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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How Our Brains Change During the Day.
I am reminded what a rigid daily schedule my body keeps and expects every time I vary my routine slightly (changing a meal time, exercise, happy hour,... Read more
Posted on 07 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Nature's Warning System.
A colleague in my Chaos and Complexity discussion group at the Univ. of Wisconsin passed on this Atlantic article in which my Zoology colleague Steve Carpenter... Read more
Posted on 06 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
A Positive Tonic: Human Progress Quantified
Edge.org has just posted responses to its 2016 question of the year "What do you consider the most interesting recent [scientific] news? What makes it... Read more
Posted on 04 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Boosting Our Brain Plasticity.
Wow, this study by Forsyth et al. makes me want to run out and buy a bottle of D-cycloserine, which they show enhances experience-dependent learning, i.e.... Read more
Posted on 01 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Dorsal and Ventral Right Brain Pathways for Prosody
Sammler et al. show that analysis of the emotional content, or vocal tone, of our speech is processed in dorsal and ventral streams of the right hemisphere... Read more
Posted on 30 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Brain Mitochondria Function Links Anxiety with Social Subordination.
Hollis et al. make the fascinating observation that position in the social hierarchy of rats (dominant versus submissive) can be enhanced or diminished by... Read more
Posted on 29 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Socioeconomic Status, Inflammatory Reactivity, and Social Support.
Interesting work from John-Henderson et al., who suggest that social support is more effective in damping stress responses in people having childhoods with low... Read more
Posted on 28 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Need for Affiliation - Communities of Kindness
I belong to the Gay Men's Chorus of South Florida, which completed a series of five Christmas season concerts over the past two weeks. Singing in these... Read more
Posted on 25 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Good News for the Grumpy.
A dogma of the self-help and happiness industries is that unhappiness decreases health and longevity. Happy people are supposed to live longer. Not so, it... Read more
Posted on 22 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Loneliness Hurts.
Reynolds points to an article by Cacioppo et. al., who contribute to a special issue of Cortex magazine on Neuro-cognitive mechanisms of social interactions.... Read more
Posted on 21 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
A Special Issue of Science Magazine on Aging.
You can see titles and abstracts of articles here. And, I want to pass on a section of one of the articles, " Healthy aging: The ultimate preventative medicine,... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Exercise Helps Your Brain Rewire.
Our brains are most capable of changing in response to experience when we are young, then this ability abruptly declines into adulthood. Lunghi and Sale do an... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Why Doesn't Economic Growth Lead to More Happiness?
This is the Easterlin paradox, which I have mentioned in a previous post. Oishi and Kesebir now do an interesting analysis showing that economic growth is not... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Modest Exercise Gives Maximum Health Benefits.
Gretchen Reynolds points to a study in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings that reviews studies published in PubMed since 2000 that included at least 500 runners and... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Coffee Consumption Correlates with Lower Risk of Dying.
Researchers followed more than 200,000 doctors and nurses for up to 30 years. The participants had periodic physical examinations and completed questionnaires o... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Exercise Enhances Frontal Brain Lateralization Characteristic of Younger Brains.
As we age beyond 40 years or so, mental tasks that require attention, problem solving, decision-making and other types of high-level thinking become less... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Mindfulness Meditation and Pain Reduction.
An interesting analysis from Zeidan et al.: Recent findings have demonstrated that mindfulness meditation significantly reduces pain. Given that the "gold... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Lower Leg Power Predicts Cognitive Aging.
Gretchen Reynolds points to a study of 162 healthy female twin pairs, some identical, and some not, who 10 years previously had completed extensive... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Cultural Specificity of Human Fairness.
Blake et al. do an interesting experiment on how sensitive children are to inequality. They asked one child in a pair or to accept or reject an offer of Skittle... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Evolution of Music from Emotional Signals
I want to pass on the slightly edited abstract of a recent article on the evolutionary origins of music, "Music evolution and neuroscience," in Progress in Brai... Read more
Posted on 03 December 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE