Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• National Religiosity Eases the Psychological Burden of Poverty

  From Berkessel et al.: Significance According to a fundamental assumption in the social sciences, the burden of lower socioeconomic status (SES) is more severe... Read more

  Posted on 13 October 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Precision and the Bayesian Brain

  I've been studying and trying to understand the new prevailing model of how our brains work that is emerging - the brain as a Baysean predictive processing... Read more

  Posted on 11 October 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Reconsolidation of a Reactivated Memory Can Be Altered by Stress Hormone Levels.

  Stern's summary in Science Magazine of work by Antypa et al.: Reactivation of a memory can make it malleable to subsequent change during reconsolidation. Read more

  Posted on 08 October 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Perceived Voice Emotions Evolve from Categories to Dimensions

  Whether emotions are best characterized as discrete catagories (anger, fear, joy, etc.) or as points on continuums of valence (positive/negative) and arousal... Read more

  Posted on 06 October 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Music Can Be Infectious Like a Virus - the Same Mathematical Model Works for Both

  Rosati et al. find that a standard model of epidemic disease, called the SIR model, fitts trends in song downloads over time: Popular songs are often said to... Read more

  Posted on 04 October 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can We Get Human Nature Right?

  

  Iris Berent does an interesting Perspective artice in PNAS that considers the strong intuitions that laypeople hold about human nature. People's attitudes... Read more

  Posted on 01 October 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How the Unvaccinated Threaten the Vaccinated for COVID-19: A Darwinian...

  From the current issue of PNAS that just appeared I want to immediately pass on the entire text of the open source piece by Emanuel Goldman. Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Models of How Political Polarization Happens

  

  I want to recommend the article "Modeling the power of polarization" by Waldrop in the Sept. 14th PNAS (open source). I pass on just a few fragments: There are... Read more

  Posted on 27 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Asymptomatic Infection is the Pandemic’s Dark Matter

  

  Fisman and Tuite do a commentary on the article by Sah et al. (open source) that includes a great graphic showing how estimated asymptomatic COVID can be... Read more

  Posted on 24 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Is Self Awareness a Mirage?

  David Brooks does a brief psychological essay - a sequel to one described in MindBlog's Sept. 10 post. One of the most unsettling findings of modern psychology... Read more

  Posted on 22 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Secure Human Attachment Can Promote Support for Climate Change Mitigation

  From Misa et al.: Significance Attachment theory focuses on the primal form of emotional bonding between humans. Attachment is conceptualized as an innate... Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Monday Morning Tonic - A Modern Folk Song About Your Brain

  

  Ryan Stotland, a song writer from Montreal, has pointed me to a few of his engaging pieces, and I pass on one of them to you. It rhapsodizes about what differen... Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Social Mindfulness and Prosociality Vary Across the Globe

  

  From Van Doesum et al. (open source) I pass on the abstract, one figure, and a clip of the discussion: Significance Cooperation is key to well-functioning group... Read more

  Posted on 17 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Domestic Dogs: Born Human Whisperers

  

  Vignieri does a summary of recent work by Bray et al. and Salomans et al. in Current Biology The closest relative to dogs, “man’s best friend,” is the wolf, a... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The 31st First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony -

  

  I pass on this Science.org summary of the virtual awards ceremony. Musical cats, upside-down rhinos, and submarine cockroaches took the gold last night at the... Read more

  Posted on 13 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• You Are Not Who You Think You Are

  I want to point to the NYTimes piece by polymath David Brooks that does a nice summary of several themes that have been emphasized in MindBlog posts - on the... Read more

  Posted on 10 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Ageing Yields Improvements as Well as Declines Across Attention and Executive...

  Interesting work from Verissimo et al.: Many but not all cognitive abilities decline during ageing. Some even improve due to lifelong experience. Read more

  Posted on 08 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Test of Plasticity-based Cognitive Training in Treating Mild Traumatic Brain...

  A study from Mahncke et al. (open source) shows that using a computerized cognitive training program that I have mentioned in previous MindBlog posts (BrainHQ,... Read more

  Posted on 06 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Babbling Bats

  An interesting piece from Fernandez et al.: Babbling is a production milestone in infant speech development. Evidence for babbling in nonhuman mammals is scarce... Read more

  Posted on 03 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Neuroinflammation Collection: a Review of Neuro-immune Crosstalk

  Irani et al. (open source) offer a compact and concise review that highlights publications in Brain over the past several years as a focal point to offer a... Read more

  Posted on 01 September 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE