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
-
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 ( 2496 )
-
Brain Correlates of Information Virality
Scholz et al. show that activity in brain areas associated with value, self and social cognition correlates with internet sharing of articles, reflecting how... Read more
Posted on 10 April 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Three Sources of Cancer - the Importance of “bad Luck”
Tomasetti and Vogelstein raised a storm by claiming several years ago that 65% of the risk of certain cancers is not due to inheritance or environmental factors... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
How "you" Makes Meaning.
Orvell et al. do some experiments on our use of the generic “you” rather than the first-person pronoun “I.” “You” is one of the most common words in the... Read more
Posted on 06 April 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Religiosity and Social Support
I found this article by Eleanor Power to be an interesting read. Here is her abstract:. In recent years, scientists based in a variety of disciplines have... Read more
Posted on 05 April 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Wiser Than Than the Crowd.
In a summary in Nature Human Behavior, Kousta points to work by Prelec et al. The summary: The notion that the average judgment of a large group is more accurat... Read more
Posted on 04 April 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Several Takes on Extending Our Lives.
In spite of the fact that I am unsympathetic to efforts to extend our lifespan, I want to pass on several recent articles on the effort. Read more
Posted on 03 April 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Preverbal Foundations of Human Fairness
I want to point to two articles in the second issue of Nature Human Behavior. One is a review by McAuliffe et al.: New behavioural and neuroscientific evidence... Read more
Posted on 31 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Best Exercise for Aging Muscles
I want to pass on the message from this Gretchen Reynolds article, that points to work by Robinson et al.. Their experiments were... .... Read more
Posted on 30 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Brain Systems Specialized for Knowing Our Place in the Pecking Order
From Kurnaran et al.: Highlights •Social hierarchy learning is accounted for by a Bayesian inference scheme •Amygdala and hippocampus support... Read more
Posted on 29 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Termite Castles, Human Minds, and Daniel Dennett.
After reading through Rothman’s New Yorker article on Daniel Dennett, I downloaded Dennett’s latest book, “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” to check out his... Read more
Posted on 28 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Ownership of an Artificial Limb Induced by Electrical Brain Stimulation
From Collins et al.: Significance Creating a prosthetic device that feels like one’s own limb is a major challenge in applied neuroscience. Read more
Posted on 27 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Predicting the Knowledge–recklessness Distinction in the Human Brain
Important work from Vilares et al. - in an open source paper in which fMRI results are shown in a series of figures - showing that brain imaging can determine,... Read more
Posted on 24 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Warping Reality in the Era of Trump - Some Interesting Essays
I try to not pay attention, feel worn down by the continual bombardment of alternative realities presented by today's media, but have read and enjoyed the... Read more
Posted on 23 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Is the Body the Missing Link for Truly Intelligent Machines?
Medlock comments on efforts to achieve human-like artificial intelligence (AI) while bypassing the messy flesh that characterizes organic life. A clip from the... Read more
Posted on 22 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
What is Really Going on in the White House?
A good friend sent me this speculation, and I asked him if I could pass it on. He said yes, as long as he remained anonymous.... Ivanka Trump now has an office... Read more
Posted on 21 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Emergence of Communities and Diversity in Social Networks
Two edited chunks from the introduction of Han et al. (open source), followed by the significance and abstract statements: Han et al. Read more
Posted on 21 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Materialism Alone Can't Explain Consciousness? A Flawed Argument.
Adam Frank does an interesting piece at aeon.co in which he suggests that since the materialist position in physics appears to rest on shaky metaphysical ground... Read more
Posted on 20 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Half of the Conclusions in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Papers Are...
I want to add to MindBlog's archive (see here, here, and here) of articles that document the fact that half or more of the scientific studies that are... Read more
Posted on 17 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Well-being Increased by Imagining Time as Scarce.
You have surely heard the homilies "Live each day as if it were your last." or "Would you be doing what you are doing now if you knew you had only a year to... Read more
Posted on 16 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Minding the Details of Mind Wandering.
Mind wandering happens both with and without intention, and Paul Seli, in Schecter's Harvard psychology laboratory, finds differences between the two in terms o... Read more
Posted on 15 March 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE