Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• Constancy of the Architecture of Shame Across Cultures is Due to Biological,...

  Interesting work from Sznycer and other collaborators of Cosmides and Tooby suggests that shame’s match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by... Read more

  Posted on 01 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Anti-aging Molecule Produced During Fasting.

  

  Diet trends like intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets are popular for their weight-loss effects. Han et al. now show that the β-hydroxybutyrate... Read more

  Posted on 28 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Is Democracy Dying? - Irrelevance of Most Humans in a Technocratic Future...

  I want to point to the October issue of the Atlantic Magazine, which carries out the manifesto published in its first issue, in 1857, to “endeavor to be the... Read more

  Posted on 27 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Flow Genome Project - Modern Snake Oil? Con?

  I thought I would point MindBlog readers to comments made on my post of 11/7/2017, where I offered a scathing review of a book, "Stealing Fire" which purports t... Read more

  Posted on 26 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The War for Our Attention - an Existential Threat.

  I want to pass on some edited clips from an article by Casey Schwartz on fundamental threats to individual and societal well-being posed by the new “attention... Read more

  Posted on 25 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Infants Distinguish Between Leaders and Bullies

  From Margoni et al: We examined whether 21-month-old infants could distinguish between two broad types of social power: respect-based power exerted by a leader... Read more

  Posted on 24 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Giving Ecstasy to Octopuses

  Edsinger and Dölen have found out how to make the normally shy and retiring octopus into a party animal. They found that MDMA (phenethylamine... Read more

  Posted on 21 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Building Molecular Machines.

  In an open source PNAS news article, Stephen Ornes describes efforts to build molecular machines modeled on our own biochemical processes - possibly artificial... Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mapping Our Subjective Feelings.

  

  Nummenmaa et al. do a massive job of data gathering whose purpose left me scratching my head on first sight...wondering why such an effort is useful. Read more

  Posted on 16 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Details of How a Fear Response is Unlearned.

  Learning requires the formation of new nerve connections. When that learning is extinguished are those connections inhibited or lost? Wan Lai et al. Read more

  Posted on 13 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media Can Increase Political Polarization.

  A sobering study by Bail et al. (open source) shows that just getting us out of our tribes' social media echo chambers does not have the palliative softening... Read more

  Posted on 12 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Exercise Slows Alzheimer’s Disease.

  Wow…if I ever needed more encouragement to keep up my exercise routines (mainly swimming, biking, and a few weights) Choi et al. Read more

  Posted on 11 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Robots R Us

  Two recent NYTimes pieces - one by Sherry Turtle (professor in the program in Science, Technology and Society at M.I.T.) and the other by Andy Clark (professor... Read more

  Posted on 10 September 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Collective Intelligence is Improved by Intermittent Breaks in Interaction.

  Interesting work from Bernstein, Shore, and Lazer: Significance Many human endeavors—from teams and organizations to crowds and democracies—rely on solving... Read more

  Posted on 30 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Robots Exert Peer Pressure on Children, but Not Adults.

  From Vollmer et al.: People are known to change their behavior and decisions to conform to others, even for obviously incorrect facts. Read more

  Posted on 29 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Reversing Age Related Decay of Brain Plasticity with Prozac

  Eavri et al. find that treatment of mice with fluoxetine as they are aging slows the decline of several brain plasticity makers. Read more

  Posted on 28 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-profound Bullshit

  I want to thank MindBlog reader Mike Walterman, who sent me an email pointing me to this article (which won an Ig Nobel Prize) and commented on his experience... Read more

  Posted on 27 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Architecture of Pride is a Cultural Universal.

  Sznycer et al. provide evidence that the pride system of WEIRD (western-ized, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) societies is found in 10... Read more

  Posted on 24 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Tracking of Musical Beat is Enhanced by Low Frequency Sounds.

  Lenc et al. find that that brain activity at the frequency of the perceived beat is selectively enhanced compared with other frequencies in the... Read more

  Posted on 22 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The False Idols of Wellness.

  Jen Gunter does an engaging take-down of the wellness-industrial complex in a NYTimes piece. She suggests that the wellness industry is exploiting rather than... Read more

  Posted on 21 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE