Chris hosts a superb edition of Encephalon, presenting the articles as an engaging and pretty comprehensive Q&A session. If you want to read the answers, to the questions below, by some of the best neuroscience and psychology bloggers, simply visit Encephalon 52: Q&A.
Q: What is the relationship between neurogenesis and depression?
Q: For that matter, is there a relationship between depression and diabetes?
Q: What is the molecular basis of bipolar disorder?
Q: Can brain stimulation make you a better driver? Continue Reading »
Welcome to Encephalon´s 50th edition, where you will find another superb collection of blog posts on all things Brain and Mind.
Enjoy these contributions:
Science & Technology
Mind Hacks reports that Facebook ate my psychiatrist. We can learn about the benefits of social networking sites like Facebook, bringing great perspective to recent and misguided media speculation (fuelled by a recent talk at the Royal College of Psychiatrists). Vaughan, will you please report on the benefits of participating (and, better, hosting) Encephalon?.
Dungeons And Dragons - Or Mazes And Monsters?: PodBlack Cat offers a thought-provoking review of the therapy (including self-therapy) applications of role-playing games such as the classic Dungeons And Dragons and the more recent massively multiplayer online games.
Cognitive Daily covers another type of game. Continue Reading »
What were you doing on August 26th, 2006? That day, Mo, the blogger behind ScienceBlogs' Neurophilosophy, launched the Encephalon blog carnival to present, every other week, a selection of the best neuroscience and psychology blog posts on brain and mind.
It has been one of the most stimulating blog carnivals ever since, and we are honored to continue the tradition. Today we are proud to announce...
A neuroscience blog carnival- Second Continue Reading »
That is the goal of Stanford University Media X: to foster deep collaborations between industry and academia, as highlighted in Business Week's recent article The Virtual Meeting Room. The 5th Annual Media X Conference on Research, Collaboration, Innovation and Productivity served its purpose well for the last couple of days: very fun and insightful presentations by Stanford researchers (and a few external experts) and a great list of participants to get to know.
No doubt, a great source of mental stimulation for all of us. Charles House, Media X's Executive Director, framed the dialogue as an effort to generate the right questions and then engage the best minds in answering them.
Some of (my) main take-aways
- "The world does not come to us as neat disciplinary problems, but as complex interdisciplinary challenges" (great quote by Dean John Hennessy)
- Personal Robotics is poised to explode soon-and software will be key (predicted by Paul Saffo)
- An inconvenient truth: Al Gore had to be convinced to bring his presentation into a movie, since he was very attached to each and every of his X hundred slides. We are happy it happened!
- Neuroscientists know what patterns in the brain indicate certain intentions-and are starting to use technologies to help immobilized patients communicate with external devices based merely on their thoughts
- We need to learn to embrace change- a lot of it is coming!
Now, some key points from several presentations (there were more than these, but I couldn't attend all). I encourage you to visit the website of each presenter if you are interested in learning more about that topic.
a. Paul Saffo on Innovation
- It usually takes 20 years since basic science until applications reach inflection point and take the world by storm
- Next big thing: personal robotics. Indicators: Continue Reading »
