Monday, November 15, 2010

Great pianists of the 20th century

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I have to pass on this wonderful video on great pianists of the 20th century. Horowitz doing the Carmen variations is astounding.

Color of ambient light directly influences our brain's emtional processing

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When I started my first research laboratory 42 years ago, one of my first actions was to replace all of the standard fluorescent light fixtu...
1 comment:
Friday, November 12, 2010

Reducing pain by touching ourselves

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Interesting observations from Kammers et al. The abstract: Acute peripheral pain is reduced by multisensory interactions at the spinal lev...
3 comments:

How the leopard got its spots...

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I pass on this interesting bit from the Nov. 5 Science Magazine's 'Editor's Choice" section describing work by Allen et al....
Thursday, November 11, 2010

Another reason exercise inhibits aging - boost of muscle stem cells.

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Work by Shefer et al. suggests why exercisers have better muscle function than nonexercisers as they age. It turns out that endurance exerc...
2 comments:
Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Dancing Scientists

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In a previous life, I was a dancer, taking classes in modern dance technique and improvisation, and was actually in a few performances.  Thi...
1 comment:

Robust exchanges on MindBlog

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Just as I have been following the commentaries (19 when I last looked) on the topic of last Wednesday's post " Our minds extend be...
Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Neural signature in the brain of skilled negotiators

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Read Montague's group studies brain correlates of how we manipulate other people's beliefs about ourselves for gain. A review by Bh...
2 comments:
Monday, November 08, 2010

The recent election - gridlock or compromise?

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I find it hard to find much of a glimmer of hope for the prospect that some important issues will actually be faced in the next several year...
Friday, November 05, 2010

Why our brains go for market bubbles.

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Jonah Lehrer has a nice piece in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine which discusses Read Montague's work suggesting that financi...
2 comments:
Thursday, November 04, 2010

Calculate your endurance

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I thought I would pass on this fascinating item from the Random Samples section of the Oct. 29th issue of Science Magazine.  Now you can cal...
1 comment:
Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Our minds extend beyond our heads.

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I've always liked the idea, lucidly presented by Andy Clark over many years, that our minds are impossible to distinguish from our envir...
21 comments:
Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Light at night makes us fat.

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...at least that is what experiments on mice done by Fonken et al. suggest.  The experiments were motivated by wondering whether the global...
4 comments:
Monday, November 01, 2010

Oxytocin selectively improves social cognition.

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Numerous studies on pro-social effect of oxytocin have generated interest in oxytocin’s potential to ameliorate social deficits in such diso...
5 comments:
Friday, October 29, 2010

de Waal on the Biology of Morality

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A colleague pointed out this thoughtful piece on morals without God written by primatologist Frans de Waal. The debate is less about the t...
4 comments:
Thursday, October 28, 2010

How rummination can both help and hinder.

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Altamirano et al. do a simple study that shows that depressive rumminators (like myself?) are more stable in maintaining goals, but sacrifi...
1 comment:
Wednesday, October 27, 2010

MindBlog is on the road.

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Tuesday evening... little do they realize  (my two Abyssinian cats, Marvin and Melvin) that they will be on the road at 7 a.m. tomorrow morn...
1 comment:

Why that nearby cell phone conversation bothers you...

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While I am reading my morning newspaper in a restaurant at breakfast, nothing ticks me off more than a nearby cell phone conversation, but I...
3 comments:
Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The quest for simplicity.

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A new Apple product has been announced recently, a new MacBook Air that is the offspring of the union of a Mac computer and an iPad. In ad...
1 comment:
Monday, October 25, 2010

A Brahms Rhapsody for monday morning...

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I thought I would pass on this slightly truncated version of the Brahms Rhapsody Op. 79, No. 1 that I played for the Carnaval Music group in...