Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• More on Building Brains with Video Games

  Nick Bilton does a brief piece on how trying to win various kinds of video games enhances subsequent performance on real world attention and memory tests. Read more

  Posted on 05 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Want to Remember Something? Have Some Coffee!

  

  Here is the brief abstract from Borota et al., followed by a graphic summary of the results offered by Favila and Kuhl: It is currently not known whether... Read more

  Posted on 04 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Cognitive Aging - a Dark Side to Environmental Support?

  Lindenberger and Mayr make some very interesting points on the consequences of shifting during aging from self initiation to environmental support in... Read more

  Posted on 03 March 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Brain Basis for Musical Hallucinations

  Kumar et al. report their findings from an unusual opportunity that presented itself when a retired London schoolteacher, Sylvia, reported to her doctors that... Read more

  Posted on 28 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Right Temperature for a Stroking Caress

  We apparently have sensory nerves in our skin that are exquisitely tuned for human hedonic, affiliative contact. From Ackerley et al. Read more

  Posted on 27 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Passing ADHD from One Generation to the Next.

  Prenatal and early postnatal exposure of the developing brain to nicotine (PNE) is a major risk factor for inducing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder... Read more

  Posted on 26 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Restoring Vision to Blind Mice (and Humans with RP Or AMD?) with a Photoswitch.

  

  Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP) affect millions of people around the world and in their advanced stages lead to blindness. Read more

  Posted on 25 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Predicting Risky Choices from Brain Activity Patterns

  Helfinstein et al. find some predictive neural correlates of avoiding versus taking risks. Even course global patterns of brain activity reflect enhanced... Read more

  Posted on 24 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Senior Coolness

  Swiss researchers Zimmermann and Grebe describe the outcome of analysis of in-depth interviews in German with 65 people aged 77 to 101, which runs counter to th... Read more

  Posted on 21 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mindfulness and Corporate America’s Bottom Line.

  New Republic senior editor Evgeny Morozov writes a piece called “The Mindfulness Racket”. (I have been working on a brain/mind web lecture on the... Read more

  Posted on 20 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Meditation and Brain Imaging of Two Kinds of Love.

  Judson Brewer and collaborators perform fMRI scans of experienced practitioners of loving kindness meditation, which fosters feelings of selfless love for... Read more

  Posted on 19 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Neural Signature of Our Own-race Bias.

  Wiese et al. examine the N170 signal (a component of event related potentials, or ERP recorded from electrodes placed on the head, which is maximal over... Read more

  Posted on 18 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Awesome Images

  

  I want to pass on to MindBlog reader two striking galleries of open access images. The first is Science Magazine's Visualization Challenge. Read more

  Posted on 17 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Social (and Medical) Pathology of Correlating Inner Worth with Wealth.

  A recent piece by Wilkinson and Pickett in the NYTimes deserves notice. They comment on how wealth inequality is not only divisive and socially corrosive, but... Read more

  Posted on 14 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Pupil Dilation Reflects Decision Related Choice.

  Pupil size is known to be increased by effortful decisions. The current supposition is that decision-related pupil dilation tracks the activity of... Read more

  Posted on 13 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Reaction Time and Longevity.

  Hagger-Johnson et al. note a correlation between reaction times (doing a button press as quickly as possible after a light flashes on a computer screen) and... Read more

  Posted on 12 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Genetic Predisposition of Our Behavioral Responses.

  Gregory sets the context for a recent article by Skuze et al. on how genes for our oxytocin receptors can influence our social recognition skills: ... Read more

  Posted on 11 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Different Cultures, Different Computation Systems

  Bender and Beller report that a mixed number system superimposing three binary steps onto a decimal structure was invented long before Leibniz’s description of... Read more

  Posted on 10 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why Electroconvulsive Therapy Works in Mood Disorders.

  Dukart et al. make the interesting observation that the controversial procedure of electroconvulsive therapy causes changes in gray matter volume in the brain... Read more

  Posted on 07 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Constancy of Our Social Signatures.

  Robin Dunbar and collaborators have done an interesting examination of the persistence of how many close contacts we maintain (family and close friends) over... Read more

  Posted on 06 February 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE