Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• 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

• Thoughts About Dying in America.

  Pizzo offers a summary of a recent Institute of Medicine report, with the title "Thoughts about Dying in America: Enhancing the impact of one’s life journey... Read more

  Posted on 17 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Working Memory Modulates Our Conscious Access to Suppressed Threatening...

  Our processing of emotional information is susceptible to working memory (WM) modulations - emotional faces trigger much stronger responses in the... Read more

  Posted on 16 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• View a Flickering Stimulus Before You Try to Read Fine Print…

  A nice piece of work from Arnold et al.: Significance Distinct anatomical visual pathways can be traced through the human central nervous system. Read more

  Posted on 15 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why Do People in Big Cities Move Faster?

  

  A number of studies have shown that people in big cities move faster. Why is this? Pontzer describes work by Ahmed et al. suggesting that our brains use... Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Social Class and Attentiveness to Others.

  More on “The rich are different from you and me.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald) “Yes, They have more money.” (Hemingway). Dietze and Knowles use eye movement... Read more

  Posted on 11 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Explaining Gender Differences in Anxiety.

  Li et al. find that a set of oxytocin-responsive neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) look similar in both sexes, but in males they secrete a protein... Read more

  Posted on 10 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE