Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• 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

• The Effects of Birth Order on Personality.

  Rohrer et. al. issue a new installment on the perennial question of how our birth order influences us, with a study showing higher intelligence in firstborns, ... Read more

  Posted on 30 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Picture Show; And, Alzheimer's and the Innate Immune System

  

  Our nervous and immune systems interact with each other at the same time they both interact with our environment. Cell magazine has put together a picture show... Read more

  Posted on 27 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Choosing to Be Grateful.

  In a piece timed for Thanksgiving, Arthur Brooks does a nice job of fetching up and giving links to references to a number of interesting studies on the positiv... Read more

  Posted on 25 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Musical Expertise Modulates the Brain’s Entrainment to Music.

  Yet another study, by Doelling and Poeppel, showing effects of musical training on the brain and supporting a role for cortical oscillatory activity in music... Read more

  Posted on 25 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Bodies Can Sabotage Our Healthy Behaviors..

  I pass on an interesting chunk from Reynolds' review of work by Mansoubi et al. showing that people who use sit-to-stand workstations in their office... Read more

  Posted on 24 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Flip-Flops in Medical Advice.

  I want to forward readers some clips I've taken from a review by Zuger of a recent book " Ending Medical Reversal" by Prasad and Cifu. After glancing through th... Read more

  Posted on 20 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE