Monday, April 30, 2018

A workshop on music and the brain.

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I want to point to this open access article describing an NIH/Kennedy Center workshop on music and the brain, hosted by National Institutes...
Friday, April 27, 2018

Risk tolerance is predicted by amygdala-prefrontal cortex connectivity

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Hoon et al. show that more nerve connections between our amygdala and the rest of the brain increase our tolerance for risk. Highlights ...
Thursday, April 26, 2018

Propagation of economic inequality through reciprocity and reputation.

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Interesting work from Hackel and Zaki ...an excerpt from their introduction, followed by their abstract: Reciprocity and reputation are cor...
Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Seeing what you feel - unconscious affect drives perception

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Siegle et al. provide yet another example of how it is impossible to separate emotions from cognition and perception: Affective realism, t...
Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Why exercise alone may not cause weight loss.

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Gretchen Reynolds points to work by Lark et al. showing that mice given the opportunity to exercise on a running wheel then are more lazy ...
Monday, April 23, 2018

How our "I" is like a virtual reality headset.

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I pass on some clips from Joshua Rothman's article on the ideas of Metzinger, Blanke and others regarding the actual nature of our expe...
Friday, April 20, 2018

Andy Clark on extended mind, A.I., and predictive processing

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I want to point to a New Yorker article by Larissa MacFarquhar describing the evolution of the ideas of philosopher of mind Andy Clark. T...
1 comment:
Thursday, April 19, 2018

Baby Boomers reaching the end of their To-Do list

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A few clips from an engaging piece by Patricia Hampl on the maturing of the baby boomer generation, those born in 1946 or later - who came ...
Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Basal forebrain and default mode network regulation.

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The basal forebrain is an ascending, activating, neuromodulatory system involved in wake–sleep regulation, memory formation, and regulation ...
2 comments:
Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Scared by the news? Take the long view.

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I tell everyone I meet or chat with to read Steven Pinker's new book "Enlightenment Now." It was the subject of a series of re...
2 comments:
Monday, April 16, 2018

Cracking the code relating speech prosody to social judgements.

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Ponsot et al. use an ingenious method to determine prosodic prototypes that govern social judgments in speech. Clips from their introducti...
Friday, April 13, 2018

Locus Coeruleus integrity and memory in aging adults

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The locus coeruleus is a deep brain nucleus whose cells synthesize noradrenaline that is sent via its axonal projections to other parts of t...
Thursday, April 12, 2018

A.I. quantifies 100 years of gender and ethnic stereotypes.

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Hutson points to work of Garg et al. that uses artificial intelligence to demonstrate how racial and gender stereotypes have changed over ...
Wednesday, April 11, 2018

The contract with authoritarianism

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Thomas Edsall offers yet another of his thoughtful well referenced essays , from which I want to pass on a few clips. You should read the e...
1 comment:
Tuesday, April 10, 2018

A small molecule for stroke therapy

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The small 'magic molecule,' a neural plasticity enhancer, found by Abe et al. to accelerate motor function recovery from brain dama...
Monday, April 09, 2018

Why senior adults get lost more frequently than younger adults.

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Strang et al. identify the brain area whose degeneration with aging underlies the loss of our navigational abilities: Highlights •Grid...
1 comment:
Friday, April 06, 2018

We choose what we want to hear.

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Billig et al. provide a nice example of how we can consciously influence what we perceive, in this case hearing a sequence of pure tones ei...
2 comments:
Thursday, April 05, 2018

Reprogramming fear responses outside of conscious awareness.

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Fascinating work by Taschereau-Dumouchel et al . suggests that our 'hard wired' fear responses can be reprogrammed or attenuated by ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, April 04, 2018

If resources are scarce infants choose ingroup support over fairness.

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From Bian et al : Significance Recent research suggests that infants possess principles of fairness and ingroup support. We examined wh...
Tuesday, April 03, 2018

Is loneliness a health epidemic?

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Two recent bits of writing on loneliness: Klinenberg suggests that the 'loneliness epidemic' that has been promoted by numerous r...
1 comment: