Just to let you know I've uploaded the news reports for October.

New Scientist has an article about some quite fascinating research into the effects of meditation. The study seems to confirm anecdotal reports that meditation can make up for lack of sleep. Apparently meditation had an immediate effect on vigilance, even among those subjects inexperienced at meditation. More excitingly (for those who us who like to see concrete, neurological evidence), another study has found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing, such as the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula.

And ScienCentral reports on an imaging study showing what we all knew -- men and women react differently to humor! And so do individuals -- personality differences may in fact be more important than gender. They're not really sure how to interpret the differences in brain activation patterns they observe, yet, but it's interesting to see that there are these differences in brain activity.