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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Over the Hill at 24
Great....the continuous stream of papers documenting cognitive aging in adults and seniors, many noted in MindBlog, has how lowered the bar even further.... Read more
Posted on 17 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Training Emotions - a Brief Video from The Brain Club
I received an email recently from "The Brain Club" pointing me to the series of brief video presentations they are developing over time. I thought the... Read more
Posted on 17 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Attributing Awareness to Oneself and Others.
Kelley et al. make some fascinating observations. I pass on their statement of the significance of the work and their abstract: Significance What is the... Read more
Posted on 17 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Poor People Judge More Harshly.
From Pitesa and Thau: In the research presented here, we tested the idea that a lack of material resources (e.g., low income) causes people to make harsher mora... Read more
Posted on 16 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Memory Reactivation in Aging Versus Young Brains.
Given my status as a senior aging person I always note the passing article that chronicles yet another way in which the equipment upstairs is losing it. Here... Read more
Posted on 15 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Enhancing Or Lowering Performance Monitoring Activity of Our Brains.
Wow, here is a fascinating observation. Small electrical currents applied to our medial frontal cortex can either enhance or abolish our brains' error... Read more
Posted on 14 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Caloric Restriction and Longevity.
I thought I would pass on this recent open access Nature article by the Univ. of Wisconsin group studying the effects of caloric restriction in Rhesus monkeys,... Read more
Posted on 11 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Is Consciousness in Control? Does It Matter?
I want to pass on a clip from SelfAwarePatterns that is as succinct a summary as I have seen (better than the one in my "I-Illusion" lecture) of the largely... Read more
Posted on 10 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
An Interesting Pain Suppression Tactic.
Romano and Maravita report that magnifying the visual size of one׳s own hand modulates pain anticipation and perception, reducing experiened pain, a... Read more
Posted on 09 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Practice and Sleep Form Different Aspects of Skill.
Because I am a pianist I find this work by Song and Cohen totally fascinating. It conforms to my own experience in learning new note sequences in a piano... Read more
Posted on 08 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Using Imagination Or Memory to Increase Prosocial Behavior.
Gaesser and Schacter test two simple techniques for altering empathy towards the suffering of others, useful perhaps at the scale of individuals, but not... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Exercise Protects Retinas.
Gretchen Reynolds points to an article by Lawson et al. showing that the increase in blood levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factors (B.N.D.F. Read more
Posted on 04 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Another Demonstration of the Gender Gap.
The observations of Brooks et al. are quite clear-cut: We identify a profound and consistent gender gap in entrepreneurship, a central path to job creation,... Read more
Posted on 03 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Can Body Language Be Read More Reliably by Computers Than by Humans?
This post continues the thread started in my March 20 post "A debate on what faces can tell us." Enormous effort and expense has gone into training security... Read more
Posted on 02 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Evolved Music Specific Brain Reward Systems.
Perhaps the most plausible suggestion for why music is universal in human societies is that it plays a central role in emotional social signaling that could hav... Read more
Posted on 01 April 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Mechanism of Muscle Decay on Aging, and Its Reversal.
Humans in their 70's and 80's experience a loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength (sarcopenia) that correlates with an increase in mortality in older... Read more
Posted on 31 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Our Lives Are a Concept, Not a Reality.
It is useful to occasionally be reminded of our essential strangeness, something I attempted in my "I-Illusion" web/lecture some years ago. Read more
Posted on 28 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Restoring Mitochondrial Dysfunction Associated with Aging.
The aging of our bodies is by definition cellular aging, and it is hard to keep track with all the theories on why cells age. One of the most venerable models i... Read more
Posted on 27 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
It has been a common supposition that suppressing conscious recall of unpleasant or traumatic memories doesn't prevent their stealthly emotionally damaging... Read more
Posted on 26 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Clash of 'grand Theories' of Consciousness??
In what strikes me in the most unlikely venue, The Huffington Post, new age guru (also savvy businessman and marketer) Deepak Chopra offers what seems to an... Read more
Posted on 25 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE