Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2562 )

• Brain Showbiz...

  Put me down as a curmudgeonly old fart, but I'm not getting a 'gee whiz' response to a recent promotional email asking for publicity on a rhythm and the brain... Read more

  Posted on 17 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Clever Crows! Now Shown to Reason About Hidden Causes.

  Behavioral studies on New Caledonian crows, especially over the past twenty years, continue to yield amazing results. (A video I first posted for my Biology of... Read more

  Posted on 15 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Opps! Sex Does Decrease Human Male Lifespan.

  Animal studies have suggested that castration increases lifespan in males, and now Korean researchers have examined genealogy records and lifespan of 81 Korean... Read more

  Posted on 11 October 2012 SCIENCE

• Followup on Evolutionary Psychology as ' Just So Stories'

  A comment on my Sept. 28 post has passed on a number of excellent response to the book review I was noting in that post. I was remiss (lazy) in not taking to... Read more

  Posted on 10 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Young Children and Adults: Intrinsically Motivated to See Others Helped

  This interesting piece from Tomasello and collaborators: Young children help other people, but it is not clear why. In the current study, we found that... Read more

  Posted on 09 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MRI of Reading Jane Austen

  Another totally annoying example of science by press release sans any reference to an original research article offers a glimpse at what looks like fascinating... Read more

  Posted on 08 October 2012 BOOKS, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Rethinking Sleep - Brief Wakeful Resting Boosts New Memories Over the Long Term.

  Two recent articles point out that the prevailing notion that an eight hour chunk of sleep is required for optimum health and function is a relatively recent... Read more

  Posted on 05 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Regulators of Prosocial and Empathetic Behavior.

  Two pieces in the September issue of Psychological Science deal with empathetic or prosocial behavior. Grant and Dutton make observations showing that... Read more

  Posted on 04 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Idle Minds - Why Are Our Brains So Active When Doing ‘nothing’?

  Kerri Smith does a review on the resting or default activity of our brains, what is happening when we are not focused on anything in particular, but letting... Read more

  Posted on 03 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Interpersonal Closeness and Brain Social Reward Processing

  

  I'm passing on a graphic from Vrticka's comments on recent work by Farei et al., who have observed brain activation patterns associated with sharing positive... Read more

  Posted on 02 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Want to Be Unhappy? Trying to Be Happy Will Do It!

  

  I'm finding the "Anxiety" topic in the Opinionator series at the NYTimes to be a real treat. This entry by British expatriate Ruth Whippman brings back... Read more

  Posted on 01 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Just So Stories About the Evolution of Our Minds.

  I want to point to a very nicely done review in The New Yorker by Anthony Gottlieb, who notes a number of recent books dealing with evolutionary psychology,... Read more

  Posted on 28 September 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Voting Patterns: “I” Value Competence but “we” Value Social Competence

  (Chen et al. ask whether judgments of candidates' social competence—defined as the capacity for effective functioning in social interactions—are related to... Read more

  Posted on 27 September 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Combat Stress Causes Long Term Changes in Brain Connectivity.

  

  Sobering results from Wingen et al.: Prolonged stress can have long-lasting effects on cognition. Animal models suggest that deficits in executive functioning... Read more

  Posted on 26 September 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Male Sex Hormones Alter the Brain After Exercise.

  Numerous experiments have shown that exercise ability our ability to remember and think, and causes formation of new nerve cells. Read more

  Posted on 25 September 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• On Being Nothing...

  The "Opinionater" feature of the New York Times has "Anxiety" as one of its topics inviting online essays. I wanted to pass on a piece submitted by Brian Jay... Read more

  Posted on 24 September 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Signing Beforehand Increases Honesty.

  Here is a fascinating simple study by Shu et al. Simply signing a statement of honesty at the top rather the bottom of a form makes you more honest. Read more

  Posted on 21 September 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Distinct Prefrontal Areas Regulating Cognitive Control and Value Decisions.

  

  A massive study involving workers at five different universities has utilized a dataset on brain lesions accumulated over many decades to reveal two distinct... Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Motivation Influences How Time Flies When You’re Having Fun.

  Numerous studies have shown that a positive state, relative to a negative state, makes time appear to pass more quickly and causes assessments of elapsed time t... Read more

  Posted on 19 September 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Neural Signature of Affiliative Emotions.

  

  Moll et al. do an interesting study to experimentally disentangle affiliative experience from general emotional valence, by demonstrating that brain areas... Read more

  Posted on 18 September 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE