Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• If All the World's a Stage, Do We Have a True Self?

  My reading of Irving Goffman's classic "The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life" in the early 1970's was the beginning of my going beyond my laboratory... Read more

  Posted on 03 March 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• "Well-being" as a Practiced Skill

  I thought I would pass on from the mindful.org website yet another piece featuring my Wisconsin colleague Richie Davidson, noting his presentation on "Four... Read more

  Posted on 02 March 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Getting Rid of Old Cells Extends Lifespan of Mice and Ameliorates Age-related...

  Baker et al. show that getting rid of cells that have entered an irreversible senescent state expands the lifespan of mice and ameliorates some age-related... Read more

  Posted on 01 March 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Brain Circuit for Loneliness.

  Tye and colleagues find a neural circuit at the base of mouse brains that drives loneliness-like behaviors and drives the animals to seek company. From a... Read more

  Posted on 29 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Moralistic Gods Enhance Sociality.

  Purzycki et al. combine laboratory experiments, cross-cultural fieldwork, and analysis of the historical record to propose that belief in judgmental deities... Read more

  Posted on 24 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Creative Cognition and Brain Network Dynamics.

  

  Beaty et al. do a review that notes trends in recent neuroimaging studies suggesting that creative cognitive involves increased cooperation of the default and... Read more

  Posted on 23 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Mindfulness Meditation Intervention Enhances Connectivity of Brain Executive...

  Creswell et al. recruited 35 stressed-out adult job-seekers, getting half to participate in an intensive three-day mindfulness meditation retreat while the othe... Read more

  Posted on 22 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Forming Beliefs: Why Valence Matters.

  Sharot and Garrett do a review article that puts their work on how we see through rose colored glasses, mentioned in a previous MindBlog post, in perspective... Read more

  Posted on 19 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Neural Crossroads of Psychiatric Illnesses as a Target for Therapeutic Brain...

  I want pass on this open source article by Downar et al. which contains some useful graphics for illustrating their point about a central role for anterior... Read more

  Posted on 18 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Finally...a Brain Area Specialized for Music Has Been Found.

  Norman-Haignere, Kanwisher, and McDermott have devised a new method to computationally dissect scans from functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain to... Read more

  Posted on 17 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A 50 Year Misunderstanding of How We Decide to Initiate Action - Our Intuition i...

  A commonly accepted assumption (that underlies all of the essays at dericbownds.net and many mindblog posts) is that a line of experiments starting in the... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Eye Movements Are Coupled to Our Heartbeats.

  A fascinating finding by Ohl et al. that the darting about of our eyes (saccades) during visual search is coupled to our heart rate (the R-R interval), proving ... Read more

  Posted on 15 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What Makes Political Leaders Influential?

  Brinke et al. examine whether politicians who ascend to influence have been driven by Aristotelian or Machiavellian values (i.e., virtue versus vice). Is... Read more

  Posted on 12 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Linking Sustained Attention to Brain Connectivity.

  

  Rosenberg et al. find that strengths of a specific set of brain connections - even when estimated from resting state data collected when subjects are not... Read more

  Posted on 11 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Fantasies of the Future

  Following up on my Jan. 28 post on Schwab's book "The Fourth Industrial Revolution" I thought I would pass on some speculations in the appendix of the book on... Read more

  Posted on 09 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Digital Presence.

  

  Here is an interesting tally: Active users of social media sites compared with the populations of the world's largest countries. if social media sites were... Read more

  Posted on 08 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Consciousness as the Product of Carefully Balanced Chaos.

  Tagliafuochi and collaborators have provided more evidence that our experience of consciousness and reality might result from a delicate balance or critical... Read more

  Posted on 05 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Inequality and Facing the Future.

  A recent piece by Arianna Huffington ( The fourth industrial revolution meets the sleep revolution) suggests to me one aspect of yet another driver of future... Read more

  Posted on 04 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Neuroscience of Poverty.

  

  This open source review article by Alla Katsnelson is sobering, and worth a read. The major foci in the brain that appear to show disparities in poor children... Read more

  Posted on 03 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Burden of Obesity Revisited.

  A previous mindblog post has noted the obesity paradox, generated by data suggesting that fat people may live longer. Stokes and Preston,however, note an... Read more

  Posted on 02 February 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE