Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• Mindfulness as an Antidote to the Intrusions of Artificial Intelligence?

  I want to point to a very interesting New Yorker Magazine article by Ian Parker describing the life and ideas of Yuval Harari, whose work has been the subject o... Read more

  Posted on 14 February 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Amazing Technology - a Total Body PET Scanner with 100ms Resolution.

  

  From Zhang et al. at UC Davis (check out the video, showing injection of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose into a vein in the right leg): A 194-cm-long total-body... Read more

  Posted on 10 February 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Economic Inequality Increases Desire for a Strong Leader.

  From Sprong et al., studies very relevant to the current political climate in the U.S., and worldwide: Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental... Read more

  Posted on 07 February 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Resilient Misinformation in a Crisis

  From Carey et al.: Disease epidemics and outbreaks often generate conspiracy theories and misperceptions that mislead people about the risks they face and how... Read more

  Posted on 05 February 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Much Are We Misled by Inauthentic Internet Content? Perhaps Not Much...

  Bail et al. analyze data describing attitudes and online behaviors of Republican and Democratic Twitter users from late 2017 and find no evidence that... Read more

  Posted on 03 February 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Universality and Diversity in Human Song

  In the same vein as the previous post on cultural variation and universal structures in music, another massive research collective reports on their study of... Read more

  Posted on 31 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What Music Makes Us Feel - 13 Cross Cultural Categories

  From Cowen et al.: (Be sure to check out their striking visualization of the data. By moving the cursor about the screen you can listen to the different... Read more

  Posted on 29 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Repeated Fake Headlines Feel More Moral

  In a bit of work relevant to the current impeachment drama Effron and Raj find that repeatedly viewing a false headline increases approval and reduces... Read more

  Posted on 27 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Altruistic Behaviors Relieve Physical Pain.

  From Wang et al., the fascinating observation that altruistic behavior diminishes both acute and chronic pain by damping activity in brain areas responsible... Read more

  Posted on 24 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Childhood Deprivation Alters Adult Brains Despite Subsequent Environmental...

  A sobering study from Mackes et al: Significance Millions of children worldwide live in nonfamilial institutions. We studied impact on adult brain structure of ... Read more

  Posted on 22 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What is Your Biological Age? A Problem with the Epigenetic Clock Approach.

  Having already sent off blood samples to 23andMe and Helix, mainly out of curiosity over possible genome details relevant to my health (Apparently I might be... Read more

  Posted on 20 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Mind-Body Problem - How Our Brain Talks to Stress Systems in Our Body.

  Dun et al. use a neuronal pathway tracking technique to show how different brain areas link to the adrenal medulla to connect its activity (secretion of... Read more

  Posted on 17 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• You Ideal Job Can Be Predicted by Your Social Media Behavior.

  So...are occupational guidance counselors going to be replaced by social media algorithms? From Kern et al.: Significance Employment is thought to be more... Read more

  Posted on 15 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Alternative Neural Mechanism for Treating Anxiety Disorders Through Safety...

  In these times of political polarization all over the world, over one third of all people experience anxiety disorders, in which circumstances frequently are... Read more

  Posted on 13 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Great Graphics - a Review of Cerebral Cortex Structure/folding from Mice to...

  I pass on this open source review article for the small number of MindBlog readers who might find it useful in their teaching. Read more

  Posted on 10 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Aging Reduced by Elevating acetyl-CoA Levels.

  Acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) is a central molecule in the energy metabolism of mitochondria in our cells. Currais et al. show that two Alzheimer's disease (AD... Read more

  Posted on 08 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Quiet Brains of Athletes

  An interesting study by Kraus and collaborators shows that athletes have larger responses to specified sounds than non-athletes, due to a reduction in their... Read more

  Posted on 06 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Anti-immigration Sentiment Does Not Correlate with Local Democraphic Changes.

  Hill et al. analyze election results and demographic measures for almost 32,000 precincts in the states of Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio,... Read more

  Posted on 03 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Increased Emotional Reactivity in Men with High Hair Testosterone Concentrations.

  As I was scanning the table of contents of the latest issue of the journal "Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience" the article whose abstract I pass on... Read more

  Posted on 01 January 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• We’ve Just Had the Best Decade (and Year) in Human History. Seriously

  To provide a faintly upbeat end of the year post, I want to point to a Matt Ridley piece in The Spectator that provides a bit of a tonic for our times, by... Read more

  Posted on 30 December 2019 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE