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Health & Healthcare
April 15, 2008

Encephalon, Forthy-Third Edition

By Shaheen E Lakhan, MD, PhD, MEd, MS | 14 Comments | Share | Print | Email | Tweet | Like | 1+
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We at Brain Blogger are honored to the host the Encephalon for the our second time. Since 2006, this blog carnival has inspired countless discussions on matters related to the brain and mind — and everything in between. In this edition, I review just a few quality blog entries worth checking out. Enjoy…

The Neurocritic presents two interesting pieces. First, he discusses how popular media is distorting the body image of young men. Second, he covers a story on how sex induces more financial risk taking behavior in men? Neuroanthropology must have sex on his mind too, for he also wrote a piece on the latter issue. However, he takes a “crap-tastic” viewpoint. My favorite sentence of agreement is

… much of the worst ‘evolutionary psychology’ is practiced by people who know very little about evolutionary science, psychology, or genetics.

The Brain Blogger offers an article on pseudo-scientific theories focusing on Bruno Bettelheim’s assertion that autism was caused by bad parenting. Yourell says it best with,

… we can thank Bettelheim for causing an extraordinary amount of suffering because of his unscientific… thinking. Countless mothers were blamed for their children’s autism. What a thing to live with!

Cognitive Daily addressed how babies learn where one word ends and the next one begins and discriminates the functions of consonants and vowels in the understanding of language.

Missives from the Frontal Lobe offers a cautionary article on oversimplifying brain functions, succeeds to a “complex multi-level integration of system, cell, molecule, and gene”, and labels our state of knowledge towards a working model of intelligence as not in its infancy, but rather “embryonic.” Harsh, but I fully concur.

SharpBrains is running high-school student essays on their blog. Thus far, they have written on Alzheimer’s disease and its prevention. What a pleasure to see students interested in science, medicine, literature, and popular media… I recommend other bloggers to take on such a project. Simply, team up with a high school teacher in a subject of your respective blog and make arrangements to have their student’s write potential blogs/essays — not only will they learn the discipline, but also how to effectively portray complex topics to a general public.

PsyBlog presents a series of articles related to the psychology of money. Among them, I most enjoyed reading “Money and Self-Control” — where the author connects simple life-situations to our spending habits.

If you don’t know what is ensemble encoding, I suggest you have a look at Pure Pedantry. Young takes a crack at answering a fundamental question in neuroscience: how does the brain encode sound? In another article, he discusses the limitations of studies that aim to link single-genes to human behavior — all in the context of a recent article “linking” the vasopressin receptor AVPR1a to ruthlessness. Though much of these arguments aren’t new, they must be retold.

Suggested Scholarly Reading

Dick, D., Rose, R., Kaprio, J. (2006). The Next Challenge for Psychiatric Genetics: Characterizing the Risk Associated with Identified Genes. Annals of Clinical Psychiatry, 18(4), 223-231. DOI: 10.1080/10401230600948407

Kendler, K.S., Greenspan, R.J. (2006). The Nature of Genetic Influences on Behavior: Lessons From “Simpler” Organisms. American Journal of Psychiatry, 163(10), 1683-1694. DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.163.10.1683

Contribute

I would like to thank the bloggers featured in this edition of the Encephalon. To submit your posts for the next edition scheduled for April 28th hosted by Cognitive Daily, email encephalon {dot} host [at] gmail {dot} com.

Shaheen E Lakhan, MD, PhD, MEd, MS

Shaheen E Lakhan, MD, PhD, MEd, MS, is executive director of the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation (GNIF). He is a published scholar in protein biomarkers, bioethics, biotechnology, education technology, and neurology. He serves on the editorial board of several scholarly publications and has been honored by the U.S. President and Congress.

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14 Responses

  1. John John says:
    April 15, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    I like how you assume the neurocritic is a he :)

    Reply
  2. Sandra says:
    April 15, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    Neurocritic was also a wee bit critical of the idea that sex presumably causes big financial risks (i.e. it doesn’t) and that magazines cause BDD (i.e. it doesn’t).

    Reply
  3. Shaheen E Lakhan, MS, MEd, PhD says:
    April 15, 2008 at 9:22 pm

    John John, I just picked up on the cues in his profile.

    Sincerely,
    Shaheen

    Reply
  4. Mark Pape says:
    April 16, 2008 at 3:49 am

    I teach Psychology at a large college in the SE of England and I have wanted to do something like SharpBrains for some time. I also think it would be fantastic if colleges teaching A level psychology in the UK and similar courses in the U.S. could link up through blogs and host something like Encephalon for students at this level.

    If anyone can help I can be contacted at Richmond College by email:

    mpape@rutc.ac.uk

    or better still leave a comment on the blog (links dump really ) set up to help my A level students:

    contemporarymottledsheep

    Reply
  5. Alvaro says:
    April 16, 2008 at 5:24 am

    Shaheen, great job hosting! Now, when I read the tone of Neurocritic’s bio, I am not sure I’d take every element of it at face value…

    Mark: will shoot you an email. We always enjoy reading good student essays and would be happy to select & publish some by your students

    Reply
  6. Shaheen E Lakhan, MS, MEd, PhD says:
    April 16, 2008 at 6:28 am

    Mark, all interested students can submit their articles/essays for consideration at http://brainblogger.com/call/

    Also, I will shortly send you an email on the suggestion you made.

    Thank you.

    Sincerely,
    Shaheen

    Reply
  7. Britni Axtell says:
    December 16, 2010 at 9:36 am

    I’m still learning from you, while I’m trying to achieve my goals. I absolutely enjoy reading all that is posted on your blog.Keep the tips coming. I loved it

    Reply
  8. Kent Gwynes says:
    December 20, 2010 at 7:40 am

    I have been checking out some of your stories and i can claim clever stuff. I will surely bookmark your website.

    Reply
  1. Mind Hacks says:
    April 15, 2008 at 1:35 pm

    Encephalon 43 lands on the virtual doormat…

    A beautiful new edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just been published on GNIF Brain Blogger and contains the best of last fortnight’s online mind and brain writing. A couple of my favourites include an article …

    Reply
  2. Encephalon and More « Neuroanthropology says:
    April 16, 2008 at 1:28 am

    [...] Comments Real Beauty and Why … on Ethnography and the Everyday: …Encephalon, Forthy-T… on Bad brain science: Boobs cause…dlende on Perspectives on ColombiaPerspectives on Colo… [...]

    Reply
  3. Pure Pedantry says:
    April 16, 2008 at 7:10 am

    Encephalon 43…

    Encephalon 43 is up at GNIF Brain Blogger…….

    Reply
  4. » Human Resources, Brain Science, Health Blogs   « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:
    April 16, 2008 at 10:38 pm

    [...] great new editions of our favorite blog carnivals: – Encephalon, Forthy-Third Edition: the best of recent neuroscience and psychology blog [...]

    Reply
  5. Encephalon Archive » Encephalon Archives says:
    May 12, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    [...] Brain Blogger, 15 April 2008 [...]

    Reply
  6. Carnivalia 4/16 – 4/22 | Sorting out Science says:
    October 17, 2011 at 6:43 am

    [...] Encephalon, Forthy-Third Edition (also should have been in last week’s basket) [...]

    Reply

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