This is #2 in my Best of Neuron Culture Moving Party — a run of 10 of my favorite posts from the blog’s tenure at WIRED, as I move the blog here. In this one, “Kill Whitey,” I look at a playful but ingeniously fresh look at a popular social science approach to studying decision-making and ethics,…
This post, originally published 14 September, 2010, examines how genes and culture can apparently shape one another’s development and expression — a topic much in my mind as I write my book The Orchid and the Dandelion, about how genes, environment, and culture shape temperament, behavior, and destiny The Depression Map: Genes, Culture, Environment, and a…
For a single post that shows how weirdly and unevenly psychiatric diagnosis actually works (and fails to work) in this country, and what that means for the new DSM, get over to Maia Svalavitz’s clear-eyed account of her own five diagnoses (and the one she never got): Over the course of my life, I have…
Neuroskeptic, one of the most insightful neuro-psycho-bloggers out there today, has a nice post at Discover on a Mark Brown article about whether it helps, if you’re fighting depression, to hear of famous role models who did so too. In general, Neuroskeptic shares the skepticism Brown feels about this. Where Brown asserts that where the…
Temple Grandin has a new book out, and over at the Times, I’ve a review of it — rather mixed, I’m afraid: For a quarter century, Dr. Grandin — the brainy, straight-speaking, cowboy-shirt-wearing animal scientist and slaughterhouse designer who at 62 is perhaps the world’s most famous autistic person — has been helping people break…