New edi­tion of Encephalon, the selec­tion of recent blog posts on brain & mind top­ics, this time hosted by Mike at Ion­ian Enchant­ment. Enjoy Encephalon’s #75 edi­tion!

A new edi­tion is out, this time hosted by David at Neu­ronar­ra­tive. Visit Encephalon #74 edi­tion if you have an appetite for great brain & mind blog­ging, and some time to relax and enjoy!

Dave hosts a fun iCephalon 2009 Keynote address (AKA Encephalon 72), a col­lec­tion of the best brain and mind blog posts of the last cou­ple weeks. Enjoy!

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

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On Neu­rons, Jour­neys, and Chem­i­cal Friends

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On Brain Functions

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Fron­tiers in Perception

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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.”

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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Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and Neu­rocog­ni­tive Health Read the rest of this entry »

2 excel­lent recent blog car­ni­val editions:

Encephalon #58 (neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy), hosted by Wal­ter at High­light Health.
Hour­glass #5 (biol­ogy  of aging), hosted by Laura at psique.

Enjoy!

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? Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to Encephalon 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. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Read the rest of this entry »

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: Read the rest of this entry »