Welcome to #76 in the fortnightly Encephalon blog carnival series.
Sandra Kiume's Channel N points us to a fascinating and inspiring talk on blindness, vision science and the brain, from MIT Prof. Pawan Sinha. It's an hour long, but well worth your attention.
The tale of a Polish violin prodigy whose career was tragically cut short is recounted over at Providentia. Josef Hassid was originally thought to have been suffering from schizophrenia, but was eventually diagnosed with a brain tumour.
The Neurocritic hits us with a pair of posts about some rather drastic neurological treatments for addiction (one, two), and also reviews a study arguing that neuroscience teaches us that torture doesn't work.
Sharpbrains discusses a pioneering initiative to encourage awareness of dementia in San Francisco.
Neurophilosophy features a pair of typically lucid posts about associative learning in coma patients and an fMRI study showing that hippocampal activity predicts unconscious memory.
Zoe Wool over at Neuroanthropologywrites about the life of a solider injured in Iraq and the difficulty in separating the "physical" from the "psychological" in such cases.
Crime and Consequences blogger Steve Erikson alerts us to a provocative new paper of his discussing and criticizing the "neurolaw" movement. Sure to be food for thought.
Brain-inspired "neuromorphic" software may soon be able to recognise text better than current methods, writes Brain Stimulant.
Neurones may be more energy-efficient than previously believed, according to a paper featured at AK's Rambling Thoughts. He also points out the dangers of taking scientific terminology too seriously.
Finally, The Mouse Trap discusses the moodiness of entrepreneurs and the near-chaotic nature of the brain.
That's it for this time. We're still looking for a host for the next edition, so if you're a neuro/psychology blogger and you'd like to be the next Encephalon editor, please email encephalon dot host at gmail dot com.
