Deric Bownds
These articles, from Deric's MindBlog at http://mindblog.dericbownds.net report new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff.
MY BLOGS
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Deric Bownds' MindBlog
http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/
This blog reports new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 2494 )
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Coordination of Brain Waves Between Humans Facing Territorial Threats.
Here is an interesting piece from Mu et al., first their abstract, and then a chunk of their introduction which gives rationale and background. Read more
Posted on 20 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Like Apes and Small Children, Ravens Plan Ahead.
The notion that animal cognition outside of the primate lineage is locked into the present has to be tossed. It appears that cognitive evolution of the ability... Read more
Posted on 19 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Premortem
Richard Thaler, the father of behavioral economics, just received the 2017 Nobel Prize in economics. I thought I would pass on this brief piece he did for edge. Read more
Posted on 18 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
A Sobering Political Graphic
The graphic (click to enlarge) is from Thomas Edsall's thoughtful and well-researched piece (as usual) on our current political situation, titled "Democrats... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Does Acupuncture Work by Re-mapping the Brain?
I want to pass on a chunk of a sane article offered by Vitaly Napadow in Aeon. Napadow is director of the Center for Integrative Pain Neuroimaging (CiPNI) and a... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
A 'Gaydar' Machine?
Heather Murphy describes the kerfuffle that has ensued after Stanford researchers published a preprint of their work that will soon appear in The Journal of... Read more
Posted on 13 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Brain and Body Imaging of the Emotional Power of Poetry.
By now a body of work has grown on how peak musical experiences engage the reward systems of our brains, with concomitant changes such as tingling and goosebump... Read more
Posted on 12 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
MindBlog Has Moved to Austin Texas.
A personal note. Len and I have just moved back into the family house in Austin Texas where I grew up, through high school. My son and his family recently move... Read more
Posted on 11 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Price Modulates the Effectiveness of Your Pain Medication!
Fascinating observations from Tinnermann et al. A Science magazine summary, followed by the article abstract: Price modulates early pain processing Patients in... Read more
Posted on 10 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Transcending Tribalism - Crafting a New Vision for America?
I want to point to, and comment on, two recent pieces by David Brooks. In the first, he argues that “the main enemy is not aliens; it’s division — between rich... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
MindBlog's Book Abstracts.
I’ve been working on abstracting a book I’ve mentioned recently, Sapolsky’s “Behave - The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst,” hoping to present the basic... Read more
Posted on 06 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Curtailing Proactive Policing Can Reduce Major Crime.
Weisburd points to work by Sullivan and O’Keeffe, yielding counter-intuitive results, that "took advantage of a natural experiment in New York City that resulte... Read more
Posted on 05 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Brain Circuits That Modulate Sociability.
The social bonding neuropeptide oxytocin can be traced over 500 million years, with analogous peptides found in birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, and some... Read more
Posted on 04 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
This Year's Ig Nobel Prizes.
If you want a few chuckles, have a look at this link. The prize winning work this year shows that cats can be simultaneously solid and liquid because of their... Read more
Posted on 02 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Does It Matter Whether We Believe in Free Will Or Not?
From Genschow et al.: Significance The question whether free will exists or not has been a matter of debate in philosophy for centuries. Recently, researchers... Read more
Posted on 29 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Greater Internet Use Does Not Correlate with Faster Growth of Political...
Continuing a topic from MindBlog's April 20 post...Most writing on the increase in political polarization over the past decades argues that it is facilitated... Read more
Posted on 28 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
“No Problem” Vs “you’re Welcome”
My daughter pointed me to this piece by Gretchen McCulloch, which gives me some insight into what I have considered the annoying habit of younger people to... Read more
Posted on 27 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Science of Emotion - Now at Least 27 Categories of Emotional States.
So...I guess we knew emotions are complicated. There has been intense debate on how to describe them in semantic and geometric dimensions such as valence and... Read more
Posted on 26 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Will You Be Above Or Below “the API” in the Emerging Economy?
An application programming interface (API) is a set of subroutine definitions, protocols, and tools that are building blocks for application software... Read more
Posted on 25 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Color Naming Across Languages Reflects Color Use
Gibson et al. do a study showing that warm colors are communicated more efficiently than cool colors, and that this cross-linguistic pattern reflects the color... Read more
Posted on 22 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE