Encephalon #76

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 Neuroanthropology writes 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.