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Insight From Trouble in Recognizing Objects
The New York Times: Object agnosia is a rare disorder in which an individual cannot visually recognize objects. In the case of a patient known as SM, he mistook a harmonica for a cash register. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Princeton University studied SM’s brain and discovered that it was affected not only in the portion of the right hemisphere that had been damaged in a car accident, but also in his structurally intact left hemisphere. They performed functional M.R.I. brain scans on the patient and report their findings in the journal Neuron. The part of the brain where an image is processed, known as the lower visual cortex, was similar in SM and in normal test subjects.
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3rd Scientific Meeting of the Federation of the European Societies of Neuropsychology
September 7 - 9, 2011 in Basel, Switzerland www.esn2011.org/
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17th Meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP)
29 September 2011 - 2 October 2011 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain www.bcbl.eu/events/escop2011
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Where Is Embodiment Going?
A Plenary Symposium on Embodiment at the 17th Meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP) cosponsored by the Association for Psychological Science and ESCOP 30 September 2011 l Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain Chair Gün R. Semin, Utrecht University, The Netherlands Presenters: Arthur Glenberg, Arizona State University, USA Norbert Schwarz and Spike W.S. Lee, University of Michigan, USA Gabriella Vigliocco, UCL, UK Bernhard Hommel, Leiden University, NL More Information: www.bcbl.eu/events/escop2011/conference/verdetalle/1301994306
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The Vitamin Paradox
Last night I had a chocolate milkshake for dinner. I don’t eat like this all the time, but often enough. I eat lots of salads, but I also eat cheeseburgers. And if I’m tired I eat pretzels, or skip eating entirely. In short, I’m far from a nutritional purist. But I take a multi-vitamin every day, and have for as long as I can remember. I figure it’s the least I can do for my personal health, plus it’s easy and fairly cheap. I guess I’m hedging my bets. And I’m not alone. Sales of nutritional supplements have grown dramatically over the past decade or so, and now total more than $20 billion a year. More than half of Americans take some kind of vitamin pill.
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The Joy of a Sun Bath, a Snuggle, a Bite of Pâté
The New York Times: Two ring-tailed lemurs, perhaps a pair, perhaps just two guys out to catch a few rays, sit side by side tilted back as if in beach chairs, their white bellies exposed, knees apart, feet splayed to catch every last drop of the Madagascar sun. All they need are cigars to complete the picture. There’s a perfectly good evolutionary explanation for this posture. Scientists use the term “behavioral thermoregulation” to describe how an animal maintains a core body temperature. But as the animal behaviorist Jonathan Balcombe points out in his exuberant look at animal pleasure, “The Exultant Ark,” they are also clearly enjoying themselves. A scientist through and through, Dr.
