Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• The Origins of Happiness

  A MindBlog reader pointed me to this presentation, at this year's Davos World Economic Forum, on the subject of what government actions (in a European context)... Read more

  Posted on 02 February 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Are Human-specific Plastic Cortical Synaptic Connections What Makes Us Human?

  I want to pass on an excellent primer (open source) on the plasticity of a specific synapse between pyramidal neurons and fast-spiking interneurons of the... Read more

  Posted on 01 February 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Individual's Ultimate Economic Burden Can Be Forecast in Childhood

  Important work from Caspi et al., who show that 20% of the population accounts for close to 80% of economic burden. This group can be predicted with high... Read more

  Posted on 31 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Uniformity Illusion.

  Otten et al. investigate a visual illusion in which the accurate and detailed vision in the center of our visual field, accomplished by the fovea, influences ou... Read more

  Posted on 30 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Regression to the Mean - Why We Would All Be Better off If We Ignored Trump’s...

  O’Donnell’s answer to the annual edge.org question "What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?": My candidate is an old, simple, and powerfu... Read more

  Posted on 27 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Smartphone Reprogramming of Our Brains?

  Nicolelis makes some good points as he adds to the genre of literature that predicts a diminution of our brain power caused by dependence on the latest... Read more

  Posted on 26 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Gender and the Conflation of Equality and Sameness

  I want to pass on some clips from a sane brief essay by Helena Cronin, author of "The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today. Read more

  Posted on 25 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Knowing How Confidently We Know

  Here is a fascinating piece of work from Miyamoto et al. showing that parallel stream of information in the brain regulate the confidence that a memory is... Read more

  Posted on 24 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Our Evolutionary Psychology Elected Donald Trump.

  While I feel that in principle our world might be best governed by a multinational meritocratic elite (of the sort that just met in Davos Switzerland) I can’t... Read more

  Posted on 23 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Deepening of Our Cultural Echo Chambers.

  Farhad Manjoo does a nice piece in the Tech and Society section of the NY Times, pointing out how much has changed since the 1970s, when TV programs like “All i... Read more

  Posted on 20 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Fitness Downside to Statin Drugs?

  Before passing on this article by Gretchen Reynolds and the work of Chung et al. that it points to, I'll start with a personal account of why it immediately... Read more

  Posted on 18 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Research on Consequences of Low Socioeconomic Status Becoming a Small Industry.

  It is becoming hard to keep up with research on biological and behavioral consequences of low socioeconomic status - one of MindBlog's subject threads since... Read more

  Posted on 17 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Positivity in Older Adults is More Related to Cognitive Decline Than to Emotion...

  It is commonly supposed that the more positive outlook characteristic of older people is due to their ability to regulate their emotions more effectively than... Read more

  Posted on 16 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Seeing Faces of Young Black Boys Facilitates Identification of Threatening...

  From Todd et al. (open source): Pervasive stereotypes linking Black men with violence and criminality can lead to implicit cognitive biases, including the... Read more

  Posted on 13 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Milliseconds of a Choice - Watching Your Mind When It Matters.

  I'm finding, with increasing frequency, that an article about health or psychology in the New York Times that I find interesting has an attached note that it wa... Read more

  Posted on 12 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• People Who Move More Are Happier.

  No surprises here, but this study polling people using a smartphone app designed by the experimenters quantifies the effect. The use of smartphones to gather... Read more

  Posted on 11 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• From Power to Inaction.

  An interesting little piece from Durso et al. on a consequence of feeling powerful (The paper appears to be open source, so you can note the details of the two... Read more

  Posted on 10 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the First Law of Psychology.

  I pass along some a clip from Steven Pinker’s contribution to the edge.org annual question “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely know. Read more

  Posted on 09 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Dual Streams of Speech Processing.

  

  A large number of studies have documented how visual information in the brain is processed in dual streams of information: dorsal (where is it?), and ventral... Read more

  Posted on 06 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Effect of Status on Stress Depends on the Stability of the Hierarchy.

  In most human societies, individuals with higher socioeconomic status live longer, experience increased well-being, and have lower rates of stress-related... Read more

  Posted on 05 January 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE