Deric Bownds
These articles, from Deric's MindBlog at http://mindblog.dericbownds.net report new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff.
MY BLOGS
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Deric Bownds' MindBlog
http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/
This blog reports new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 2505 )
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A Bit of Science Fiction...a Brain Implant That Allows Mind-controlled Gene...
The experiments by Folcher et al. are done with optogenetic implants in mouse brains that are wirelessly controlled by human brain waves. Read more
Posted on 24 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Impact of Literacy on Visual Processing
From Pegado et al., a clear demonstration of how learning the act of reading enhances our visual processing: How does learning to read affect visual processing? Read more
Posted on 23 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Cross-species Evidence That Adaptive Training Diminishes Distractibility in...
Another fascinating study from Gazzaley's productive research group. A video clip is offered in the abstract. Here are the highlights and summary: Highlights... Read more
Posted on 22 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
How to Bridge the Respective Bubbles of Our Ideological Tribes?
A number of recent mindblog posts have engaged the issue of the individual versus the collective good (for example, here, here, and here), a creative tension... Read more
Posted on 19 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Critique of the Nature Paper on Dishonest Bankers,
I wanted to pass on to MindBlog readers this item analyzing the paper noted in my recent post "Banking - a culture of dishonesty", Statistician Salil Mehta... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Several Nuggets on the Individual Vs. the Collective.
Following yesterday's post on the evolution of prosocial religions, I pass on a random set of links to articles also relevant to the individual and the... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions
Having been an author in an issue of "Behavioral and Brain Biology" published by Cambridge University Press, I receive notice of forthcoming articles inviting... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The New Surveillance State and Our Robotic Future.
Isreal et al. examine one of the many uses to which individual credit scores are being put - to determine our cardiovascular risk (useful information for... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Why Elders Smile, and Wisdom in Social Signals.
Two articles relevant to becoming a senior person: From Rijsbergen et al. (open access), a piece of work that reminds me of the book recently read by my book... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Physics, Emergence, and the Connectome - From the Connectome to Brain Function
A special issue of Neuron on connectomics has a special open source section of articles with different views of the problems we face in relating details of brai... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Psilocybin Changes Brain Connectivity.
Petri et al. show that "the brain's functional patterns undergoes a dramatic change post-psilocybin, characterized by the appearance of many transient structure... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
We Search for Meaning at the Start of Each Chronological Decade.
Recent soulful introspection by my husband, who moves from age 59 to 60 in late December, motivates me to point to this study by Alter and Hershfield, who... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Banking - a Culture of Dishonesty
Kelland points to work by Cohn et al., who have studied bank workers and other professionals in experiments in which they won more money if they cheated. Read more
Posted on 09 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Ecology of Religious Beliefs
Botero et al. do a fascinating survey of 583 societies to show that religions with moralizing high gods that promote cooperation between humans are more... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
E.O. Wilson and "The Meaning of Human Existence"
I've just read through E.O. Wilson's new and admirably brief and terse book (~200 pages) that gives a distillation of his previous writings on our human... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Varieties of Poverty - Money, Time, and Bandwidth
We usually think of money when the word poverty is employed. But, just like getting caught in a high interest loan cycle, we can get in trouble by borrowing... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
My iPad is Masturbating!
As I have read the New York Times or Kindle Apps on my iPad over the past few weeks, the tablet has seemed to take on a mind of its own, opening articles or... Read more
Posted on 03 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Peripheral Immune System and Stress Susceptibility.
Using a social stress model in mice, Hoades et al. find preexisting individual differences in the sensitivity of the peripheral immune system that predict and... Read more
Posted on 03 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Does Exercise Really Make Us Smarter?
A NYTimes Well piece by Gretchen Reynolds points to an interesting study by Stothart et al., who decided to address a basic deficiency in most studies of the... Read more
Posted on 02 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Usefulness of Spite.
Angier reviews a number of studies suggesting that the evolution of human cooperation can be assisted by spite, a certain degree of "altruistic" punishment, whe... Read more
Posted on 01 December 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE