Neuron Culture's big hits for March : Neuron Culture

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I write articles on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications, and am working on my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which expands on my recent December 2009 Atlantic article. My previous books include Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years.

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Neuron Culture's big hits for March

Posted on: April 1, 2010 10:01 AM, by David Dobbs

What grabbed people at Neuron Culture this month?

Hands-down winner: Does depression have an upside? It's complicated, which looked at the uproar raised by Jonah Lehrer's NY Times Magazine story on "Depression's Upside." Depression and evolution: two very complex dynamics there. Much rich ground to explore, this got some great comments. I'll do more, eventually — in the book, if not before.

Close behind in second place, despite that I posted it only on the 29th, is Accidental brain evolution suffers a reversal. John Hawks should get main credit for this, since almost the whole post is an excerpt of a longer one he wrote about how fast the human brain has grown over time. This testifies, I think, to high interest in how we got the big brains.

Then comes the very gratuitous Satisfaction, which is dogs jumping. (You never know.) Followed by 119 banned words ... in one sentence and one of my very irregular daily Gleanings, because of the storms, methinks. On this one I was snookered.

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