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 ( 2494 )
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A Two-System Framework for Understanding Fear and Anxiety.
LeDoux and Pine note that extensive study and understanding of how mammalian brains, including our own, detect and respond to threats has not led to... Read more
Posted on 12 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Demonstrating Reciprocity on a Global Scale.
In this age that seems characterized by increasing domestic and international chaos, I like to pass on any work that shows potential buffering or stability in... Read more
Posted on 11 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Forget About Major Life Extension - Aging is a Fundamental Feature of...
Nelson and Masel, present a theoretical argument summarized by Wagner in his brief essay on their paper. From Wagner: Paul Nelson and Joanna Masel present a... Read more
Posted on 10 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Exercise Alters the Microbiome, Enhancing Immune Function.
Reynolds points to interesting work by Allen et al. showing that exercise by lean, but not obese, subjects enhances microbial production of short chain fatty... Read more
Posted on 09 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Memories Are Stored by the Extracellular Matrix Surrounding Brain Cells.
Fascinating work from Thompson et al., who show that degrading the extracellular matrix structure with local injections into visual cortex area 2L of bacterial... Read more
Posted on 08 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Narcissism Epidemic is Dead?
An interesting piece from Wetzel et al., who find no evidence for a commonly reported narcissism epidemic over the past 10-20 years, based on the perception tha... Read more
Posted on 05 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Temporal Organization of Perception.
Ronconi et al. do interesting work suggesting that whether we perceive two visual stimuli as being separate events or a single event depends on a precise... Read more
Posted on 04 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Facebook Admits Its Sociopathic Side. Are Social Media the Drug Epidemic of Our...
An article by Farhad Manjoo notes that Facebook itself has pointed to work by Shakya and Christakis showing that overall the use of Facebook is negatively... Read more
Posted on 03 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
How Early Stress Exposure Influences Adult Decision Making.
From Birn et al.: Individuals who have experienced chronic and high levels of stress during their childhoods are at increased risk for a wide range of behaviora... Read more
Posted on 02 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Pax Technica - the New Web of World Government
Some clips from an Op-Ed piece by Roger Cohen: ...the puzzle remains. A year of Trump and the world has not veered off a precipice. Read more
Posted on 01 January 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
When Intuition Overrides Reason.
Gilbert Chin points to work by Walco and Risen showing that a third to a half of us will elect to rely on gut feelings even after having demonstrated an accurat... Read more
Posted on 29 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
On Gratitude...
I want to pass on this bit from an essay by Philip Garrity in the New York Times Philosophy Forum "The Stone". On recovering from the vibrancy and trauma of... Read more
Posted on 28 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Mind the Hype - Mindfulness and Meditation
Smith et al. point to and summarize an article by Van Dam et al. I pass on the Van Dam et al. abstract: During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has... Read more
Posted on 27 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The 11 Separate Nations of the United States
I just became aware, through an article by Matthew Speiser in The Independent, of the interesting work of Oolin Woodard that suggests that 11 distinct cultures... Read more
Posted on 26 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Autopilots and Metastates of Our Brains.
I pass on summaries from two recent contributions to understanding automatic information processing in our brains. First from Vatansever et al. Read more
Posted on 25 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Detailed Demographics from Google Street Views.
Interesting....neighborhood-level estimates of the racial, economic and political characteristics of 200 U.S. cities using Google Street View images of... Read more
Posted on 22 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Wealth Inequality as a Law of Nature.
Here is the abstract from Scheffer et al., a bit of work that casts an interesting light on the current Republican tax legislation that significantly accelerate... Read more
Posted on 20 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Skill Networks and Human Capital.
Anderson does an interesting analysis showing that workers who can combine different skills synergistically earn more than other skilled workers. Read more
Posted on 19 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Positive Stimuli Blur Time.
From Roberts et al.: Anecdotal reports that time “flies by” or “slows down” during emotional events are supported by evidence that the motivational relevance... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Teaching A.I. to Explain Itself
An awkward feature of the artificial intelligence, or machine learning, algorithms that teach themselves to translate languages, analyze X-ray images and... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE