Thursday, June 12, 2008

Only a theory!

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Toasting the Joys of Imbibing Properly

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Check out this review by Dwight Garner of "EVERYDAY DRINKING - The Distilled Kingsley Amis". The book deals with more than the p...
Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Seeing ourselves / Seeing others - built in errors

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Emily Pronin writes a review article in Science Magazine to which my first reaction was "Duh... so what else is new?" But as I...

Dan Dennett: Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes

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My son Jonathan sent me this link to an engaging talk by Dan Dennett given some time ago. I heard it back then, and think it is worth pas...
Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Valse Romantique

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Debussy. Someone who listened my recording of this on YouTube asked how to get the sheet music to this piece, and as I sent them the infor...

Growing new brain cells enhanced by social contact

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From the editor's choice section of the May 30 issue of Science, a suggestion that increased social input from a larger number of other ...

The neural circuits of free choice

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We often face alternatives that we are free to choose between. Planning movements to select an alternative involves several areas in frontal...
Monday, June 09, 2008

The futurist: machines as smart as ourselves

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John Tierney does a nice write up of the debate over the ideas of futurist Ray Kurzweil. (I've always thought that Kurzweil was simple...
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Sarcasm and the right parahippocampal gyrus...

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Getting inside someone's else's head to realize when they are ironic, sarcastic, or angry is one of our most advanced 'theory of...
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Friday, June 06, 2008

Social heirarchy, stress, and diet

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I become increasingly convinced over time that much of what runs our behavior is is the same stuff that runs a macaque monkey, with the huma...
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Spatial memory requires new nerve cells.

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At least this appears to be the case in mice. Here is the abstract from Dupre et al. The dentate gyrus of the hippocampus is one of the few...
Thursday, June 05, 2008

Sex differences in judging attractiveness - brain correlates

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When selecting mates, men place greater importance on attractiveness than do women, whereas women favor status and resources more so than me...
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Body odors - brain processing different from similar common odors

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Here is an edited paste-up of text and abstract from Lundström et al . Humans are highly accurate at identifying individuals based solely on...
Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Update on resveratrol and aging...

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Check out Nicholas Wade's article in today's NY Times. It includes mention of the report in a PLoS ONE article by Prolla and We...

Brain Rules

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I've been sent a review copy of "Brain Rules" by John Medina. The book, which includes a DVD, is an exuberant and entertain...

Healing and sedative effects of music.

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An article by David Dobbs describes the work of musician/surgeon Claudius Conrad, who suggests that music may exert healing and sedative ef...
Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The Evolution of Music

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In the May 15 issue of Nature Josh McDermott discusses ideas about the evolution of music: The mere presence of music in every known cultur...
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Neurobiology of trust

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The June 2008 issue of Scientific American has an article by Zak on the neurobiology of trust, and the hormone oxytocin. I've previous...
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Monday, June 02, 2008

Brief Bach, and its piano and windows

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A Bach two-part invention (No. 8)

Do chimpanzees have a theory of mind? 30 years later

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Call and Tomasello offer a review in the May issue of Trends in Neuroscience on the controversial question of how much our nearest relative...