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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Cooperating with the Future
You should have a look at this nice Nature Video that very simply illustrates work by Hauser et al. dealing with how we might design policies aimed at preservin... Read more
Posted on 14 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Does Phase of the Moon Influence Our Sleep? Three Contradictory Studies.
This is an update on a previous MindBlog posting. Vyazovskiy and Foster review three recent studies that give contradictory results on how or whether the phase... Read more
Posted on 11 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Untutored Mind Does Not Like to Be Alone with Itself.
Our mammalian brains evolved to physically engage the world in the interest of our survival and passing on genes. Humans are distinctive among animals in being... Read more
Posted on 10 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Caring for the Future
In a fascinating behavioral economics experiment Hauser et al examine willingness of people in a group to sacrifice personal gains for future generations, and... Read more
Posted on 09 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Information Integration Without Awareness.
I want to point to an excellent review by Christof Koch and colleagues. It contains some useful summary graphics. •Empirical data suggest that... Read more
Posted on 08 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Couch Potato? You Should Be Taking Omega-3!
I pass on the abstract from Leckie et al. (DHA refers to docosahexaenoic acid, an omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid that is highly concentrated in the brain,... Read more
Posted on 07 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Moral Judgements Depend on What Language We’re Speaking.
Costa et al. use the famous trolley problem to offer another example of the incredible power of the tribal or "us versus them" nature of our psychology. Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Consciousness is Constructed Through a Discrete Set of Activity Spaces.
This fascinating work by Hudson et al. shows that as the brain recovers consciousness from a perturbation such as anesthesia, it does not follows a steady and... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Parenting Rewires Men's Brains.
From Abraham et al., interesting material on a global "parental caregiving" neural network in our brains: Although contemporary socio-cultural changes... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks
I have frequently noticed that simply reading the barrage of negative news in the daily New York Times about the myriad things in our world that aren't working... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Mind Reading Has to Be Taught.
A review by Heyes and Frith notes how our learning to read minds is like learning to read print, except that it occurs much earlier in our development. Read more
Posted on 30 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Stress Chemistry Predicts Age-related Cognitive Decline.
Anderson et al. show, in studies on rats, that elevated hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activity impairs not only hippocampal function during aging but may... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Megascience Efforts and the Brain.
Grillner offers a commentary on the current megascience efforts (costing gazillions of dollars) to develop infrastructure for tools, modeling, or... Read more
Posted on 26 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Executive Control Training Reduces Rumination.
Rumination (thinking repetitively and passively about negative emotions, focusing on symptoms of distress) is a maladaptive form of self-focus that is a core... Read more
Posted on 25 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Distinguishing the 50 United States with a Tightness-looseness Measure.
Harrington and Gelfand offer a parsimonious mechanism for the striking cultural and political differences between the 50 United States by suggesting that the... Read more
Posted on 24 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Early Music Training Enhances Cognitive Capacities in Adults.
Further experiments on the profound effect that early musical training has on executive functioning in adults. The article has a useful introduction that... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
On the Precipice - a "Majority-Minority" America.
Sigh.... another chilling vision of America's future from Craig and Richeson. Increasing polarization of groups: The U.S. Census Bureau projects that racial... Read more
Posted on 20 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Dopamine Receptor Genes and Independent Versus Interdependent Social Orientation.
Kitayama et al. make yet another stab at finding correlates of the often cited distinction of European American (more independent) and Asians (more... Read more
Posted on 19 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Speed Reading Apps Blow Away Comprehension.
Schotter et al. make a demonstration that being able to glance back during reading (not allowed under speed reading conditions) significantly enhances... Read more
Posted on 18 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Watching the Physical Correlate of Memory Improvement During Sleep.
Euston and Steenland do a perspective on nice work by Yang et al. that probes the role of sleep in altering mouse brain structures. I pass on their summary... Read more
Posted on 17 June 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE