A new edi­tion of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­lica, the biweekly blog car­ni­val that “show­cases the finest sci­ence, med­ical and envi­ron­ment writ­ing pub­lished in the blo­gos­phere”, is avail­able now, hosted by Prov­i­den­tia,

To enjoy, click Here.

Wel­come to the XL edi­tion of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­lica (or, since we are try­ing to speak Eng­lish, the 40th edi­tion of “Sci­ence for the Peo­ple”), the rotat­ing blog car­ni­val that show­cases the finest sci­ence, med­ical and envi­ron­ment writ­ing pub­lished in the blogosphere.

Quick now — ask a ques­tion, any ques­tion, that comes to mind. Chances are some­one in this excel­lent ros­ter of sci­ence blog­gers has antic­i­pated it and pro­vided an answer below. Enjoy!

About our­selves

1. Why do I feel bet­ter after I exer­cise (pic: brainblogger)
2. Can thought­ful blog­ging and read­ing build brain reserve and delay dementia
3. What’s the bor­der­line between high and low func­tion­ing — autism research examples
4. Can we learn to multi-task more effectively
5. Should you mind your brain

About our bod­ies Read the rest of this entry »

We will be host­ing the Sep­tem­ber 27th edi­tion of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­lica, the biweekly blog car­ni­val that “show­cases the finest sci­ence, med­ical and envi­ron­ment writ­ing pub­lished in the blogosphere”.

If you write a blog about sci­ence, med­i­cine or the envi­ron­ment and would like to share your writ­ing or pho­tog­ra­phy with a large and appre­cia­tive audi­ence, please sub­mit a good recent blog post no later than end of Sep­tem­ber 25th, using this auto­mated sub­mis­sion form.

Remem­ber to visit us on Sep­tem­ber 27th!

A new edi­tion of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­lica, the biweekly blog car­ni­val that “show­cases the finest sci­ence, med­ical and envi­ron­ment writ­ing pub­lished in the blo­gos­phere”, is avail­able now, hosted at The Guardian’s new sci­ence blog network.

To enjoy, click Here.

If you write a blog about sci­ence, med­i­cine or the envi­ron­ment and would like to share your writ­ing or pho­tog­ra­phy with a large and appre­cia­tive audi­ence, you are invited to use this auto­mated sub­mis­sion form. We will be host­ing the next edi­tion, on Sep­tem­ber 27th, here at SharpBrains.com.

Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis, Cen­ter for Neuroscience

What should every­one learn about the brain?

At the national level, the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) describes what adults should know in its sem­i­nal work Sci­ence for All Americans.[1] AAAS also rec­om­mends learn­ing goals for K-12 stu­dents in its Bench­marks for Sci­ence Literacy[2,3], and Atlas of Sci­ence Literacy[4,5], and the National Research Coun­cil (NRC) offers a sim­i­lar set of goals in its National Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Standards.[6] States and school dis­tricts use the AAAS and NRC rec­om­men­da­tions as a basis for the design of their own stan­dards, which then inform the devel­op­ment of cur­ricu­lum and assess­ment mate­ri­als (those com­mer­cially devel­oped as well as those devel­oped with grant funds). In addi­tion, the neu­ro­science com­mu­nity has devel­oped its own set of core con­cepts that K-12 stu­dents and the gen­eral pub­lic should know about the brain and ner­vous sys­tem and has cor­re­lated those con­cepts to the national standards.[7]

Between the AAAS and NRC rec­om­men­da­tions, there are some areas of broad con­sen­sus on what stu­dents should know. Accord­ing to AAAS’s Bench­marks and Atlas, for exam­ple, stu­dents in the ele­men­tary to mid­dle school grades should under­stand the fol­low­ing ideas:

• The brain enables human beings to think and sends mes­sages to other body parts to help them work properly.
• The brain gets sig­nals from all parts of the body telling it what is hap­pen­ing in each part. The brain also sends sig­nals to parts of the body to influ­ence what they do.
• Inter­ac­tions among the senses, nerves, and brain make pos­si­ble the learn­ing that enables human beings to pre­dict, ana­lyze, and respond to changes in their environments.[8]

The National Research Council’s Stan­dards offers very sim­i­lar con­cepts in Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to the 16th edi­tion  of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­lica, the blog car­ni­val  that cel­e­brates the best sci­ence, nature and med­ical writ­ing pub­lished in the blo­gos­phere within the past 60 days.

What are some of the fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics you can explore and dis­cuss with this group of bloggers?

Sci­ence & Us

The Evolv­ing Mind: What’s the point of day­dream­ing?

Credit: Johan Stig­wall, via Flickr

Gen­er­ally Think­ing: What is the brain impact of dif­fer­ent types of med­i­ta­tion (focused, open mon­i­tor­ing, compassion)?

The Emo­tion Machine: Can blog­ging help you con­trol your envi­ron­ment and man­age stress?

Greater Good Mag­a­zine: Want to live longer and bett­ter?

Col­lec­tive Imag­i­na­tion: Can you share a pow­er­ful uncanny expe­ri­ence?

