Blogging on the Brain: April 8-22, 2006

Some highlights from the week in brain blogging:

The Genius covers theta oscillations and sequence compression in hippocampus.

Biology of Perspective-Taking: A fascinating summary of what happens in our brains during "perspective-taking," when we exercise our theory of mind abilities and put ourselves in someone else's shoes.

When does the brain develop math? Mind Hacks covers an open-access article on the development in math ... in four year olds. I haven't read the article yet, but it involves fMRI, and I can't imagine that this experiment was well controlled. Draw conclusions with caution...

A primer on correlation: A couple of under-appreciated issues with the interpretation of correlation coefficients.

Forest for the trees? Neurodudes points out an interesting recent article in Science, one that confirms a small piece of folk theory: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing..."

Re-Inventing the Wheel? Not a Bad Idea: Finally, a nice bit of mechanical engineering from Al Fin, because everybody needs a break from cognitive science every now and then.

Have a nice weekend!