Implied motion in Hokusai Manga
In NeuroReport, 21(4), pp 264-267, an interesting article by N. Osaka, D. Matsuyoshi, T. Ikeda, and M. Osaka of Kyoto and Osaka Universities, entitled "Implied motion because of instability in
Lévi-Strauss in comic form
Thanks to Culture Matters for drawing our attention to this tribute to Claude Lévi-Strauss in comic form published by The Financial Times. It has a clever twist and it might help you procrastinate
Learn about Social Neuroscience
In the last issue of Neuron (65, 6), a "Special Feature: Reviews on Social Neuroscience," of unique interest to cognitive and social scientists, "a series of reviews [most of them freely available
Babies got rhythm!
A participant listening to Mozart while her mother listens to speech. Watch the video here
Forthcoming in PNAS and freely available here, an article by Marcel Zentner and Tuomas Eerola: "Rhythmic
Do only humans share with non-kin?
"Comparisons between chimpanzees and humans have led to the hypothesis that only humans voluntarily share their own food with others. However, it is hard to draw conclusions because the food-sharing
Is hearing God like being a skilled athlete?
Not often do we find in the American Anthropologist material of clear Cognition and Culture relevance. Here is a noteworthy exception: "The Absorption Hypothesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical
How many minutes does it take for social norms to inhibit survival instinct?
Forthcoming in PNAS, an innovative study entitled "Interaction of natural survival instincts and internalized social norms exploring the Titanic and Lusitania disasters" by Bruno S. Frey, David A.
3 Quarks Daily’s Arts and Literature Prize: Nicolas Baumard on the universality of music in the com
The great 3 Quarks Daily blog is holding a competition for the best Arts and Literature blog post and one of Nicolas Baumard's posts on our blog, "The universality of music: Cross-cultural comparis
How cultural is sensitivity to shape properties?
In Psychological Science (Vol, 20 (12) pp.1437-1442), an interesting article by Irving Biederman, Xiaomin Yue, and Jules Davidoff entitled: "Representation of Shape in Individuals From a Culture With
Viral columns
The New York Times picks up on an interesting study of what journal articles people email to their friends. Short answer: those that inspire awe.
Quoting from the NYT:
People preferred e-mailing
Video: A Debate on Group Selection
On July 7th 2009, the The London Evolutionary Research Network held a extremely interesting debate on group selection in which four eminent speakers in the field discussed the motion: "Is natural
The evolution of misbeliefs
An article entitled "The Evolution of Misbeliefs" by Ryan McKay and Daniel Dennett In Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2009) 32, 493-561, freely available here, with commentaries by (among many
Universal and culture-specific recognition of emotions
Participant watching the experimenter play a stimulus
and indicating her response
There is an intersting forthcoming open access (available here) article of PNAS entitled "Cross-cultural recognition
Moscow’s stray dogs
From an article in the Financial Times, fascinating both from an anthropological and a biological point of view:
'According to Poyarkov [a biologist specialising in wolves who also studies these
Language evolution and universals
Two ambitious papers just published offer broad contrasting views on the biological and cultural bases of human languages:
Nicholas Evans, N. , & Stephen Levinson (2009). The myth of language
Body movement in language and cognition
A study by Daniel Haun, published in the December 15th 2009 edition of Current Biology, reports cross-cultural variability in how people memorize bodily movements in space, depending on how space is
Predation enhances cooperation in wee little birds.
In a recent article entitled "The increased risk of predation enhances cooperation"published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Volume 277, Pages 513 - 518 and available here, Indrikis Krams
Does power increase hypocrisy?
An article entitled "Power Increases Hypocrisy: Moralizing in Reasoning, Immorality in Behavior" by Joris Lammers, Diederik A. Stapel, and Adam D. Galinsky coming out in Psychological Science and
Is Imitation Necessary?
In an article entitled "Social Learning Mechanisms and Cumulative Cultural Evolution: Is Imitation Necessary?" published in Psychological Science, Volume 20 Issue 12, Pages 1478 - 1483 and available
Monkeys recognize the faces of group mates in photographs
Jennifer J. Pokorny and Frans B. M. de Waal show that "Monkeys recognize the faces of group mates in photographs" (PNAS December 22, 2009 vol. 106 no. 51 21539-21543).
Subjects need to select the odd
Uta and Chris Frith on the social brain
In the special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B entitled "Personal perspectives in the life sciences for the Royal Society's 350th anniversary", a freely available
The study of cognition and culture today
A special series of lectures supported by the LSE Annual Fund, organised by the department of anthropology of the LSE and the International Cognition and Culture Institute. All lectures to be held at
The Biological Link Between Music and Speech
In PLoS One, two researchers from the Duke Institute for Brain Science, Kamraan Z. Gill and Dale Purves, publish an article providing "A Biological Rationale for Musical Scales" and freely available
Cosma Shalizi on social contagion
Statistician and polymath blogger Cosma Shalizi is preparing a paper [1] on social contagion, basically dwelling on the fact that the transmission of behaviours through social influence ('contagion')