Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Biochemical Individuality Obsoletes Many Dietary Recommendations and the Glycemi...

  An important paper by a Weizmann Institute group has been languishing in my list of potential posts, and Murphy's summary of their work now prods me to pass... Read more

  Posted on 19 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Posthumanism - the Quantification Craze and the Death of Beauty

  An eloquent recent essay, " Among the Disrupted" by Leon Wieseltier (pointed to by a Brooks Op-Ed piece), is worth your attention. It opens with a screed on... Read more

  Posted on 18 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Another Installment on Anti-aging Chemistry - Pterostilbene

  

  I thought I would report on my recent meandering into recent work on the putative anti-aging compounds Resveratrol and Pterostilbene, which are found in some... Read more

  Posted on 15 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Homosexuality as a Discrete Class.

  Norris et al. contribute to previous work engaging the question of whether homosexuality has a taxonic structure of categories of individuals with distinct... Read more

  Posted on 15 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How to Be Bad Together - Punishing Pro-social Behavior.

  I pass on part of a brief essay by Gloria Origgi noting the work of Gächter and Herrmann, who examined positive and negative reciprocity in different groups... Read more

  Posted on 14 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Purity, Disgust and Donald Trump

  

  Following the thread of the past few posts (on the partisan divide and empathy), I want to pass on this must-read article by Thomas Edsall, who summarizes work... Read more

  Posted on 13 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Strongest Prejudice - Partisan Hostility

  Jonathan Haidt points to the fascinating work by political scientists Shanto Iyengar and Sean Westwood, titled " Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New... Read more

  Posted on 12 January 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• 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