worthy links: Rama, acupuncture, disgust and politics (redux), mouse sex

V.S. Ramachandran gives a stimulating TED lecture and a short interview, mostly about mirror neurons, over at Neurophilosophy.

NeuroLogica’s Steven Novella recaps a recent study showing that acupuncture doesn’t work — and points out the clever way in which the failure was spun by the study’s authors.

Just the other day, I summarized a recent study looking at the relationship between disgust/purity and political ideology. In this short video, a brief discourse by Yale’s Paul Bloom on the topic.

Over at Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed Wong talks about work out of Bejing that showed male mice with reduced serotonin levels became less choosy about the sex of their sexual partners. And as should be expected, the sensationalistic headlines from mass media organizations shortly followed. From the BBC: “Sexual preference chemical found” And from CBS News, a NY Post-worthy headline: “Serotonin sex bomb: How to make a mouse bisexual or just really horny”