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May 11, 2009

Encephalon #70: on Mysteries and Ilussions

By:

Wel­come to the 70th edi­tion of Encephalon, the blog car­ni­val that offers some of the best neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy blog posts every other week.

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Mys­ter­ies of Brain and Mind

Cog­ni­tive Daily,
by Dave Munger		 Guys on dates want to know: Is it really impos­si­ble to ignore an attrac­tive face?
Recent research seems to demon­strate that, indeed, attrac­tive faces can dis­tract us from a vari­ety of tasks. Dat­ing Tip of the Week: what about impress­ing your date with a home­cooked din­ner next time and avoid poten­tial misunderstandings?
Neu­roan­thro­pol­ogy,
by Greg Downey		 BIG NEWS: First Neu­roan­thro­pol­ogy Con­fer­ence!
The first Neu­roan­thro­pol­ogy Con­fer­ence will be held 8 Octo­ber 2009 at the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame. Great theme, great speak­ers. Will it offer a cross-cultural analy­sis of the research men­tioned above?

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On Neu­rons, Jour­neys, and Chem­i­cal Friends

Brain­Health­Hacks,
by Ward Plunet
 The power of one — neu­ron
We have all been told about the power one per­son, that one per­son can make a dif­fer­ence. Well, does the gen­eral prin­ci­ple also hold true about a sin­gle neu­ron? Can a sin­gle neu­ron make a dif­fer­ence — change your sleep state, motor move­ment, or induce a behavior?
Neu­rophiloso­pher,
by Mo		 New cells in the adult brain migrate long dis­tances by crawl­ing along blood ves­sels
The jour­ney under­taken by newly gen­er­ated neu­rons in the adult brain is like the cel­lu­lar equiv­a­lent of the ardu­ous upstream migra­tion of salmon return­ing to the rivers in which they were hatched.
Neu­ro­topia,
by Scicurious
 The ele­gant logic of dopamine
What do we know about the for­ma­tion of dopamine neu­rons and the reg­u­la­tion of gene expres­sion?. A sim­ple and ele­gant recent study pro­vides some much-needed, crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion that could dras­ti­cally affect how we pur­sue new ther­a­pies dopamin­er­gic dis­eases such as Parkinson’s.
Brain Stim­u­lant,
by Mike		 Brain Synapse Com­pu­ta­tional Capac­ity
Evo­lu­tion has exploited mul­ti­ple avenues to increase the brain’s com­pu­ta­tional capac­ity. This is great news for all humans, except per­haps for those try­ing to model the mind exactly by build­ing com­puter brain sim­u­la­tions, since they will likely have to model all of these pro­tein inter­ac­tions to func­tion in a man­ner sim­i­lar to a real brain.

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On Brain Functions

Sharp­Brains,
by Tracy Alloway
 10% Stu­dents may have work­ing mem­ory prob­lems: Why does it mat­ter?
In screen­ing of over 3000 school-aged stu­dents in main­stream schools, 1 in 10 was iden­ti­fied as hav­ing work­ing mem­ory dif­fi­cul­ties. Why does this mat­ter? Clue: Work­ing mem­ory seems to be even more impor­tant to learn­ing than other cog­ni­tive skills such as IQ.
Neu­ro­topia,
by Scicurious		 Cake or Death? It’s all a mat­ter of self-control, and your vmPFC
A recent MRI study helps pin­point where sig­nals for self-control may orig­i­nate, and could be a big deal clin­i­cally. Not nec­es­sar­ily as a diet aid, but rather for prob­lems where there’s a lack of self-control, as in addiction.
The Mouse Trap,
by Sandy Gautam
 Low Latent Inhi­bi­tion, high faith in intu­ition and psychosis/creativity
What is the rela­tion­ship between low latent inhi­bi­tion (brain’s capac­ity to screen from cur­rent atten­tional focus stim­uli pre­vi­ously tagged as irrel­e­vant), high faith in intu­ition and psychosis/creativity?

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Fron­tiers in Perception

Dr. Deb,
by Deb Serani
 Can You Find The Twelve Faces?

How many faces can you see in this image?
Mind Hacks,
by Vaughan Bell		 Deeper into the neu­ro­science of hyp­no­sis
A new arti­cle from Trends in Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences explores how cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tists are becom­ing increas­ingly inter­ested in under­stand­ing hyp­no­sis and are using it to sim­u­late unusual states of con­scious­ness in the lab. Might hyp­no­sis help you see the Twelve Faces above? or per­haps 25 of them?

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Next edi­tion will be hosted by Neu­roan­thro­pol­ogy on Mon­day, May 25th. If you can’t wait until to read more, you may be inter­ested in the new in-depth fea­ture, Cog­ni­tive Monthly, offered by Cog­ni­tive Daily blog for $2/ month. This month’s issue, “The Illu­sion of The­ater,” dis­cusses the “remark­able sci­ence behind what the­atri­cal pro­fes­sion­als seem, to laypeo­ple, to do intu­itively: cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that encour­ages us to believe that what we see on stage is a true rep­re­sen­ta­tion of reality.”

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  1. Encephalon # 70 up for consumption | Brain Health Hacks says:
    May 13, 2009 at 6:48

    […] The 70th edi­tion of Encephalon (for all the encephalon edi­tions) is hosted by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez at Sharp­brains. The encephalon blog car­ni­val cov­ers the best of neu­ro­science and psychology. […]

Welcome to SharpBrains!

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