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Random neuron firing, lame philosophy, literary pontificating, movies, sex, clothes & other femme stuff

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Neurotrash



I suppose I could have posted a little more about Zack Lynch, "evolutionary biologist, enterprise software marketer, and economic geographer" (a rising interdisciplinary amalgam, just now) whose blog is called Brain Waves. (I'm considering changing the name of my blog, by the way, to Vagina Waves Back.)

You may have picked up that I'm a little dubious about evolutionary psychology. I know it's an extremely cheap shot simply to hold up a small slice of an academic discipline's discourse and point and laugh. But I can't resist.

Zack has a recent post about the Gruter Institute's 2004 seminar Law, Behavior, and the Brain (my emphasis):

Owen Jones began the meeting with an ambitious list of questions that legal scholars should be asking behavioral scientists. Among them was this one: "What proof do we have that evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience will be important 20 years out?" Hopefully, my talk on our emerging neurosociety and the important role that biochips and brain imaging will play in driving future societal change put this question to bed.

After lunch legal scholar J.B. Ruhl explored how complex adaptive systems research could inform legal research and policy. J.B. was particularly interested in the policy implications of neurotechnology, an area I am sure we will be hearing more from him in time.

Peter Huang gave a very forward thinking talk titled "Effective Regulation of Affective Investing: Regulating Emotional Investing in Bipolar Securities Markets." Peter's knowledge of neurofinance and the potential policy implications was extremely impressive.

In the last talk of the first day, the ever insightful neuroeconomist Kevin McCabe provided an overview of his latest neuroeconomic research. Let's just say that Kevin understands intelligent experimental design is critical to getting anything out of an fMRI.


Into the stew of neologisms --neurosociety, biochips, neurotechnology, neurofinance, neuroeconomist-- I would like also to stir neurocasuistry and neurochicanery. And I look forward to finding biochips one of these days in the Whole Foods snack aisle --perhaps improved by the use of biodips. My guess: the first neurocuisine cookbook will be titled Brain Food
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