Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2685 )

• Observing Brain Correlates of Self Affirmation and Its Healthy Consequences

  

  From the introduction of Falk et. al. : ...according to the World Health Organization, “60% to 85% of people in the world—from both developed and developing... Read more

  Posted on 12 March 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Spontaneous Emergence of Shared Social Conventions.

  Centola and Baronchelli have recruited subjects from the world wide web to play a live game. They demonstate that myopic players interacting in sequential... Read more

  Posted on 11 March 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Predictions and the Brain: How Musical Sounds Become Rewarding

  I want to point to the review article in Trends in Cognitive Science by Salimpoor, Zatorre, and collaborators that outlines brain mechanisms underlying the... Read more

  Posted on 10 March 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Hugging Can Make You Less Likely to Catch a Virus Cold.

  Daily social stress is known to correlate with susceptibility to cold virus infection. Cohen et al. ask whether social support and the actual receipt of physica... Read more

  Posted on 09 March 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Human Language Reveals a Universal Positivity Bias

  Dodds et al. have constructed 24 corpora (collections of writing) spread across 10 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean,... Read more

  Posted on 06 March 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Chickens Count from the Left, Just Like Us!

  Rugani et. al. show (Brugger's summary) that ...3-day old chicks associate small numerosities with the left side, and large ones with the right side, of a... Read more

  Posted on 05 March 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The High from Nicotine Depends on Whether You Think It is There.

  Fascinating observations from Gu et al.: Significance Nicotine is the primary addictive substance in tobacco, which stimulates neural pathways mediating reward... Read more

  Posted on 04 March 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Immune Cells Drive Resilience to Stress.

  Evidence has been accumulating recently for back and forth interactions between the brain and immune system. Brachman et al. have now made the observation that... Read more

  Posted on 03 March 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MindStuff: A Guide for the Curious User

  When I am trying to collect together some ideas to form a lecture or longer piece of work, I frequently think “Haven’t I seen that before?” …. Read more

  Posted on 02 March 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Neurochemistry of Music.

  I want to point to an interesting review article by Chanda and Levitin, that summaries studies showing how music engages four of our bodies' fundamental... Read more

  Posted on 27 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Twitter Predicts Mortality from Heart Disease!

  Here is an interesting item from Eichstaedt, Seligman, and collaborators: Hostility and chronic stress are known risk factors for heart disease, but they are... Read more

  Posted on 26 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Metacognitive Mechanisms Underlying Lucid Dreaming.

  

  Metacognition is the ability to observe, reflect on, and report one's own mental states during wakefulness. Dreaming is not typically accessible to this kind... Read more

  Posted on 25 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Neuroscience of Motivated Cognition.

  I want to point to this interesting open source article by Hughes and Zaki, who review research from social psychology and cognitive neuroscience that provides... Read more

  Posted on 24 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MindBlog's 9th Anniversary

  I realize that I have let MindBlog's 9th birthday slip past without note. The Feb. 6, 2006 post that started the blog, Dangerous Ideas, is no less relevant toda... Read more

  Posted on 23 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What is Different About the Brains of "SuperAgers"

  We all probably know some people well into their 80's and 90's who seem to maintain crystal clear intelligence, presence, and memory. Read more

  Posted on 23 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Training the Mind Not to Wander with Brain Feedback.

  deBettencourt and collaborators at Princeton University have placed student subjects in an MRI machine while they were performing a sustained attention task. Read more

  Posted on 20 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Informative Genetic Grammatical Impairment - the Biological Basis of Language

  

  A fascinating article from van der Lely and Pinker: •Specific language impairment is a heterogeneous family of genetic developmental disorders that affect... Read more

  Posted on 19 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Psilocybin as a Key to Consciousness.

  

  Michael Pollan offers an engaging article "The Trip Treatment" in the Feb. 9 issue of The New Yorker magazine that describes the resurgence of interest and... Read more

  Posted on 18 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Sense of the Unfolding Digital Age.

  I've just spent an hour following web links in the New York Times article on a recent course offered by recently deceased media columnist David Carr. Read more

  Posted on 17 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Music Training Offsets Decline in Speech Recognition on Aging.

  From Bidelman and Alain: Musicianship in early life is associated with pervasive changes in brain function and enhanced speech-language skills. Read more

  Posted on 17 February 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE