Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Our Weaponized Social Media

  I pass on a few clips from a sobering NYTimes article by Kara Swisher, who quotes from a recent Facebook post: We face determined, well-funded adversaries who... Read more

  Posted on 08 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Pupil Mimicry Promotes Trust.

  Prochazkova et al. show that pupil mimicry promotes trust through our theory of mind brain network: Significance Trusting others is central for cooperative... Read more

  Posted on 07 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Regions Involved in Compensating for Lost Body Parts.

  From Striem-Amit et al.: Significance What determines the role of brain regions and their plasticity when typical inputs or experience is not provided? To what... Read more

  Posted on 06 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Residential Isolation of Disadvantaged Groups is Not Mitigated by Extensive Urba...

  Wang et al. offer yet another approach to observing the intractability of racial segregation in large cities: Significance Living in disadvantaged... Read more

  Posted on 03 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Chimps Can Psych out Humans

  Interesting work from Eckert et al. shows that chimps can use mental state information revealed by experimenters' biases in selecting food items. Read more

  Posted on 02 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Enhanced Brain Activity Associated with Highly Superior Memory.

  Santangelo et al. show that people with superior memory have enhanced connectivity of their prefrontal cortex with their hippocampus and temporoparietal... Read more

  Posted on 01 August 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Are Things Getting Better Or Worse?

  In a recent New Yorker article Joshua Rothman discusses debate over assessing the state of the world, with major emphasis on Pinker book "Enlightenment Now",... Read more

  Posted on 31 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Piano Training Enhances Speech Perception.

  Fascinating work from an international collaboration of Desimone at M.I.T., Nan at Beijing Normal Univ., and others: Significance Musical training is... Read more

  Posted on 30 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mechanism of White Matter Changes Induced by Meditation?

  Posner and collaborators, who previously have shown changes in brain white matter induced by meditation, suggest a possible mechanism, using a mouse model.... Read more

  Posted on 27 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation

  

  I completely missed this review article by Posner and colleagues when it appeared, and am grateful for Bäumli's mention of it in her recent brief essay, which... Read more

  Posted on 26 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• When Persistence Doesn't Pay - the Sunk Cost Bias.

  Sweis et al. show that sensitivity to time invested in pursuit of a reward occurs similarly in mice, rats, and humans. All three display a resistance to giving... Read more

  Posted on 25 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Declining Mental Health Among Disadvantaged Americans.

  Cherlin summarizes work by Goldman et al. that demonstrates "a troubling portrait of declining psychological health among non-Hispanic whites in mid- and... Read more

  Posted on 24 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Therapy for NYTAD - Read About Citrus Micro-jets!

  

  What is NYTAD? My just made up acronym for “New York Times Anxiety Disorder” - what I have to resist during my daily glance through the endless list of NYT and... Read more

  Posted on 23 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Crows Make Mental Templates.

  

  Weintraub points to further studies from the University of Aukland School of Psychology on the extraordinary New Caledonian crows that have been shown to learn... Read more

  Posted on 20 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Perceptual and Judgement Creep.

  

  Fascinating work by Gilbert and colleagues: Why do some social problems seem so intractable? In a series of experiments, we show that people often respond to... Read more

  Posted on 19 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Authentic Lies.

  Hahl et al. suggest how a blatantly lying demagogue (guess who?) can be perceived as authentic: We develop and test a theory to address a puzzling pattern that... Read more

  Posted on 18 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Social Media and the Emergence of Violence During Protests.

  The social media, and especially Twitter, are now integral to modern political behavior, with events online both reflecting and influencing actions offline.... Read more

  Posted on 17 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What is Consciousness, and Could Machines Have It?

  I want to point to a lucid article by Dehaene, Lau, and Koulder that gives the most clear review I have seen of our current state of knowledge on the nature of... Read more

  Posted on 16 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Playing with Proteins in Virtual Reality.

  Much of my mental effort while I was doing laboratory research on the mechanisms of visual transduction (changing light into a nerve signal in our retinal rod... Read more

  Posted on 13 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Increasing Despair Among Poor Americans.

  A survey by Goldman et al. of more than 4,600 American adults conducted in 1995-1996 and in 2011-2014 suggests that among individuals of low socioeconomic... Read more

  Posted on 12 July 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE