Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Biomarkers of Inflamation Are Lower in People with More Positive Emotions

  Fron Ong et al.: There is growing evidence that inflammatory responses may help to explain how emotions get “under the skin” to influence disease susceptibility. Read more

  Posted on 15 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• New Longevity Vitamins?

  Well known senior biochemist Bruce Ames (b. 1928) suggests an array of compounds should be added to the list of essential vitamins that maintain health and... Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Are We Getting Too Hysterical About the Dangers of Artificial Intelligence?

  It is certainly true that A.I. might take away the current jobs of people like lawyers and radiologists who scan data looking for patterns, or those who are... Read more

  Posted on 13 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Even a 10 Minute Walk Can Boost Your Brain

  From Suwabe et al.: Significance Our previous work has shown that mild physical exercise can promote better memory in rodents. Read more

  Posted on 12 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Facebook Language Predicts Depression in Medical Records.

  Eichstaedt et al., suggest that analysis of language used by consenting individuals in their social media accounts could provide a depression assessment that... Read more

  Posted on 09 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Advancing Front of Old-age Human Survival

  Zuo et al. examine the probabilities of death at ages past 65 years for males and females in developed countries; that is, they consider individuals in each yea... Read more

  Posted on 08 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Human Herd and Its Digital Overlords.

  We've been seeing articles about the downside of young children and teenagers using digital social platforms, and the family conflicts resulting from trying to... Read more

  Posted on 07 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Might Tribal Conflict Fatigue Lead to a Contagion of Civility and Kindness ?

  A majority of both republicans and democrats express dismay over the current state of our civil discourse. Continuously stoked arousal of our brains' fear and... Read more

  Posted on 06 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Core Mechanisms Undermining Liberal Democracy.

  Because of the overwhelming number of (slightly hysterical) articles appearing on how our society is coming unhinged, I have become reluctant to do posts on... Read more

  Posted on 05 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Review of Body Effects of Mindfulness Meditation

  I point to a review by Jill Suttie, "Five Ways Mindfulness Meditation Is Good for Your Health." because it has a number of useful links to research articles -... Read more

  Posted on 02 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Are You Holding Your Breath?

  As I was doing some homework on techniques of coping with stress, I came across an old MindBlog post which I pass on again, below. It was part of what... Read more

  Posted on 01 November 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Evolution of Overconfidence

  Johnson and Fowler on the crucial role of overconfidence in human success: Confidence is an essential ingredient of success in a wide range of domains ranging... Read more

  Posted on 31 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Self-care and Finding Personal Peace in Today's Socio-political Climate.

  

  In Fort Lauderdale, FL, and now in Austin TX, I have organized discussion groups that meet regularly to discuss new topics and ideas. Read more

  Posted on 30 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• DNA Variants Linked to Same Sex Behavior.

  Michael Price and Jocelyn Kaiser report from the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics in San Diego: How genes influence sexual orientation... Read more

  Posted on 29 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Diffusion in Networks and the Virtue of Burstiness

  From Akbarpour and Jackson: Significance The contagion of disease and the diffusion of information depend on personal contact. Read more

  Posted on 26 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Musicians' Enhanced Auditory Perception Depends on the Instrument They Play.

  Professionally trained musicians show enhanced auditory perception of music. Krishnan et al. show that this expertise is modulated by the instrument played by... Read more

  Posted on 25 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Seeing Something That is Not There - Our Brain Retroactively Constructs Our...

  

  Two new illusions found by Stiles et al. (open source) report two new multimodal illusions in which sound influences visual perception. Read more

  Posted on 24 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Average Person Can Recognize 5,000 Faces.

  

  Jenkins et al. recruited 25 undergraduate or postgraduate students at the University of Glasgow and the University of Aberdeen (15 female, 10 male; mean age... Read more

  Posted on 23 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What is the Last Question?

  After 20 years, the Edge.org annual question exercise seems to have run out of steam. John Brockman, author of "The Third Culture" and the guru who has led the... Read more

  Posted on 22 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• It's Better to Be Born Rich Than Gifted.

  Andrew Van Dam points to work by Papageorge and Thom use genome based measurements to demonstrate that even though genetic endowments are distributed almost... Read more

  Posted on 19 October 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE