The Curious Engineer

Deric's MindBlog

2013–2017

1,357 posts

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2017 264

December 2017

  1. When intuition overrides reason.
  2. On gratitude...
  3. Mind the Hype - Mindfulness and Meditation
  4. The 11 separate nations of the United States
  5. Autopilots and metastates of our brains.
  6. Detailed demographics from Google Street Views.
  7. Some morning Rachmaninoff - Fantasy Piece, in E, Op. 3. No. 3
  8. Wealth inequality as a law of nature.
  9. Skill networks and human capital.
  10. Positive stimuli blur time.
  11. Teaching A.I. to explain itself
  12. Debussy La plus que lente - a first musical offering from Austin Texas.
  13. Digital mass persuasion via psychological targeting.
  14. Trauma is passed over generations.
  15. How is American (and World) governance evolving?
  16. Dogs can smell our happiness and fear.
  17. How Evil is Tech?
  18. Trust and cooperation across societies.
  19. The emotional political base supporting the consolidation of the U.S. plutocracy.
  20. A mind reading machine?
  21. Bringing big science to psychology

November 2017

  1. Speed of processing training results in lower risk of dementia
  2. Behavior modification empires.
  3. People who seek solitude are more creative.
  4. How to turn conservatives into liberals.
  5. Common cause of jihad and the Alt-Right
  6. How gratitude changes you and your brain.
  7. A debate on the pros and cons of aging and death.
  8. Building artificial intelligence that can build artificial intelligence
  9. Buddhism is more Western than you think.
  10. The emotional intelligence of one- to four-year-olds
  11. America is facing an epistemic crisis
  12. Improving brain function by shocking it.
  13. How linguistic metaphor scaffolds reasoning
  14. Arousal versus relaxation in meditative practices.
  15. Self as object: Trends in Self Research
  16. For your brain's sake, keep moving.
  17. Where our brains perceive social interactions.
  18. Modern flimflam men? - The Flow Genome Project
  19. Focus on present predicts enhanced life satisfaction but not happiness
  20. Cognitive reflection in men impaired by single testosterone dose
  21. The split brain revisited - a new perspective
  22. Gut reasons to brush your teeth.

October 2017

  1. Smiles of reward, affiliation, and dominance.
  2. Rethinking our conceptions of mental life.
  3. “Let’s Get Togetherism.”
  4. How Fiction Becomes Fact on Social Media.
  5. Do intelligent robots need emotion?
  6. Different kinds of mindfulness correlate with different benefits.
  7. The “sense of self” in Biblical times.
  8. The coming dark age…or a new integration?
  9. Coordination of brain waves between humans facing territorial threats.
  10. Like apes and small children, ravens plan ahead.
  11. The Premortem
  12. A sobering political graphic
  13. Does acupuncture work by re-mapping the brain?
  14. A 'Gaydar' machine?
  15. Brain and body imaging of the emotional power of poetry.
  16. MindBlog has moved to Austin Texas.
  17. Price modulates the effectiveness of your pain medication!
  18. Transcending tribalism - crafting a new vision for America?
  19. MindBlog's book abstracts.
  20. Curtailing proactive policing can reduce major crime.
  21. Brain circuits that modulate sociability.
  22. You want younger or older?
  23. This year's Ig Nobel prizes.

September 2017

  1. Does it matter whether we believe in free will or not?
  2. Greater internet use does not correlate with faster growth of political polarization.
  3. “No problem” vs “you’re welcome”
  4. The science of emotion - now at least 27 categories of emotional states.
  5. Will you be above or below “the API” in the emerging economy?
  6. Color naming across languages reflects color use
  7. Separate prefrontal areas code desirability versus availability.
  8. How we see what we expect to see.
  9. Computer design cues taken from human brains
  10. It’s all about tribes - not ideas, morals, or principles.
  11. The intractability of racial discrimination
  12. Neuroforecasting crowd funding outcomes
  13. Do Americans care about rising inequality?
  14. How to regulate Artificial Intelligence
  15. How “ought” exceeds but implies “can”
  16. Debate over a scientific wellness study.
  17. Oxytocin reduces xenophobic outgroup rejection.
  18. Evaluation of brain training programs.
  19. American Nirvana
  20. Washing away your sins in the brain.
  21. Mindfulness management of stress and inflammation

August 2017

  1. How to make time slow down.
  2. An essay on the real problem of consciousness.
  3. A magic bullet to restore our brain's plasticity?
  4. Are people really unconcerned about rising economic inequality?
  5. Mammalian empathy: neural basis and behavioral manifestations
  6. Forget about our brains, even the most simple nerve networks defy understanding.
  7. Different flavors of artificial intelligence - and, can we pull the plug?
  8. Race based biases in deception judgements.
  9. Beyond anger.
  10. Hold your nose to prevent obesity?
  11. Our broken economy, in one simple chart
  12. Neural correlates of the positive effects of gratitude.
  13. Exposure to and recall of violence reduce short-term memory and cognitive control
  14. Leisure just as enjoyable before as after work is done.
  15. Perception of being overweight predicts future health and well-being
  16. In group favoritism shown by 17 month old infants.
  17. Redistribution is supported by compassion, envy, and self interest, but not sense of fairness.
  18. Smiles for love, sympathy, and war.
  19. Why it's a bad idea to tell students that words are violence
  20. A positive mood from listening to music broadens our auditory attention.
  21. Default mode network and the wandering mind.
  22. The real threat of artificial intelligence
  23. Buying time promotes happiness.

July 2017

  1. Cognitive reappraisal in frontal cortex underlies placebo analgesia.
  2. Different languages use different systems of nerve cells.
  3. The world’s laziest countries.
  4. The brain circuits of a winner.
  5. When is stress good for you?
  6. Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks.
  7. Rejuvenating brain plasticity
  8. A.I. algorithms analyze the mood of the masses.
  9. Trust is heritable, whereas distrust is not
  10. A new ‘alternative’ culture?
  11. Nature experience reduces our brain rumination.
  12. Politics and the English Language - George Orwell
  13. Can utopianism be rescued?
  14. When the appeal of a dominant leader is greater than a prestige leader.
  15. Damaging in utero effects of low socioeconomic status.
  16. Our nutrition modulates our cognition.
  17. Working memory isn’t just in the frontal lobes.
  18. Cognitive control as a double-edged sword.
  19. Describing aging - metastability in senescence
  20. The human fetus engages face like stimuli.
  21. Neural measures reveal lower social conformity among non-religious individuals.

June 2017

  1. Maybe Trump’s behavior is explained by a simple Machine Learning (A.I.) algorithm.
  2. Mechanism of adult brain changes caused by early life stress.
  3. Positive trends over time in personality traits as well as in intelligence.
  4. It's complicated....more on Sapolsky's new book.
  5. Why it is impossible to tune a piano.
  6. Sorting out complex thoughts and messy emotions
  7. Dogs can know what you know.
  8. Metabolic and physical decline that occurs during aging promoted by a DNA repair enzyme.
  9. A conclusion from one of my lectures.
  10. Some outstanding books on the biology of our behaviors.
  11. Watching our brains construct linguistic phrases
  12. Brain-to-Brain symmetry tracks classroom interactions.
  13. Our mental models predict emotion transitions.
  14. A chemical link between early life stress and adult schizophrenia
  15. You're less likely to check facts in a social media crowd than when alone.
  16. Cracking the brain's code for facial identity.
  17. Trust and the poverty trap.
  18. The heart trumps the head : Desirability bias in political belief revision.
  19. Opioids regulate oxytocin enhancement of social attention.
  20. Visual category selectivity is innate.
  21. Preferences for group dominance underlie social inequality and violence across societies
  22. The wisdom of crowds for visual search.

May 2017

  1. Listener evaluations of new and old Italian violins
  2. Solitary discourse yields deeper understanding than solitary description.
  3. Detecting both facial and olfactory cues of sickness in others
  4. Optimal incentives for collective intelligence
  5. Poor human olfaction is a 19th-century myth
  6. A moralistic bias in our default representation of what is possible.
  7. Osteoarthritis attenuated by removing senescent cells.
  8. The Science of Consciousness
  9. Our brains have an innate knowledge of tools.
  10. The invisibility cloak illusion - You're too focused on what you're focused on.
  11. Increasing honesty in humans with noninvasive brain stimulation
  12. The fading American dream in a nutshell...
  13. Our spatial memory is driven by perceived animacy of simple shapes.
  14. Semantics and the science of fear - the amygdala doesn't 'cause' fear.
  15. What we perceive depends on how much it costs us.
  16. Has Trump stolen philosophy’s critical tools?
  17. Details of our brain's upstairs-downstairs emotion regulation.
  18. Brain correlates of third person perspective improving interactions with criticism.
  19. Histone variants promote vulnerability to depressive behaviors
  20. Watching the brain think about friends.
  21. From learning to instinct
  22. The Nature Fix
  23. Brain stimulation enhances memory.

April 2017

  1. Brain-heart dialogue shows how racism hijacks perception
  2. Underestimating the value of being in another person's shoes.
  3. MindBlog is moving to Austin. Texas
  4. Reading what the mind thinks from how the eye sees.
  5. Brooks on "The crisis of Western Civilization"
  6. A.I. better at predicting heart attacks, learns implicit racial and gender bias.
  7. Study suggests social media are not contributing to political polarization.
  8. How to feel good - and how feeling good can be bad for you.
  9. Scratching is contagious.
  10. Is "The Stack" the way to understand everything?
  11. Anterior temporal lobe and the representation of knowledge about people
  12. Lying is a feature, not a bug, of Trump’s presidency.
  13. How exercise calms anxiety.
  14. The calming effect of breathing.
  15. Brain correlates of information virality
  16. Three sources of cancer - the importance of “bad luck”
  17. How "you" makes meaning.
  18. Religiosity and social support
  19. Wiser than than the crowd.
  20. Several takes on extending our lives.

March 2017

  1. Preverbal foundations of human fairness
  2. The best exercise for aging muscles
  3. Brain systems specialized for knowing our place in the pecking order
  4. Termite castles, human minds, and Daniel Dennett.
  5. Ownership of an artificial limb induced by electrical brain stimulation
  6. Predicting the knowledge–recklessness distinction in the human brain
  7. Warping reality in the era of Trump - some interesting essays
  8. Is the body the missing link for truly intelligent machines?
  9. What is really going on in the White House?
  10. Emergence of communities and diversity in social networks
  11. Materialism alone can't explain consciousness? A flawed argument.
  12. Half of the conclusions in psychology and cognitive neuroscience papers are wrong.
  13. Well-being increased by imagining time as scarce.
  14. Impeachara
  15. Minding the details of mind wandering.
  16. Humans can do echolocation
  17. Exercise slows the aging of heart cells.
  18. Meditating mice!
  19. A higher-order theory of emotional consciousness
  20. We look like our names.
  21. The Trump vortex - social media as a cancer
  22. Crony beliefs
  23. Evolutionary psychology explains why facts don't change people's minds.
  24. Opposite Effects of Recent History on Perception and Decision
  25. Theory of cortical function

February 2017

  1. Universality of the cognitive architecture of pride.
  2. Monday morning Schubert
  3. Vitamin B3 (Niacin) protects from glaucoma
  4. Scientific curiosity counters politically motivated reasoning.
  5. Will the “Anthropocene Era” concept slow or accelerate human impact on our planet?
  6. Decision-making: Judges' decisions not so legal
  7. Musical evolution in the lab exhibits rhythmic universals
  8. OhMyGawd....
  9. The purpose of sleep? To forget.
  10. Hacking the brain to overcome fear
  11. Gender stereotypes emerge early.
  12. How our brains make meaning, with the help of a little LSD
  13. An emotional experience can enhance future memory formation.
  14. Kind words in language - changes over time
  15. Mysterianism
  16. Feel good fractals.
  17. Why our supermarket tomatoes are sturdy and flavorless.
  18. MindBlog’s 11th anniversary…some statistics.
  19. Artificial intelligence: Machines that reason
  20. The origins of happiness
  21. Are human-specific plastic cortical synaptic connections what makes us human?

January 2017

  1. An individual's ultimate economic burden can be forecast in childhood
  2. The uniformity illusion.
  3. Regression to the mean - Why we would all be better off if we ignored Trump’s tweets
  4. Smartphone reprogramming of our brains?
  5. Gender and the conflation of equality and sameness
  6. Knowing how confidently we know
  7. How our evolutionary psychology elected Donald Trump.
  8. The deepening of our cultural echo chambers.
  9. The immensity of the vacated present.
  10. A fitness downside to statin drugs?
  11. Research on consequences of low socioeconomic status becoming a small industry.
  12. Positivity in older adults is more related to cognitive decline than to emotion regulation.
  13. Seeing faces of young black boys facilitates identification of threatening stimuli.
  14. The milliseconds of a choice - Watching your mind when it matters.
  15. People who move more are happier.
  16. From Power to Inaction.
  17. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the First Law of Psychology.
  18. Dual streams of speech processing.
  19. The effect of status on stress depends on the stability of the hierarchy.
  20. What is different about the brains of “superagers”?
  21. How to market the reality of climate change more effectively.
  22. I used to be a human being - how technology almost killed me.

2016 271

December 2016

  1. Resetting the clock of aging - at least in mice.
  2. Killing old cells to stay young.
  3. Creative versus destructive chaos in Trump-land. Is there a ray of hope?
  4. Artificial intelligence ups its game
  5. Making the world nicer is a tough slog - two organizations trying.
  6. Our automated jobless future.
  7. A stark graphic - the income gap continues to widen.
  8. Our Arthropod housemates.
  9. Reducing future fears by suppressing episodic simulation in the brain.
  10. Can evolution have a 'higher purpose'?
  11. Political tribes, and the psychology of liberals and conservatives.
  12. Bad things that happen to annoyingly happy people...
  13. Why does time fly when you’re having fun? Dopamine neurons…
  14. Feeling confident that you know? fMRI correlates of metacognitive accuracy.
  15. Oxytocin, moral judgement, and male social synchony
  16. Exhaustion is not unique to our overstimulated age.
  17. The rage against the elites...
  18. We should ask our elders how best to live.
  19. Protecting and reactivating memories
  20. Reversing the effect of booze on the brain.
  21. The brain adapts to dishonesty.
  22. Genetic variants linked to education predict longevity

November 2016

  1. Genetic correlates of social deprivation and household income
  2. More exercise, less depression.
  3. Networks of conforming or nonconforming individuals always reach a satisfactory state
  4. Online social interaction associated with reduced mortality risk.
  5. Stock trading - gut feelings help with risky decisions.
  6. The teenage brain and the pleasure of “likes”
  7. Social media's globe-shaking power.
  8. Sex differences in brain regulation of aggression
  9. Are your emotions 'Black and White' or 'Shades of Gray'? - Brain correlates.
  10. Thoughts about Dying in America.
  11. Our working memory modulates our conscious access to suppressed threatening information.
  12. View a flickering stimulus before you try to read fine print…
  13. Why do people in big cities move faster?
  14. Social class and attentiveness to others.
  15. Explaining gender differences in anxiety.
  16. The presidential election has spawned an effusion of interesting essays - a sampling
  17. Political ideology and pathogen avoidance across 30 nations
  18. How to get beyond our tribal politics.
  19. Facebook use associated with a longer life?
  20. Social motion, social bonds, and exercise.
  21. Wikipedia - a possible antidote for the pathologies of the internet?
  22. Paradoxical thinking intervention can moderate attitudes in violent times

October 2016

  1. I can't resist passing this on..... Trump Sandwich
  2. Questioning the universality of a facial emotional expression.
  3. Lifespan adversity and later adulthood telomere length.
  4. More evidence on exercise delaying later life dementia
  5. Men are more friendly after conflict than women.
  6. Issues or Identity? Cognitive foundations of voter choice.
  7. What kind of exercise is best for the brain?
  8. Most effective learning?... sleep between two practice sessions
  9. You're gonna die....
  10. Testosterone in men is associated with status enhancing behaviors.
  11. The brain basis of numerical thinking is different in congenitally blind people.
  12. 3-year olds infer social norms from single actions.
  13. Our most simple sensory decisions show confirmation bias.
  14. The decline of self, intimacy, and friendships
  15. When fairness matters less than we expect.
  16. Do "Brain-Training" programs work? - the latest installment of the debate
  17. Some brain benefits of exercise evaporate after a short rest.
  18. A way to change adult behaviors - debiasing decisions.
  19. MindBlog, hurricane Matthew, and a personal note
  20. A way to change adolescent behaviors?
  21. Avalanche of Distrust
  22. Decoding spontaneous emotional states in our brains.
  23. Science in the age of selfies

September 2016

  1. More great news: Our brains are polluted with environmental magnetite.
  2. Recollecting details improves future performance
  3. Insight into intergroup conflict - defense trumps aggression
  4. Election Stress Disorder
  5. A hedonism hub in the human brain.
  6. Dreams and revelations.
  7. Treating trans-generational stress with probiotics...
  8. Biofeedback to chill out your amygdala’s hyper-reactivity?
  9. Scientific studies show....
  10. Defining brain areas involved in music perception.
  11. Predicting false memories with fMRI
  12. Self-regulation via neural simulation
  13. A psychological mechanism to explain why childhood adversity diminishes adult health?
  14. The ecstasy of speed - or leisure?
  15. Mind and Body - A neural substrate of psychosomatic illness
  16. Want to predict a group’s social standing? Get a hormonal profile.
  17. Reason is not required for a life of meaning.
  18. Brain network characteristics of highly intelligent people.
  19. Feeling Good? Do something unpleasant.
  20. Do your friends really like you?
  21. Growing Older, Getting Happier
  22. Everything we eat both cures and causes cancer.

August 2016

  1. Climate disasters act as threat multipliers in ethnic conflicts.
  2. Our self and our temporo-parietal junction
  3. Psychological disruptions of our online lives.
  4. A bit of nostalgia - Powers of 10
  5. Alerting or Somnogenic light - pick your color
  6. Oxytocin - a molecular substrate for forming optimistic beliefs about the future
  7. Slow motion increases perceived intent.
  8. Lifespan changes in brain and cognition - early life sets the stage.
  9. Neural link between affective understanding and interpersonal attraction
  10. Statistics versus judgement.
  11. How China is changing your internet.
  12. The long lives of fairy tales.
  13. Brain changes during hypnosis
  14. Why do people infer “ought” from “is”?
  15. How our brain and visceral monitoring encode the ‘self’
  16. Leave the kids alone! A cognitive case for un-parenting
  17. Uncalculating cooperation is used to signal trustworthiness.
  18. A brain area crucial to coping with stress.
  19. To remember something better, wait, then exercise.
  20. Distinguishing brain correlations from causes.
  21. Competition does not improve quality of work.
  22. Turn-taking skills unique to humans?
  23. Zapping your brain at home.

July 2016

  1. Worldwide internet access from light based wireless communication
  2. Abstract thinking in newborn ducklings!
  3. Brain scans are prone to false positives.
  4. A must see Rube Goldberg machine
  5. The intractability of implicit beliefs
  6. Our sociability correlates with epigenetic oxytocin gene modifications.
  7. Cultural differences in music perception
  8. Oxytocin both bonds and divides the sexes.
  9. Placebo effects in brain training
  10. Consciousness is the brain messing with itself.
  11. Insurance makes sellers of services dishonest.
  12. Who blames the victim?
  13. Social support, stress, and the aging brain
  14. Is Donald Trump's frontostriatal connectivity weakened?
  15. A non-linguistic brain network for mathematics.
  16. Turning out the vote.
  17. Endogenous opioids are not involved in meditation based pain relief
  18. The secrets to a long and happy life.
  19. Why we become more cautious with age.
  20. A simple model for why moderate beliefs rarely prevail.
  21. The Myth of Cosmopolitanism
  22. How exercise enhances brain renewal and growth.

June 2016

  1. Cognitive fatigue increases impulsivity.
  2. The brain makes maps of abstract realms.
  3. Training our brains without our awareness.
  4. Much ado about grit.
  5. Why do Greek statues have such small penises?
  6. Think less, think better.
  7. Smartphone Era Politics
  8. Confronting the prejudiced brain
  9. Predicting whether you are going to vote.
  10. Yes, there have been aliens.
  11. The mistrust of science
  12. Our (Bare) Shelves, Our Selves
  13. Vision reconstructs causal history from static shapes.
  14. A postdictive illusion of choice.
  15. Reducing stress induced inflammatory disease with bacteria.
  16. Unethical amnesia
  17. The attention economy
  18. A redefinition of health and well-being for older adults
  19. Why do we feel awe?
  20. Is humanity getting better?
  21. Telephone metadata does reveal personal details.
  22. A science of consciousness carnival in Tucson.

May 2016

  1. Sentiments on cynicism and hope.
  2. Exercise and intermittent fasting improve brain plasticity and health
  3. Are electric vehicles really better for the planet?
  4. Culture shapes the evolution of cognition.
  5. A model for aggression and violence around the world.
  6. The Dalai Lama’s Atlas of emotions
  7. When philosophy lost its way.
  8. This is how fascism comes to America
  9. Brain modules that process human consensus decision-making
  10. Aerobic fitness: one minute of all out effort = 45 min. of moderate effort
  11. America in decline?
  12. Downsides of diversity.
  13. Two ways to be satisfied.
  14. John Oliver on "Scientific Studies show...."
  15. Diversity makes you brighter.
  16. What art unveils
  17. Our brain activity at rest predicts our performance on tasks.
  18. The key to political persuasion
  19. Our perception of our body shape is very malleable - making your finger feel shorter.
  20. What happens if we all live to 100?
  21. Semantic maps in our brains - and some interactive graphics
  22. Video games for Neuro-Cognitive Optimization
  23. Embodied Prediction - perception and mind turned upside down

April 2016

  1. The privileged fifth.
  2. Sleep deprivation, brain structure, and learning
  3. Grandiose narcissism and the U.S. presidency
  4. Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?
  5. Essential role of default mode network in higher cognitive processing.
  6. How to attract others.
  7. Impulsivity, sensation seeking, and substance use correlate with reduced brain cortical thickness.
  8. Metaphorical conflict shapes social perception when spatial and ideological collide.
  9. Political polarization and prejudice.
  10. How to change prejudice...for real this time
  11. Brain correlates of how the risk taking of others influences our own risk taking
  12. Aging brains - more physical activity, more gray matter, less Alzheimers.
  13. Distraction in the digital era….what about since 1710?
  14. The evolutionary origins of smiles, laughter, and tears.
  15. Another list - "Keys to happiness"
  16. A succinct list of some of our common psychological errors.
  17. Muscle mass and nerve control enhanced in octogenarian athletes.
  18. Why sad music can make us feel good.
  19. The Social Gene
  20. Pterostilbene anti-aging supplement - undesirable side effects
  21. Are we all sexists and racists?

March 2016

  1. Another social science, Economics, looks at itself.
  2. Overkill in techno-aids for 'Mens Sana in Corpore Sano'
  3. Storing long term emotional memories.
  4. Screenagers - brain executive function immediately diminished by television
  5. Our progression towards a nation of rich and poor
  6. Suppressing memory of trauma causes forgetting of other memories.
  7. Vasopressin increases human risky cooperative behavior
  8. Pictures of green spaces make you happier.
  9. Rachmaninoff Morceaux de fantasie Op. 3, No. 4, Polichinelle
  10. Anxiety suppresses prefrontal cortex decision ability.
  11. Impatience, aging, and leukocyte telomere length.
  12. Political Substance Abuse: Donald Trump in Florida
  13. Seasonality in human cognitive brain responses
  14. Rachmaninoff Morceaux de fantasie Op. 3 No. 1 Elegie
  15. Our brains remember the good stuff.
  16. Brain games and driving safely.
  17. Wearing a bike helmet increases risk taking.
  18. Brahms Waltzes Op. 39, Nos. 1,13,14
  19. Stephen Wolfram on A.I. and the future of civilization
  20. Repeated social defeat causes neuroinflammation and memory impairment.
  21. Punishment of others: decreased by status in the West, increased in the East
  22. More on clever crows - they learn shell games.
  23. Chopin Trois Eccossaises
  24. New nerve cells in the brain generated best by sustained aerobic exercise
  25. This is too good not to pass on.....
  26. If all the world's a stage, do we have a true self?
  27. "Well-being" as a practiced skill
  28. Getting rid of old cells extends lifespan of mice and ameliorates age-related diseases.

February 2016

  1. A brain circuit for loneliness.
  2. Winning a competition predicts dishonest behavior.
  3. Abnormal cortical folding correlates with trait anxiety.
  4. Moralistic gods enhance sociality.
  5. Creative cognition and brain network dynamics.
  6. A mindfulness meditation intervention enhances connectivity of brain executive and default modes and lowers inflammation markers.
  7. Forming Beliefs: Why Valence Matters.
  8. A neural crossroads of psychiatric illnesses as a target for therapeutic brain stimulation
  9. Finally...a brain area specialized for music has been found.
  10. A 50 year misunderstanding of how we decide to initiate action - our intuition is valid
  11. Our eye movements are coupled to our heartbeats.
  12. What makes political leaders influential?
  13. Linking sustained attention to brain connectivity.
  14. Everybody's a critic. And that's how it should be.
  15. Fantasies of the Future
  16. Our digital presence.
  17. Consciousness as the product of carefully balanced chaos.
  18. Inequality and facing the future.
  19. The neuroscience of poverty.
  20. The burden of obesity revisited.
  21. The 8 second attention span.

January 2016

  1. Fourth Industrial Revolution?? Maybe not.....
  2. Predicting the Future: The Fourth Industrial Revolution
  3. The ascendant candidacy of Donald J. Trump
  4. Social relationships and biomarkers of longevity across our life span.
  5. The evolution of dance
  6. On teaching old dogs new tricks.
  7. Several perspectives on the valuation of outgroups.
  8. Paying attention to your body can increase resilience to stress
  9. Biochemical individuality obsoletes many dietary recommendations and the glycemic index.
  10. Posthumanism - the quantification craze and the death of beauty
  11. Homosexuality as a discrete class.
  12. Another installment on anti-aging chemistry - pterostilbene
  13. How to be bad together - Punishing pro-social behavior.
  14. Purity, Disgust and Donald Trump
  15. Our strongest prejudice - partisan hostility
  16. How learning shapes the empathic brain.
  17. Virtual reality going mainstream will enhance our understanding of consciousness.
  18. How our brains change during the day.
  19. Nature's warning system.
  20. Higher inequality correlates with less generous rich people.
  21. A positive tonic: Human Progress Quantified
  22. Boosting our brain plasticity.

2015 286

December 2015

  1. Negative evaluation of counterstereotypical people by conservatives maintains their sense of certainty
  2. Dorsal and Ventral Right Brain Pathways for Prosody
  3. Brain mitochondria function links anxiety with social subordination.
  4. Socioeconomic status, inflammatory reactivity, and social support.
  5. The need for affiliation - communities of kindness
  6. Empathy is a choice, and can be trained.
  7. Male and female brains do not constitute two distinct categories.
  8. Good news for the grumpy.
  9. Loneliness hurts.
  10. A special issue of Science Magazine on aging.
  11. Exercise helps your brain rewire.
  12. Why doesn't economic growth lead to more happiness?
  13. Modest exercise gives maximum health benefits.
  14. Coffee consumption correlates with lower risk of dying.
  15. Exercise enhances frontal brain lateralization characteristic of younger brains.
  16. Mindfulness meditation and pain reduction.
  17. Gender bias in the attribution of creativity
  18. Lower leg power predicts cognitive aging.
  19. Racial bias and time perception.
  20. Cultural specificity of human fairness.
  21. The evolution of music from emotional signals
  22. Increased false-memory susceptibility after mindfulness meditation
  23. Religiousness decreases children’s altruistic behaviors.

November 2015

  1. The effects of birth order on personality.
  2. A picture show; and, Alzheimer's and the innate immune system
  3. Online political communication: more than an echo chamber?
  4. Choosing to be grateful.
  5. Musical expertise modulates the brain’s entrainment to music.
  6. Our bodies can sabotage our healthy behaviors..
  7. Wielding power increases testosterone in women.
  8. Flip-Flops in medical advice.
  9. Divided we fall - putting social progress on par with prosperity
  10. A personal note, the Steinway B now in Fort Lauderdale - some Chopin
  11. Neuropolitics - reading the electorate's mind.
  12. The Brain with David Eagleman
  13. More evolution cartoons
  14. Good and bad stress in the Brain - The inverted U
  15. Shift happens
  16. How to live what we don't believe.
  17. Amazing…. Robots learn coordinated behavior from scratch.
  18. Trusting robots, but not androids
  19. The unknowns of cognitive enhancement
  20. Can we really change our aging?
  21. Critical period for visual pathway formation? - another dogma bites the dust.
  22. A biomarker for early detection of dementia
  23. Lifting weights and the brain.
  24. Brain Pickings on 'the most important things'
  25. A lab experiment: visibility of wealth increases wealth inequality

October 2015

  1. More exercise correlates with younger body cells.
  2. Low-power people are more trusting in social exchange.
  3. How much sleep do we really need?
  4. Chilling down our religiousity and intolerance with some magnets?
  5. The hippocampus is essential for recall but not for recognition.
  6. Brain activity associated with predicting rewards to others.
  7. Drugs or therapy for depression?
  8. Hoopla over a bit of rat brain…a complete brain simulation?
  9. Meditation madness
  10. A brain switch that can make the familiar seem new?
  11. Sir Reginald's Marvellous Organ
  12. Great apes can look ahead in time
  13. Rhodopsin curing blindness?
  14. Can epigenetics explain homosexuality?
  15. Musical expertise changes the brain's functional connectivity during audiovisual integration
  16. Runner's high? Thank your internal marijuana...
  17. A Gee Whiz! moment. Activating neurons with ultrasound.
  18. 1/f brain noise increases with aging.
  19. Methionine, an amino acid, enhances recovery from cocaine addiction.
  20. Memory aging and brain maintenance
  21. The wealthy are different from you and me...
  22. Watching sleep deprivation cause a decline in prefrontal control of emotion.
  23. Ig Nobel Prizes for 2015
  24. Brain system for mental orientation in space, time, and person.

September 2015

  1. More exercise correlates with younger body cells.
  2. Does exercise change your brain?
  3. Can dietary supplements fight cognitive decline?
  4. Humanity as a Competitive Advantage
  5. Is "gaydar" a myth?
  6. Consolidating motor skills in our sleep.
  7. More bad things about sleep debt.
  8. Our nervous systems are lazy.
  9. The social mysteries of the superior temporal sulcus
  10. A final musical/social at Twin Valley - some Rachmaninoff
  11. Hormones and clothing choices.
  12. Heritable risk of developing anxiety correlates with brain metabolism, not structure.
  13. Inventing new words - iconic sounds are used.
  14. Brain correlates of learning character traits versus rewards.
  15. Thinking too much - Self generated thought as the engine of neuroticism.
  16. Savoring happy memories - value representations in the striatum
  17. Convergent evolution of numerosity detection in bird and primate brains.
  18. A classification of cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice.
  19. Brain imaging can predict six-year outcomes in children’s numerical abilities.
  20. Bioethics - Doing more harm than good?
  21. Oxytocin - more sophisticated views of its functions
  22. Birth of the moralizing gods.
  23. The benefits of reading to children.

August 2015

  1. Self-policing by psychologists - many prominent experiments fail replication tests
  2. A beta-blocker facilitates fear extinction.
  3. The collaborative roots of corruption.
  4. What emotions are and aren’t.
  5. Stress can cause bad food choices and compromise long term goals.
  6. Disadvantage, self control, and health
  7. Biased internet search engines might influence election outcomes
  8. Introverts prefer mountains.
  9. Unequal, but happy
  10. People who eat spicy food live longer.
  11. Tracking ongoing cognition with fMRI of functional connectivity states.
  12. Anti-aging therapies? Start by quantifying aging in young adults for early intervention.
  13. Exercise for the aging brain - how much is necessary?
  14. What is fair? It depends on your culture.
  15. Knowing the internal states of ourselves and of others.
  16. Overclaiming - the illusion of knowledge
  17. Habitual exercise correlates with lower distractibility.
  18. The benefits of pupil orientation.
  19. Are Chatbots destined to become our most sympathetic listeners?
  20. Benefits of High School Music training.
  21. Synchronizing brain theta oscillations strengthens our adaptive behavior control.
  22. Another awesome brain video
  23. New stuff on exercise, brain, and body.
  24. Brain correlates of the impatience of adolescents.

July 2015

  1. Unlearning social biases during sleep
  2. The danger of artificial intelligence is artificial stupidity.
  3. Placebo analgesia reduces empathy for pain.
  4. Dopamine and subjective well-being
  5. Brain markers of individual differences in human prosociality.
  6. Top-down alpha band oscillations optimize visual perception.
  7. Universal features of human music.
  8. A small bonbon for techie MindBlog readers.
  9. Screams and the communication soundscape
  10. Ohmygawd - a social app that aims for fleeting authenticity?
  11. How experiencing nature influences our brains.
  12. Happy or anxious?
  13. Sense8 - Sympathetic Sci-Fi
  14. How did kindness come to be our forbidden pleasure?
  15. Four books from Edge.org's summer reading list.
  16. Participants in the senior olympics have fitness age 25 years younger than their chronological age.
  17. Cleaning up the queue - interesting ideas.
  18. Genetic risk factors for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia predict creativity.
  19. Evolving ourselves
  20. The embodied cognition of your love life.
  21. Kinda Neat! - a Soft Jumping Robot
  22. Why don't the poor rise up?
  23. Political ideology, self control, and belief in free will.
  24. Caffeine as an antidote to depression caused by stress.
  25. Groups are better lie detectors than individuals.
  26. The science of 'Inside-Out"'
  27. The Higher Life - A mindfulness guru for the tech set.
  28. The smell of happiness.
  29. Cat videos are good for your health.
  30. Anti-ageing pill pushed as a bona fide drug.

June 2015

  1. The power of positivity.
  2. Inside Out
  3. Neuroanatomical correlates of the income-achievement gap.
  4. Facebook internal research shows its algorithms enhance political polarization.
  5. Acetaminophen - over the counter relief from both pain and emotions...
  6. How is creativity helped by being just a little bit crazy?
  7. A new class of anti-aging drugs that selectively kill senescent cells.
  8. Ocytocin reverses amphetamine-induced deficits in social bonding.
  9. A bit of amphetamine turns older brains into younger brains.
  10. Brain areas that place us in the past, present and future.
  11. Constructing rich false memories of committing crime.
  12. Brain markers of psychopathy.
  13. Sign language as a window on universals in linguistic representation of events.
  14. Oxytocin makes formidable men more likeable.
  15. Serotonin deficiency correlates with stress vulnerability.
  16. The urge to instruct.
  17. The "Good Life"
  18. Why do we experience awe?
  19. Lack of exercise disrupts body’s rhythms.
  20. It’s not a stream of consciousness, its a rhythm.
  21. Humans need not apply.
  22. How we fashion meaning and purpose.
  23. Sleep stabilizes, but does not enhance, motor performance training.

May 2015

  1. Cultural differences, emotional expressivity, and smiles
  2. How biased are our brains?
  3. After Phrenology: Neural Reuse and the Interactive Brain
  4. Neural basis of anxiety reduction by placebo.
  5. How alarm amplifies through social networks.
  6. Modulating movement intention and the extended present with tDCS.
  7. Brain correlates of loving kindness meditation.
  8. Essentialism
  9. What to do with brain markers that predict future behaviors?
  10. More comment on anti-aging regimes
  11. Grasp posture of our hands biases our visual processing.
  12. The sound of climate change.
  13. Literary (like musical and athletic) expertise shifts brain activity to the caudate nucleus.
  14. Human Purpose
  15. Trust and the Insula
  16. The immensity of the vacated present.
  17. Yet another self therapy electrical widget.
  18. Observing brain correlates of social interactions.
  19. Early environment and stress systems in children.
  20. Cognitive training enhances intrinsic brain connectivity in childhood.
  21. Ideology distorts perception of social mobility in the U.S.
  22. Economic origins of ultrasociality
  23. Explaining the increase in individualism in the U.S. over the past 150 years.

April 2015

  1. The most clever crow yet....
  2. Effortless awareness: Linking subjective experience with brain activity during focused meditation with real-time fMRI
  3. Improving vision in older adults.
  4. Emotion is a component of the earliest stages of perception.
  5. Subliminal learning can nudge future control decisions.
  6. Mind wandering and mental autonomy.
  7. The evolution of gender effects on empathy.
  8. Observing leadership emergence through interpersonal brain synchronization.
  9. Glycogen recovery after exercise: junk food as good as sport supplements
  10. Your friends know how long you will live.
  11. Positive and negative emotions - valence is not value
  12. What happens in Vagus - compassion, positive emotion, vagal tone, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia,
  13. The science of mind wandering.
  14. Manipulating moral decisions by exploiting eye gaze.
  15. The Apple Watch will be making us more sociable and human??
  16. A drug for compassion?
  17. A natural compound for chilling out?
  18. Physical activity's 'modest' effects on cognitive vitality
  19. The transparent avatar in your brain.
  20. Awareness breaks down brain’s network modularity.
  21. Origins of Narcissism in Children
  22. Cognitive abilities across the lifespan.

March 2015

  1. The Singularity—an Urban Legend?
  2. Quiet
  3. Altering the oxytocin receptor gene enhances perception of anger and fear.
  4. Information overload is filter failure.
  5. Expert listening to music alters gene transcription...So?
  6. Thought for the day: America devolving into a plutocracy...
  7. Transcranial direct current stimulation increases propensity to mind-wander
  8. Impulse control with weak currents applied to the head - a new therapy?
  9. Losing the music - Aging affects the perception of musical harmony
  10. Thomas Metzinger on (the absence of) our conscious agency.
  11. Hunger promotes acquisition of nonfood objects
  12. What can music ensembles tell us about social cognition and interaction?
  13. The happiness gap between conservatives and liberals debunked
  14. Emotional foundations of cognitive control.
  15. Observing brain correlates of self affirmation and its healthy consequences
  16. Spontaneous emergence of shared social conventions.
  17. Predictions and the brain: how musical sounds become rewarding
  18. Hugging can make you less likely to catch a virus cold.
  19. Human language reveals a universal positivity bias
  20. Chickens count from the left, just like us!
  21. The high from nicotine depends on whether you think it is there.
  22. Immune cells drive resilience to stress.
  23. MindStuff: A Guide for the Curious User

February 2015

  1. The neurochemistry of music.
  2. Twitter predicts mortality from heart disease!
  3. Metacognitive mechanisms underlying lucid dreaming.
  4. The neuroscience of motivated cognition.
  5. MindBlog's 9th anniversary
  6. What is different about the brains of "SuperAgers"
  7. Training the mind not to wander with brain feedback.
  8. An informative genetic grammatical impairment - the biological basis of language
  9. Psilocybin as a key to consciousness.
  10. A sense of the unfolding digital age.
  11. Music training offsets decline in speech recognition on aging.
  12. MindBlog experiments with a brain enhancer.
  13. How musical sound becomes rewarding - predictions and the brain
  14. Changing bodies changes minds.
  15. MindBlog's other lives - a piano concert
  16. Watching large scale brain network interactions in cognitive control.
  17. Causal emergence in our brains
  18. Expensive drugs work better than cheap ones.
  19. Computers judge personality more accurately than humans.
  20. Doubting global warming?
  21. A landmark for our human brains.
  22. Another study on exercise keeping us young - and other fitness trends
  23. Communicating by having our brains in synchrony.
  24. Low social status enhances prosocial orientation.

January 2015

  1. Parallel brain systems regulate our pain.
  2. Power and your voice.
  3. Musical training accelerates cortical thickness maturation.
  4. Judging and adapting to norm violations engage different brain regions.
  5. Subjective status shapes political preferences.
  6. We can see in the infrared!
  7. Steven Pinker's "Sense of Style"
  8. The signature of consciousness in resting-state brain activity.
  9. Body movements shape brain representation of musical rhythms.
  10. An Example of Publication Bias - Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism
  11. Watching brain oscillations drive perception.
  12. Perceived control promotes persistence and influences brain response to setbacks
  13. Another magic anti-aging compound?
  14. Human children conform to peers' behavior, but apes do not.
  15. Personality and Ideology
  16. Subliminal Strengthening
  17. Personality and immune system reactivity.
  18. The unforeseen costs of extraordinary experiences.
  19. Invunerablism
  20. Is there a reason for everything? - Teleological reasoning about life events
  21. Biological explanations for psychopathology decrease clinician empathy.
  22. Cerebral coherence between communicators.

2014 284

December 2014

  1. Neurobiology and the Humanities
  2. Origins of human altruism.
  3. Exercise and intermittent fasting improve brain plasticity and health
  4. Several articles on aging brains.
  5. Exercise changes our muscle DNA
  6. A bit of science fiction...a brain implant that allows mind-controlled gene expression.
  7. Impact of literacy on visual processing
  8. Cross-species evidence that adaptive training diminishes distractibility in Aging.
  9. How to bridge the respective bubbles of our ideological tribes?
  10. Critique of the Nature paper on dishonest bankers,
  11. Several nuggets on the individual vs. the collective.
  12. The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions
  13. The new surveillance state and our robotic future.
  14. Why elders smile, and wisdom in social signals.
  15. Physics, Emergence, and the Connectome - From the connectome to brain function
  16. Psilocybin changes brain connectivity.
  17. We search for meaning at the start of each chronological decade.
  18. Banking - a culture of dishonesty
  19. The ecology of religious beliefs
  20. E.O. Wilson and "The Meaning of Human Existence"
  21. Varieties of poverty - money, time, and bandwidth
  22. My iPad is masturbating!
  23. The peripheral immune system and stress susceptibility.
  24. Does exercise really make us smarter?
  25. The usefulness of spite.

November 2014

  1. Brain's inflammatory response may contribute to brain disorders.
  2. In older people, moderate alcohol intake improves memory.
  3. How to dampen that urge to buy.
  4. Can brain science be dangerous?
  5. How our prefrontal cortex explores and exploits options.
  6. Art in a whiskey glass, the physics explained.
  7. Wealth is especially bad for the wealthy.
  8. Genes that turned wildcats into kitty cats.
  9. Cooperating with the future - how to sustain resources.
  10. Humor and Health
  11. Chemicals that delay or reverse effects of aging.
  12. Big data in Neuroscience
  13. The internet and the mind
  14. MDMA (ecstasy) enhances emotional empathy and prosocial behavior
  15. Trajectories of aging.
  16. Are we really conscious?
  17. Antidepressant and nerve growth stimulating effects of exercise - a mechanism.
  18. Aging: sit less and shape up your attitude
  19. Mind wandering that makes effort more efficient.
  20. What is literature good for?
  21. Why do we like sad music?
  22. Positive thinking can sabotage desired outcomes.
  23. A mechanism underlying intractable political conflicts.
  24. Aging - predictors of cognitive abilities.
  25. Liberals and conservatives have different smell preferences.
  26. Memory reactivation during rest supports upcoming learning of related content.
  27. A mechanism underlying our current political paralysis

October 2014

  1. Neural and cognitive characteristics of extraordinary altruists.
  2. Anti-aging interventions: from elixirs to fasting.
  3. Update on ‘fitness age’ calculators…
  4. Brain resting state network stimulation for psychiatric and neurological diseases
  5. The amygdala as the hub of three brain networks supporting our social life.
  6. Breath counting as an objective behavioral measure of mindfulness.
  7. The power of play - Portal2 better than brain training software?
  8. Let a Hundred McMansions Bloom
  9. How to chill on aggression...get blood glucose levels up.
  10. Happiness and well-being sources.
  11. Speaking out in a group correlates with gender.
  12. Scientific evidence does not support anti-aging claims of the brain game industry.
  13. Humans and robots.
  14. Pianists’ brains are different from everyone else...
  15. Vitamin D prevents cognitive decline
  16. How culture shapes spatial conceptions of time - Is your past in front of, or behind you?
  17. Why are we fooled by the ventriloquist?
  18. Our microbial aura - in the house and in the garden
  19. Boredom = Stress.... and misbehavior
  20. Improvement of performance by transcranial stimulation depends on existing degree of expertise.
  21. Our sleep cycle started 700 million years ago in a worm?
  22. Inflammatory signaling is bad for the aging brain.
  23. Why our childhood takes so long - the metabolic costs of brain development
  24. Is it love or lust? Look at eye gaze.
  25. Having 'no self' as self transcendence, or spirituality.
  26. An update of dericbownds.net
  27. A few Self-Help Nostrums.
  28. Fish as brain food - it’s not just the omega-3
  29. Status and the brain.

September 2014

  1. The good order - creativity needs routine
  2. Hearing and imagination shape what we see.
  3. The Human Dynamic Clamp
  4. Rules of implicit evaluation by race, religion, and age.
  5. Morality in real life versus the lab.
  6. Neuroanatomy predicts individual risk attitudes.
  7. Synchrony between observers' brains during action observation.
  8. Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes
  9. Music shapes how we think - whether we see the forrest or the trees.
  10. Parasites practicing mind control.
  11. Associative memory enhanced by brain stimulation.
  12. Norm enforcement is biased from its emergence.
  13. Early music training improves neural encoding of speech in children and arrests auditory decline in older adults.
  14. Study on relationship between genomics and well being receives a critical trashing.
  15. A new compound that ameliorates cognitive dysfunction.
  16. Upstairs/Downstairs in our Brain – What’s running our show?
  17. MindBlog's other half - a Sunday afternoon recital at Twin Valley
  18. Reboot, reset, your brain - take a break - a walk, or better, a vacation.
  19. MDMA (Ecstasy) as an affiliative social drug
  20. Does one novelty lead to another?
  21. Genetic influence on our valuation of free choice
  22. Morality - how theists and non theists differ
  23. Intergenerational transmission of emotional trauma.
  24. How could language have evolved?

August 2014

  1. The origins of morality.
  2. The stability of the authoritarian state.
  3. Early life anxiety in monkeys and humans correlates with connectivity between prefrontal cortex and amygdala.
  4. More on better living through zapping your brain.
  5. Origins of good and evil in human babies.
  6. OhMyGawd...now MRI measurement are going to tell us how happy we are??
  7. The source of consciousness.
  8. Is our microbiome manipulating us to look out for itself?
  9. Brain and behavioral correlates of compassion training.
  10. Spooky and awesome technology
  11. More on brain games and training - and reversing cognitive decline in aging.
  12. How chronic pain saps our motivations and desires - the mechanism.
  13. The habenula (?) does a tally of our negative outcomes.
  14. In learning, too much of a good thing can be bad.
  15. Varieties of introspection.
  16. An opinion due to social conformity lasts only a few days.
  17. Motivation not improved by multiple motives.
  18. How much do our genes influence our political beliefs?
  19. Anger as the most easily spread emotion.
  20. Brain noise? Insomnia? Try A.S.M.R.
  21. MindBlog gets married.
  22. Faith and ideology trump reason...

July 2014

  1. Brain activity that reflects positive and negative emotion.
  2. Brain correlates of behaviors in market bubbles.
  3. A intriguing take on consciousness as a perceptual construct.
  4. Video game puzzle that improves executive function.
  5. Life purpose, longevity, and Alzheimers disease.
  6. How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
  7. Why is melody in the high notes and rhythm in the base?
  8. Blue is warmer than red?
  9. Ecstasy (MDMA) and LSD as therapeutic drugs
  10. Feeling the social touch being observed in others.
  11. Brain activity can reveal whom someone is thinking about.
  12. Response of large scale brain networks to acute stress.
  13. Increased self control without increased willpower
  14. Cooperating with the future
  15. Does phase of the moon influence our sleep? Three contradictory studies.
  16. The untutored mind does not like to be alone with itself.
  17. Caring for the future
  18. Information integration without awareness.
  19. Couch potato? You should be taking omega-3!
  20. Moral judgements depend on what language we’re speaking.
  21. Consciousness is constructed through a discrete set of activity spaces.
  22. Parenting rewires men's brains.

June 2014

  1. Emotional contagion through social networks
  2. Mind reading has to be taught.
  3. Stress chemistry predicts age-related cognitive decline.
  4. Megascience efforts and the brain.
  5. Executive control training reduces rumination.
  6. Distinguishing the 50 united states with a tightness-looseness measure.
  7. Early music training enhances cognitive capacities in adults.
  8. Monday music - Debussy Nocturne
  9. On the precipice - a "Majority-Minority" America.
  10. Dopamine receptor genes and independent versus interdependent social orientation.
  11. Speed reading apps blow away comprehension.
  12. Watching the physical correlate of memory improvement during sleep.
  13. When being a control-freak doesn't help....
  14. Another Poulenc offering: Improvisation No. 13
  15. Brain initiative meets physics….Opps!
  16. Gratitude reduces economic impatience.
  17. Childhood bullying predicts adult inflammation.
  18. Tonics for a long life?
  19. Rapidity of human brain and muscle evolution - the downside of smarts?
  20. A Monday musical offering - Poulenc Improvisation No. 7
  21. First direct evidence for human sex pheromones.
  22. Social attention and our ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
  23. Blue Mind - looking at water improves your health and calm
  24. Crowdsourcing our brain’s wiring.
  25. The science of inequality.

May 2014

  1. The monkey business illusion.
  2. How social equality is represented in the brain.
  3. Brain correlates of expertise in musical improvisation
  4. Brain correlates of "the good life" ??
  5. Stress can protect from Alzheimer's disease
  6. Fear detection depends on phase of our heartbeats.
  7. Correlation between prosocial behavior and computer game playing
  8. What drives collective versus individualistic behaviors?
  9. Morality and perception speed
  10. Sluggish cognitive tempo, a new diagnosis du jour?
  11. Formation of new brain cells can erase old memories
  12. Nonconscious emotions and first impressions - role for conscious awareness
  13. Language universals at birth.
  14. GABA predicts time perception.
  15. More on the rejuvenating power of young blood...
  16. Brain activity display in the spirit of P.T. Barnum
  17. We transfer reward in a bottom-up search task to a top-down search task.
  18. Gene expression changes in expert meditators?
  19. The smell of sickness.
  20. Out of body, out of mind.
  21. Oxytocin promotes group-serving dishonesty
  22. Aesop's crow - evidence of causal understanding

April 2014

  1. A blood test for Alzheimers disease?
  2. Wave of the future - trusting machines that talk to us.
  3. Brain abnormalities caused by marijuana use.
  4. Brain activity underlying subjective awareness
  5. Blocking facial muscle movement compromizes detecting and having emotions
  6. Is it a Stradivarius?
  7. Top Brain, Bottom Brain - a user's manual from Kosslyn and Miller
  8. Judging a man by the width of his face.
  9. Over the hill at 24
  10. Training emotions - a brief video from The Brain Club
  11. Attributing awareness to oneself and others.
  12. Poor people judge more harshly.
  13. Memory reactivation in aging versus young brains.
  14. Enhancing or lowering performance monitoring activity of our brains.
  15. Caloric restriction and longevity.
  16. Is consciousness in control? Does it matter?
  17. An interesting pain suppression tactic.
  18. Practice and sleep form different aspects of skill.
  19. Using imagination or memory to increase prosocial behavior.
  20. Exercise protects retinas.
  21. Another demonstration of the gender gap.
  22. Can body language be read more reliably by computers than by humans?
  23. Evolved music specific brain reward systems.

March 2014

  1. Mechanism of muscle decay on aging, and its reversal.
  2. Our lives are a concept, not a reality.
  3. Restoring mitochondrial dysfunction associated with aging.
  4. Out of Sight, Out of Mind
  5. Clash of 'grand theories' of consciousness??
  6. Shaping memory accuracy by TCDS
  7. Do brain workouts work?
  8. A debate on what faces can tell us.
  9. Magical thinking in auction biding.
  10. Control over memory retrieval is predicted by heart rate variability.
  11. Some homilies on wisdom - older and wiser.
  12. Fat hurts, and exercise helps, the brain.
  13. Several perspectives on rich versus poor.
  14. A technique for enhancing error awareness in older age.
  15. Time, Money, and Morality
  16. Default mode network: the seat of literary creativity?
  17. Optimism correlates with poor results
  18. Dangerous behaviors and the corporate consumption complex.
  19. More on building brains with video games
  20. Want to remember something? Have some coffee!
  21. Cognitive aging - a dark side to environmental support?

February 2014

  1. A brain basis for musical hallucinations
  2. The right temperature for a stroking caress
  3. Passing ADHD from one generation to the next.
  4. Restoring vision to blind mice (and humans with RP or AMD?) with a photoswitch.
  5. Predicting risky choices from brain activity patterns
  6. Senior Coolness
  7. Mindfulness and corporate America’s bottom line.
  8. Meditation and brain imaging of two kinds of love.
  9. Neural signature of our own-race bias.
  10. Awesome Images
  11. The social (and medical) pathology of correlating inner worth with wealth.
  12. Our pupil dilation reflects decision related choice.
  13. Reaction time and longevity.
  14. Genetic predisposition of our behavioral responses.
  15. Different cultures, different computation systems
  16. Why electroconvulsive therapy works in mood disorders.
  17. Constancy of our social signatures.
  18. Does music make you smarter?
  19. When psychotherapy works - what are the brain changes?
  20. Making Our Brains Younger
  21. MindBlog's most read posts.

January 2014

  1. The myth of cognitive decline with aging? Yes and No....
  2. Most published scientific results are false.
  3. Mindfulness has so totally gone mainstream…..
  4. Enriched environments enhance adult brain plasticity.
  5. How inactivity changes the brain
  6. The liberal illusion of uniqueness
  7. The Kerfuffle over whether men and women's brains are different.
  8. Bodily maps of emotions.
  9. The morning morality effect.
  10. The milliseconds of a choice - Watching your mind when it matters.
  11. Beauty at the ballot box.
  12. Signals from inside and outside our bodies in self consciousness
  13. A reason for the power of prayer.
  14. Left spatial neglect goes with neglecting the “Left Side” of time.
  15. How the brains of virtuosic pianists are different...
  16. The social life of our genes - the devastating effects of social isolation
  17. Social Darwinism isn't dead - the rich really do think they are different...
  18. Watching our brain remembering something.
  19. The "being happy" stress-out.
  20. Oxytocin enhances brain function in children with autism.
  21. A neural prosthesis can restore sensory-motor function after brain damage.
  22. My aversion to "selfies" and the demographics of social media.
  23. Cognitive Control - what you see depends on how you look.

2013 252

December 2013

  1. How our advanced capabilities may have come from separation of our primary brain areas.
  2. Your brain has many genomes.
  3. Cognitive benefits of music lessons?
  4. Oxytocin and the strength of romantic bonds in men.
  5. In praise of failure
  6. My grandsons - making it in the brave new world - part III
  7. My grandsons making it in the brave new world - part II
  8. My grandsons - making it in the brave new world - part I
  9. Sequence your microbiome!
  10. Psychobiotics - gut bacteria changing our brains?
  11. Three psychological regions of the U.S. - economic, health, social, political correlates
  12. Imaging the the updating of true and false memories.
  13. Naked bodies and mind perception.
  14. Unconscious, not conscious, attitudes predict relationship success.
  15. Digital Passivity
  16. Childhood poverty changes adult brain emotion regulation pathways.
  17. Do you use your head or follow your heart?
  18. Homage to idleness.

November 2013

  1. Still alive....
  2. MindBlog on medical leave.
  3. The biology of sacred values.
  4. Your fitness age - a simple online calculator
  5. Making muscle
  6. More on long-term benefits of early musical training.
  7. Where musical melodies are represented in our brains.
  8. Why some of us can, or can't, disengage from pain.
  9. The promises of 'priming'
  10. The serious business of play
  11. Motor exploration of 5-month old predicts academic achievement at 14 years.
  12. The quest for personal enhancement - adding self brain stimulation to the toolkit?
  13. Generating music during exercise lessens sense of physical effort.
  14. Slaves of the Internet, Unite!
  15. Sleep cleans our brains, renews our synapses, consolidates our memories

October 2013

  1. Scary music for Halloween - Dance Macabre
  2. Finding a protein linking exercise to brain health
  3. "Only Disconnect" - The pathology of digital of connectivity
  4. Perspective taking can turn competitors unethical
  5. Oxytocin, gentle human touch, and social impression.
  6. A genetic predisposition to note the negative.
  7. Silver Lining of a mind in the clouds
  8. Face recognition area of the brain also notes race and sex.
  9. Out of the group, out of control?
  10. Trashing Malcolm Gladwell
  11. Constructive aspects of mind wandering
  12. The changing psychology of culture from 1800 through 2000.
  13. Distinctive brain correlates of brief compassion meditation.
  14. Is music the key to success?
  15. Oxytocin dilates our pupils and enhances emotion detection
  16. Our sense of fairness changes with weak electric stimulation of our prefrontal cortex.
  17. Psychedelic drugs cause cortical desynchronization
  18. Poulenc Improvisation No. 15
  19. Better memory with less default mode activity
  20. Evilicious humans, hard-wired for war?
  21. Information sharing as a measure of brain consciousness
  22. Early emergence of mature brain alarm circuits in maternally deprived children

September 2013

  1. Francis Poulenc Sonata for piano 4 hands
  2. Threads of current debate: narcissism, ills of the world, scientism, brain science
  3. Aspects of our musical experience.
  4. Theory of Mind and the mind of the market
  5. Franz Schubert Marches caractéristiques, No. 2
  6. The joystick years - computer games and grey matter volume
  7. Clementi Sonata No. 2 in C for piano four hands
  8. Compassion - Bridging Practice and Science
  9. Poulenc Novelette No. 3
  10. Virtues of coffee and coffee shops.
  11. Old farts perform more consistenly on cognitive tasks than younger adults.
  12. Poulenc Novelette No. 2 - a bit on the wild side
  13. The cognitive benefits of movement reduction.
  14. Some mindblog music - Poulenc Novelette No. 1
  15. Video game training enhances cognitive control in older adults
  16. Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding.
  17. A pinch of l-dopa enhances learning to suppress excessive fear responses.
  18. Numerosity is represented in our parietal cortex.
  19. Scientific explanation of our subjective experience.....
  20. Language can boost unseen objects into visual awareness.
  21. A drug that alters dopamine receptors and risk-taking behaviors
  22. Nighttime light impairs our emotional responses.
  23. Better safe than sorry?...Anxiety and our body’s safety margin.
  24. Dopamine, rewards, and the brain
  25. Interesting…thinking about science enhances moral behavior.
  26. The social pathologies generated by connectivity and internet echo-chambers.
  27. Second language training reorganizes right hemisphere areas.
  28. Nocebo pain facilitation occurs at spinal cord level.

August 2013

  1. The Innovation of Loneliness
  2. "Life Enhancement"
  3. Meditation factoids - enhancement of “good” genes expression, smoking reduction
  4. More on the Neuro-Utopians
  5. Song of our warming planet
  6. The Beethoven mouse - a key to auditory transduction
  7. Early experience shapes the amygdala’s sensitivity to race.
  8. Looking at the Posit Science brain renewal training program.
  9. How the brain shifts between purpose and habit.
  10. A brain correlate of near death hallucinations and visions?
  11. War of science and the humanities redux: Ross Douthat on The Scientism of Steven Pinker
  12. Factoids on exercise and learning - the kind of exercise is important
  13. Do you have a tidy or messy desk?
  14. Imperceptible current applied to our scalp enhances general intelligence.
  15. Evidence that the Lunar cycle influences human sleep.
  16. Personal control enhances treatment effectiveness.
  17. Think your radiologist gets it right? The invisible gorilla strikes again.
  18. Degree of Musical Expertise Modulates Higher Order Brain Functioning
  19. Be young in perception and behavior! Put yourself in a virtual child’s body!
  20. The bad kind of stress - perceived helplessness
  21. Different kinds of happiness - different immune system consequences.

July 2013

  1. Workouts at the brain gym.
  2. Loneliness promotes inflammation in our bodies
  3. Markers of our aging
  4. Unconscious activation of our brains' inhibitory controls.
  5. Why does time speed up for older people?
  6. A mechanism of why novelty seeking individuals are more vulnerable to social defeat stress.
  7. Positive feedback loop between social connections, positive emotions, and vagal tone.
  8. Sebastian - The Maestro
  9. An ancestral logic of politics?
  10. Pathways through which loneliness affects health.
  11. How exercise calms anxiety.
  12. Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary 3 years later
  13. A defense of evolutionary psychology.
  14. The obesity paradox - fat people may live longer!
  15. The gospel according to me...
  16. Order your DIY brain stimulation kit to improve your cognition?
  17. Want to see the metadata on yourself (like the NSA already has)??
  18. How our brain cortex receives information about the world
  19. Eye widening in fear - sensory and social benefits
  20. Inflammation links ageing to the brain.
  21. A spiritual home for atheists.
  22. Linking brain imaging to our subjective experience - focused attention versus mind-wandering
  23. Enhanced emotion regulation persists after meditation training.

June 2013

  1. The Harm-Made Mind
  2. Are you married? Did you meet on-line or off-line?
  3. Brain science backlash, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
  4. Paternal stress changes stress axis in offspring
  5. Paper is not dead...
  6. More on smartphone brain training apps.
  7. Neuroimaging our self esteem - be happy!
  8. Young blood makes younger hearts (and brains) - also, aging resistant brains
  9. Heart rate variability, ANS aging - a new device from "Phyode" - therapeutic agent or scam??
  10. Carrying human (and mouse) babies reduces their crying and heart rate.
  11. Our memory can be selectively rewritten during its reconsolidation.
  12. Antonin Scalia Does Not Believe in Molecular Biology
  13. Private behaviors from public records...
  14. Changes as an autonomic nervous system ages 11 years - The "Wild Divine" is a bit less wild.
  15. Preventing Alzheimer’s associated brain cell atrophy with B vitamin treatment.
  16. Visions of our high-tech future: Julian Assange, Jaron Lanier, et al. on Google, Siren servers and the banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’
  17. Penis size and male attractiveness - the most read article in The Proceedings of the National Academy!
  18. We can learn new information during sleep.
  19. Childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety
  20. MindBlog starts up some summer music - a Poulenc Valse
  21. The chemistry of protecting our brains by fasting.
  22. Long-term improvement of brain function and cognition with brain stimulation and cognitive training.

May 2013

  1. When more support is less....
  2. Giant, Glowing Plastic Brain on Wheels
  3. How we work: 'brain waves' versus modern phrenology
  4. Training our ability to make decisions on uncertain outcomes.
  5. Renewing our brain's ability to make decisions.
  6. The limits of empathy
  7. Transferring from Google Reader to Feedly
  8. On well-being - An orgy of good energy last week in Madison, Wisconsin.
  9. On continuing MindBlog - Drawing personal structure from sampling the digital stream.
  10. Deric’s MindBlog spends time in the past...in the future?
  11. MindBlog in Seattle this week - hiatus in posts
  12. Riding other people's coattails.
  13. Willpower and Abundance - The case for less.
  14. Overearning

April 2013

  1. The slippery slope of fear
  2. Lessons learned from a Chaos and Comlexity seminar.
  3. Teleological reasoning about nature: intentional design or relational perspectives?
  4. Brain activity correlating with future antisocial activity.
  5. Body posture modulates action perception.
  6. Where our brains compute musical reward.
  7. Quiet - the world of introverts.
  8. Free Will, continued - Prior unconscious brain activity predicts choices for abstract intentions!
  9. Showing where moral intent is determined in our brains.
  10. Brain training games don't actually make you smarter.
  11. Older brains - just as much nerve firing, but scrambled connections?
  12. A review - Mindfulness meditation and our brain's default versus attentional networks.
  13. Why old folks more easy lose their way,
  14. Defining when a visual stimulus become conscious to us.
  15. Your smartphone, your social brain, and your vagus nerve.
  16. Mindfulness training improves working memory and cognitive performance while reducing mind wandering.
  17. Alteration of paralimbic self awareness circuits in behavioral addiction.
  18. Training our emotional brain - improving affective control.
  19. Impersonating your younger self makes your body physiologically younger - a rediscovered post.
  20. Do we need an Apollo moon project for the brain?
  21. A next generation of antidepressants?
  22. What are philosophers good for?

March 2013

  1. Brain activity associated with the "Cocktail Party Effect."
  2. The perils of perfectionism, and the world we are losing.
  3. Ambivalence and Body Movement
  4. If you use Google Reader to follow Deric's MindBlog, please read on....
  5. Are there trendy parts of the brain?
  6. A Cornucopia of Mind Blog sites.
  7. The brain basis of our superiority illusion.
  8. Would Tarzan believe in God?
  9. Negativity bias and political ideology
  10. Reversal of hearing decline with aging.
  11. How to dress to say it is wrong to be gay!
  12. Does cannabis use cause lower IQ?
  13. Observing regulatory connections correlating with emotion control during transition to adolescence.
  14. How do alligators get errections?
  15. Anti-aging drugs - Clarification on Resveratrol and SIRT1 activators
  16. The mental cost of cognitive enhancement.
  17. And you thought you knew the data on wealth inequality?
  18. Can the Catholic Church evolve?
  19. Neural mechanisms of stress vulnerability and resilience.
  20. In praise of the unexamined, unlived life?
  21. Is the insula necessary for our feelings? If not, where are they?
  22. Watching our auditory brain, like a radio, switch hearing frequency channels.

February 2013

  1. Amygdala damage can make us more generous
  2. How our viscera influence our brain and behavior
  3. How ambient light might influence our mood.
  4. The lament of the historian…
  5. In an uncertain world, fairness finishes first.
  6. Big brains decrease fertility.
  7. How mindfulness meditation works in the brain - a model
  8. Interdependent behavior facilitated by independent behavior?
  9. Red Brain, Blue Brain
  10. Chimps play fair in the ultimatum game.
  11. How we listen to music...
  12. Internal threats to our bodies trigger different fear system from external threats.
  13. Wisconsin Public Radio series on consciousness
  14. We can retroactively edit our conscious experience.
  15. Deric Bownds' MindBlog - 7th Anniversary
  16. The cocktail party effect is enhanced by vision.
  17. Aging, sleep, and memory.
  18. Racial essentialism correlates with less domain-general creativity.
  19. "Chasing Ice" - watching a glacier calving
  20. Early musical training - sensitive period in brain white matter plasticity
  21. The promise and perils of oxytocin.

January 2013

  1. How our brains judge risk and effort.
  2. Moral roots of environmental attitudes.
  3. The Biology of Fear
  4. You are going to die...
  5. Thoughts as material objects - impact on evaluations
  6. What we should fear...
  7. Brain correlates of developing intuition.
  8. How procrastination gets things done...
  9. Hedonic adaptation - where did the warm glow go?
  10. How environments talk to genes.
  11. Our brains change operating modes during an eyeblink.
  12. Why mental arithmetic counts.
  13. Lifelong bilingualism enhances cognitive control in aging.
  14. A great New Yorker Cover
  15. Mindfulness neuroscience
  16. The power of concentration
  17. Self affirmation enhances responsiveness to errors.
  18. Music and movement: shared dynamic structure in universal expressions of emotion
  19. The End of History Illusion.
  20. Surprise! Satisfied old folks live longer.
  21. Human evolution: endurance running made our brains larger and smarter.
  22. Why are older people more susceptible to fraud?
  23. Body resonance and art appreciation.
  24. Lévi-Strauss - "shattered hologram" of aging.

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