Sci­ence & Friends

via Live­Science

Lab Rat: Pros and Cons of hav­ing amphib­ian skin?

Sci­ence in Par­adise: Do sharks get can­cer?

Mauka to Makai: Can bun­nies offer new light on what comes after Via­gra, how to deal with nuclear feces, and new sources of electricity?

Kind of Curi­ous: Did dinousaurs migrate? dead or alive?

Migra­tions: Do beliefs on evo­lu­tion affect one’s abil­ity to appre­ci­ate bird­ing?

Sci­ence & Society

Sci­ence & Soul: Can we reverse corn mono­cul­ture trends?

Genomics Law Report: If a Direct-To-Consumer genomics com­pany goes bank­rupt, what hap­pens to your data? does HIPAA cover it?

And this con­cludes today’s edi­tion.  Kelsey will host next edi­tion (Decem­ber 7th) at Mauka to Makai;  you can sub­mit posts using this handy form. And if you’re inter­ested in host­ing Sci­en­tia at your blog, con­tact Grrlsci­en­tist!

Here you have the March edi­tion of our monthly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page. I know I am biased — but do believe this Newslet­ter issue might well be our best so far. I hope you find the time to enjoy it!

Bird’s Eye View

Brain Fit­ness Sur­vey: Over 2,000 thought­ful responses to our Jan­u­ary sur­vey (Thank You!) rein­force the need for pub­lic aware­ness ini­tia­tives and qual­ity infor­ma­tion to help eval­u­ate and nav­i­gate lifestyle and prod­uct claims, as well as the need for more research, an expanded health­care cul­ture, as more. Given this con­text, we are pub­lish­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness in May 2009, a book with 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, in addi­tion to our annual mar­ket report for pro­fes­sion­als and exec­u­tives (to be pub­lished in April). If you have ideas to help us pro­mote the book, please reply to this email and let us know!

Life­long Learning

I wanted to alert you to a very inter­est­ing find­ing pub­lished in a recent issue of Sci­ence, one of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tific journals.

The study was led by Dr. Torkel Kling­berg and his col­leagues from the Karolin­ska Insti­tute in Swe­den. The goal was to learn whether Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing is asso­ci­ated with changes in brain bio­chem­istry, thus sug­gest­ing a mech­a­nism by which train­ing may lead to enhanced work­ing mem­ory capac­ity and a reduc­tion in atten­tion prob­lems. Thus, although Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing has pre­vi­ously shown promis­ing results as a treat­ment for work­ing mem­ory and atten­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, this was a basic sci­ence study rather than a treat­ment study.

The major find­ing was that increased work­ing mem­ory capac­ity fol­low­ing train­ing was asso­ci­ated with changes in brain bio­chem­istry. Specif­i­cally, the researchers found changes in the den­sity and bind­ing poten­tial of cor­ti­cal D1 dopamine recep­tors in brain regions that are acti­vated dur­ing work­ing mem­ory tasks.

Results from this study sug­gest a bio­log­i­cal basis for the improve­ment in work­ing mem­ory capac­ity and reduc­tions i Read the rest of this entry »

John Med­ina, Direc­tor of the Brain Cen­ter for Applied Learn­ing Research at Seat­tle Pacific Uni­ver­sity, and author of Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School, wrote a great arti­cle for us on Brain Rules: sci­ence and prac­tice, bring­ing brain research to daily life.

We enjoyed the book very much since it pro­vides an excel­lent and engag­ing overview of recent brain research, so we are glad to see it reach­ing new cor­ners. You may enjoy these 2 new resources:

1) A 52-minute video based on his Google talk on April 8th: click Here. Great dis­cus­sion of the brain ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress management.

2) An inter­view at Har­vard Busi­ness Review, titled The Sci­ence of Think­ing Smarter. I enjoyed some of the exchanges, such as this one (though I find the ques­tion a bit mys­ti­fy­ing, are we assum­ing it is genes all that mat­ter for leadership?):

Ques­tion: In the absence of genetic test­ing, do you see any merit in the sort of psy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing some busi­nesses use, such as the Myers-Briggs test?

Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

We are glad to wel­come you to our blog car­ni­val. After a short hia­tus, Encephalon is back and gath­er­ing steam. We have pre­pared this “revival” edi­tion just for you, so you can be well informed and impress us all dur­ing the upcom­ing Sci­encede­bate 2008.

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s pro­ceed to the ques­tions posed by 24 blog­gers on neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy issues. We hope they pro­vide, at the very least, good men­tal stim­u­la­tion for you and your advisors.

Big Ques­tions

Do I deserve to vote even if I don’t have Free Will? (Marc at Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cally Challenged).

If cul­ture sculpts our brains, what can our brains do to refine our cul­ture first? (Stephanie at Brains On Purpose).

Is God more than a fly­ing brain? (Jes­sica at bioephemera).

Is Your brain really read­ing This? (Pete at Brain Hammer).

A Few Intru­sive Questions

Do you play any musi­cal instru­ment? (Megan at SharpBrains).

Read the rest of this entry »