Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Norm Enforcement is Biased from Its Emergence.

  Interesting work from Jordan et al. on the appearance of in-group bias in punishing selfish behaviors in insiders versus outsiders: When enforcing norms for... Read more

  Posted on 16 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Early Music Training Improves Neural Encoding of Speech in Children and Arrests...

  Fascinating work from Kraus et al.: Musicians are often reported to have enhanced neurophysiological functions, especially in the auditory system. Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Study on Relationship Between Genomics and Well Being Receives a Critical...

  I recently did a post passing on (as usual, uncritically) what looked like a neat correlation between genomics and human well-being. Brown et al. now issue a... Read more

  Posted on 12 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A New Compound That Ameliorates Cognitive Dysfunction.

  

  Alzheimer's disease is thought ultimately to be caused by the accumulation of the excess proteins found in plaques and tangles in the brain, but the prior defec... Read more

  Posted on 11 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Upstairs/Downstairs in Our Brain – What’s Running Our Show?

  Although I mentioned this in Tuesday's post, I wanted to more explicitly point MindBlog readers to this web version of a talk I gave at the Sept. Read more

  Posted on 10 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MindBlog's Other Half - a Sunday Afternoon Recital at Twin Valley

  This past Sunday afternoon my partner Len and I hosted a musical/social event for 50 friends at our Twin Valley home in Middleton Wisconsin. Read more

  Posted on 09 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Reboot, Reset, Your Brain - Take a Break - a Walk, Or Better, a Vacation.

  I've done a number of posts on the attentional and default modes of our brain (in fact, I'm doing on a talk on this topic today at the Physics Department's chao... Read more

  Posted on 09 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MDMA (Ecstasy) as an Affiliative Social Drug

  Wardle et al. probe an interesting bit of social neurochemistry: 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, ‘ecstasy’) is used recreationally to improve mood and... Read more

  Posted on 08 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Does One Novelty Lead to Another?

  Barbar Jazney summarizes interesting work by Tria et al.: Life would be boring if things were always the same. Tria and colleagues explore whether... Read more

  Posted on 05 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Genetic Influence on Our Valuation of Free Choice

  Cockburn et al. find an interesting correlation: A polymorphism in DARPP-32, a gene linked to dopaminergic striatal plasticity and individual differences in... Read more

  Posted on 04 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Morality - How Theists and Non Theists Differ

  Shariff et al offer an interesting review of the ways in which the moral concerns of theists and nontheists both overlap and are different, as a result of... Read more

  Posted on 03 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Intergenerational Transmission of Emotional Trauma.

  Interesting work from Debiec and Sullivan on how conditioned fear learning in a parent is transmitted to children: Despite clinical evidence that specific fear... Read more

  Posted on 02 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Could Language Have Evolved?

  An eminent group of co-authors (Bolhuis, Tattersall, Chomsky, and Berwick) suggest that a simple core repeatable operation is the basis of all language. Read more

  Posted on 01 September 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Origins of Morality.

  Mark Johnson has generated some creative and seminal ideas in his books "The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason" and, with... Read more

  Posted on 29 August 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Stability of the Authoritarian State.

  Science Magazine publishes comment on a fascinating article by King et al. who essentially reverse-engineer censorship in China to show that criticisms of the... Read more

  Posted on 28 August 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Early Life Anxiety in Monkeys and Humans Correlates with Connectivity Between...

  

  A group of collaborators, mainly at the University of Wisconsin, including Ned Kalin and Richard Davidson, provide new information about the evolutionarily... Read more

  Posted on 27 August 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• More on Better Living Through Zapping Your Brain.

  Anna Altman has done an entertaining piece on transcranial direct-current stimulation, or tDCS, which I have mentioned in numerous previous mindblog posts (ente... Read more

  Posted on 26 August 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Origins of Good and Evil in Human Babies.

  Felix Warneken does a review in TICS (Trends in Cognitive Sciences) of Paul Bloom new book "Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil," which argues that humans... Read more

  Posted on 25 August 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• OhMyGawd...now MRI Measurement Are Going to Tell Us How Happy We Are??

  Dolan and collaborators come up with yet another clever use of MRI measurements. (If you enter "Dolan" in the mindblog search box, you will find numerous posts... Read more

  Posted on 22 August 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Source of Consciousness.

  Paller and Suzuki do a compact review on efforts to define the source of consciousness, arguing against the mysterian position that consciousness is beyond the... Read more

  Posted on 21 August 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE