A mind free of nurture

A core question in the study of personality and intelligence is about the relative contribution of inherited traits and learned behaviours. How much nature vs how much nurture shapes the mind? This problem can be approached in several ways, including the study of monozygotic twins that have been reared apart, and adoption studies (e.g. comparing [...]

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Exercising your mind

Many of us are doing crosswords, soduko or whatever kind of training to keep mentally in shape. However, it seems that at least some of the time we would be better off putting on our running shoes and start walking or running. According to a number of studies, mental health is strengthened by physical training. [...]

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Updating your cog-neurosci textbook

Take any textbook on cognitive neuroscience. If you go through the book you wil see that there are chapters on perception (e.g. vision), memory, and language. Each chapter has its own vocabulary, theories and experimental evidence. Each chapter may even have been written by different authors (i.e. authorities).
Once reading such a book you will have [...]

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Neuroethics history lesson

Neuroethics is an inherently historical field, although this is not always pointed out: the cases and experiments discussed by the neuroethics literature took place sometime in the past, and in many cases it might be beneficial to also consider the historical context when examining them. What were the theoretical assumptions that informed the experiments? What [...]

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Rorty reviews Hauser

Marc Hauser has new book out (Moral Minds, HarperCollins, 2006) where he argues that we should analyze moral cognition as a “universal grammar” along the lines of Chomsky’s programme for linguistics. I haven’t had the opportunity to read Hauser’s book yet, so I will refrain from commenting on it until I have (hint, hint, HaperCollins!). [...]

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New journal: Brain imaging and behavior

It’s not every day that we see a new journal emerging. However, Springer now launches a new journal called Brain Imaging and Behavior. According to the mission statement, the goal of the journal is to
publish innovative, clinically-relevant research using neuroimaging approaches to enhance the understanding of neural mechanisms underlying disorders of cognition, affect and motivation, [...]

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The non-coding DNA that makes us human

The race is on to pinpoint how the human genome has changed since the last common ancestor of chimps and hominids. With more and more genomes being sequenzed it has become possible to compare species and locate the regions where DNA has remained static over the last ~5 million years, and where it has evolved [...]

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Generalist genes and massive modularity

Recently Thomas wrote about a paper by Yulia Kovas and Robert Plomin in the May issue of TICS discussing the implications of the fact that a great number of genes – dubbed “generalist” genes – affect not one, but most cognitive abilities. One obvious implication is that, if most genes being expressed in the brain [...]

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Dawkins needs a bulldog … nay butcher

I just saw the TV documentary “The root of all evil?” hosted by Richard Dawkins, who is one of today’s most ardent defenders of evolutionary theory, and of science in general. Over two episodes Dawkins argues that the world would be better off without religion, since it distorts our view of ourselves as human beings [...]

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DNAlcohol

As noted in my previous post, the impact of alcohol on brain maturation in adolescence is still considered an open question, although studies indicate that early exposure to alcohol is even more damaging in adolescence than in adulthood. It’s not surprising at all. Alcohol crosses the blood-brain barrier to influence the function of neurons. Actually, [...]

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