Monday, October 18, 2021

Paws for thought: Dogs have a theory of mind?

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In a very simple experiment, Schünemann et al. appear to demonstrate that dogs can attribute thoughts and motivations to humans, distinguis...
Friday, October 15, 2021

The dark side of Eureka: Artificially induced Aha moments make facts feel true

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Fascinating observations from Laukkonen et al : Some ideas that we have feel mundane, but others are imbued with a sense of profundity. We ...
Wednesday, October 13, 2021

National religiosity eases the psychological burden of poverty

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From Berkessel et al. :   Significance According to a fundamental assumption in the social sciences, the burden of lower socioeconomic st...
Monday, October 11, 2021

Precision and the Bayesian brain

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I've been studying and trying to understand the new prevailing model of how our brains work that is emerging - the brain as a Baysean pr...
Friday, October 08, 2021

Reconsolidation of a reactivated memory can be altered by stress hormone levels.

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Stern's summary in Science Magazine of work by Antypa et al. : Reactivation of a memory can make it malleable to subsequent change dur...
1 comment:
Wednesday, October 06, 2021

Perceived voice emotions evolve from categories to dimensions

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Whether emotions are best characterized as discrete catagories (anger, fear, joy, etc.) or as points on continuums of valence (positive/neg...
Monday, October 04, 2021

Music can be infectious like a virus - the same mathematical model works for both

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Rosati et al. find that a standard model of epidemic disease, called the SIR model, fitts trends in song downloads over time: Popular song...
Friday, October 01, 2021

Can we get human nature right?

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Iris Berent does an interesting Perspective artice in PNAS that considers the strong intuitions that laypeople hold about human nature. Pe...
Wednesday, September 29, 2021

How the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated for COVID-19: A Darwinian perspective

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From the current issue of PNAS that just appeared I want to immediately pass on the entire text of the  open source piece by Emanuel Goldman...
4 comments:
Monday, September 27, 2021

Models of how political polarization happens

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I want to recommend the article " Modeling the power of polarization " by Waldrop in the Sept. 14th PNAS (open source). I pass on...
1 comment:
Friday, September 24, 2021

Asymptomatic infection is the pandemic’s dark matter

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Fisman and Tuite do a commentary on the article by Sah et al. (open source) that includes a great graphic showing how estimated asymptomat...
Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Is self awareness a mirage?

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David Brooks does a brief psychological essay - a sequel to one described in MindBlog's Sept. 10 post . One of the most unsettling fi...
Monday, September 20, 2021

Secure human attachment can promote support for climate change mitigation

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From Misa et al. :  Significance Attachment theory focuses on the primal form of emotional bonding between humans. Attachment is conceptua...

Monday morning tonic - A modern folk song about your brain

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Ryan Stotland, a song writer from Montreal, has pointed me to a few of his engaging pieces, and I pass on one of them to you . It rhapsodize...
Friday, September 17, 2021

How social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe

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From Van Doesum et al. (open source) I pass on the abstract, one figure, and a clip of the discussion: Significance Cooperation is key t...
Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Domestic dogs: Born human whisperers

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Vignieri does a summary of recent work by  Bray et al. and Salomans et al. in Current Biology   The closest relative to dogs, “man’s bes...
1 comment:
Monday, September 13, 2021

The 31st First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony -

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I pass on this Science.org summary of the virtual awards ceremony . Musical cats, upside-down rhinos, and submarine cockroaches took th...
Friday, September 10, 2021

You Are Not Who You Think You Are

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I want to point to the NYTimes piece by polymath David Brooks that does a nice summary of several themes that have been emphasized in MindB...
2 comments:
Wednesday, September 08, 2021

Ageing yields improvements as well as declines across attention and executive functions

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Interesting work from Verissimo et al. : Many but not all cognitive abilities decline during ageing. Some even improve due to lifelong expe...
Monday, September 06, 2021

A test of plasticity-based cognitive training in treating mild traumatic brain injury

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A study from Mahncke et al. (open source) shows that using a computerized cognitive training program that I have mentioned in previous Mind...