Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• Optogenetics Used to Induce Pair Bonding and Restore Vision.

  I want to note two striking technical advances that make use of the light activated protein rhodopsin that I spent 36 years of my laboratory life studying. Read more

  Posted on 03 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• I’m Not Scared to Reenter Society. I’m Just Not Sure I Want To.

  I have to pass on a few clips from Tim Kreider's piece in the Atlantic: ...after a year in isolation, I, at least, have gotten acclimated to a different... Read more

  Posted on 02 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Watching Brain Regions That Help Us Anticipate What's Going to Happen Next.

  

  A primary function of the brain is to adaptively use past experience to generate expectations aboutevents that are likely to occur in the future. Lee et al. Read more

  Posted on 01 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Will Our American Democracy Collapse?

  An apocalyptic opinion piece by Krugman induces me to ruminations of the sort I’ve been inflicting on MindBlog readers in recent posts (see last paragrapht). Bu... Read more

  Posted on 31 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Latest on Wearable Stress-relief

  Over its 15 year history MindBlog has done several reviews of widgets currently on the market that are meant to monitor and relieve stress. Read more

  Posted on 28 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Bias Is a Big Problem. But So Is ‘Noise.’

  I have to pass on the strong dose of sanity offered by Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues in a recent NYTimes guest essay. They make some elemental... Read more

  Posted on 27 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Darwin’s Insights: How the Evolutionary Perspective Has Come to Permeate the...

  I want to pass on a review article on human evolution by Richerson1,Gavrilets, and de Waal (open source) in a recent issue of Science Magazine. Read more

  Posted on 26 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can You Have More Than 150 Friends?

  MindBlog has done more than 9 posts over the past 15 years (enter Dunbar in the search box in the left column of this web page) pointing to Robin Dunbar's work... Read more

  Posted on 25 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• For Consciousness Theory Mavens: an Argument Against Tononi’s Integrated...

  Behavioral and Brain Science invites commentary on a forthcoming article by Merker et al. Here is the abstract: Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory... Read more

  Posted on 24 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• I Owe My Soul to the Company Store (Google).

  As I pass through my 79th birthday I offer a cathartic rant - without worrying about whether its parts cohere: I am the white collar equivalent of the coal mine... Read more

  Posted on 22 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Educational Attainment Does Not Influence Brain Aging

  Well...so much for my smugness over knowing that educational attainment slows brain aging. Nyberg et al. (open souce) show that it ain't so. Read more

  Posted on 21 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Curiosity Circuits of Our Brains.

  

  Every morning, as I am passing through the waking, exercise, and breakfast rituals that finally deliver me to my 'professor is in' office - a converted front... Read more

  Posted on 19 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Nerdy Liberal Fact-masters Can Jump Down the Rabbit Hole of a Wild Social Media...

  I pass on this clip from the Morning Dispatch sent by a friend. Check out the link to the NYTimes article it refers to. Ben Smith describes how hundreds of... Read more

  Posted on 18 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Both Tribes Are Missing the Mark

  Continuing in the thread of last Monday's post, I can't resist passing on three articles that absolutely nail the current dilemma in the U.S. Read more

  Posted on 17 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Two Promising Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Treatments

  I want to pass on references to two new approaches to relieving the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Nuwer describes a new study showing that... Read more

  Posted on 14 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Social Isolation Makes Us Stupid.

  The summary of an open source article from Ingram et al. in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology: Studies examining the effect of social isolation on... Read more

  Posted on 12 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Tribe Trumps Truth.

  I've been trying to cut down on the number of posts on politics, but with the republican party now requiring a loyalty test that is the modern equivalent the... Read more

  Posted on 10 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Structural Whitening

  I pass on this summary by Rai of a study by Anicich et al. in J. Exp. Soc. Psychol: As the US population becomes more racially diverse, it is unclear how... Read more

  Posted on 07 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Evidence That Monkeys Have Conscious Awareness of Self - They Know What They Saw.

  Ben-Haim et al. Disentangle perceptual awareness from nonconscious processing in rhesus monkeys Significance Many animals perform complex intelligent... Read more

  Posted on 05 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• People Have Shaped Most of Terrestrial Nature for at Least 12,000 Years

  From Ellis et al.L Significance The current biodiversity crisis is often depicted as a struggle to preserve untouched habitats. Read more

  Posted on 03 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE