Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• 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

• 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