According to David Bus:

* Physical reasons such as to reduce stress ("It seemed like good exercise"), feel pleasure ("It's exciting"), improve or expand experiences ("I was curious about sex"), and the physical desirability of their partner ("The person was a good dancer").

* Goal-based reasons, including utilitarian or practical considerations ("I wanted to have a baby"), social status ("I wanted to be popular") and revenge ("I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease").

* Emotional reasons such as love and commitment ("I wanted to feel connected") and expression ("I wanted to say 'thank you'").

* Insecurity-based reasons, including self-esteem ("I wanted the attention"), a feeling of duty or pressure ("My partner kept insisting") and to guard a mate ("I wanted to keep my partner from straying").

Whew... that's cleared up now. But why do you have sex?!!?

Omni Brain now has a Facebook group. Join us!

I'm amiss in reporting recent IRL social news. There was a lovely dinner with SciBling Bora (who's creating a new online community at PLoS) at the sustainable foods Italian restaurant Incanta, in San Francisco.

Then in Vancouver, Bjoern Brembs was in town for the Eighth International Congress of Neuroethology and we filled ourselves with talk of drosophila and free will, invertebrates vs. vertebrates, and all you can eat sushi.

We were accompanied by a mystery blogger who I won't say anything about but I must say congratulations on the new grant. Cheers!

I'm not sure how to feel about this video. Can someone inform me of the correct emotion?
Thanks.

So freaking cool (and freaky)...Via Neatorama and Curious Expeditions.

It is a remarkable bit of irony, that finger. Venerated, kept in reliquary, subjected to the same treatment as a Saint. But this finger belonged to no Saint. It is the long bony finger of an enemy of the church, a heretic. A man so dangerous to the religious institution he was made a prisoner in his own home. It sits in a small glass egg atop an inscribed marble base in the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, or the History of Science Museum in Florence, Italy. On the shelf next to the middle finger of his right hand is something that the once five-fingered heretic would be much happier to see preserved. A small, cracked bit of glass that once glimpsed into the heavens.

I discovered this pretty neat blog via boingboing today (at least that's where I think I found it). This illustration seems to show something that is strangely like an fMRI machine... well with fire instead of magnets, bricks instead of plastic, and smoke instead of a computer analyzing brain images...ohh and instead of the brain images it gives direct insight into the semantic content of the brain.

Check out the BibliOdyssey blog for many many more great illustrations.

I feel like posting some silly brain pictures so here they are:

Here's another interesting book from the "Review copies of books Steve gets in the mail from publication companies, like Prometheus Press, that love bloggers" series If you've read this book please let us know what you think in the comments section.

Todays book is The (Fabulous) Fibonacci Numbers.

Book Description:
The most ubiquitous, and perhaps the most intriguing, number pattern in mathematics is the Fibonacci sequence. In this simple pattern beginning with two ones, each succeeding number is the sum of the two numbers immediately preceding it (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ad infinitum). Far from being just a curiosity, this sequence recurs in structures found throughout nature--from the arrangement of whorls on a pinecone to the branches of certain plant stems. All of which is astounding evidence for the deep mathematical basis of the natural world.

With admirable clarity, math educators Alfred Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann take us on a fascinating tour of the many ramifications of the Fibonacci numbers. The authors begin with a brief history of their distinguished Italian discoverer, who, among other accomplishments, was responsible for popularizing the use of Arabic numerals in the West. Turning to botany, the authors demonstrate, through illustrative diagrams, the unbelievable connections between Fibonacci numbers and natural forms (pineapples, sunflowers, and daisies are just a few examples). In art, architecture, the stock market, and other areas of society and culture, they point out numerous examples of the Fibonacci sequence as well as its derivative, the "golden ratio." And of course in mathematics, as the authors amply demonstrate, there are almost boundless applications in probability, number theory, geometry, algebra, and Pascal's triangle, to name a few. Accessible and appealing to even the most math-phobic individual, this fun and enlightening book allows the reader to appreciate the elegance of mathematics and its amazing applications in both natural and cultural settings.

About the Author
Alfred S. Posamentier (New York, NY) is dean of the School of Education and professor of mathematics education at The City College of the City University of New York. He has published over 40 books in the area of mathematics and mathematics education, including Pi: A Biography of the World's Most Mysterious Number and Math Charmers: Tantalizing Tidbits for the Mind. Ingmar Lehmann (Berlin, Germany) is on the mathematics faculty at Humboldt University in Berlin and the coauthor of Pi: A Biography of the World's Most Mysterious Number.

There's an interesting article over at Neurophilosophy about ' the peculiarities of the Negro brain.' - Which of course don't exist ;) But in any case... I figured I would see what I could turn up in the NY Times before 1900. I didn't find anything that connected with the previously mentioned article (well I really didn't look that hard...), but I did find these horribly gruesome descriptions of murders which are gruesome on certainly more than one level.

The first is from Feb. 4th, 1854:

The second is from Sep. 29, 1852:

There's a great Flickr slide show with some brilliant LOL Philosophers right here.

Here's one of my favorites:

Here begins another new series at Omni Brain. This one is called, Review copies of books Steve gets in the mail from publication companies that love bloggers, like Prometheus Press. Long enough title for you?

I actually don't have time to read anywhere near all of these books so I'm going to give you the Amazon shtick ;) These books really do look interesting and are definitely worth checking out! If you've read them please let us know what you think in the comments section.

Our first book is... Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments?

Book Description In a world confronted by conflicting moral beliefs and values, the question is often raised, "Can science help us to solve our moral problems?" Many people today believe that moral principles are derived from religion. Their critics point out that the great religions often vehemently disagree about what is good, bad, right, and wrong. On the other side of a great divide stand many who say that there are no ethical standards at all and that morality is merely a question of personal taste or cultural relativity.

This volume presents a unique collection of authors who generally maintain that science can help us make wise choices and that an increase in scientific knowledge can help modify our ethical values and bring new ethical principles into social awareness.

Among the thirty contributors to this volume are distinguished scientists and philosophers, including Arthur Caplan, Mario Bunge, Vern Bullough, Thomas Szasz, Scott Lilienfeld, Susan Haack, and others. Among the wide-ranging topics discussed are bio-genetic engineering, stem cell research, organ transplants, human enhancement, abortion, euthanasia, psychiatry, and psychotherapy.

Editor Paul Kurtz maintains that there is a modified form of naturalistic ethics that is directly relevant to both science and ethics and provides guidelines for our moral choices.

About the Author
Paul Kurtz, Ph.D. (Amherst, NY), professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is the author or editor of forty-eight books, including Forbidden Fruit, The Courage to Become, and The Fullness of Life, plus 850 articles and reviews. He is currently the editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry. In addition, he is the founder and chairman of the Center for Inquiry--Transnational, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

David Koepsell, Ph.D. (Amherst, NY), is executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism.

Since we're talking about panicking about drugs today, complements of Robot Chicken:

Stop smoking pot immediately! You WILL go CRAZY!!! Panic!

The study by Zammit and colleagues, published in the medical journal the Lancet, reanalyzed data from seven long-term studies on psychotic illnesses and marijuana involving 61,000 participants.

The researchers filtered out about 60 factors, such as preexisting mental illness and the use of other illicit drugs, and considered IQ and social class, to try to isolate the effect of marijuana, Zammit said.

Most of the studies that were analyzed indicated a range of increased risk for frequent users from 50% to 200%, with the average being about 100%, or double the risk, Zammit said.

The researchers also studied the relationship between marijuana use and mood disorders, such as depression and bipolar disorder. They analyzed 22 studies involving 52,000 participants.

The researchers found that any marijuana use increased the lifetime risk for mood disorders by about 40%, and weekly or daily use increased the risk by about 50%.

Ok.. maybe it's not time to panic yet but you probably shouldn't be doing all of those wake and bakes every morning ;) According to Dr. Victor Reus, another Psychiatrist not connected with the study,

he was unconvinced by Zammit's conclusions for both psychotic and mood disorders.

Too many outside factors contribute to the disorders, and the studies Zammit used were too vague to draw hard conclusions, he said.

"There's a limit to what you can do with the data that's in these studies," he said.

Wow... those are some pretty damning remarks! I really do wish newspaper articles were a bit more specific than this.

<source>

Via Neatorama and the Presurfer

This sterling silver charm bracelet designed by Made With Molecules sports detachable neurotransmitter charms to blend. Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, glutamate, and GABA.

"Each is packaged in recycled materials and includes an informational tag with neurotransmitter recipes."

Then with magical thinking, the concoctions will improve your memory. Not. But the bracelet IS cute. Talk about science instead if you wear it. That's more charming.

Ok ok... I'll do it too.....

Self explanatory - highly entertaining.

-via digg-

This weeks article is again from the Book Review section of the NYTimes on April 28, 1890. Admittedly, I'm not very familiar with the history of Physiognomy so I am learning about it a little bit today as I post this. It is essentially Phrenology of the face, even more ridiculous and can be used for racist conclusions more readily. From Wikipedia:

Physiognomy (Gk. physis, nature and gnomon, judge, interpreter) is a theory based upon the idea that the study and judgement of a person's outer appearance, primarily the face, may give insights into their character or personality. The term physiognomy is also used to refer to the general appearance of a person, object, or terrain, without reference to its underlying or scientific characteristics.

So onto the book review. This time the NYTimes gets the right idea (even though some present day people still don't) that the book they're reviewing is a bunch of baloney.

Ohh... and don't forget about this great quote from the article!

Music & Life: An Alan Watts Animation by Trey Parker and Matt Stone

A slick little neuroimaging video, but in five or ten years it will probably seem as clunky as this 1998 clip.

Karmen of Chaotic Utopia will be posting a comprehensive list of science education web sites for young kids, and has inspired me to share what's collected in my del.icio.us bookmarks.

Brains Rule! has six Flash games and hands-on activities for young kids. The gold standard Neuroscience for Kids from UW has many games and resources on their acclaimed site; most of the site geared slightly older. The Dana Foundation has Brainy Kids with info and although no animated games on their site, links to many other science kids' sites that have games. Nina and the Neurons is an interactive game for the very young. Breaking the Silence has info and lesson plans to do with the science(s) behind mental illness, targeting upper elementary and older. The award-winning There's No Such Thing as Crazy, for the same age group, is even better and teaches clinical CBT skills with Flash games and videos. Sara's Quest is to learn about neuroscience and drugs of abuse. The very cool Mouse Party teaches neurobiology also. But it's not just substances that can be addictive; youths toy with cerebral hypoxia in the choking game. Finally, the Society for Neuroscience has a collection of resources for young people with concerns like eating disorders.

Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is a fun and funny ecology/critical thinking site. Related to that, Media Awareness.ca teaches media/web literacy with lots of games for ages 8+. It's a well-designed site with a lesson library for teachers, and parent resources.

The Robotics Alliance Project at NASA has megatons of games, tools, information and inspiration. Here's a list for grades K - 5, with even more on the site for older students and their teachers (robotics course for download). Finally, this isn't designed with kids in mind, but they might be intrigued by the interactive AI floys games at AI Life and other experiments. There's no "AI for Kids" site that I know of, though. Yet.

Got links to more brain sites for kids? Leave a comment. :)

Peter Giancola & Michelle Corman of the University of Kentucky have determined why drunks at the bar get into fights. Here's how they did it and the pretty nifty results:

The scientists tested this idea on a group of young Kentucky men. Some of the men drank three to four screwdrivers before the experiment, while others stayed sober. Then they had them all compete against another person in a somewhat stressful game that required very quick responses. Every time they lost a round, they received a shock varying in intensity. Likewise, when they won a round they gave their opponent a shock. The idea was to see how alcohol affected the men's belligerence, as measured by the kinds of shocks they chose to hand out.

But there was more to it. Giancola and Corman also deliberately manipulated some of the volunteers' cognitive powers. They required them--some drinkers, some not--to simultaneously perform a difficult memory task. The idea was to see if they could distract those who were "under the influence" from their "hostile" situation. If they could tax their limited powers of concentration, perhaps they wouldn't process the fact that someone was zapping them with electricity.

And that's exactly what happened. As reported in the July issue of Psychological Science, the drunks who had nothing to distract them were predictably mean, exhibiting aggression towards their adversaries. However, the drunks whose attention was focused elsewhere were actually less aggressive than the sober non-drinkers. This seems counterintuitive at first, but it's really not: The sober men were cognitively intact, so they would naturally attend to both provocations and distractions in the room, resulting in some low level of aggression.

So what's the moral of the story. Yes... force everyone to perform difficult memory tasks at the bar. No talking, no making out, no easy tasks like darts. Memorize random sequences of number and letters and it will be fun for all!

I'm in the middle of writing up some of my results for publication so I haven't felt much like doing much 'science' on the blog so I figure I'll post what I've been giggling at this morning while procrastinating.

Our first image is completely self explanatory:

And our second comes from one of our favorite nerd comics xkcd. It seems that some people have taken the comic and reenacted one of the silly ideas, chess on a roller coaster.

Here's the original:

And one of the many reenactments. Don't miss the picture of the chess on a military helicopter!

Wow... I knew that many animals had herpes and if you want to get a herpes free lab animal it costs many times what a 'normal' herpes carrying animal does. But wow... Chlamydia in Koala's?! Maybe some of you bio people out there can tell us whether it's the same Chlamydia humans carry. So basically If I go to Australia and nail a koala - can I catch it and give it to my sheep?

Here's the exciting details on how Australian scientists are going to protect the koala population from STD's.

Professor Peter Timms, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said chlamydia was a major threat to the continued survival of koalas with almost all populations affected by the disease.

"The trial is planned to begin before the end of the year and will test the vaccine's ability to induce a good immune response in the koala against chlamydia," he said.

"Assuming that this first trial is successful, then future trials can determine if this immune response is able to protect the koalas against chlamydial disease.

"We've been able to develop the vaccine for koalas as a result of our studies on the development of human chlamydial vaccines done in the mouse model. We have identified several novel vaccine proteins that we hope will protect koalas as well."

Professor Timms said chlamydia in koalas was a significant cause of infertility, urinary tract infections, and inflammation in the lining of the eye that often led to blindness.

"The numbers of koalas with chlamydia seems to be increasing," he said.

"As much as 40-50 per cent of koalas coming into care in both Queensland and NSW are showing clinical signs of the disease and it seems to be getting worse."

-source-

Maybe if Koala's didn't have so much group sex like the above picture demonstrates they wouldn't be in this predicament to begin with. Perhaps the Australian government should call George Bush and ask about his super successful Abstinence only education that has been sweeping the U.S.

I swear I'm not trying to be obnoxious like Chris ;)

I thought I would draw your attention to a couple small changes that appear at the bottom of all of the individual posts (you have to be only looking at a single post - not the main page). We evaluated where traffic is most coming from and decided that changing some of the submit story to other sites buttons had to be changed. So now... you can submit your favorite Omni Brain (and other ScienceBlogger's stories) to Slashdot and Stumbleupon in addition to the others such as digg, reddit, and del.icio.us. So don't be shy! Submit our stories ;)

A music video, a crowdsourced homecast cultural expression ... Brain Tamer by Peter Johnson.

A sort of Stroop test for road signs. First the usual warning for deer crossing, which people often ignore:

Here's the version that gets drivers' attention:

There are no rhinoceroses in North Vancouver, at least I don't think so, but you never know because the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is found in the area. They're sadly endangered, though. Maybe the rhinos eat them.

I'm excited to announce that I've been named an associate editor for a new high profile journal, Chocolate Pudding Letters Review. Read below for our first call for papers:

CALL FOR PAPERS!

We are now accepting papers for the 1st issue of CPLR! DO NOT MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY! Leading scientists anticipate that CPLR will become the premier outlet for major breakthroughs in the study of chocolate pudding (CP) and other viscous edible creations (VECs).

Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, 1) theoretical reviews, 2) empirical works, 3) recipes, 4) novel appropriations of/ways to smear CP/VECs, 5) interesting pictures of CP/VECs, 6) implications of CP/VECs for genetic research, 7) mirror neurons and CP/VECs, 8) and the localization of CP/VECs in the normal adult brain.

Please send an email to either of the Editors (refer to UIUC psychology website for contact info) stating your affiliation and which type of article you are submitting: a) short report, b) confession, c) diatribe, or d) ad hominem comment on others' work(s). Type (d) submissions are especially welcome for the first issue, but we prefer to receive these before the target article is composed and/or submitted. Videos and other multimedia works are encouraged. Please send us your most sincere manuscripts only. For authors interested in hilarious mockery of academic literautre, we recommend "The Savory Biscuit Pudding Report", "Journal of Experimental Pudding: Learning, Memory, and Pudding", "Psychological Pudding", and "Sensory and Pudding Skills".

Accepted works will be published online in Volume 1, Issue 1 of CPLR. Authors are invited to a founders' ceremony in Rm. 837 of the Psychology Building one week after all acceptance notifications have been issued. Invitees must provide some variety of VEC and are encouraged to bring a wig, electric drill, and beach towel.

Editors:

A. Ksyusha Kittredge
Eric G. Taylor

Associate Editors:

Rachael Bild
Derek Devnich
Michael Diaz
J. Stephen Higgins
Agnieszka Konopka
Erica L. Middleton
Gary Oppenheim

Everyone thinks the printing press led to increased literacy among the average man in the middle ages, but that just might not be the case. Dr Marco Mostert a historian from Utrecht University is instead suggesting that the availability of cheap paper was the main reason more reading material became available. While this isn't surprising the source of the new cheap paper is. It seems that, according to Dr. Mostert,

"These rags came from discarded clothes, which cost much less than the very expensive parchment which was previously used for books. In the 13th century, so it is thought, as more people moved into urban centres, the use of underwear increased - which caused an increase in the number of rags available for paper-making."

For more random medieval literacy facts (none as exiting as this though) check out the EurekAlerts press release.

In case you're wondering what medieval underwear looks like here's an example.
This is a reproduction created by copying paintings by Antonello Da Messina and Piero della Francesca

Channel 4 in Britain has created a series documenting what goes on in Autopsies, but even more exciting is that they've made them available online for your viewing...pleasure?

I'm a pretty squeamish guy, which is one of the (many) reasons I didn't go to medical school. So if you're particularly grossed out by dead, cut open people then you should perhaps not watch these graphic videos. I'm about to force myself to check out the videos though! Wish me luck ;)

Here's a short description from the show webpage:

These clips contain scenes of a graphic nature demonstrating disections of the human body. All bodies dissected were formally dedicated to the Institute for Plastination, Germany and the donors consented to their remains being used for educational purposes.

And here's the videos!

My office mate claims this doesn't really look like me - but meh.. it's close enough. I've challenged her to do a better job.

There's a neat little program over at the Simpsons Movie website that allows you to create your own Simpsons Avatar. Check it out!

This weeks Pseudoscience of the past is brought to you (again) by the New York Times from November 21, 1851. In this episode we demonstrate how you can tell nearly everything about a person from...wait for it.... wait..... yes! Their Hat!

Now this isn't something you can tell from how fashionable the hat is - but instead, people's hats conform to the shape of their skulls. So basically if you have a sloping head of a certain shape you are a revolutionary and all that one would need to do to determine if you have a treasonous head is to do a little hat measuring!

I'm seeing it now...
"Sir, this is a hat checkpoint. Please remove your hat for measurements"

And don't miss the greatest line in the article, "and with a scientific zeal worthy of all encouragement, have followed up the system so effectually as to arrive at a man's political views, by examining his beaver."

Here's the wonderful article in full:

I do get the idea that perhaps the author might be making fun of this whole idea a bit - but I'm not really sure. What do you guys think? does the journalist take this seriously?

Check out the interview Bora scored over at A Blog Around The Clock. Of course it's an interview with a politician so it doesn't really say anything earth shattering ;) But it's well worth checking out.

Congratulations to Jeremy and Tanya on their wedding day!

Jeremy is an avatar virtual performance artist, who is part of the Second Life group Second Front among other projects. Check out his blog for some of his many guises.

Some of you (well, very few of you) know that I keep another blog, a brain sciences video showcase vlog called Channel N. I'm really into its statistics, and figure you want to know about them too.

My Technorati ranking has grown to a dazzling 260,350 of the approximately six million blogs online. 24 blogs have linked to me, and the number of people who've "favourited" Channel N has doubled to two. (One of them is myself, though.) Here's a screenshot as proof of my ranking. Feel free to distribute it.

RSS feed subscribers are currently at 49, and according to Google Analytics 23 people actually viewed the site today. I think there's an error on Google's part, though, because they report that the average time spent on my blog is 00:01:24 but most of the lecture videos are more like 01:24:00 long. The most popular link that people click is "View my complete profile." Here's the analysis for the past month so you can see the trends for yourself. Cool, huh?

I also maintain a blog called Neurofuture, but I'm not going to talk about that since readership keeps rising despite my best efforts not to post anything.

So I noticed today that ScienceBlogs does not have a wikipedia entry! What's up with that? Ridiculous!

I felt it to be my solemn duty to start one for the world! But clearly I'm not really supposed to be creating it since I guess I sorta, kinda 'work' for Seed Media. But anyway! Please head over there and help fill it up with some exciting content! Your favorite stories, information about all the great blogs, how you met the love of your life there, etc.

I also wouldn't object if someone created an Omni Brain entry ;) (I would feel a little worse actually creating that one myself).

Here's the exciting link!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienceblogs

Well I guess Boeing does a lot of government research so it really isn't surprising that they would be involved with some of the really stupid things the military has been involved in. Thankfully their research didn't focus on flying their planes psychically (well that we know of). From Danger Room, a Wired Blog:

Boeing researchers don't just spend their days designing killer drones and networked tanks. They also investigate unexplained powers of the mind, sometimes. Especially if those times are the late '60s.

This study, New Correlation Between a Human Subject and a Quantum Mechanical Random Number Generator, conducted in 1967, "tentatively conclude[s]" that people can basically will particular numbers to appear.

According to the Boeing-ites, there "exists a weak but significant correlation" between the experiment's "statistical processes" (that would be the generation of random numbers, "connected to four lamps and four corresponding pushbuttons") and "the experimenter who initiates the processes" ("the human subjects, asked to press the buttons... with the objective in mind of obtaining a high number of coincidences").

There seems to be countless silly studies coming from the military complex, which with a little creative keyword searching, you can find as well at the Public STINet (AKA Scientific & Technical Information Network). It's a little funny seeing these citations listed right next to totally legitimate pieces of research. Keep reading for more of the wonderfully compelling research I came across.

The Empty Life, a 1963 film from the Mental Hygiene Division of the Oklahoma State Departmeny of Health. "This man's life has lost its zest. For him, the kick has gone out of living..." Learn why people drink to excess, hang out with ten-dollar-tramps, race cops and shoot craps: the menace of boredom.

Spoiler:

It's kind of hard to imagine a child lying who barely understands language and is even less able to produce something understandable. And babies certainly don't have a very developed theory of mind! But like all areas of developmental psychology the trend is for people to be able to do things earlier and earlier and deception seems to be one of those universal abilities all humans have very early on. A Psychologist, Vasudevi Reddy, from the University of Portsmouth has identified seven different categories of ways that babies can deceive. The ways that babies deceive are essentially (according to the Telegraph - I only could find 5?) fake crying, pretend laughing, concealing forbidden activies, distract parents attention and bluffing when threatened with punishment.

Here's an excerpt from the Globe and Mail story with some examples of actual children's behavior:

There was the 11-month-old who, caught in the act of reaching for the forbidden soil of a house plant, quickly turned his outstretched hand into a wave, his mother reported to Dr. Reddy, "as though he was saying, 'Oh, I wasn't really going to touch the soil, Mom, I was waving at you.' "

Babies also seem to think they are masters of the Jedi mind trick, using steady eye contact as a distraction technique. Another 11-month-old, upon being presented with toast she didn't want to eat, would hold eye contact with her mother while discreetly chucking the toast onto the floor.

"She's very sneaky," the mother told Dr. Reddy, "she thinks you can't see it."

Fake crying is another trick babies learn early on to get attention, Dr. Reddy says. The researcher defines "fake" crying as being more calculated than the usual "I'm tired/hungry/wet/hurt/lonely" cries.

"In one case the mother thought it sounded 'put on,' but watched from a crack in the door, and noticed that there were pauses in the crying which seemed rather like waiting to see if it worked," Dr. Reddy wrote in an e-mail.

There is a great article today on Slate about why the pretty ridiculous idea that vaccinations containing trace amounts of mercury cause autism will never go away. Here's the first little part of the article:

At the recent 12-day hearing into theories that vaccines cause autism, the link between the disorder and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine came across as shaky at best. As for the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which was used in other vaccines, witnesses showed that in all known cases of actual mercury poisoning (none of which caused autism), the dose was hundreds or thousands of times higher than what kids got during the 1990s. Powerful population studies showed no link to either MMR or thimerosal-containing shots.

None of that moves Mary Wildman, 47, whose son's case is before the court and who drove from her home near Pittsburgh to watch the hearing, which ended this week. "I know what happened to my son after he got his MMR shot," she told me. "I have no doubt. There's no way they'll convince me that all these kids were not damaged by vaccines."

It is difficult to challenge a mother's knowledge of her own child. And also to fight off the staying power of the vaccines-cause-autism theory and other such notions that verge on the irrational.
Click Here!

People who study irrational beliefs have a variety of ways of explaining why we cling to them. In rational choice theory, what appear to be crazy choices are actually rational, in that they maximize an individual's benefit--or at least make him or her feel good.

Continue reading at Slate. Make sure you check out the parody Mad Magazine cover by an autistic blogger named Bev Harp.

Check out the 1st Anniversary edition of the Encephalon Blog Carnival at the brand spanking new home of the great blog Neurophilosophy!

From SFGate via reddit:

Boy, are you at the wrong concert: As a red-haired young man prays during the Creation Christian music festival in Shirleysburg, Pa., a red-shirted teen flashes the heavy-metal Satan gesture.

hehe... silly.

There has been a whole lot crap floating around the press in the last couple weeks since the trial started that is seeking to link vaccination with higher incidence of autism. Now a survey funded by one of these anti-vaccination groups is correlating, through a random telephone survey, more mental health issues like ADHD with vaccination. So why do you think this correlation exists? Is there a simple way of simply explaining away this correlation (think less pirates = more global warming).

Here's some of the info from medical news today:

The survey, commissioned by Generation Rescue, compared vaccinated and unvaccinated children in nine counties in Oregon and California. Among more than 9,000 boys age 4-17, the survey found vaccinated boys were two and a half times (155%) more likely to have neurological disorders compared to their unvaccinated peers. Vaccinated boys were 224% more likely to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and 61% more likely to have autism.

For older vaccinated boys in the 11-17 age bracket, the results were even more pronounced. Vaccinated boys were 158% more likely to have a neurological disorder, 317% more likely to have ADHD, and 112% more likely to have autism. Complete survey results are available at http://www.GenerationRescue.org.

Generation Rescue commissioned the phone survey. Data was gathered by SurveyUSA, a national market research firm, which surveyed parents by phone on more than 17,000 children, ages 4-17, in five counties in California (San Diego, Sonoma, Orange, Sacramento, and Marin) and four counties in Oregon (Multnomah, Marion, Jackson, and Lane).

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Have you ever wondered why your left hemisphere is better developed than your right? Are you worried about the negative impacts of hypnotism, crossed eyes and convulsions? The NY Times may have the answer for you!
It's all about how you sleep as a baby and what's in your cradle.

From Nov. 26 1880:

Not only do they provide answers for these questions they express these other very elucidating views on imagery:

I always loved these homunculi drawings in intro psych and neuro books. These sculptures from the London Natural History Museum are even better!

And finally if you have no idea what the heck is going on here. Wikipedia has a good description of the homunculus.

[edit by Sandra - in keeping with our new R-rating, see the NSFW image of a proposed revision involving the penis. Read more here. Oh, and I find it curious/backward that I can't find an image representing a female homunculus...]