Friday, September 28, 2018

Anti-aging molecule produced during fasting.

›
Diet trends like intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets are popular for their weight-loss effects. Han et al. now show that the β-hydroxy...
Thursday, September 27, 2018

Is Democracy Dying? - Irrelevance of most humans in a technocratic future...

›
I want to point to the October issue of the Atlantic Magazine, which carries out the manifesto published in its first issue, in 1857, to “en...
2 comments:
Wednesday, September 26, 2018

The Flow Genome Project - modern snake oil? con?

›
Note added Aug.16, 2019.  Please see this update:  https://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2019/08/a-schism-in-flow-land-flow-genome.html I thou...
6 comments:
Tuesday, September 25, 2018

The war for our attention - an existential threat.

›
I want to pass on some edited clips from an article by Casey Schwartz on fundamental threats to individual and societal well-being posed b...
Monday, September 24, 2018

Infants distinguish between leaders and bullies

›
From Margoni et al : We examined whether 21-month-old infants could distinguish between two broad types of social power: respect-based powe...
Friday, September 21, 2018

Giving Ecstasy to Octopuses

›
Edsinger and Dölen have found out how to make the normally shy and retiring octopus into a party animal. They found that MDMA (phenethylami...
Thursday, September 20, 2018

Building molecular machines.

›
In an open source PNAS news article , Stephen Ornes describes efforts to build molecular machines modeled on our own biochemical processes -...
Sunday, September 16, 2018

Mapping our subjective feelings.

›
Nummenmaa et al.   do a massive job of data gathering whose purpose left me scratching my head on first sight...wondering why such an effort...
1 comment:
Thursday, September 13, 2018

Details of how a fear response is unlearned.

›
Learning requires the formation of new nerve connections. When that learning is extinguished are those connections inhibited or lost? Wan L...
Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization.

›
A sobering study by Bail et al. (open source) shows that just getting us out of our tribes' social media echo chambers does not have th...
Tuesday, September 11, 2018

How exercise slows Alzheimer’s disease.

›
Wow…if I ever needed more encouragement to keep up my exercise routines (mainly swimming, biking, and a few weights) Choi et al. provide it...
1 comment:
Monday, September 10, 2018

Robots R Us

›
Two recent NYTimes pieces - one by Sherry Turtle (professor in the program in Science, Technology and Society at M.I.T.) and the other by ...
Friday, August 31, 2018

MindBlog is on vacation Aug. 31 - Sept. 22

›
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.

›
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.

›
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

›
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

›
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.

›
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

›
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.

›
Lenc et al. find that that brain activity at the frequency of the perceived beat is selectively enhanced compared with other frequencies in...