The Curious Engineer

Deric's MindBlog

2010–2012

979 posts

← 2008–2009 2013–2017 →

2012 258

December 2012

  1. A usefull trick: Shifting attention to reduce emotional reactivity.
  2. Happy Holidays - a personal note - and MindBlog taking a break
  3. Training parts of your brain for perceptual enhancement.
  4. For guys who want to attract women?
  5. Unconscious reading and arithmetic.
  6. Grin and bear it.
  7. Brain plasticity induced by musical training.
  8. The herding hormone
  9. Brain imaging of the positive bias we place on social feedback.
  10. Enhancing social ability with brain stimulation.
  11. Thanks for not sharing, and tuning out...
  12. Living without irony?
  13. Hindsight bias.
  14. We use body cues, not facial expression, to discriminate intense positive and negative emotions.
  15. MindBlog is trying a new brain fitness app
  16. New Love, a short shelf life...
  17. Honesty requires time (and lack of justifications)
  18. Brain regions that predict and regulate risk-taking.

November 2012

  1. Where our brains predict romantic attraction at a glance.
  2. Cognitive and Emotional plasticity increased by Mindfulness training
  3. Face to face dialog is different.
  4. Body-Mind dualism - effects on health.
  5. Oxytocin nudges men to monogamy?
  6. Musical protolanguage hypothesis - support from congenital amusia.
  7. Inspired by distraction.
  8. Unpredictable love.
  9. The force of affective norms - the stranger effect
  10. How a simple innate bias might guide visual learning
  11. Carbs and self control.
  12. Self awarenss and our "spider jar"
  13. Giving time gives you time.
  14. Mental time travel and our brain's default network.
  15. Awe is good for you…
  16. Decreased amygdala neuroplasticity linked to early-life anxious temperament.
  17. Biology of social adversity.
  18. Empathy represses analytic thought, and vice versa.
  19. Physiological benefits of leadership - Importance of a sense of control
  20. Oxytocin facilitates protective responses to aversive social stimuli in men..
  21. A selective magnetic zap can alter belief formation in our brains.
  22. Are drug effects and placebo effects additive or synergistic?

October 2012

  1. I R’ Us - a waking mashup
  2. Mouse song: features similar to human and bird song.
  3. Brain correlates of switching consciousness on and off again
  4. A new study on implicit attitudes and voting..
  5. Gender bias is alive and well in academic science.
  6. Resilience to stress replacing happiness as fashionable research topic
  7. Mechanism of unconscious internal bias in our choices
  8. Memory fading? Try some dopamine...
  9. A revolution in understanding our genetics, personality, and disease.
  10. Learning new information during sleep.
  11. The Neurochemistry of Storytelling.
  12. Brain Showbiz...
  13. Conscious awareness not required for our placebo or nocebo responses.
  14. Clever crows! Now shown to reason about hidden causes.
  15. Kids as little scientists - early academics can be misguided
  16. Opps! Sex does decrease human male lifespan.
  17. Followup on evolutionary psychology as ' just so stories'
  18. Young children and adults: intrinsically motivated to see others helped
  19. MRI of reading Jane Austen
  20. Rethinking sleep - brief wakeful resting boosts new memories over the long term.
  21. Regulators of prosocial and empathetic behavior.
  22. Idle Minds - why are our brains so active when doing ‘nothing’?
  23. Interpersonal closeness and brain social reward processing
  24. Want to be unhappy? Trying to be happy will do it!

September 2012

  1. Just so stories about the evolution of our minds.
  2. Voting patterns: “I” value competence but “we” value social competence
  3. Combat stress causes long term changes in brain connectivity.
  4. Male sex hormones alter the brain after exercise.
  5. On being nothing...
  6. Signing beforehand increases honesty.
  7. A personal history.
  8. Distinct prefrontal areas regulating cognitive control and value decisions.
  9. Motivation influences how time flies when you’re having fun.
  10. Neural signature of affiliative emotions.
  11. Do implicit attitudes predict actual voting behavior?
  12. Psychological distance enhances conformity to group norms.
  13. Zero effect of caloric restriction on lifespan
  14. Cognitive load disrupts implicit theory of mind processing.
  15. Why the sex gap in affective disorders?
  16. Investing in Karma - When Wanting Promotes Helping
  17. Alcohol and group formation.
  18. Where thinking about thinking happens in the brain.
  19. The unimaginable complexity of our evolved human systems.
  20. Mapping discrete and dimensional emotions onto the brain.
  21. How childhood musical training shapes the adult brain.

August 2012

  1. Scientific basis of a psychotherapy.
  2. Freud, the tea party, and deluded individualism.
  3. Wednesday morning music: Faure Barcarolle No. 1
  4. The quotable Gore Vidal.
  5. Effect of early institutionalization on brain development.
  6. The mis-use of Science: PseudoNeuroscience sways judges' sentencing.
  7. Reconstructing intolerance.
  8. A musical offering - Debussy L'Isle Joyeuse
  9. Nocebo effect - the harm expectations can do.
  10. Simple mechanisms can generate wealth inequality.
  11. The Anxious Idiot
  12. A friday homily - "Symptoms of Inner Peace"
  13. A choice mind-set perpetuates acceptance of wealth inequality.
  14. We are meant to become cyborg.
  15. If you are not in the group, you will not be in consciousness.
  16. Culture of Empathy
  17. More on Haidt and Moral Psychology
  18. Men with wider faces are more generous.
  19. A MindBlog Retrospective
  20. The MindBlog queue: moral responsibility; evolution of music; booze and hypnosis
  21. How the mighty have fallen...
  22. Brain correlates of out of body and depersonalization experiences

July 2012

  1. Beyond the blink - the art of delay
  2. Aphorisms and the Commodification of Wisdom
  3. Compassion towards one person generalizes to others.
  4. Half a heartbeat can chill out our response to threat.
  5. Why are conservatives happier?
  6. MindBlog summer vacation schedule
  7. Monday music offering. Faure Barcarolle No. 4
  8. Religion replenishes self-control.
  9. Scary?..Google X making a digital human brain?
  10. Thinking in a foreign language reduces decision biases.
  11. 'Crazy busy' and internet distractions...
  12. A Faure Barcarolle
  13. Metarepresentations explain human uniqueness.
  14. Mechanisms of white matter changes induced by meditation.
  15. Hierarchy increases group effectiveness.
  16. Connectivity of prefrontal cortex predicts cognitive control and intelligence
  17. Hygiene can hurt.

June 2012

  1. Life satisfaction and economic growth.
  2. Synchronized brain activity across individuals during emotional arousal.
  3. Cumulative life stress decreases working memory and prefrontal cortex size.
  4. Finding genes that affect brain integrity and intellectual performance
  5. Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking.
  6. How depressives surf the web.
  7. Highjacked brain fallacy, and free will illusion going mainstream.
  8. Exercise bad for you?
  9. The burdens of being a biped
  10. A musical offering.
  11. Skin Pics
  12. The science of gaydar
  13. Brain correlates of resting, alert, and meditation states.
  14. Your great grandparent's experience might have altered your stress response.
  15. MindBlog's other lives
  16. Different sorts of suspicion - brain correlates
  17. Why the liberals lost Wisconsin, and Obama may lose.
  18. Deep brain stimulation, fear extinction, and OCD suppression
  19. Embodied metaphors and creative acts
  20. The power of network visualization.
  21. Unconscious actions of testosterone

May 2012

  1. Quantitative analysis of language evolution.
  2. Social jetlag and obesity.
  3. Social interactions prime us for motor empathy or resonance.
  4. Serotonin modulates reward value in our decision making.
  5. The neurogenetics of nice.
  6. Higher maternal cortisol correlates with later affective problems.
  7. Seeing where our brains think about our thinking
  8. My amygdala made me do it...
  9. Further cognitive advantages of bilinguals.
  10. Reunion of Bownds' Vision Laboratory
  11. Emotion reversed in the brains of left handers.
  12. Compounds that increase muscle endurance also enhance cognition
  13. Universality of facial expressions of emotion challenged.
  14. Linking social environment to gene expression.
  15. Egalitarian behavior and the insula.
  16. Choosing whether you are anxious or chilled out - a toolkit.
  17. 12 month old human infants recognize stable social dominance relations.
  18. Further work on when two heads are better or worse than one.
  19. Brain correlates of whether we help someone suffering.
  20. Metaphors are the tip of the mind's iceberg.
  21. Homophobic? Maybe you're gay!
  22. Structures of arousal and calm - This year's MindBlog Web Lecture

April 2012

  1. Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief.
  2. We don't project our visceral states onto dissimilar others.
  3. Facial theory of politics
  4. Better brains through exercise
  5. Walking on air.
  6. Physical exertion can impair recall and recognition.
  7. Increases in stress and amygdala volume reversed by mindfulness meditation.
  8. Both mental and physical effort rise from deep sub-cortical structures.
  9. Young blood enhances repair of old brains.
  10. John Cleese on creativity
  11. Swarm Intelligence - The Simpleton Ant and the Intelligent Ants
  12. Two different ways of making choices in two brain areas.
  13. More on why exercise is so good for us...
  14. Seeing the whole reduces access to its parts.
  15. Clothes can invade our body and brain...
  16. When two heads are worse than one - the cost of collaboration
  17. Why Curry, Wine And Coffee Cure Most Ails
  18. How curriculum reform can decrease learning.
  19. Our brain structure changes after two hours of learning.
  20. The happiest countries? I'm confused.
  21. Homophobic? Maybe you're Gay!
  22. Colored brains carpet bomb the web.
  23. Innovation relies on the obscure.

March 2012

  1. Feeling the moves - motor empathy with expert performance
  2. The Righteous Mind
  3. Everything Is The Way It Is Because It Got That Way
  4. Handedness affects the coding of affective information.
  5. Emotion in Eastern and Western Music Mirrors Vocalization
  6. Eyes as location of the self.
  7. The importance of epigenetics in understanding nature/nurture interactions
  8. Belief in and memory for an event can be independent constructs.
  9. Beyond mirror neurons - the neuroscience of real social encounters
  10. Our brains lengthen perceptions of biological motions.
  11. Meditation practice increases brain size and gyrification
  12. Serotonin and reaction to unfairness.
  13. Elegance of our brain lies in its inelegance.
  14. Cognitive enhancement is in our futures.
  15. The debate over the evolution of altruism.
  16. Why humans made it, and chimps didn’t
  17. Recurring patterns in music from Bach to Scott Joplin
  18. The rich behaving badly
  19. Our brain connectivity predicts perceptual task performance.
  20. Childhood maltreatment reduces brain volume.
  21. Dim minds and dark attitudes.
  22. Psychological benefits of religiosity ride on cultural values.
  23. More on the discorrelation of happiness and material welfare
  24. Neophily - Exuberance for Novelty predicts well being.

February 2012

  1. The map in our head is oriented north.
  2. Early maternal support predicts larger brain volumes at school age.
  3. How to get the rich to share their marbles.
  4. Cognitive dissonance reduction in conservative and liberal Christians
  5. Desperately seeking simplicity.
  6. An App for your anxiety...
  7. Science of minus 10 Biology iPad App
  8. Our brains as prediction machines - a unified view of mind and action
  9. Our brain's grasp of metaphors grounded in perception?
  10. Negative social interactions and body inflammation.
  11. How psychedelics affect our brain - unconstrained cognition
  12. Life is a digital code.
  13. Testosterone, digit ratio, and abstract reasoning ability
  14. Us vs. them in context.
  15. Even if the juice is a placebo...
  16. Juice up your Valentine's day!
  17. Don't go to bed angry...
  18. Our connectomes 'R Us?
  19. Massage therapy suppresses expression of inflammatory genes after exercise..
  20. The good life can be a killer.
  21. Should I use condoms for sex? The millisecond scan.
  22. Simplicity itself.

January 2012

  1. Our Thrifty Brains.
  2. A simple way to attentuate emotional arousal?
  3. You think, therefore I am.
  4. Cellular 'self eating' accounts for some beneficial effects of exercise.
  5. The psychology of perceived wealth.
  6. Bounded rationality.
  7. The age of anxiety
  8. On Solitude.
  9. Chill-out architecture - The use of tree metaphors
  10. Living large - how the powerful overestimate.
  11. My pushing back against our diffusion into “the cloud”
  12. Remembering a rosy future.
  13. Our bias against creativity
  14. IQ scores are malleable.
  15. BioDigitalHuman - You've got to check out this site!
  16. Classic versus modern violins: beauty in the eye of the beholder?
  17. Are the Humanities becoming the “Animal Sciences”
  18. Structural changes in adult brains caused by acquiring knowledge
  19. Can ignorance promote democracy?
  20. Dynamics of improvising together.
  21. Have a scary memory? Erase it with prozac plus psychotherapy.
  22. Our genes and our behavior, a paradigm shift in our understanding

2011 323

December 2011

  1. Friends with benefits - pet ownership and well-being
  2. Local Jekyll and global Hyde - duality of face perception
  3. Leaning to the left makes an object seem smaller.
  4. Musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently.
  5. Good minus God - distrust of atheists
  6. Prosocial behavior as intrinsic to our brains in absence of social pressure
  7. Single nucleotide change in oxytocin receptor gene decreases stress relief by social support.
  8. A face only an investor could love...
  9. Our mindreading of another person depends on how much skin we see!
  10. Why do humans collaborate so much?
  11. Video at the speed of light.
  12. Taming human conflicts in the real world
  13. Our biological immune system activates our behavioral immune system.
  14. Heirarchies of empathy in the brain
  15. Empathy in rats - a great video
  16. Chemical and social mechanisms of self healing.
  17. Perfecting the not quite perfect
  18. REM sleep chills out amygdala, reduces emotional reactivity
  19. How exercise benefits the brain - importance of BNDF
  20. Psychopathy correlates with reduced prefrontal connectivity.
  21. Purging senescent cells can prevent some ills of aging.
  22. Ignoring the bad news...the brain’s rose colored glasses
  23. A gene that makes you appear to be kinder...
  24. Why does synesthesia persist in the population?
  25. Our brain's fusiform "face" area is about holistic processing of any familiar complex visual input.

November 2011

  1. Neural (MRI) correlates of effective learning.
  2. The speed-accuracy tradeoff in the elderly brain.
  3. How not to revert to habit under stress...
  4. A nap enhances relational memory
  5. Brief musical training in kids enhances other high level cognitive skills.
  6. Quantitating how positive emotions increase longevity.
  7. Compatibility of Neuroscience and Free Will? - a further discussion
  8. How to qualify as a social partner.
  9. Improve your motor memory!
  10. MindBlog back in Fort Lauderdale, FL
  11. Resonating with others: changes in motor cortex
  12. Brain areas that increase in size with social network size.
  13. Synaptic switch to social status in medial prefrontal cortex.
  14. On understanding our brains...
  15. Where in the brain does 'negative surprise' happen?
  16. Insensitivity to social reputation in autism.
  17. Our resting brain networks can be formed by multiple architectures.
  18. When it's an error to mirror...
  19. Booze and our brains.
  20. Dynamnic views of MindBlog
  21. Economic inequality is linked to biased self-perception
  22. Climate change and human crisis
  23. Narcissistic Leaders and Group Performance
  24. The evolution of cognition

October 2011

  1. Very brief meditation training produces brain changes associated with positive emotions.
  2. Adolescent brain changes while viewing media violence
  3. A Fauré Nocturne - new born chicks would like it....
  4. Our "divided brain" - an animated tutorial.
  5. Women's memory enhanced by lower male voice pitch.
  6. Human genes still evolve rapidly
  7. The brain's fountain of youth
  8. "Neurotrash"
  9. Brief neuroscience video-tutorials
  10. The science of irrationality.
  11. The science of psychological change
  12. Dissolution of the social contract
  13. Differences in reality monitoring correlate with prefrontal cortex variations
  14. Merging emotional information from voice and faces in the brain.
  15. Measuring Zeitgeist from the Tweet stream.
  16. Fatherhood decreases testosterone.
  17. Mimicry can foster both rapport and threat.
  18. The Jekyll and Hyde of emotional intelligence
  19. How our brain links to our immune system via vagus nerve
  20. Be Happy! ... regulate your own amygdala
  21. Psychological resources correlate with an Oxytocin receptor gene.
  22. Income inequality, happiness, and trust.
  23. Think away colds, and...Less fat, less depression

September 2011

  1. There is nothing paranormal about near-death experiences.
  2. Longevity gene debate.
  3. Yoghurt lowers stress in the brain.
  4. Infidelity yields better offspring
  5. Atul Gawande on improving skilled performance by coaching
  6. The Buddha's Biology
  7. Delayed gratification - 40 years later.
  8. Nurture affects gender differences in spatial abilities
  9. Testosterone modulates brain talk in social emotional behavior.
  10. Evolutionary rationale for positive illusions.
  11. Rewriting self-fulfilling prophecies about social rejection
  12. Musical expertise boosts language perception
  13. Neural correlates of pain reduction through meditation
  14. Why laughing feels so good...
  15. Priming for self-esteem improves performance.
  16. Brain changes following cognitive behavioral therapy for psychosis.
  17. Talk about a nasty trick..plus, beta males win
  18. Civil conflict correlates with climate change.
  19. Free Will: Neuroscience vs. Philosophy
  20. Behavioral and Brain Science Freebies...
  21. Deficits in cognitive control correlate with depression and rumination.
  22. Our economic history
  23. Neuroeconomics and the current financial crisis.
  24. Our brains beat with the music...
  25. The genetics of cognition
  26. Women on the make are better at spotting gay men
  27. Ironic effects of dietary supplements
  28. Microbes run the world

August 2011

  1. G male
  2. Just looking at the American flag can make you a Republican?
  3. Fat mice live longer with resveratrol.
  4. Estimates of social influence - the "unfriending problem"
  5. Synthesis of new brain cells and social dysfunction.
  6. Brain excitation/inhibition balance and social dysfunction
  7. A unified bottleneck in our brains limits our attention
  8. New views on cancer - 99% of the functioning genes in our bodies are not ‘ours’.
  9. Trying to live forever - Centenarians have plenty of bad habits
  10. Neotony - how long does our pre-frontal cortex stay young?
  11. The dark side of emotion in decision making.
  12. Why worry? It's good for you.
  13. Class warfare and voting
  14. Information and ideas are not the same thing!
  15. How google effects our memory.
  16. The art of musical notation - scoring outside the lines
  17. Cowboys and Pit Crews
  18. Atul Gawande on aging.
  19. Do 18-month old humans have a theory of mind?
  20. In a nutshell....
  21. Effects of oxytocin in humans - a critical review
  22. Macho mice make manly melodies.
  23. Boredom - a Lively History
  24. Collectivism promotes bribery
  25. Diversity is Universal
  26. The sunny side of smut.

July 2011

  1. MindBlog retrospective: A new description of our inner lives.
  2. The utility of being vague.
  3. Inappropriate cravings? Hold a magnet by your head!
  4. Watching Humor in the Brain
  5. Confabulation
  6. The importance of our brains’ resting state activity.
  7. Pressure to conform - survey of tight and loose cultures.
  8. The Forbidden Fruit Intuition - our inability to cope with what we know about our minds.
  9. Clips: Animal Joys - Diet and Weight
  10. Our Umwelt
  11. Peer pressure influences our memories
  12. Stress and the City
  13. Effects of blue light on our memory, cognition, and circadian thythm
  14. Watching contextual memories
  15. Dopamine, reward, and beliefs
  16. Varies of reward in the brain.
  17. Our brains are hard-wired to make poor choices about harm prevention.
  18. How we form beliefs
  19. Married, with Infidelities
  20. Emotion hot spots in our brain - modern phrenology
  21. We are lost in thought.
  22. Introspection and shyness - evolutionary tactic?
  23. MindBlog retrospective - 3rd and 1st person narrative in personality change
  24. In the light of evolution - Cooperation and conflict
  25. MindBlog's most popular posts
  26. On the art of puttering...

June 2011

  1. Consciousness - correlation is not a cause
  2. Internet use restructures the brain
  3. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex and judgement bias.
  4. How our attention can be highjacked.
  5. Debate on mechanisms for change..continued
  6. Does cognitive training work?
  7. Why ketamine ( 'special K') makes you happy
  8. The visual impact of gossip
  9. Innate Euclidean geometry.
  10. The amygdala - not command central for our fear reactions?
  11. Article of the future...
  12. Why we laugh
  13. Techie nirvana - Google's human android
  14. Liszt - Années de pèlerinage - Vallee d'Obermann
  15. The Empathetic Brain
  16. The quest for validation.
  17. Shame and honor drive cooperation
  18. Debate on optimal mechanisms for political and social change
  19. Searching for the True Self
  20. A devolution of modern nation states?
  21. Chopin Fantasy in F Minor
  22. Dopamine gene variants correlate with learning style.
  23. A Haydn Fantasy
  24. Social influence undermines "The Wisdom of Crowds"
  25. Antiinflammatory drugs oppose antidepressant drug action
  26. The echo chamber online.
  27. Mozart - Fantasia in C Minor
  28. “Representational rigidity” in our aging brains
  29. MindBlog posts this summer.

May 2011

  1. Nightclub owner? Use perfume...
  2. Control your spotlight
  3. Predicting the conscious experience of other people
  4. Musical experience enhances hearing in the aging brain
  5. Guilt motivates cooperation
  6. A correlate of our distractability in our brain's parietal cortex
  7. Is happiness overrated?
  8. Language processing in our visual brain
  9. Twitter/Facebook/Our Brain
  10. No sleep, better mood...
  11. Academics and health of minority students improved by brief social-belonging intervention
  12. Nice guys finish first...
  13. Cultural attractors
  14. Testosterone and economic risk aversion.
  15. Education, religion, and wealth
  16. Black Swan Technology
  17. Dirty Liberals!
  18. A monkey could paint that well!... apparently not
  19. New happiness research
  20. Brain Buzz, a 9 volt battery and some wires...
  21. Language evolution inferred from phonemic diversity
  22. Slow spring at Twin Valley
  23. Monkey memory.
  24. Increasing vanity in our culture.
  25. Healing anxiety disorders with cortisol
  26. Heartbeat synchrony between performer and crowd - emotional resonance
  27. Have your legal hearing just after the judge’s lunch break.
  28. Physical pain and social rejection: same brain areas
  29. "Evolving the I" a MindBlog lecture at the Univ. of Wisconsin
  30. Why old folks don’t sleep as well.

April 2011

  1. Yet another distortion of democracy.
  2. Religion and brain atrophy...
  3. How to decrease belief in intelligent design
  4. Liberal and Conservative brains
  5. Multitasking compromises short term memory in seniors.
  6. Neuromarketing - not ready for prime time...
  7. Juvenile training improves adult skills - at a cost.
  8. Pain reduction by mindfulness meditation - brain correlates
  9. Self control makes us angry
  10. Dialing numbers on your cellphone can elicit concepts
  11. Outsourcing self regulation
  12. A long, diligent life...
  13. Disorder promotes discrimination and stereotyping
  14. Hurt the flesh, cleanse the soul....
  15. Improving your cognitive toolkit - VII
  16. Music and language - differing brain activations
  17. Elephants know when they need a helping trunk.
  18. The brains of experts - due to predispositions and/or training?
  19. Competitions for memory, it's stabilization, and a memory enhancer
  20. Increasing the viewed size of a painful body part reduces the pain
  21. Dynamic Views of Mindblog
  22. A bad taste in the mouth - more on embodied cognition and emotion

March 2011

  1. MindBlog is on the road.
  2. Blocking arthritis pain in the brain.
  3. Sleep deprivation biases economic risk-taking.
  4. A revolution in evolution - cooperation
  5. Experimental Philosophy addresses Free Will vs. Determinism
  6. Us vs. Them - what shapes the urge to harm rivals?
  7. The symphony of trading.
  8. A new view of early human social evolution
  9. How to grow a human mind...
  10. A new blog - David Brooks' psychology blog.
  11. Chaos and complexity in financial markets and nuclear meltdowns
  12. In Vino Veritas - Wine drinking and mortality
  13. Women's underrepresentation in science
  14. All the Aggregation That’s Fit to Aggregate
  15. The madness of trivial decisions
  16. Predicting volition - Free will redux
  17. Chimpanzees know that others make inferences
  18. Improving your cognitive toolkit - VI
  19. Cats with thumbs...
  20. The beginning and middle of human history
  21. The New Humanism
  22. Science starts early.
  23. A map of well-being
  24. The significance of self control.
  25. The Threatening Scent of Fertile Women
  26. Hugs follow a 3-second rule.
  27. Hope over experience - the persistence of optimism
  28. Happy people live longer.
  29. Conscious attention influences unconscious cognition.
  30. Go easy on yourself...
  31. Sharing the spoils develops early in humans.

February 2011

  1. Politics in Madison, WI
  2. Improving your cognitive toolkit - V
  3. A potpuorri of almost-posts
  4. How stress damages or enhances different aspects of our vision
  5. Uncertainty increases romantic attraction
  6. Strategies for remembering.
  7. Improving your cognitive toolkit - IV
  8. Empire at the End of Decadence
  9. What conversatives really want.
  10. A Sunday School Hymn - Evolution Made Us All
  11. Suppressing emotions correlates with larger prefrontal cortical area
  12. Placebo in 3 minutes
  13. Blue-enriched light keeps us alert...
  14. Skeuomorphs - why innovation is also a throwback
  15. Sleep enhances memories relevant to the future.
  16. Foundations of religious belief
  17. Improving your cognitive toolkit - part III
  18. Anniversary of Deric's MindBlog
  19. The Net Delusion
  20. The size weight illusion is not an illusion for throwing.
  21. Preverbal infants mentally represent social dominance.
  22. Bias within - politics of the professoriat
  23. Walking improves your memory.
  24. Did Frédéric Chopin have temporal lobe epilepsy?
  25. Improving your cognitive toolkit - part II
  26. Skilled object recognition uses both our left and right hemispheres
  27. The biology of morality
  28. Meanwhile...back in Wisconsin
  29. What would improve your cognitive toolkit?
  30. Modern virtue - the religion of physical fittness

January 2011

  1. Modern conversation.
  2. Is our technology replacing our identity?
  3. Our social brain - what are smiles for?
  4. Our Guts 'R Us
  5. Some factoids on exercise and health.
  6. Why loneliness is hazardous to your health
  7. The chemistry of enjoying music
  8. Age defying or denying? Real life among the old old.
  9. Distortions of mind perception in psychopathology
  10. Smart Phone people...
  11. Recursive inference of the beliefs of others.
  12. Good Dog!
  13. Financial reward undermines intrinsic incentives.
  14. Living for "The Whoosh"
  15. Examples of the relativity of our sensing time...
  16. Modeling the World in the Brain
  17. Further debate on anti-aging molecule resveratrol
  18. The dark side of oxytocin
  19. Difficulty of seeing changes in moving objects.
  20. How our brains optimize our rewards
  21. Yet another ESP controversy.
  22. Our digital afterlives - Deric's version
  23. Gay or Straight - same brain regions activated by love partner.
  24. "Not tonight, dear" chemical signal in women's tears.
  25. People believe they have more free will than others
  26. Is the face alive? - the eyes tell us.
  27. The social sense - Theory of mind in 7-month old human infants.
  28. Brain correlates of choice-induced preference change.
  29. Influence of language on perception

2010 398

December 2010

  1. The wolfpack effect.
  2. A contrarian view of energy prospects.
  3. New brain circuits form online during rapid learning
  4. Paying the price for a longer life.
  5. Placebo pills work without deception
  6. English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently.
  7. You've got to have (150) friends...
  8. The science of cities.
  9. Listening to your heart
  10. Deric's MindBlog for smartphones
  11. The dark side of inflammation
  12. Google's body browser
  13. Why diets fail.
  14. Sigh....
  15. Regulation of distress better with thicker prefrontal cortex.
  16. Out of our brains - extended mind continues
  17. Reducing depression with light stimulation of medial prefrontal cortex
  18. Time, space, and number - evolved brain computations
  19. Culturomics
  20. "Me-We" - Obama and the passions
  21. Female genes respond to winners versus losers
  22. Why women apologize more than men.
  23. Amazing moving graphic - history of well-being
  24. Turning back aging - The 91 year old athlete
  25. The truth wears off...
  26. More on efficacy/mechanism of acupuncture...
  27. The weather - why I am in Florida
  28. Imagining eating reduces actual eating
  29. Sleights of Mind
  30. The one night stand gene?
  31. Complete heresy: life based on arsenic instead of phosphorus??
  32. Narcissists - an endangered species?
  33. How reading rewires the brain.
  34. Advanced human achievement - simple reinforcement learning?
  35. Political Leapfrogging
  36. What makes the human brain special...
  37. How comfort foods reduce stress.

November 2010

  1. This is your brain on metaphors
  2. Brain clutter - what's left undone lingers on
  3. Social cognition in reptiles
  4. Becoming a GPS zombie - eroding your brain.
  5. Trouble with numbers? Try zapping your brain.
  6. Predicting the future with web search queries
  7. Attention span and focus - problem/not a problem?
  8. Greedy Geezers
  9. Using invisible visual signals to see things.
  10. How life experiences alter what our genes do.
  11. Tiny touches of the tongue - the elegance of cats.
  12. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.
  13. Great pianists of the 20th century
  14. Color of ambient light directly influences our brain's emtional processing
  15. Reducing pain by touching ourselves
  16. How the leopard got its spots...
  17. Another reason exercise inhibits aging - boost of muscle stem cells.
  18. Dancing Scientists
  19. Robust exchanges on MindBlog
  20. Neural signature in the brain of skilled negotiators
  21. The recent election - gridlock or compromise?
  22. Why our brains go for market bubbles.
  23. Calculate your endurance
  24. Our minds extend beyond our heads.
  25. Light at night makes us fat.
  26. Oxytocin selectively improves social cognition.

October 2010

  1. de Waal on the Biology of Morality
  2. How rummination can both help and hinder.
  3. MindBlog is on the road.
  4. Why that nearby cell phone conversation bothers you...
  5. The quest for simplicity.
  6. A Brahms Rhapsody for monday morning...
  7. How to make yourself more powerful...
  8. Brain correlates of whether we decide to help others.
  9. Magic numbers
  10. A dog's dish - half empty or half full?
  11. Earlier retirement, earlier memory decline.
  12. Do cell phones cause cancer?
  13. What makes groups of people smart?
  14. Lecture slides from the "theory of everything" talk.
  15. Followup on MindBlog's Istanbul lecture on our subjective "I"
  16. Serotonin regulates our moral judgements
  17. A New Theory of Everything?
  18. The science of us...
  19. Exercise improves executive function in our aging brains
  20. A presumed cognitive divide between monkeys and ourselves disappears
  21. Why indiscretions appear youthful.
  22. A Brahms Intermezzo
  23. Embodyment of our emotions in our brains.
  24. This Year's Ig Nobels
  25. The fraying thread of civil society
  26. Brain correlates of introspective accuracy.
  27. Mindblog does another anti-aging experiment.
  28. A Brahms Romance
  29. The new international economic order.
  30. Continuation of "The Secret" scam in "The Power" exploits design weakness in our minds.
  31. Our brain connections become more sparse and sharp with aging.

September 2010

  1. High income improves life evaluation, but not emotional well-being
  2. Worm brains N' Us - a hint of the ancestral brain
  3. The Willy Street Fair - the 70's still live in Madison, WI....
  4. Choice blindness at the marketplace
  5. Does the Digital Classroom Enfeeble the Mind?
  6. Do social moods predict financial markets, not vice versa?
  7. Internet and Society - Swept into Superficiality
  8. Language about motion causes motion adaptation of our visual cortex.
  9. Children, Wired: For Better and for Worse
  10. Aging - How alcohol is good for you
  11. A Dictionary of the Near Future
  12. Men's dance moves that catch a woman's eyes.
  13. Differences in brain connectivity drive cognitive differences
  14. The brain's fight against aging
  15. Seeking emotional support - effects of oxytocin gene and cultural variation.
  16. Learning tricks
  17. The anxiolytic power of religion
  18. Google’s Earth
  19. Laughter therapy
  20. Language shaping cognition - a followup
  21. How language shapes our thinking
  22. Sealing the emotions genie
  23. Robbed of lasting pleasures by drugs
  24. Money looms larger to the powerless.
  25. Social learning - The importance of copying others

August 2010

  1. Doing good (or evil) increases physical strength
  2. Making decisions: Optimally interacting minds
  3. Religion and spatial cognition
  4. More trusting people are better lie detectors
  5. Upstairs-Downstairs pathways regulating our cravings.
  6. Delusions of Gender.
  7. Metacognitive deficits in public political discourse
  8. Inflammatory and neural responses to social rejection.
  9. The psychology of possibility.
  10. Delaying age-related damange to nerves and muscle
  11. Predicting inherited risk for anxiety
  12. Oxytocin makes people trusting, but not gullible.
  13. Coping with stress stimulates new brain cell growth.
  14. Solving protein folding - humans outperform computers
  15. A Brahms Capriccio as a TGIF offering...
  16. Watching our brains perceive the intentions of others.
  17. My hero questioned...
  18. Paradigm change in the practice of science?
  19. Stereotypes can prevent perceptual learning.
  20. Exercise moderates anger
  21. Effect of wilderness vs. tech-world on the brain
  22. "The Law of Emotional Balance?"
  23. Seeking immortality in words, not religion
  24. A custody battle for the mind - brain genes from different parents
  25. Where the brain stores emotional memories
  26. Sex at Dawn
  27. The first church of robotics
  28. Similar brain cortex changes during human development and evolution
  29. We generalize negative more than positive stimuli
  30. Trying too hard....
  31. Are self-reflective people more depressed?
  32. The Web and the end of forgetting
  33. Good and Bad in the Hands of Politicians
  34. Deconstructing science blogs
  35. Speakers and Listeners - fMRI shows coupled brains
  36. Universities on the Web
  37. Effect of irrelevant events on voters' evaluations
  38. Being wrong...
  39. I tweet, therefore I am...
  40. (Mis)understanding mirror neurons

July 2010

  1. Resilience in the face of adversity - brain correlates
  2. Reciprocity engages our brain's reward system.
  3. Twitter-mood
  4. Altruism as good business - shoppers who care
  5. Monetary favors bias judgement in unrelated domains
  6. Our bias towards negative interpretation of ambiguous faces
  7. Nuturing robots
  8. Perceptual training enhances working memory in older adults.
  9. Sex promotes generation of new brain cells.
  10. MRI evidence on how hypnosis works.
  11. Directly controlling 'fear' cells in the brain.
  12. Fool the brain to enhance performance with a carbohydrate rinse
  13. Our dread of idleness
  14. Mindblog on the road
  15. Acetaminophen (tylenol) reduces physical and social pain.
  16. A growing isolated brain can organize itself.
  17. Dopamine, Time, and Our Impulsivity
  18. Motivating only half our bodies.
  19. The mind is the body - tumor suppression by enriched environment
  20. How superstition improves performance
  21. Behavioral economics as a palliative cop-out
  22. Thriving on selfishness
  23. Moral evaluations influence our mental state ascriptions.
  24. How exercise stimulates brain nerve cell growth
  25. Factoids about aging, reaching 70
  26. A sinister bias in calling football (soccer) fouls
  27. The benefits of 'losing it'
  28. Music sightreading skill - practice doesn't make perfect
  29. Goal pursuit outside our conscious awareness
  30. A smooth botox face inhibits emotion processing
  31. The reading module of our brains.
  32. Physical contact and financial risk taking
  33. Mind reading - How to seem telepathic
  34. How our brains resolve competing social signals
  35. The virtues of a wandering mind.
  36. Brain correlates of behavioral traits
  37. Being calmed by a machine.
  38. Wealth diminishes our ability to savor the ordinary
  39. Brain imaging can predict behavior days in advance.
  40. What we touch influences social judgements.
  41. More on enhanced brain processes in musicians.
  42. How we learn skilled motor sequences
  43. More on testosterone and human trust.
  44. Prefrontal Reward Prediction Errors in Alcohol Dependence

June 2010

  1. Dysregulation Nation
  2. The classical art of memory
  3. Binge drinking and the adolescent brain.
  4. Being hungry or full influences our risk taking.
  5. MRI can decode subjective, but not objective, memories
  6. How we read the minds of others.
  7. "The Singularity" - and Singularity University
  8. Presidential Harrisment
  9. Concert pianists as genius models?
  10. Antipsychotic drug shrinks the brain
  11. Sense of Wonder
  12. The Devil's grimmace.
  13. Oxytocin: out-group aggression, social cues, and amygdalar action
  14. The Wayward Mind
  15. Followup on acupuncture
  16. Is life worth living?
  17. Are you holding your breath?
  18. Associating a nerve growth factor with positive affect - depression therapy?
  19. Is that my Mobile ringing? Rapid brain processing
  20. Acupuncture's secret revealed?
  21. Cognitive changes caused by single exposure to a placebo
  22. Our brains on the internet - smarter, dumber, neither?
  23. Believing is seeing.
  24. MindBlog back in Madison - the anterior insula rests from risk alertness
  25. Observing disease symptoms causes a more vigorous immune response
  26. You are how you eat - fast food and impatience
  27. "Vital Exhaustion"
  28. Austin pictures
  29. Testosterone decreases trust.
  30. Neural processing of risk.
  31. More on clever crows and complex cognition.
  32. Older is happier
  33. Keep Austin Weird
  34. Washing away postdecisional dissonance
  35. Brunch at Fonda San Miquel in Austin
  36. Prozac reverses maturation of some brain cells
  37. Six Famous Geniuses You Didn't Know Were Perverts
  38. MindBlog in Austin Texas
  39. Aging brains are less able to recover from the effects of stress
  40. Michelangelo as brain anatomist
  41. Overimitation of adults by kids is a cultural universal.
  42. Prehistoric makeover
  43. The cognitive niche
  44. Contra doomsayers, a bright future beckons?

May 2010

  1. Mindblog as dutiful tourist
  2. A lecture and piano recital in Istanbul
  3. The chemistry of commitment
  4. More on the science of morality - baby morals.
  5. Nasal attraction
  6. Eipgenetics and cognitive aging
  7. More on creativity and the brain
  8. Chimps have tools for sex
  9. William's syndrome: Disappearance of racism along with social fear.
  10. Our brain as a cognitive miser - where decision costs are registered.
  11. Slowing down the brain may enhance creativity.
  12. Emotions can persist longer than memory of their induction.
  13. Embodyment: a two-minute powerful pose raises your testosterone levels

April 2010

  1. Evaluating effects of genes and environment on early reading.
  2. When do human groups form states?
  3. Do brain training programs work?
  4. Old age improves reasoning about social conflicts
  5. Internet enhancing, not diminishing, the public square.
  6. How pain impairs cognition
  7. Oxytocin enhances social learning as well as empathy.
  8. The brain's default mode, our ego, and Freud
  9. The best illusion of the year contest
  10. Doing two things at once splits the brain.
  11. Opera singers' brains - and the brain's organization of music knowledge
  12. PharmVille
  13. Enhanced facial threat detection in elite warriors
  14. MindBlog's spring home
  15. Two routes to slowing aging...
  16. More detail on money and happiness
  17. Like humans - Leaders, Followers and Schmoozers among animals
  18. Self control without a self...
  19. Lessening moral judgements by a magenetic zap to the brain.
  20. We separate identity and emotion of a stimulus in under 100 msec.
  21. Brain correlates of anticipation and body dysmorphic disorder
  22. fMRI measurents distinguish specific memories
  23. April stirs the dull roots...and MindBlog is on the road.
  24. Unconscious control of 'conscious' prefrontal cognitive control.
  25. The love that dare not squawk its name.
  26. A new wave in literary studies - theories of mind
  27. A Mozart presto
  28. Blocking the emotions of old memories.
  29. Mate preferences predicted by national health.
  30. Facilitating choice with a electrical zap to the head

March 2010

  1. A Mozart adagio
  2. Overcoming status quo bias in our brains
  3. Harris: science can point to 'what ought to be'
  4. Sociopaths know right from wrong but don't care.
  5. Monday Mozart allegro
  6. Babies are born to dance.
  7. The Schubert Fantasy - part 3
  8. Wal-Mart Moral Lessons
  9. Everybody have fun.
  10. Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks
  11. More on mindfulness meditation and emotional muscle
  12. The Schubert Fantasy - part 2
  13. Our face recognition capability has a strong genetic component
  14. Comments on "Statins enchance memory"
  15. Text without context and the death of culture
  16. Brain changes caused by forced right-handedness
  17. A Schubert fantasy (part I) for Monday morning
  18. Training emotional muscles of the brain - special issue of Emotion
  19. Statins enhance memory
  20. A lipstick that signals how turned on you are?
  21. Stress makes men prefer dissimilar mates.
  22. Streaming: new culture or cultural dissolution?
  23. Lesion mapping of our brain's general intelligence system.
  24. The decay of sympathy...
  25. Belief in free will is a belief in vitalism
  26. The lost art of the R.S.V.P.
  27. Brain regions and the DC metro
  28. New nerve cell growth in stress-induced social avoidance.
  29. The Blues Broaden, but the Nasty Narrows
  30. Thoughts of randomness enhance supernatural beliefs.
  31. Demasculinization of frogs (and men?) by pesticides
  32. Strange Maps
  33. Men's testosterone increases with female ovulation cues
  34. More on the virtues of red wine...
  35. Fundamental changes in public discourse.
  36. Looking at motor imagery underlying complex skill learning.
  37. Funny or die
  38. Measuring consciousness -how an anesthetic puts us to sleep.
  39. Are kids overmedicated?
  40. The power of touch.
  41. Food and Flying
  42. Damage to our amygdala can eliminate monetary loss aversion
  43. Oxytocin may improve autism
  44. Behavioral Addictions in the proposed DSM-V
  45. Our thalamus goes to sleep before our cerebral cortex
  46. Depression's Upside
  47. Asymptomatic Depression - hidden disease and untapped market

February 2010

  1. A Mozart Presto
  2. Evidence for a geometric brain module suggested by William's syndrome defect
  3. Human pheromones - androstenol activates hypothalamus in women.
  4. Reward centers in men activated by optimal hip-to-waist ratio in women
  5. Is the internet making us smarter or dumber?
  6. Universal nonverbal vocal communication of negative, but not positive, emotions.
  7. Holy surgery and the spiritual brain.
  8. The 'cutaneous rabbit' hops outside of the body!
  9. Some friday morning Mozart
  10. Effect of socioeconomic status on increase in stress hormones over time.
  11. Female teachers can transmit math anxiety to girls
  12. More on conservative versus liberal brains.
  13. Grumpy people may be more evolved
  14. Cat Turf War
  15. Better to react than to act.
  16. Dialing the desired emotions in your music...
  17. Lusting while loathing...
  18. A chemical test for disturbed relationship?
  19. Abstract thoughts move muscles.
  20. The 4th anniversary of Deric's MindBlog
  21. Religiosity tied to socioeconomic status.
  22. Our brain activity as desire collides with reason.
  23. Slime molds and humans - similar transport network design.
  24. Is there an ecological unconscious?
  25. Measuring our happiness...
  26. Music training induces plasticity in our hippocampus
  27. Exercise keeps your cells young, and a tip on running.
  28. Genetic contributions to financial risk taking
  29. Financial risk taking in the elderly - brain correlates
  30. The populist addiction

January 2010

  1. A clever treatment for tinnitus
  2. Social structure influences language structure.
  3. Resting brain default mode activity under genetic control
  4. Distinguish Democrats and Republicans from their faces.
  5. The secret life of chaos.
  6. Thinking of God moves attention
  7. Speech perception requires motor system activation.
  8. Rats can learn a cooperation game.
  9. Watching our brain decide when it has enough information
  10. One thing that doesn't deteriorate as we age!
  11. Why I am a snowbird...
  12. A thought to speech machine.
  13. Distinguishing a new evolutionary track?
  14. Internet hive mind - the madness of crowds
  15. Category errors in politics (the rage of the left) and mind science
  16. High-Tech Sex... and gestural interactions with electronics
  17. Attention alters appearance
  18. The Messiah Complex
  19. Breaking the addiction to connectivity and networking.
  20. Distinguishing conscious from unconscious brain activity.
  21. Brain correlates of strategic and experiential emotional intelligence.
  22. Where did the time go?
  23. Have fun.....NOW!
  24. Anhedonia - frontal lobe correlates
  25. We are what our ancestors did or didn't eat.
  26. Similarity breeds connection
  27. God's beliefs as what we want them to be.
  28. The faith instinct
  29. A gentle start to the new year...some Debussy
  30. Reward regions in the adolescent brain.
  31. Unconscious strategic recruitment of resources measured with pupil diameter.

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