Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• Non-duality as a Platform for Experiencing Daily Life.

  I pass on abstracted edited clip from a recent podcast conversation between Sam Harris and M.I.T philosopher Kierna Setiya on “Philosophy and the Good Life”... Read more

  Posted on 12 September 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Eye Movements Are Related to the Contents of Consciousness in REM (rapid Eye...

  Senzai and Scanziani have recorded head direction cells in the anterior dorsal nucleus of the thalamus in mice during wake and sleep. Read more

  Posted on 09 September 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Is History History?

  I recommend that you read Bret Stephens fascinating NYTimes piece. Some clips: The End of History was supposed to have happened back in 1989, the year the Berli... Read more

  Posted on 07 September 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Animals (including Us) Conjure Model-based Structures from Random Events

  Superstitious learning is usually thought to be accounted for by conditioned association, but Jin et al. now show that monkeys can develop more complex cognitiv... Read more

  Posted on 05 September 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Increasingly Good Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is Offering Us Promise and...

  I want to pass on a few items from my list of putative MindBlog posts on A.I. The first derives from an series of emails on A.I. sent to the listserve of the... Read more

  Posted on 02 September 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Does Crypto-world Really Give Us Trustworthyness Without Gate Keepers...? The...

  I try in the title of this post to summarize the basic conclusions of a fascinating NYTimes article by Siobhan Roberts. The article emphasizes the work of... Read more

  Posted on 31 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Medium Really is the Message

  I recommend that you read a recent Op-Ed piece by Ezra Klein that notes 20th-century media theorists who saw what was coming and tried to warn us. Read more

  Posted on 29 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Anterior Insula Signals Salience and Deviations from Expectations Via...

  Haufler et al. show that the insula signals salience and prediction errors via amplitude modulations of beta bursts (~15-40 Hertz, or cycles per second), which... Read more

  Posted on 26 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Brain Chemistry Underlying Mental Exhaustion.

  Emily Underwood does a review of work by Wiehler et al. (open source) on the brain chemistry underlying mental fatigue, also describing several reservations... Read more

  Posted on 24 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Even Novices Intuit Complex Music Theory,

  Bridget Alex does a nice summary of work by Weis and Peretz showing that people without musical training naturally improvise melodies that have hallmarks of... Read more

  Posted on 22 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Reproducability Crisis in Machine Learning Systems That Inform Immediate Or...

  I have by now accumulated a list of articles on a growing debate over naive scientists, especially social scientists, botching their research by using machine... Read more

  Posted on 19 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Alcohol, Neuronal Plasticity, and Mitochondrial Trafficking

  Hernandez and Kaun provide a nice description of work by Knabbe et al. with summary graphics. Here is the start of their text: Consumption of alcohol creates a... Read more

  Posted on 17 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Systematic Review of Microdosing - Research on Low Dose Psychedelics

  I pass on the link to this review by Polito and Liknaitzky. Their abstract: The use of low doses of psychedelic substances (microdosing) is attracting increasin... Read more

  Posted on 15 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Music Training Enhances Auditory and Linguistic Processing.

  From Neves et al.: Highlights • Systematic review and meta-analysis of neurobehavioral effects of music training. • We ask whether music training... Read more

  Posted on 10 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Old Hearts Learn New Tricks

  Nusinovich's summary in Science Magazine of work by Lerchenmüller et al.: Aging-related diseases such as heart failure and other cardiovascular disorders are th... Read more

  Posted on 08 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Dissecting and Improving Motor Skill Acquisition in Older Adults

  From the introduction of Elvira et al. (open source): We designed a study intended to identify (i) the main factors leading to differences in motor skill... Read more

  Posted on 05 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Motor Learning Without Movement

  Fascinating work from Kim et al. on the influence of the prediction errors that are essential in calibrating actions of our predictive minds:Significance Our... Read more

  Posted on 03 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Changes, Or the Absence Thereof, Associated with Mindfulness Training.

  Richard Davidson and his collaborators (open source, with useful graphics) inject a note of sanity into evaluating widely reported claims of brain changes... Read more

  Posted on 01 August 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Wolf Attacks Predict Far-right Voting

  Under MindBlog's category of "random curious stuff" I couldn't resist passing on the following bit of quirky political analysis from von Hohenberg and Hager:... Read more

  Posted on 29 July 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Emotional Contagion and Prosocial Behavior

  Keysers et al. do an open source review of studies on emotional contagion and prosocial behavior in rodents, whose brain regions necessary for emotional... Read more

  Posted on 27 July 2022 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE