Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• 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

• Shaping Memory Accuracy by TCDS

  Here is yet another example, from Zwissler et al., of how different brain processes, in this case memory, can be tweaked by trans-cranial direct current... Read more

  Posted on 24 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Do Brain Workouts Work?

  I've done numerous posts on brain training websites, and have ended up enjoying returning to the one started up by Michael Merzenich, Posit Science. Read more

  Posted on 21 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Debate on What Faces Can Tell Us.

  Security agencies are developing facial emotion profiling software for use at checkpoints, while Apple and Google are working on using your laptop camera to tel... Read more

  Posted on 20 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Magical Thinking in Auction Biding.

  Newman and Bloom do another demonstration of how common magical thinking is in our society by analyzing the influence of physical contact on how much people... Read more

  Posted on 19 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Control Over Memory Retrieval is Predicted by Heart Rate Variability.

  Here is a fascinating observation from Gillie et al., who find that a physiological marker, heart rate variability, correlates with a person's ability to contro... Read more

  Posted on 18 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Some Homilies on Wisdom - Older and Wiser.

  Because at ~72 years of age I am becoming more aware of how much time I have left rather than how long I have lived, I enjoyed a recent article by Phyllis... Read more

  Posted on 17 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE