culture + science

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Neuroanthropology

Since I am now at the University of South Florida, I can finally mentor some graduate students!

I’m writing a fortnightly column for BBC Future , about everyday brain quirks (as I’ve mentioned previously ).

Looking for Jesus in all the wrong places I have a soft spot for pareidolia, as regular readers know. It amuses me to no end to see Jesus and Mary popping up on freeway underpasses, tacos, toast, pieces of sheet metal, Lava Lamps, and the like.

Not one but two new papers have appeared from the Carlos Zarate group at NIMH reporting that a single injection of the drug ketamine has rapid, powerful antidepressant effects. One placebo-controlled study found a benefit in depressed bipolar patients who were already on mood stabilizers.

Neuroskeptic

Herd - the hidden truth about who we are

Nice piece from Seth Godin today (HT peter_harrison peter@brainjuicerlabs.com) about the importance of... I'll have what she's having and buying "the" christmas toy:

http://herd.typepad.com/herd_the_hidden_truth_abo/

The Social Atom

Stanley Fish has written an interesting essay in today's New York Times .

Brains On Purpose™

The phrase "brains on purpose" was included in a blog post this weekend published in the New York Times :

ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Even while not posting here, new posts, updates, documents, and videos will appear on ZA’s pages on Facebook, Twitter, Box.net, and ZATV. You can also follow Anthropologists for Justice and Peace, where the majority of new articles will appear for the next 18 months and which will be the focus of online efforts in that period....It's time for a break: I planned to announce this at the end of May, when my sabbatical begins, a sabbatical in which I have committed myself to an astounding amount of work (I blame it on a workaholic binge that caused blood poisoning).

Coming out of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology An important comparative study on Early social cognition in three cultural contexts by T. Callaghan, H.