Tuesday, March 30, 2021

The case against reality

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Over the past year I've dipped into and out of Donald Hoffman's ideas several times, looking back at Geffer's article in Granta...
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Friday, March 26, 2021

Plasticity during our development of mapping time on to space.

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A previous mindblog post has pointed to work showing how culture shapes our spatial conceptions of time. Starr and Srinivasan now address ...
Thursday, March 25, 2021

Measuring happiness in small steps.

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I find this Brook's self help essay - that I came across while browsing the news during this morning's coffee - to be a nice brie...
Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Brain mechanism by which testosterone reduces generosity

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 Interesting work from Jianxin Ou et al.: Significance Testosterone is associated with aggressive behavior in both animals and humans. H...
Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Four distinct patterns of aging - what is your 'ageotype'?

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An interesting piece from Lanese describs work showing how aging unfolds at different rates in different tissues: The research team behi...
Monday, March 22, 2021

Points on having a self and free will.

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 A recent podcast by Sam Harris summarizing his ideas on the question of whether we have free will motivates me to do a further summary her...
Friday, March 19, 2021

Passion matters but not equally everywhere.

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From Li et al. :   Significance In three large-scale datasets representing adolescents from 59 societies across the globe, we find eviden...
Thursday, March 18, 2021

Hierarchical dynamics as a macroscopic organizing principle of the human brain

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Raut, Snyder, and Raichle do a open source description of general principles describing the functional organization of brain activity times...
Wednesday, March 17, 2021

How about another global conspiracy theory?..... Multinational mega-corporations are a global oligarchy maintaining world peace.

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I pass on this great clip from Mark Manson's weekly newletter : Watch any cheesy Hollywood action flick from the 90s or early 2000s and...
Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Traces of psychedelics make you feel good, but so does placebo.

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From Balázs Szigeti et al. : Microdosing is the practice of regularly using low doses of psychedelic drugs. Anecdotal reports suggest that ...
Monday, March 15, 2021

You should probably end a conversation sooner than you think.

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From Mastroianni et al. :  Significance Social connection is essential to physical and psychological well-being, and conversation is the p...
Friday, March 12, 2021

Turn your living room into a Neuro Lab for marketing research....

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MindBlog gets quite a few jaw-dropping emails. I'll spare you the email responding to a MindBlog post on a model of societal collapse th...
Thursday, March 11, 2021

Changing basic personality traits with a smartphone App?

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A group of Swiss researchers has taken direct aim at trying to modify, in a digital intervention experiment with ~1,500 participants, the b...
Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Evidence for an influence of meditation on immune-related pathways?

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I pass on the abstract, below, and also the entire text of a study by Chaix et al .: Highlights • We explored the methylome of train...
Tuesday, March 09, 2021

The echo chamber effect on social media

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From Cinelli et al. :   Significance We explore the key differences between the main social media platforms and how they are likely to in...
Monday, March 08, 2021

Sexiest birds on the planet - Manakins have the best moves

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Elizabeth Pennisi describes reports from a recent virtual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology on the genetic und...
Friday, March 05, 2021

Lifestyle and mental health disruptions during COVID-19

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From Giuntella et al :   Significance COVID-19 has affected daily life in unprecedented ways. Drawing on a longitudinal dataset of colleg...
Thursday, March 04, 2021

A graphic of the coming collapse of our marine ecosystems.

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I've just done a slow read through a PNAS Perspective article authored by a collaborative of mainly European scientists on " The q...
Wednesday, March 03, 2021

Wellness apps can't cure our digital dehumanization

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Wortham describes the surge in the use of wellness Apps as we have shifted our entire lives indoors this past year and notes that they can&#...
Tuesday, March 02, 2021

Avoiding psychological biases that trick your brain.

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The monthly Austin Rainbow Forum discussion group which I help organize meets on the first Sunday afternoon of each month, and I thought I w...