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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Bad Things That Happen to Annoyingly Happy People...
There is abundant evidence that being or appearing to be happy confers lots of advantages in life, both in personal health, relationships and in the workplace. Read more
Posted on 15 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Why Does Time Fly When You’re Having Fun? Dopamine Neurons…
Soares et al. find by observing timing behavior in mice that dopaminergic neurons control temporal judgments on a time scale of seconds. Our sense of time is fa... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Feeling Confident That You Know? fMRI Correlates of Metacognitive Accuracy.
The more confident you are, the less likely you are to be correct! From Molenberghs et al: One important aspect of metacognition is the ability to accurately... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Oxytocin, Moral Judgement, and Male Social Synchony
I pass on two interesting pieces of work. First, Bernhard et al. show a correlation between different forms of the oxytocin receptor gene (which would... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Exhaustion is Not Unique to Our Overstimulated Age.
Anna Katharina Schaffner, author of the book "Exhaustion: A History (2016), does a precis of its arguments, Is ours the most exhausting age ever?.. Read more
Posted on 09 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Rage Against the Elites...
Roger Cohen, always a perceptive commentator, really nails it in his recent Op-Ed Piece "The Rage of 2016". His closing paragraphs: Western democracies are in... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
We Should Ask Our Elders How Best to Live.
I want to point to a brief essay by Pillemer in Aeon. His interviews with several thousand people in their 80s and 90s revealed that their common response to... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Protecting and Reactivating Memories
I want to point to two recent Science Magazine articles on memory. From the magazine's summaries.. Protecting memories from stress It is widely accepted that... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Reversing the Effect of Booze on the Brain.
Assuming that data on female rats can be extrapolated to humans, a bit of work that makes me feel better about my daily habits of aerobic swimming and a robust... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Brain Adapts to Dishonesty.
From Garrett et al., some information on neural correlates of what might be going on in Donald Trump's brain.... Dishonesty is an integral part of our social... Read more
Posted on 02 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Genetic Variants Linked to Education Predict Longevity
I'll follow yesterday's post on genetic variation and societal outcomes by passing on yet another piece, this one from Marioni et al.: Significance Individuals... Read more
Posted on 01 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
From Molecules to Society.
From Hill et al.: Highlights •Common SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) explain 21% of social deprivation and 11% of household income •Two loci... Read more
Posted on 30 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
More Exercise, Less Depression.
Reynolds points to a number of interesting meta-analyses that pool outcomes from past research involving more than a million men and women to show that regular... Read more
Posted on 29 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Networks of Conforming Or Nonconforming Individuals Always Reach a Satisfactory...
Here is an intriguing study from Ramazi et al., who use linear-threshold-based dynamic models to show that whether individuals go with or against the crowd, a... Read more
Posted on 28 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Online Social Interaction Associated with Reduced Mortality Risk.
Hobbs et al. apply longitudinal statistical models to two massive databases to show that online social interactions, just like old-fashioned networks in the... Read more
Posted on 25 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Stock Trading - Gut Feelings Help with Risky Decisions.
I've done a number of posts describing studies trying to determine what characteristics might distinguish successful stock traders (enter 'traders' in the... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Teenage Brain and the Pleasure of “likes”
Rabin points to work by Sherman et al. showing that positive feedback given to a teenager's post on social media ('likes') stimulates the same reward center in... Read more
Posted on 23 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Social Media's Globe-shaking Power.
Like many of you, I am more than completely overwhelmed by recent political events and the avalanche of thoughtful commentary on them. Read more
Posted on 22 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Sex Differences in Brain Regulation of Aggression
Interesting work from Terranova et al., done with hamsters, and almost certainly applicable to us humans. Here is their summary of the significance of the study... Read more
Posted on 21 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Are Your Emotions 'Black and White' Or 'Shades of Gray'? - Brain Correlates.
Satpute et al. show that how we think about emotion shapes our perception and neural representation of emotion. They asked subjects to judge emotional... Read more
Posted on 18 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE