Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• A Personal Note, the Steinway B Now in Fort Lauderdale - Some Chopin

  

  After a few tense moments, my Steinway B is now moved from Wisconsin to Florida. I've upgraded my video and audio recording equipment, finally got the bugs... Read more

  Posted on 19 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Neuropolitics - Reading the Electorate's Mind.

  Members of our two major political parties increasingly seem to inhabit alternative realities that are utterly incomprehending of each other. How about... Read more

  Posted on 18 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Brain with David Eagleman

  I want to point MindBlog readers who aren't already aware of the David Eagleman PBS series on the brain to its description on the PBS website. The episodes can... Read more

  Posted on 17 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Good and Bad Stress in the Brain - The Inverted U

  

  I want to pass on a bit of commentary by Robert Sapolsky, in a special issue of Nature Neuroscience that focuses on stress, that presents a clear and lucid... Read more

  Posted on 16 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How to Live What We Don't Believe.

  Veteran readers of MindBlog will be aware that a continuing issue has been the problem of what to do with our understanding of how our brains really work - the... Read more

  Posted on 13 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Amazing…. Robots Learn Coordinated Behavior from Scratch.

  Der and Martius suggest that a novel plasticity rule can explain the development of sensorimotor intelligence, without having to postulate higher-level... Read more

  Posted on 12 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Unknowns of Cognitive Enhancement

  Martha Farah points out how little is known about current methods of cognitive enhancement, and suggests several reasons why we are so ignorant. A few clips fro... Read more

  Posted on 10 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can We Really Change Our Aging?

  I thought I would point MindBlog readers to a brief talk I gave, "Can we really change our aging?," at the Nov. 1, 2015 meeting of the Fort Lauderdale Prime... Read more

  Posted on 09 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Critical Period for Visual Pathway Formation? - Another Dogma Bites the Dust.

  India, which may have the largest number of blind children in the world, with estimates ranging from 360,000 to nearly 1.2 million, is providing a vast... Read more

  Posted on 06 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Biomarker for Early Detection of Dementia

  Kunz et al. show that in an at-risk group for developing Alzheimer's different brain signals are detected many decades before onset of the disease. Individuals... Read more

  Posted on 05 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Lifting Weights and the Brain.

  

  Reynolds points to a study suggesting that light weight training slows down the shrinkage and tattering of our brain's white matter (nerve tracts) that... Read more

  Posted on 04 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Pickings on 'the Most Important Things'

  I enjoy the weekly email sent out by Maria Popova's Brain Pickings website. I find it a bit overwhelming (and high on the estrogens), and so sample only a few o... Read more

  Posted on 03 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Lab Experiment: Visibility of Wealth Increases Wealth Inequality

  Nishi et al. do a fascinating laboratory experiment conducted online showing that when people can see wealth inequality in their social network, this propels... Read more

  Posted on 02 November 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• More Exercise Correlates with Younger Body Cells.

  Reynolds points to work by Loprinzi et al. showing physicaly active people have longer telomeres at the end of their chromosomes' DNA strands than sedentary... Read more

  Posted on 30 October 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Much Sleep Do We Really Need?

  A study by Yetish et al. casts fascinating light on the widespread idea that a large fraction of us in modern industrial societies are sleep-deprived, going to... Read more

  Posted on 28 October 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Chilling Down Our Religiousity and Intolerance with Some Magnets?

  A group of collaborators has used transcranial magnetic stimulation to dial down activity in the area of the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC)that evaluate... Read more

  Posted on 27 October 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Drugs Or Therapy for Depression?

  I want to pass on a few clips from a piece by Friedman, summarizing work by Mayberg and collaborators at Emory University, who looked for brain activity that... Read more

  Posted on 22 October 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Hoopla Over a Bit of Rat Brain…a Complete Brain Simulation?

  A vastly expensive and heavily marketed international collaborative "Blue Brain Project (BBP)" has now reported its first digital reconstruction of a slice of... Read more

  Posted on 21 October 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Meditation Madness

  Adam Grant does a NYTimes Op-Ed piece that mirrors some of my own sentiments about the current meditation craze. There would seem to be almost nothing that... Read more

  Posted on 20 October 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Brain Switch That Can Make the Familiar Seem New?

  We all face the issue how to refresh and renew our energy and perspective after our brains have adapted, habituated, or densensitized to an ongoing interest or... Read more

  Posted on 19 October 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE