Encephalon #82

Welcome to the 81st 82nd edition of Encephalon, neuroscience blog carnival that keeps dying and getting resurrected over and over again. Let’s hope it keeps going for a long time again, as it collects some of the best writing about the brain, mind and behavior on science blogs. Including this month’s edition – a great collection of entries, if I may say so myself! Without further ado, instead of wasting your time on long introductions, I will let you dig in and enjoy:

Let’s start with Stress: Does Gender Matter? by Allison Goldstein from The Wiley Life Sciences Blog.

Taylor Burns of Student Voices wrote If You’re Reading This, You’re Probably Weird.

Mo Costandi at Neurophilosophy penned this delicious post: Neurocriminology in prohibition-era New York

Mark Robinson emerged from the Somatosphere to contribute The Privatization of Neuroscience: The University, The State and the Moral Aims of Science.

Zen Faulkes of NeuroDojo sent in three posts this month: It’s nothing personal, it’s just that my brain is bigger than yours and Are big brains better for long trips in bats? and Neither me nor thee: the fish in the mirror

Janet Kwasniak has thoughts on thoughts including thoughts on A step towards correlates of consciousness.

The Neurocritic of the eponymous The Neurocritic is neurocritical: Seizures Triggered by Strawberry Syrup.

Sandeep Gautam who has fallen into The Mouse Trap sent out a message – Personality and Motivation looks at a paper linking Big Five personality traits (FFM) with their underlying motivational reaction norms.

Dr.Romeo Vitelli of Providentia contributes two posts: The Opium Eater on one of the first “psychenauts” and a literary giant, to boot, and Born to be Wild – One of the more recent genetics= violence controversies to be hashed out in the media.

LivingwithN24 from DSPS, a sleep disorder is doing some self-study in Charting the course of N24.

Jesse Bering of Bering in Mind walked accros the Bering Straight to ask us: Not so fast… What’s so premature about premature ejaculation?

From Vaughan Bell of Mind Hacks comes It only exists if I can see colours on a brain scan. My brain must have lit up when I was reading that post…or otherwise it does not exist!

Maria Schamis Turner of The Brain Detectives was not asleep when she wrote Homicidal somnambulism.

Allison Brager of Dormivigilia wrote What the Airlines Neglect to Tell You: Jet Lag Elicitation of a Proinflammatory Response, which is only applicable if you managed to pass through the TSA security checkpoint in the first place.

Neuroskeptic is skeptical – The Limits of Neuroplasticity.

Jeremy Dean of PsyBlog has a whole series of posts on persuasion, includin Caffeine Makes Us Easier to Persuade.

Virginia Hughes over at SFari blog wonders about Negative feedback – Can your brain be trained to make better brain waves?

Christian Jarrett at the BPS Research Digest Blog is asking: Moving the eyes but not looking – why do we do it?

Princess Ojiaku from Science with Moxie has a two-parter: The Genes of a Rocker and AVPR1A: Music in your Genes?

I picked two Scicurious posts from Neurotic Physiology, one serious, one…also serious: Friday Weird Science: Does Your Aunt Only Visit at the Dark of the Moon? and New Possibilities for Depression: A MAP Kinase regulator.

Eric Michael Johnson who usually blogs at The Primate Diaries wrote a guest-post on the Guest Blog at Scientific American – A primatologist discovers the social factors responsible for maternal infanticide

And we’ll finish with Jason Goldman of The Thoughtful Animal and Social Cognition in a Non-Social Reptile? Gaze-Following in Red-Footed Tortoises.

And this is it for this month. If I missed your entry, let me know ASAP.

Next month, the carnival will be hosted by Dr. Romeo Vitelli at Providentia. Watch the Encephalon homepage for updates and instructions.