of neurolaw say that neuroscientific evidence will have a large impact not only…
omnibrain | March 2, 2007F'n hilarious!
MISSOULA, MT--University of Montana wildlife biologist and Herbert R. Braithwaite Foundation research grant recipient Dr. James Neuthom has spent his entire $275,000 grant--intended for the study of whirling disease on rainbow trout--on such items as a 15-foot sailboat, scented stationery, and several dozen boxes of chocolate, according to documents he submitted to the foundation Tuesday.
Neuthom spent $7,000 on a trip with Hamilton to Lake Tahoe, which contains no trout.
Neuthom is now seeking additional Braithwaite Foundation funds to continue his desperate attempt to win the…
omnibrain | March 1, 2007Ahhh the life of the grad students. The Simpsons have it soooo right.
Ok.. I don't actually grade any papers or have a pony tail...but hahahah...
I have a feeling this is going to be more like my entry into teaching:
(HT: Jennifer and David for the video links)
omnibrain | February 25, 2007Ok just kidding but you should really read this funny post from the Language Log mocking a Washington Post article about spear use in chimps.
The Original:
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.
The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of…