Wednesday, July 01, 2009

REM sleep improves creativity by priming associative networks

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From Cai et al : The hypothesized role of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is rich in dreams, in the formation of new associations, has...

The evolution of God

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Paul Bloom reviews Robert Wright's new book, which gives a historical account of how God has mellowed over time: In sharp contrast to m...
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Metzinger: introduction to "The Ego Tunnel"

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Thomas Metzinger is one of my heroes, a philosopher and polymath who has a deep understanding also of neurobiology and cognitive psychology ...
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On becoming cultural - models for evolution of human behavior

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Ruth Mace describes articles by Bowles and by Powell et al. on the origins of altruism toward one's own social group and the emergenc...
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Nonverbal Status Cues Alter Perceived Size

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Marsh et al. show that nonverbal cues associated with social dominance also affect the perceived size of the displayer.
Monday, June 29, 2009

Regret in animals

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In That Tucked Tail, Real Pangs of Regret?

No evidence for mirror neurons in humans?!

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Given all the hype over the mirror neuron system in humans (basis for constructing social cognition, empathy, mind reading, and the developm...
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Positive and negative emotions bias the earliest stages of our visual processing.

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Opposing Influences of Affective State Valence on Visual Cortical Encoding

Hardwired human nature?

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David Brooks repeats some of the arguments needed as an antidote to the evolutionary psychology craze that is reinforced by books such as G...
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Friday, June 26, 2009

The Stonewall Riots

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The Stonewall riots that started on June 27, 1969, have achieved iconic status as the start of my tribe's 'liberation.' Here ...

Risky behaviors: genetic predisposition countered by behavioral intervention

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Work by Brody et al. is summarized by Jasny in the Editor's Choice section of the June 5 issue of Science: There have been many discu...

Pretty Please....

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Why are we more friendly towards the pleading behavior of very young humans or animals? The Nature "Research Highlights" section n...

An evolutionary rationale for blushing.

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An article from Benedict Carey covers work suggesting the blushing evolved to to strengthen social bonds.
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Gender, culture, and mathematics performance

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Janet Hyde at Wisconsin continues her crusade against the proposition that there are gender differences in mathematical performance and tal...
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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Unconscious motor control that conflicts with conscious awareness.

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During my recent Europe vacation, on stepping onto an escalator in the Munich metro that I knew was stopped, I noticed that odd sensation ac...
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Boosting your serotonin reduces responsiveness to aggression

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From Berman et al. : We tested the theory that central serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, or 5-HT) activity regulates aggression by modulating ...
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Questioning the link between brain size and sociality

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Almost any lecture on brain evolution includes the assertion that larger brains evolved to serve communication demands of larger social grou...

Anticipating monetary and social reward - differing brain activations in men and women.

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Spreckelmeyer et al. show a wider network of brain regions is activated by the prospect of monetary reward in men than in women.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Lost in the sauce - alcohol and mind wandering

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Great.... all I need is another reason to question the daily happy hour that I use to take the edge off the TV evening news. From Sayette e...

Mathematical and linguistic syntax: different brain areas

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Contra the suggestion of Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch that the hierarchical processing required for syntactical operations requires Broca'...
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