Brain Matters! Vancouver is a venue for researchers, thinkers and members of the public to come together and explore the implications of brain science and social responsibility. This is an opportunity to forge new collaborations, network with peers and experts in all fields of the brain sciences, and engage with the key stakeholders. Join us in expanding the conversation about the ethical, legal and social implications of brain science for promoting brain health and enabling well-being.

The meeting will be held from March 12 to 14, 2014 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

View the conference website for registration, abstract submission, and more information.

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By Adam Gopnik | Sept 9, 2013 | The New Yorker

“Writers on the brain and the mind tend to divide into Spocks and Kirks, either embracing the idea that consciousness can be located in a web of brain tissue or debunking it. For the past decade, at least, the Spocks have been running the Enterprise: there are books on your brain and music, books on your brain and storytelling, books that tell you why your brain makes you want to join the Army, and books that explain why you wish that Bar Refaeli were in the barracks with you. The neurological turn has become what the “cultural” turn was a few decades ago: the all-purpose non-explanation explanation of everything. Thirty years ago, you could feel loftily significant by attaching the word “culture” to anything you wanted to inspect: we didn’t live in a violent country, we lived in a “culture of violence”; we didn’t have sharp political differences, we lived in a “culture of complaint”; and so on. In those days, Time, taking up the American pursuit of pleasure, praised Christopher Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism”; now Time has a cover story on happiness and asks whether we are “hardwired” to pursue it.

Myths depend on balance, on preserving their eternal twoness, and so we have on our hands a sudden and severe Kirkist backlash. A series of new books all present watch-and-ward arguments designed to show that brain science promises much and delivers little. They include “A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind” (St. Martin’s), by Robert A. Burton; “Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuro-Science” (Basic), by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld; and “Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind” (Princeton), by a pair of cognitive scientists, Nikolas Rose and Joelle M. Abi-Rached.”

Read the Full Piece at NEWYORKER.COM.

By Eric Kandel | Sept 6th, 2013 | The New York Times Sunday Review

This new science of mind is based on the principle that our mind and our brain are inseparable. The brain is a complex biological organ possessing immense computational capability: it constructs our sensory experience, regulates our thoughts and emotions, and controls our actions. It is responsible not only for relatively simple motor behaviors like running and eating, but also for complex acts that we consider quintessentially human, like thinking, speaking and creating works of art. Looked at from this perspective, our mind is a set of operations carried out by our brain. The same principle of unity applies to mental disorders.

In years to come, this increased understanding of the physical workings of our brain will provide us with important insight into brain disorders, whether psychiatric or neurological. But if we persevere, it will do even more: it will give us new insights into who we are as human beings.

Read the full piece at NYTIMES.COM.

By Nancy Gertner and Judith Resnik | Sept 3, 2013 | The Boston Globe

Just as Attorney General Eric Holder was rightly decrying the impact of onerous drug sentences for low-level, nonviolent offenders this summer, the federal Bureau of Prisons began to implement plans that would dramatically increase the burdens of imprisonment on women inmates. The sole federal prison for women in the Northeast — a facility for 1,100 in Danbury, Conn. — is scheduled to be converted into an institution for men, and many of the female prisoners will be transferred to rural Alabama, making family visits virtually impossible.

Only 200 beds for women will remain in Danbury, attached in a lower-security camp — far too few to hold the roughly 900 women from the Northeast who receive federal prison sentences each year.

Read the Full Piece at BOSTONGLOBE.COM.

Source: The New America Foundation

Washington, DC — Today, Anne-Marie Slaughter became the new president and CEO of The New America Foundation.

Dr. Slaughter, a Princeton professor, former Dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and the former Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department, succeeds Steve Coll, who stepped down on March 31 after five years leading the nonpartisan public policy think tank. Dr. Slaughter, [who also serves on the CLBB Advisory Board], will work out of both New America’s Washington, DC and New York offices.

“Anne-Marie Slaughter is a creative, inspiring thinker who has played a critical role in the institution’s success as a board member, and we are thrilled for her to lead New America in what promises to be an exceptional period for both the institution and society,” said David Bradley, chairman of the Board’s search committee. “Steve Coll firmly established New America as an innovative policy institute that’s tackling today’s greatest challenges, and she is the right person to build on that foundation.”
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