Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Watching Large Scale Brain Network Interactions in Cognitive Control.

  We frequently face situations in which we must override our ongoing behavior to react to a situational demand, a process that is impaired in many patients with... Read more

  Posted on 11 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Causal Emergence in Our Brains

  I recently came across an important paper that I didn't spot when it first appeared in 2013. Tononi and collaborators question the common assumption that knowin... Read more

  Posted on 10 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Expensive Drugs Work Better Than Cheap Ones.

  Bakalar points to work published in the journal Neurology that found that when Parkinson's disease patients were told they were testing two new drugs, one... Read more

  Posted on 09 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Computers Judge Personality More Accurately Than Humans.

  This is a bit scary, from Youyou et al.: Judging others’ personalities is an essential skill in successful social living, as personality is a key driver behind... Read more

  Posted on 06 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Doubting Global Warming?

  My colleague John Young, who is a member of the Univ. of Wisconsin Chaos and Complexity Seminar group I join when I am in Madison, circulated this video to the... Read more

  Posted on 05 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Landmark for Our Human Brains.

  

  The search for specifically human cortical landmarks has been frustrating. Reported asymmetries in the planum temporale and the inferior frontal region are not... Read more

  Posted on 05 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Another Study on Exercise Keeping Us Young - and Other Fitness Trends

  Because there are currently no generally agreed on markers of human ageing, Pollock et al. (see review by Reynolds) decided to examine the relationship between... Read more

  Posted on 04 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Communicating by Having Our Brains in Synchrony.

  Stolk et al. have done an interesting experiment by doing MRI scans of people communicating only through a visual display who were working together to complete ... Read more

  Posted on 03 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Low Social Status Enhances Prosocial Orientation.

  Interesting observations from Guinote et al. : Humans are a cooperative species, capable of altruism and the creation of shared norms that ensure fairness in... Read more

  Posted on 02 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Parallel Brain Systems Regulate Our Pain.

  

  Our subjective sensory experiences are regulated by defined brain areas subh visual cortex, auditory cortex,somatosensory cortex, etc. Read more

  Posted on 30 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Power and Your Voice.

  Margaret Thatcher did it, and so can you. She went through voice training that permitted her to exude a more authoritative powerful persona. Read more

  Posted on 29 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Musical Training Accelerates Cortical Thickness Maturation.

  

  Hudziak et al. have examined a database of MRI scans of 232 youths ranging from 6 to 18 years of age, obtained over a period of years. Read more

  Posted on 28 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Judging and Adapting to Norm Violations Engage Different Brain Regions.

  Gu et al. find that our insula is critical for learning to adapt when reality deviates from norm expectations, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is... Read more

  Posted on 27 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Subjective Status Shapes Political Preferences.

  Brown-Iannuzzi et al. suggest that people's subjective perception of their socioeconomic status (SES) has a large influence on whether they support wealth... Read more

  Posted on 26 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• We Can See in the Infrared!

  The major part of my professional life was spent doing research on how the rod cells in our retinas change light into a nerve signal. Read more

  Posted on 23 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Steven Pinker's "Sense of Style"

  I've just read through Steven Pinker's new book "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Read more

  Posted on 22 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Signature of Consciousness in Resting-state Brain Activity.

  I've done a number of posts on attentional or salience versus default mode long-range connectivity networks in our brains (for a review see my lecture. Read more

  Posted on 21 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Body Movements Shape Brain Representation of Musical Rhythms.

  Entraining our movement to music is a universal human behavior. The enhancement of social cohesion by group movements in synchrony with the rhythms of chants an... Read more

  Posted on 20 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Example of Publication Bias - Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism

  MindBlog has done several posts on experiments that reinforce what has become the conventional wisdom regarding bilingualism: that it enhances our executive... Read more

  Posted on 19 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Watching Brain Oscillations Drive Perception.

  Are the electrical oscillations observed in EEG recordings as we perceive images simply correlations, reflecting brain processes driving our visual experience,... Read more

  Posted on 16 January 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE