Deric Bownds
These articles, from Deric's MindBlog at http://mindblog.dericbownds.net report new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff.
MY BLOGS
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Deric Bownds' MindBlog
http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/
This blog reports new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 2495 )
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Where is Free Will in Our Brains?
Really fascinating work from Darby et al. identifying the brain areas that make us feel like we have free will, the perception that we are in control of, and... Read more
Posted on 10 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Sans Forgetica
A fascinating piece from Taylor Telford in The Washington Post describes a new font devised by psychology and design researchers at RMIT Univ. in Melbourne...... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
In Praise of Mediocrity
Tim Wu does an engaging essay on how the pursuit of excellence has infiltrated and corrupted the world of leisure. I’m a little surprised by how many people tel... Read more
Posted on 08 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Militarized Police Forces Do Not Enhance Safety Or Reduce Crime, but Do...
From Jonathan Mummolo: Significance National debates over heavy-handed police tactics, including so-called “militarized” policing, are often framed as a... Read more
Posted on 05 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Number of Neurons in the Amygdala Normally Increases During Development,...
Avino et al. point out one possible underlying cause of the characteristic difficulty that people with autism spectrum disorder have in understanding the... Read more
Posted on 04 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Income Inequality Drives Female Sexualization.
Blake et al. do a fascinating analysis that suggests that rising economic inequality promotes status competition among women, by means of the posting of "sexy... Read more
Posted on 03 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Daily Fasting Can Improve Health Span and Life Span
Mitchell et al. show (in mice) that caloric restriction (a 30% reduction in daily intake) or single-meal feeding (resulting in fasting during each day but no... Read more
Posted on 02 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Constancy of the Architecture of Shame Across Cultures is Due to Biological,...
Interesting work from Sznycer and other collaborators of Cosmides and Tooby suggests that shame’s match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by... Read more
Posted on 01 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Anti-aging Molecule Produced During Fasting.
Diet trends like intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets are popular for their weight-loss effects. Han et al. now show that the β-hydroxybutyrate... Read more
Posted on 28 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Is Democracy Dying? - Irrelevance of Most Humans in a Technocratic Future...
I want to point to the October issue of the Atlantic Magazine, which carries out the manifesto published in its first issue, in 1857, to “endeavor to be the... Read more
Posted on 27 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Flow Genome Project - Modern Snake Oil? Con?
I thought I would point MindBlog readers to comments made on my post of 11/7/2017, where I offered a scathing review of a book, "Stealing Fire" which purports t... Read more
Posted on 26 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The War for Our Attention - an Existential Threat.
I want to pass on some edited clips from an article by Casey Schwartz on fundamental threats to individual and societal well-being posed by the new “attention... Read more
Posted on 25 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Infants Distinguish Between Leaders and Bullies
From Margoni et al: We examined whether 21-month-old infants could distinguish between two broad types of social power: respect-based power exerted by a leader... Read more
Posted on 24 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Giving Ecstasy to Octopuses
Edsinger and Dölen have found out how to make the normally shy and retiring octopus into a party animal. They found that MDMA (phenethylamine... Read more
Posted on 21 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Building Molecular Machines.
In an open source PNAS news article, Stephen Ornes describes efforts to build molecular machines modeled on our own biochemical processes - possibly artificial... Read more
Posted on 20 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Mapping Our Subjective Feelings.
Nummenmaa et al. do a massive job of data gathering whose purpose left me scratching my head on first sight...wondering why such an effort is useful. Read more
Posted on 16 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Details of How a Fear Response is Unlearned.
Learning requires the formation of new nerve connections. When that learning is extinguished are those connections inhibited or lost? Wan Lai et al. Read more
Posted on 13 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media Can Increase Political Polarization.
A sobering study by Bail et al. (open source) shows that just getting us out of our tribes' social media echo chambers does not have the palliative softening... Read more
Posted on 12 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
How Exercise Slows Alzheimer’s Disease.
Wow…if I ever needed more encouragement to keep up my exercise routines (mainly swimming, biking, and a few weights) Choi et al. Read more
Posted on 11 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Robots R Us
Two recent NYTimes pieces - one by Sherry Turtle (professor in the program in Science, Technology and Society at M.I.T.) and the other by Andy Clark (professor... Read more
Posted on 10 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE