We're featuring brain evolution in the upcoming edition

The next edition of Carnival of Evolution will be on NeuroDojo in just a few days (June 1st). Zen Faulkes will be featuring posts anything related to brain evolution prominently in this edition, but I fear that not very many bloggers are writing about brain evolution, so here are a few pointers for those with enough enthusiasm.

The RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan has lots of resources on brains, including this primer on brain basics and evolution:

Through the course of evolution, the brain has undergone considerable changes. In many invertebrates, such as worms, the nervous system consists of no more than a net or bundle of nerve cells. In fish, amphibians, and reptiles, the brain is a well-developed organ consisting of several distinct structures, such as the cerebellum, tectum, and basal ganglia. These structures are specialized for different basic functions, such as detecting visual patterns, generating walking or swimming movements, generating reflexive responses, and so on. Mammal brains also contain many of these primitive structures, so scientists can understand many aspects of our own brain function by studying these areas in other animals.

Journals on brain evolution: Brain, Behavior and Evolution | Brain | Current Anthropology | Journal of the History of the Neurosciences | Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience

There's plenty, so get crackin'! Submit one (good) or two (better) posts on anything about evolution, and particularly about brain evolution, through this online form.

CoE featured on Blog Carnival today

Today Blog Carnival the website with all the carnivals, is featuring Carnival of Evolution on their home page and on Facebook.

The big event captured for perpetuity:

May edition up today on Springer

The 2010 May edition of our beloved Carnival of Evolution is up today on the official blog for Springer Verlag's journal, Evolution: Education and Outreach. And with that, surely getting your post accepted in CoE is now akin to peer-reviews on some level. Thanks to Adam M. Goldstein for hosting.

An excerpt:

The squeamish are advised to prepare themselves before visiting GrrlScientist’s post about a newly identified genus of leech (“those spineless blood sucking animals”) which makes its home in the nose of mammals. The photographic evidence is compelling, to say the least; indeed, so is the science. A second posting discusses recent work on the genetics of personality based on the genetics of the Great Tit, a bird (Parus major). Those Tits with a variant in the DRD4 gene show a greater tendency to explore their environment, offering suggestions about how humans with this variant might behave. (Incidentally, the title of this post, “What do great tits reveal about human personality,” is no doubt likely to show up in Internet searches for topics not having to do with evolutionary biology….) She also writes about recent work in which UV rays are used to shed some new light (sorry, couldn’t help it) on fossils, revealing details about fossilized feathers in a Microraptor gui skeleton.

Next month CoE will be hosted by Dr. Zen on Neurodojo. We are going to try to make it a special edition featuring brain evolution, but that of course only works if people submit posts about brain evolution. Doesn't take much brains to figure that out. Or does it? So, you have a whole month to write up one (good) or two (better) posts pwning brain evolution. CoE has a fast track review system, and Dr. Zen will be the functioning as both editor and reviewer(s) in this edition. Use this form on Blog Carnival to submit your posts.

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