Thursday, May 31, 2018

A.I. needs to learn like a human child.

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Matthew Hutson summarizes efforts to nudge machine learning researchers away from the assumption that "computers trained on mountains ...
Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Intelligent brains have more sparse and efficient nerve connections.

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From Genç et al. : Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with higher intelligence are more likely to have larger gray matter...
1 comment:
Tuesday, May 29, 2018

The light and dark sides of friendship.

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I want to point to two brief reviews by Natalie Angier on friendship. She first points to work of Parkinson et al. showing similarities i...
Monday, May 28, 2018

Good things about a party drug (Ketamine).

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Ketamine, used extensively as an anesthetic during the Vietnam war and also as a party drug, has a rapidly acting antidepressant effect. A r...
Friday, May 25, 2018

Why we itch more with aging.

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Lewis and Grandl offer context and note the significance of work by by Feng et al. : It is well known that aging is accompanied by the ...
Thursday, May 24, 2018

The microbiome regulates amygdala-dependent fear recall.

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Hoban et al. show interaction between the gut microbes and expression of anxiety and fear regulated by the amygdala. Their technical abstr...
Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Research on subjective well-being.

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Given the drum beat of daily negative news we all face, it is useful to be open to facts about longer term trends showing improvement in dif...
Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Cognitive underpinnings of nationalistic ideology.

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From Zmigrod et al. : Significance Belief in rigid distinctions between the nationalistic ingroup and outgroup has been a motivating fo...
Monday, May 21, 2018

Brain changes from adolescence to adulthood

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Kundu et al. have used a new fMRI imaging technique to look at shifts in functional brain organization in subjects ranging from 8 to 46 yea...
Friday, May 18, 2018

Has artificial intelligence become alchemy?

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Mathew Hutson describes Ali Rahimi's critique of current artificial intelligence (AI) learning algorithms at a recent AI meeting: Rahi...
1 comment:
Thursday, May 17, 2018

Status threat explains 2016 presidential vote

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Niraj Chokshi points to a PNAS article by Diana Mutz .  Mutz's abstract: Significance Support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 elec...
Wednesday, May 16, 2018

The effort paradox - Effort is both costly and valued

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Inzlicht et al. do an interesting review article on how we (as well as some other animals) associate effort with reward, sometimes pursuing...
Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Transparency is the mother of 'fake news'

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Stanley Fish, writing in the NYTimes "The Stone" series suggests that fake news is in large part a product of the enthusiasm for ...
Monday, May 14, 2018

Industrial revolutions are political and social wrecking balls.

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I want to point to yet another impressive bit of research and writing by Thomas Edsall, who gives one of the most clear pictures I have see...
Friday, May 11, 2018

How not to mind if someone is lying...

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Daniel Effron describes the means by which Trump supporters, aware that many of his statements are falsehoods, manage to temper their poten...
Thursday, May 10, 2018

More on the vagaries of expertise

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To follow up on yesterday's post on the illusion of having skills, I want to point to two other articles in this vein. Herrera notes w...
Wednesday, May 09, 2018

The illusion of skill acquisition.

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Kardas and O'Brien document how watching others perform can foster an illusion of skill acquisition. Their abstract: Modern technologi...
Tuesday, May 08, 2018

Protein synthesis in brain tissue is much higher than previously thought.

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Smeets et al. use stable isotope methodology during temporal lobe resection surgery to demonstrate protein synthesis rates exceeding 3% per...
Monday, May 07, 2018

Electrical brain stimulation enhances visual memory performance

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Kucewicz et al. study patients with epilepsy undergoing evaluation for resective surgery to show that stimulation of the lateral temporal c...
Friday, May 04, 2018

A morning cortisol pulse is crucial for normal cognitive and emotional responses.

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From Kalafatakis et. al. : Significance The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is a critical neurohormonal network regulating homeosta...