Who loves TED? I love TED

More watchy goodness, mostly courtesy of TED:

Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other’s minds – actually about the  business of making accurate, predictive models of each other’s minds in our own. They’ve localised the ability to a particular segment of the brain, the Right Temporo-Parietal Junction (RTPJ) – verified by manipulating it to vary people’s capacity to understand what’s going on for each other. Quite literally mind-boggling, in several senses; very scary; and absolutely must-watch if you’re at all interested in the ways we relate to each other. I’d be fascinated to know if there is any gender-differentiation between men and women in the development of the RTPJ – and whether there’s any observable difference at birth, given the current state of gender neuroscience which seems to say that the differences between male and female brains in infancy are very few indeed.