Neuroscience
A short interview with Dr. Louann Brizendine in today's New York Times Magazine.
While we're in the NYT Magazine, let's take a look at some of the psychology- and neuroscience-influenced entries in their 6th Annual Year in Ideas.
CB illustration from Cecilia Burman's site on prosopagnosia, or face blindness.
The Visage Problem
By CHRISTOPHER SHEA
. . .
Face-blindness can be sadly debilitating: in some cases, parents can’t tell which kindergartner is theirs; sufferers become shut-ins, overwhelmed by a world full of blank faces. Before their diagnosis, many people with prosopagnosia assume that they are just socially awkward. "You have a perceptual problem, and you self-ascribe," Nakayama says. "You say you are an introvert." If the 2.5 percent figure is correct, millions of Americans may be misreading a glitch in their cognitive software — analogous to colorblindness — as a personality flaw.
Here's a nifty device for people with autism:
Finally, the scary prospect of a 50-year-old man sporting a faux-hawk is described in Psychological Neoteny.
- Day 2 Of Digest Super Week: Meet A Super-recogniser
For many years psychologists have studied people whose brain damage has impaired their ability to recognise faces. More recently it became clear that there is another group of individuals who are born with this deficit, or develop it early in childhood....
- Encephalon Seven
Encephalon 7th Edition now available at Omni Brain! [or should I say Ensexalon?] I figured we should start with the usual topics of the Omni Brain blog - sex, drugs, and rock and roll! The Neurocritic's fictitious rendition of the stimuli from the...
- Men Are From Chicago, Women Are From Peotone
I must point out an excellent series of posts at Language Log that closely examines a few of the shaky claims made in the new book by Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain. Oh, you've read about the book in the popular press and in Neurobloggy Land....
- Hand Tremors
From Information Week: IBM Unveils Mouse Adapter That Assists Hand-Tremor Sufferers IBM has developed a computer mouse that can help hand-tremor sufferers eliminate excessive cursor movements. By Antone Gonsalves TechWeb News March 14, 2005 IBM on Monday...
- Reading Fiction Improves Empathy
Stephen Abram pointed out a fascinating article from the (Toronto) Globe and Mail, citing some research which shows that folks who read fiction have "exceptionally strong" social skills. The Globe and Mail interview Keith Oatley about his research, and...
Neuroscience
He Thought, She Thought She'd Backpedal
A short interview with Dr. Louann Brizendine in today's New York Times Magazine.
He Thought, She ThoughtIs that "should have been" backpedaling phraseology because of this Boston Globe article by Mark Liberman, who had previously written three excellent critiques of the 20,000 vs. 7,000 claim in Language Log?
By DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: December 10, 2006
. . . [skipping the part about oxytocin and dopamine in sixth grade girls...]
Your book cites a study claiming that women use about 20,000 words a day, while men use about 7,000.
The real phraseology of that should have been that a woman has many more communication events a day — gestures, words, raising of your eyebrows.
While we're in the NYT Magazine, let's take a look at some of the psychology- and neuroscience-influenced entries in their 6th Annual Year in Ideas.
CB illustration from Cecilia Burman's site on prosopagnosia, or face blindness.
The Visage ProblemBy CHRISTOPHER SHEA
. . .
Face-blindness can be sadly debilitating: in some cases, parents can’t tell which kindergartner is theirs; sufferers become shut-ins, overwhelmed by a world full of blank faces. Before their diagnosis, many people with prosopagnosia assume that they are just socially awkward. "You have a perceptual problem, and you self-ascribe," Nakayama says. "You say you are an introvert." If the 2.5 percent figure is correct, millions of Americans may be misreading a glitch in their cognitive software — analogous to colorblindness — as a personality flaw.
Here's a nifty device for people with autism:
The Social-Cue Reader"Out, damned spot!" - read about the relationship between moral and physical purification in The Lady Macbeth Effect.
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
. . .
The Emotional-Social Intelligence Prosthesis, developed by Rana el Kaliouby and Rosalind Picard, consists of a small camera mounted on a cap or glasses that monitors a conversation partner’s facial expressions and feeds the data into a hand-held computer. Software tracks the movement of facial features and classifies them using a coding system developed by the psychologist Paul Ekman, which is then correlated with a second taxonomy of emotional states created by the Cambridge autism researcher (and Ali G cousin) Simon Baron-Cohen. Almost instantaneously, the computer crunches each raised eyebrow and pucker of the lips, giving a whispered verdict about how the person is feeling.
Finally, the scary prospect of a 50-year-old man sporting a faux-hawk is described in Psychological Neoteny.
- Day 2 Of Digest Super Week: Meet A Super-recogniser
For many years psychologists have studied people whose brain damage has impaired their ability to recognise faces. More recently it became clear that there is another group of individuals who are born with this deficit, or develop it early in childhood....
- Encephalon Seven
Encephalon 7th Edition now available at Omni Brain! [or should I say Ensexalon?] I figured we should start with the usual topics of the Omni Brain blog - sex, drugs, and rock and roll! The Neurocritic's fictitious rendition of the stimuli from the...
- Men Are From Chicago, Women Are From Peotone
I must point out an excellent series of posts at Language Log that closely examines a few of the shaky claims made in the new book by Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain. Oh, you've read about the book in the popular press and in Neurobloggy Land....
- Hand Tremors
From Information Week: IBM Unveils Mouse Adapter That Assists Hand-Tremor Sufferers IBM has developed a computer mouse that can help hand-tremor sufferers eliminate excessive cursor movements. By Antone Gonsalves TechWeb News March 14, 2005 IBM on Monday...
- Reading Fiction Improves Empathy
Stephen Abram pointed out a fascinating article from the (Toronto) Globe and Mail, citing some research which shows that folks who read fiction have "exceptionally strong" social skills. The Globe and Mail interview Keith Oatley about his research, and...