Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• Oxytocin Nudges Men to Monogamy?

  Scheele et al. show that oxytocin nasal spray causes married, but not single, men to keep a greater distance from attractive woman during a first encounter. The... Read more

  Posted on 26 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Musical Protolanguage Hypothesis - Support from Congenital Amusia.

  Fascinating work from Thompson et al. (open access), suggesting that sensitivity to emotion in speech prosody derives from our capacity to process music,... Read more

  Posted on 23 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Inspired by Distraction.

  Baird et al. do a simple experiment demonstrating how mind wandering can facilitate creative incubation, that the basement stuff that is dinking around in the... Read more

  Posted on 22 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Unpredictable Love.

  There's a nice pieces in the "Gray Matter" series in the New York Times by Richard Friedman that argues that it is our evolved motivational machinery (that... Read more

  Posted on 21 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Force of Affective Norms - the Stranger Effect

  Szczurek et al. make a more distanced and structured description of an experience we all have had - being put on guard in a chat with another person if their... Read more

  Posted on 20 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How a Simple Innate Bias Might Guide Visual Learning

  For years computer programmers have been trying to design algorithms that even remotely approach the ability of young infants in their first few months of life... Read more

  Posted on 19 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Carbs and Self Control.

  From Molden et al. suggest the increase in self control that some studies have correlated with carbohydrate consumption is caused not by a metabolic energy... Read more

  Posted on 16 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Self Awarenss and Our "spider Jar"

  Margit Hesthammer writes a lovely piece for the opinionator section of the NYTimes that has me thinking "I wish I had written that. Read more

  Posted on 15 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Giving Time Gives You Time.

  In the same vein as Monday's post, Mogilner et al. note another activity that expands our subjective sense of time: Results of four experiments reveal a... Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mental Time Travel and Our Brain's Default Network.

  Here is some interesting material from Østby et al. on the brain basis of the quality of our remembering the past or imagining the future: A core brain... Read more

  Posted on 13 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Awe is Good for You…

  What could most of us could do to chill out and expand our subjective sense of time? Feel a sense of awe more often! Rudd et. al. Read more

  Posted on 12 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Decreased Amygdala Neuroplasticity Linked to Early-life Anxious Temperament.

  Some interesting work from the research groups of my University of Wisconsin colleagues Ned Kalin and Richard Davidson that suggests that altered amygdala... Read more

  Posted on 09 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Biology of Social Adversity.

  PNAS has done a special issue on the biology of adversity. I mention only a few of the articles here: Ziol-Guest et al. show that low income, particularly in... Read more

  Posted on 08 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Empathy Represses Analytic Thought, and Vice Versa.

  

  Jack et al. have performed a study (online in accepted articles in the journal Neuroimage) observing brain activity in subjects while they were engaged in socia... Read more

  Posted on 07 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Physiological Benefits of Leadership - Importance of a Sense of Control

  An edited paste-up from Sapolsky's brief review pointing to work of Sherman et al. showing that leaders feeling a sense of control have lower stress levels. Read more

  Posted on 06 November 2012 HEALTH, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Oxytocin Facilitates Protective Responses to Aversive Social Stimuli in Men..

  More in the thread from last Friday's post, in this case on how our brain biases responses to positive and negative social stimuli. Read more

  Posted on 05 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Selective Magnetic Zap Can Alter Belief Formation in Our Brains.

  Dolan and collaborators continue the thread of work I mentioned first in a post last year, on our brain's rose colored glasses, how we are more likely to... Read more

  Posted on 02 November 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• I R’ Us - a Waking Mashup

  When I am going through the daily transition from the last bit of REM sleep to having an awake self I frequently find articles I have recently noted appear in... Read more

  Posted on 31 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mouse Song: Features Similar to Human and Bird Song.

  A MindBlog reader has pointed out to me an interesting article by Arriaga et al. that notes that mice courtship ultrasonic sound has some anatomical features an... Read more

  Posted on 30 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Correlates of Switching Consciousness on and off Again

  

  Kock points in Scientific American Mind to work byLångsjö et al. (open access), who image the neural core of consciousness. Read more

  Posted on 29 October 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE