Wednesday, September 30, 2015

More exercise correlates with younger body cells.

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Reynolds points to work by Loprinzi et al. showing physically active people have longer telomeres at the end of their chromosomes' DNA...

Does exercise change your brain?

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After yesterday's post suggesting no effects of common dietary supplements on cognitive changes with aging, I thought I would note work ...
Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Can dietary supplements fight cognitive decline?

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Maybe not...It is known that people who eat diets rich in fish and antioxidants have better brain health, but this association does not prov...
Monday, September 28, 2015

Humanity as a Competitive Advantage

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Some clips from a review by Tony Schwartz , of Geoff Colvin's new book “Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant M...
Friday, September 25, 2015

Is "gaydar" a myth?

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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. (Us...
Thursday, September 24, 2015

Consolidating motor skills in our sleep.

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It is well known that sleep, in ourselves and in other animals, helps in consolidating learned motor tasks. (When I am learning difficult p...
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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

More bad things about sleep debt.

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This post is to point to two recent articles on pathologies induced by sleep debt. He et al. show that sleep restriction impairs blood-bra...
Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Our nervous systems are lazy.

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Selinger et al. show that the subconscious nervous processes that regulate our movement are constantly adapting to minimize the energy requ...
Monday, September 21, 2015

The social mysteries of the superior temporal sulcus

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Michael Beauchamp does a summary of work by Deen et al. (open access) , who use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show a regu...
Friday, September 18, 2015

A final musical/social at Twin Valley - some Rachmaninoff

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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 yea...
Thursday, September 17, 2015

Hormones and clothing choices.

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Here is an interesting and curious bit from Eisenbruch et al. : Recent evidence supports the idea that women use red clothing as a courtsh...
Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Heritable risk of developing anxiety correlates with brain metabolism, not structure.

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A group of Univ. of Wisconsin collaborators adds another installment to their series of articles on anxiety in a primate model for humans. ...
Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Inventing new words - iconic sounds are used.

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Perlman and collaborators find that students inventing new words use certain types of vocalizations with certain words. For example, made-u...
Monday, September 14, 2015

Brain correlates of learning character traits versus rewards.

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Hsu and Jenkins summarize work of Hackel et al. showing where our brains learn about traits versus rewards. In a functional magnet...
Friday, September 11, 2015

Thinking too much - Self generated thought as the engine of neuroticism.

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Perkins et al. offer an opinion piece in which they propose that the cost and benefits of neuroticism are surface manifestations of a tende...
Thursday, September 10, 2015

Savoring happy memories - value representations in the striatum

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Speer et al. observe responses in the corticostriatal circuits that respond to monetary reward when positive autobiographical memories are ...
Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Convergent evolution of numerosity detection in bird and primate brains.

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From Ditz and Nieder : Birds are known for their advanced numerical competence, although a six-layered neocortex that is thought to enabl...
Tuesday, September 08, 2015

A classification of cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice.

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Dahl, Lutz, and Davidson offer an interesting classification system for different styles of meditation. Here is a paste up from their abstr...
Monday, September 07, 2015

Brain imaging can predict six-year outcomes in children’s numerical abilities.

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Interesting work from Evans et al. : Significance Statement Children show substantial individual differences in math abilities and eas...
Friday, September 04, 2015

Bioethics - Doing more harm than good?

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