Friday, August 31, 2018

MindBlog is on vacation Aug. 31 - Sept. 22

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Deric and Len just arrived in Amsterdam today. We will hang out here for a few days before getting on a Viking river boat cruise from Amster...
Thursday, August 30, 2018

Collective intelligence is improved by intermittent breaks in interaction.

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Interesting work from Bernstein, Shore, and Lazer : Significance Many human endeavors—from teams and organizations to crowds and democr...
Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Robots exert peer pressure on children, but not adults.

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From Vollmer et al. : People are known to change their behavior and decisions to conform to others, even for obviously incorrect facts. Bec...
Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Reversing age related decay of brain plasticity with prozac

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Eavri et al. find that treatment of mice with fluoxetine as they are aging slows the decline of several brain plasticity makers. Even if sh...
Monday, August 27, 2018

On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit

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I want to thank MindBlog reader Mike Walterman, who sent me an email pointing me to this article (which won an Ig Nobel Prize) and commente...
Friday, August 24, 2018

The architecture of pride is a cultural universal.

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Sznycer et al. provide evidence that the pride system of WEIRD (western-ized, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) societies is ...
Thursday, August 23, 2018

Our divided brains

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I just came across an engaging video made by British psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, and want to pass it on to MindBlog readers:
Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Brain tracking of musical beat is enhanced by low frequency sounds.

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Lenc et al. find that that brain activity at the frequency of the perceived beat is selectively enhanced compared with other frequencies in...
Tuesday, August 21, 2018

The false idols of wellness.

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Jen Gunter does an engaging take-down of the wellness-industrial complex in a NYTimes piece . She suggests that the wellness industry is exp...
Monday, August 20, 2018

Mesolimbic reward circuitry influences valuation of knowledge versus ignorance.

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From Charpentier et al. : The pursuit of knowledge is a basic feature of human nature. However, in domains ranging from health to finance p...
Friday, August 17, 2018

Meditation quiets the ego? ….maybe just the opposite.

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From Gebauer et al. . In their abstract "self-enhancement bias" refers to exaggerated self views or valuations. Mind-body practi...
Thursday, August 16, 2018

The neuroscience of pessimism.

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Ann Graybiel and collaborators offer a fascinating study showing that stimulation of the brain's caudate nucleus induces persistent and...
Wednesday, August 15, 2018

More evidence against the transferable benefits of online brain training on cognitive function

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From Stojanoski et al. : There is strong incentive to improve our cognitive abilities, and brain training has emerged as a promising appro...
Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Rediscovering ancient greek music.

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I want to point to a fascinating article by Armand D’Angour at Oxford University, on efforts to reconstruct what music sounded like in anci...
Monday, August 13, 2018

Controlling drones with a body-machine interface.

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On first glance this article creeped me out, because when control of drones at a distance is mentioned I think of the drones used to bomb IS...
Friday, August 10, 2018

No gender differences in early math cognition.

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Kersey et al. have examined data from more than 500 children ranging in age from 6 months to 8 years across several tests of numerosity, co...
Thursday, August 09, 2018

A ecosystem of podcast bros who want to optimize your life.

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I'm not a podcast or video kind of person, being too impatient to listen to or watch material that I can absorb more rapidly by reading ...
Wednesday, August 08, 2018

Our weaponized social media

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I pass on a few clips from a sobering NYTimes article by Kara Swisher, who quotes from a recent Facebook post: We face determined, well-fu...
Tuesday, August 07, 2018

How pupil mimicry promotes trust.

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Prochazkova et al. show that pupil mimicry promotes trust through our theory of mind brain network: Significance Trusting others is c...
Monday, August 06, 2018

Brain regions involved in compensating for lost body parts.

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From Striem-Amit et al. : Significance What determines the role of brain regions and their plasticity when typical inputs or experience...