Thursday, August 31, 2017

How to make time slow down.

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Many days I feel by 5 p.m. like my day has evaporated without my noticing it. I recall that when I was 20-40 years old my days seems to stre...
Wednesday, August 30, 2017

An essay on the real problem of consciousness.

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For those of you who are consciousness mavens, I would recommend having a glance at Anil Seth’s essay , which does a clear headed descriptio...
Tuesday, August 29, 2017

A magic bullet to restore our brain's plasticity?

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No...not yet. But work by Jenks et al. showing that juvenile-like plasticity is restored in the visual cortex of adult mice by acute viral...
Monday, August 28, 2017

Are people really unconcerned about rising economic inequality?

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McCall et al. provide data to counter a common social sciences research conclusion that Americans don't are about rising inequality: E...
Friday, August 25, 2017

Mammalian empathy: neural basis and behavioral manifestations

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I want to point to an interesting review by de Waal and Preston in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Here are the Abstract and a few excerpts f...
Thursday, August 24, 2017

Forget about our brains, even the most simple nerve networks defy understanding.

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If the artificial intelligence researchers who want to ‘reverse engineer the brain’ as a model for artificial general intelligence want yet ...
Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Different flavors of artificial intelligence - and, can we pull the plug?

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I want to pass on a few summary points from two recent sessions of the Chaos and Complex Systems seminar that I attend at the University of ...
Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Race based biases in deception judgements.

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From Lloyd et al. : In six studies (N = 605), participants made deception judgments about videos of Black and White targets who told trut...
Monday, August 21, 2017

Beyond anger.

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A feature of our current political polarization is the pent up anger felt by both far-left and far-right political partisans against each ot...
Friday, August 18, 2017

Hold your nose to prevent obesity?

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Smell clearly affects the anticipation and appreciation of food. Riera et al . show (in mice) that activity in olfactory sensory neurons als...
Thursday, August 17, 2017

Our broken economy, in one simple chart

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You probably have seen this chart from a NYTimes article by now, but I want to pass it on just in case. Also getting it into the list of Mi...
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Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Neural correlates of the positive effects of gratitude.

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Fox offers a review noting studies showing that gratitude activates area of the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain associated with unders...
Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Exposure to and recall of violence reduce short-term memory and cognitive control

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From Bogliacino et al. : Significance Research on violence has mainly focused on its consequences on individuals’ health and behavior. ...
Monday, August 14, 2017

Leisure just as enjoyable before as after work is done.

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From O'Brien and Roney : Four studies reveal that (a) people hold a robust intuition about the order of work and leisure and that (b) t...
Friday, August 11, 2017

Perception of being overweight predicts future health and well-being

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An interesting bit from Daly et al. : Identifying oneself as being overweight may be associated with adverse health outcomes, yet prospecti...
Thursday, August 10, 2017

In group favoritism shown by 17 month old infants.

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Jin and Baillargeon make observations that suggest an early origin of the 'us and them' perspective being taken to extremes in our ...
Wednesday, August 09, 2017

Redistribution is supported by compassion, envy, and self interest, but not sense of fairness.

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A huge collaboration looks at support for redistribution of wealth from an evolutionary psychology perspective: Significance Markets h...
Tuesday, August 08, 2017

Smiles for love, sympathy, and war.

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From Rychlowska et al. : A smile is the most frequent facial expression, but not all smiles are equal. A social-functional account holds ...
Monday, August 07, 2017

Why it's a bad idea to tell students that words are violence

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A piece by Haidt and Lukianoff contesting several points made by Lisa Friedman in a much discussed NYTimes Grey Matter essay is worth a re...
Friday, August 04, 2017

A positive mood from listening to music broadens our auditory attention.

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An addition to the literature from Putkinen et al. expanding on previous findings that positive mood broadens visual attention: Previous s...