Welcome to the 61st edition 
of Encephalon, the blog carnival that offers some of the best neuroscience and psychology blog posts every other week.
We do have an excellent set of articles today. covering much ground. Enjoy the reading:
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Neuroscience and Society
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Neuroanthropology,
by Greg Downey
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The Flynn Effect: Troubles with Intelligence 2
Average IQ test scores had risen about 3 points per decade and in some cases more. Tests of vocabulary, arithmetic, or general knowledge (such as the sorts of facts one learns in school) have showed little increase, but scores have increased markedly on tests thought to measure ‘general intelligence’. |
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MindHacks,
by Vaughan Bell
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Medical jargon alters our understanding of disease
Understanding how popular ideas influence our personal medical beliefs is an essential part of understanding medicine itself. |
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Cognitive Daily,
by Dave Munger
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Is it sexist to think men are angrier than women?
Are we more likely to perceive a male face as angry and a female face as happy? A recent study sheds light on the issue. |
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Neurocritic
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Crime, Punishment, and Jerry Springer
Judges and jurors must put aside their emotionally-driven desire for revenge when coming to an impartial verdict. Does neuroimaging (fMRI) add anything to our understanding of justice? |
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Alzheimer's Disease and Neurocognitive Health Continue Reading »
Like all psychiatric disorders, ADHD is diagnosed based on the presence of particular behavioral symptoms that are judged to cause significant impairment in an individual's functioning, and not on the results of a specific test. In fact, recently published ADHD evaluation guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) explicitly state that no particular diagnostic test should be routinely used when evaluating a child for ADHD.
While most ADHD experts would agree that no single test could or should be used in isolation to diagnose ADHD, there are several important reasons why the availability of an accurate objective test would be useful.
First, many children do not receive a careful and comprehensive assessment for ADHD but are instead diagnosed with based on evaluation procedures that are far from optimal.
Second, although AAP guidelines indicate that specific diagnostic tests should not be routinely used, many parents are concerned about the lack of objective procedures in their child's evaluation. In fact, many families do not pursue treatment for ADHD because the the absence of objective evaluation procedures leads them to question the diagnosis. You can read a review of an interesting study on this issue at www.helpforadd.com/2006/january.htm
For these reasons an accurate and objective diagnostic test for ADHD could be of value in many clinical situations. Two important conditions would have to be met for such a test to be useful.
First, it would have to be highly sensitive to Continue Reading »
Playing the Blame Game
-- Video games stand accused of causing obesity, violence, and lousy grades. But new research paints a surprisingly complicated and positive picture, reports Greater Good Magazine's Jeremy Adam Smith.
Cheryl Olson had seen her teenage son play video games. But like many parents, she didn't know much about them.
Then in 2004 the U.S. Department of Justice asked Olson and her husband, Lawrence Kutner, to run a federally funded study of how video games affect adolescents.
Olson and Kutner are the co-founders and directors of the Harvard Medical School's Center for Mental Health and Media. Olson, a public health researcher, had studied the effects of media on behavior but had never examined video games, either in her research or in her personal life.
And so the first thing she did was watch over the shoulder of her son, Michael, as he played his video games. Then, two years into her research—which combined surveys and focus groups of junior high school students—Michael urged her to pick up a joystick. "I definitely felt they should be familiar with the games if they were doing the research," says Michael, who was 16 at the time and is now 18.
Olson started with the PC game Continue Reading »
Try eating food with one chop stick.
It is possible, for certain types of food. But probably not the best approach.
Let's now talk brain health.
Dr. Larry McCleary is a former acting Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Denver Children's Hospital, and author of the The Brain Trust Program (Perigee Trade, 2007). He agreed to help us answer an important, yet often neglected, question: Given That We Are Our Brains, How do We Nourish Them?
Alvaro: Dr. McCleary, Why did a former neurosurgeon such as yourself develop an interest in brain health public education?
Dr. McCleary: For two reasons ... I am a Boomer and am trying to maximize my own brain health. Also, there is much exciting research documenting how we can be proactive in this regard. This information needs to be disseminated and I would like to help in this process.
And what is the single most important brain-related idea or concept that you would like every person in the planet to fully understand?
The most important take home message about brain health is that we now know that no matter what your brain status or age, there is much you can do to significantly improve brain function and slow brain aging. Based on emerging information, what is especially nice is the fact that unlike many things in life our brain health is largely under own control.
What are the most important elements to nourish our brains as we age?
I approach this question much like an athlete prepares for competition. They utilize a holistic approach. Continue Reading »
Cognitive training is showing a tremendous potential to expand working memory, a 
capacity once thought limited and untrainable.
If you have enough working memory to both be processing this information and developing your own thoughts, you may be thinking now, a) what exactly is Working Memory?, and b) why do we even care?. Well, Dr. Bill Klemm answers those questions, and more, below. Please enjoy one of the most insightful articles on the subject we have seen in a long while, which we are proud to bring to SharpBrains readers.
- Alvaro
How Well People Think Depends On Working Memory
- By Dr. Bill Klemm
Imagine dialing a phone number by having to look up each digit one at a time in the phone book. Normally, you look up the number and remember all seven digits long enough to get it dialed. Even with one digit at a time, you would have to remember each digit long enough to get it dialed. What if your brain could not even do that! We call this kind of remembering, “working memory,” because that is what the brain works with. Working memory is critical to everyday living.
Continue Reading »
How many of the people behind the blogs you read, have you actually met in person? I hadn't met a single one before yesterday.
Last night Alvaro and I were invited by Bora at A blog around the clock for a blogger get-together at Jupiter in Berkeley 
. Bora who is a part of the Scienceblog umbrella had gathered an interesting group of people, mainly bloggers with diverse backgrounds such as life science, law, anthropology – you name it.
Remembering names is a huge brain exercise for me, since I tend to forget especially names I haven’t heard before. I have tried to pick up some tricks for remembering names from Merlin Mann at 43folders. Let’s see who I can remember from the event:
Continue Reading »
