Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Can Dietary Supplements Fight Cognitive Decline?

  Maybe not...It is known that people who eat diets rich in fish and antioxidants have better brain health, but this association does not prove cause and effect.... Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Is "gaydar" a Myth?

  Cox et al. contest work by Rule et al. that I mentioned in a previous post and suggest that the idea of "gaydar" is a myth. (Use gaydar as a search term in the... Read more

  Posted on 25 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Consolidating Motor Skills in Our Sleep.

  It is well known that sleep, in ourselves and in other animals, helps in consolidating learned motor tasks. (When I am learning difficult passage in a new... Read more

  Posted on 24 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• More Bad Things About Sleep Debt.

  This post is to point to two recent articles on pathologies induced by sleep debt. He et al. show that sleep restriction impairs blood-brain barrier... Read more

  Posted on 23 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Nervous Systems Are Lazy.

  Selinger et al. show that the subconscious nervous processes that regulate our movement are constantly adapting to minimize the energy required for movement in ... Read more

  Posted on 22 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Social Mysteries of the Superior Temporal Sulcus

  

  Michael Beauchamp does a summary of work by Deen et al. (open access), who use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show a regular... Read more

  Posted on 21 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Final Musical/social at Twin Valley - Some Rachmaninoff

  

  A personal posting: On Sunday Sept. 13, Len and I hosted our last musical/social at the 1860 stone school house we have lived in for 25 years (I have been... Read more

  Posted on 18 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Inventing New Words - Iconic Sounds Are Used.

  

  Perlman and collaborators find that students inventing new words use certain types of vocalizations with certain words. For example, made-up words for "up"... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Thinking Too Much - Self Generated Thought as the Engine of Neuroticism.

  Perkins et al. offer an opinion piece in which they propose that the cost and benefits of neuroticism are surface manifestations of a tendency to engage in... Read more

  Posted on 11 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Savoring Happy Memories - Value Representations in the Striatum

  Speer et al. observe responses in the corticostriatal circuits that respond to monetary reward when positive autobiographical memories are recalled. These... Read more

  Posted on 10 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Classification of Cognitive Mechanisms in Meditation Practice.

  Dahl, Lutz, and Davidson offer an interesting classification system for different styles of meditation. Here is a paste up from their abstract and... Read more

  Posted on 08 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Bioethics - Doing More Harm Than Good?

  Steven Pinker recently ignited a small firestorm with his piece in the Boston Globe arguing that bioethical issues that slow down research have a massive human... Read more

  Posted on 04 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Oxytocin - More Sophisticated Views of Its Functions

  Helen Shen offers a review of studies on oxytocin, the "hug hormone," which influences maternal behavior and social attachment in various species. She notes... Read more

  Posted on 03 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• 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