Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• Birth of the Moralizing Gods.

  Lizzie Wade offers two interesting summaries of work on the evolution of religion that suggest that as societies grew bigger, so did their gods. She describes... Read more

  Posted on 02 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Benefits of Reading to Children.

  Two items...First, from Montag et al.: Young children learn language from the speech they hear. Previous work suggests that greater statistical diversity of... Read more

  Posted on 01 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Self-policing by Psychologists - Many Prominent Experiments Fail Replication...

  Benedict Carey offers context, summary, and reactions to the recent Science article reporting work of a consortium of 270 scientists on five continents led by... Read more

  Posted on 31 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Stress Can Cause Bad Food Choices and Compromise Long Term Goals.

  Maier et al. show that more immediate rewards are likely to be chosen following stress because stress increases immediate reward signaling in the amygdala and... Read more

  Posted on 26 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Biased Internet Search Engines Might Influence Election Outcomes

  Just in case you are not pessimistic enough already about election manipulations that insure our continued governance by the 1% for the 1% , here is more... Read more

  Posted on 24 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Unequal, but Happy

  I just came across an article in my queue of potential posts by Steven Quantz and Anette Asp that I had put aside, thinking to check whether this was the same... Read more

  Posted on 20 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• People Who Eat Spicy Food Live Longer.

  I pass on this interesting bit of information because I, like my father and grandfather, am addicted to hot sauce containing chili peppers (use it with every... Read more

  Posted on 19 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Tracking Ongoing Cognition with fMRI of Functional Connectivity States.

  This work by Gonzalez-Castillo at al. shows how close we are getting to real time monitoring of brain activity associated with different kinds of tasks (in... Read more

  Posted on 18 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Exercise for the Aging Brain - How Much is Necessary?

  Gretchen Reynolds points to interesting work on exercise and the aging brain by Vidoni et. al. Increasing amounts of aerobic exercise (75, 150, 225 minutes per... Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Knowing the Internal States of Ourselves and of Others.

  We frequently can infer the emotional state of someone from the style of their movement, distinguishing, for example, when they hand us something rudely versus... Read more

  Posted on 12 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Overclaiming - the Illusion of Knowledge

  Atir et al. probe how our inflated perception of our expertise can lead us to make claims of impossible knowledge. Their edited abstract: People overestimate... Read more

  Posted on 11 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Are Chatbots Destined to Become Our Most Sympathetic Listeners?

  Markoff and Mozur do a fascinating piece in the NYTimes describing how millions of young Chinese use a smartphone program as their intimate companion. Xiaoice... Read more

  Posted on 07 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Benefits of High School Music Training.

  Maybe my avoiding gym glasses in high school by being in the marching band and chorus paid off some brain benefits (in addition to my already being a pianist).... Read more

  Posted on 06 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Synchronizing Brain Theta Oscillations Strengthens Our Adaptive Behavior Control.

  Reinhart et al. show that synchronizing low-frequency theta (4-8 Hz) EEG oscillations over the medial-frontal cortex with noninvasive direct current electrical... Read more

  Posted on 05 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• New Stuff on Exercise, Brain, and Body.

  I'll use this post to point readers to several recent interesting articles on physical activity. Hutchinson does a review of work that distinguishes the effect... Read more

  Posted on 04 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Correlates of the Impatience of Adolescents.

  

  Teens and young adults show greater impulsivity than children and adults, reflected by increases in emergency room visits, accidents from drug or alcohol use,... Read more

  Posted on 03 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Unlearning Social Biases During Sleep

  Feld and Born note that tenacious implicit prejudices of race or gender drive discrimination seen in the rise of nationalistic groups, excessive police... Read more

  Posted on 31 July 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Danger of Artificial Intelligence is Artificial Stupidity.

  Here are some clips from an interesting Op-Ed piece by Quentin Hardy on artificial intelligence. (And, by the way, a recent issue of Science Magazine has a... Read more

  Posted on 30 July 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Placebo Analgesia Reduces Empathy for Pain.

  Fascinating observations from Rütgen et al.. They show that experimental modulation of a first-hand emotion experience also modulates empathy for that emotion... Read more

  Posted on 29 July 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Markers of Individual Differences in Human Prosociality.

  Sul et al. make the fascinating observation that self-regarding and other-regarding regions of the medial prefrontal cortex show greater segregation in selfish... Read more

  Posted on 27 July 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE