Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• Are There Trendy Parts of the Brain?

  

  Behrens et al. do an interesting analysis, asking: Are there really trendy parts of the brain? Or does each scientist falsely believe their own research area... Read more

  Posted on 25 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Cornucopia of Mind Blog Sites.

  

  Scientific American has announced that its daughter magazine Scientific American Mind has set up a Blogs site that lists a number of psychology, neuroscience,... Read more

  Posted on 22 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Brain Basis of Our Superiority Illusion.

  

  One of the most robustly documented findings of psychology is the "optimism" bias, which leads us to put rose-colored glasses on past, future, and our own... Read more

  Posted on 21 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Would Tarzan Believe in God?

  Some clips from Konika Banerjee and Paul Bloom: Would someone raised without exposure to religious views nonetheless come to believe in the existence of God,... Read more

  Posted on 20 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Negativity Bias and Political Ideology

  I've just received a reviewer's copy of an upcoming article in Brain and Behavioral Science in the vein of several MindBlog posts mentioning work on the brains... Read more

  Posted on 19 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Reversal of Hearing Decline with Aging.

  It is known that life-long musical experience partially offsets age-related neural timing delays. Such delays make it harder to process speech in noisy... Read more

  Posted on 18 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How to Dress to Say It is Wrong to Be Gay!

  

  I had to pass this on..... FABULOUS! The Pope Emeritus, wearing a fabulous vintage chiffon-lined Dior gold lame gownover a silk Vera Wang empire waist tulle... Read more

  Posted on 17 March 2013 HUMOR, LIFESTYLE

• Does Cannabis Use Cause Lower IQ?

  Rogeberg offers a critique of a recent suggestion by Meyer et. al. of a neurotoxic effect of cannabis on developing brains that permanently lowers IQ, based on... Read more

  Posted on 15 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Observing Regulatory Connections Correlating with Emotion Control During...

  Interesting work from Gee et al. showing some brain changes that correlate with the inhibition of emotional reactivity that occurs during human adolescence:... Read more

  Posted on 14 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Do Alligators Get Errections?

  I couldn't resist passing on this Discoblog pointer to Kelly's article. Most birds, reptiles, and mammals have penises that become erect by filling with fluid,... Read more

  Posted on 13 March 2013 SCIENCE

• Anti-aging Drugs - Clarification on Resveratrol and SIRT1 Activators

  

  Resveratrol, the natural compound in red wine, and other small molecules are allosteric activators of SIRT1, an enzyme with roles in many biological processes... Read more

  Posted on 12 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Mental Cost of Cognitive Enhancement.

  There has been quite a bit of interest lately in the prospect of enhancing various brain operations by the use of trans-cranial electrical stimulation (TES). Read more

  Posted on 11 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can the Catholic Church Evolve?

  Maureen Dowd discusses gay author Colin Toibin’s “The Testament of Mary,” a one-woman show with Fiona Shaw previewing later this month on Broadway, and I pass o... Read more

  Posted on 07 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Neural Mechanisms of Stress Vulnerability and Resilience.

  Two interesting papers in the Journal of Neuroscience deal with what is happening to nerve cells in mouse brains as they either do or don't recover from... Read more

  Posted on 06 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• In Praise of the Unexamined, Unlived Life?

  I was sufficiently interested by two reviews of a new book by British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (“Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life”), one in the... Read more

  Posted on 05 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Is the Insula Necessary for Our Feelings? If Not, Where Are They?

  I have been fairly uncritical in passing on simplifications like “The insula is the sensory cortex for our internal visceral feelings” and so was grateful to... Read more

  Posted on 04 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Watching Our Auditory Brain, Like a Radio, Switch Hearing Frequency Channels.

  From Da Costa et al.: Cocktail parties, busy streets, and other noisy environments pose a difficult challenge to the auditory system: how to focus attention on... Read more

  Posted on 01 March 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Amygdala Damage Can Make Us More Generous

  

  From van Honk et al.: Contemporary economic models hold that instrumental and impulsive behaviors underlie human social decision making. Read more

  Posted on 28 February 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Our Viscera Influence Our Brain and Behavior

  I want to pass on this fascinating and useful open source review by Critchley and Harrison in the journal Neuron. Having just had the flu, I found their... Read more

  Posted on 27 February 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Ambient Light Might Influence Our Mood.

  The visual pigment melanopsin in the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) of our inner retinas (two cells layers away from our rods and... Read more

  Posted on 26 February 2013 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE