Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• A Moralistic Bias in Our Default Representation of What is Possible.

  From Phillips and Cushman: Significance As humans, we think not only about what is, but also what could be. These representations of alternative possibilities... Read more

  Posted on 24 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Osteoarthritis Attenuated by Removing Senescent Cells.

  Jeon et al. use a model of anterior cruciate ligament surgery to show that senescent cells assemble in the traumatized knee joint and trigger development of... Read more

  Posted on 23 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Science of Consciousness

  In 1994 I went to the first of what has become an annual gathering, sponsored by the Center for Consciousness Studies of the University of Arizona, of... Read more

  Posted on 22 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Brains Have an Innate Knowledge of Tools.

  From Striem-Amit et al.: Significance To what extent is brain organization driven by innate genetic constraints, and how dependent is it on individual experienc... Read more

  Posted on 19 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Invisibility Cloak Illusion - You're Too Focused on What You're Focused On.

  Boothy does a summary of her work with Clark and Bargh. Some slightly edited clips: That coffee stain on your shirt, those mismatched earrings you... Read more

  Posted on 18 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Increasing Honesty in Humans with Noninvasive Brain Stimulation

  Maréchal et al. show that a bit of electricity applied to your right prefrontal cortex makes you half as likely to be dishonest. Hmmm..... Read more

  Posted on 17 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Fading American Dream in a Nutshell...

  From Chetty et al.: We estimated rates of “absolute income mobility”—the fraction of children who earn more than their parents—by combining data from U.S. Read more

  Posted on 16 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Spatial Memory is Driven by Perceived Animacy of Simple Shapes.

  Chin points to work of van Buren and Scholl who use “wolfpack” animations of dart shapes whose points track the movement of a disc (the prey) to show that... Read more

  Posted on 15 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Semantics and the Science of Fear - the Amygdala Doesn't 'cause' Fear.

  

  Here are some core clips from an article in which Joseph Ledoux updates an idea he proposed several decades ago: …that objectively measurable behavioral and... Read more

  Posted on 12 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What We Perceive Depends on How Much It Costs Us.

  Interesting work from Hagura et al. showing that our perceptual decisions are biased by the action costs that are associated with our subsequent decisions is... Read more

  Posted on 11 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Has Trump Stolen Philosophy’s Critical Tools?

  Casey Williams does an intriguing piece in the NYTimes “The Stone” section on topics in philosophy. I’m sure he is not crediting Trump with any awareness of... Read more

  Posted on 10 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Details of Our Brain's Upstairs-downstairs Emotion Regulation.

  Morawetz et al. (open source) offer a study probing how our brain's prefrontal upstairs modulates the up-regulation or down-regulation of our emotional... Read more

  Posted on 09 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Correlates of Third Person Perspective Improving Interactions with...

  Interesting work (open source) from Leitner et al.: Previous research suggests that people show increased self-referential processing when they provide criticis... Read more

  Posted on 08 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Histone Variants Promote Vulnerability to Depressive Behaviors

  Lepack et al. find that a particular histone protein variant in the nucleus accumbens contributes to stress susceptibility in mice (histones are highly... Read more

  Posted on 05 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Watching the Brain Think About Friends.

  Work from Wlodarski and Dunbar (open source) produces imaging data suggesting that maintaining friendships may be more cognitively exacting than maintaining... Read more

  Posted on 04 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• From Learning to Instinct

  

  I pass on a few chunks from the Science Perspective article by Robinson and Barron: An animal mind is not born as an empty canvas: Bottlenose dolphins know how... Read more

  Posted on 03 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Nature Fix

  Suttie points to a recent book from Florence Williams, also reviewed by Jason Mark, that I would like to be able to slow down enough to actually read, rather... Read more

  Posted on 02 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Stimulation Enhances Memory.

  Important work from Ezzyat et al., a potential approach to ameliorating memory loss in dementia: Highlights •Intracranial brain stimulation has variable... Read more

  Posted on 01 May 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain-heart Dialogue Shows How Racism Hijacks Perception

  Tsakiris does a nice summary of his work that shows a biological basis for why you’re more than twice as likely as a white person to be unarmed if you’re... Read more

  Posted on 28 April 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Underestimating the Value of Being in Another Person's Shoes.

  I pass on a bit of the introduction from Zhou et al., and then their abstract: A lot of leaders are coming here, to sit down and visit. I think it’s important... Read more

  Posted on 27 April 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE