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April 30, 2007

My Book

Category: Culture

So here's a link to my future book (due out in November), which gives you a nice little synopsis of the subject. What do you think of the cover?* *I'm personally interested in whether or not most people recognize the...

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Aging and Geriatrics

Category: Culture

Why we need more geriatric specialists

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April 29, 2007

Thinking, Feeling and the Cognitive Revolution

Category: Neuroscience

I've got an article in the Boston Globe Ideas section today on the cognitive revolution, and recent research demonstrating the relationship between cognition and emotion. Ever since Plato, scholars have drawn a clear distinction between thinking and feeling. Cognitive psychology...

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April 26, 2007

Science and Self-Criticism (Mirror Neurons Too)

Category: Culture

Alison Gopnik has written a thoroughly entertaining takedown of the mirror-neuron hype: The myth of mirror neurons may not do much harm. Perhaps it's even good for science that in the 21st century we turn to the brain, rather than...

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The Transgendered Brain

Category: Neuroscience

Mike Penner, a sports writer for the LA Times, has decided to become a woman. He will return to the paper as Christine Daniels. He wrote a gripping personal reflection for the paper explaining his decision: Transsexualism is a complicated...

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The Neuroscientific Case for Vegetarianism

Category: Culture

Christof Koch makes a compelling argument: My empirical studies into the neurobiology of consciousness have convinced me that many species share the sights and sounds of life with us humans. Why? First, except for size, there are no large-scale, dramatic...

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April 25, 2007

NFL Brains

Category: Neuroscience

Does football cause brain damage?

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Inequality and the Perception of Fairness

Category: Culture

Why the middle class feels so squeezed.

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April 24, 2007

History of the Future

Category: Culture

Take note historians of the future. When you set out to write your tome, The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, you might find the following three stories, all of them appearing in today's New York Times, to be...

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Wagging the Dog

Category: Culture

Not all wags mean the same thing. Careful analysis reveals an emotional difference between wags to the right and wags to the left. This asymmetry reflects an underlying asymmetry built into the mammalian brain: When dogs feel fundamentally positive about...

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April 20, 2007

Harry Reid and Admitting Defeat

Category: Culture

Failure is always an option. When we pretend that it isn't we are simply indulging our irrational aversion for losses.

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April 19, 2007

Quality and Popularity

Category: Culture

Success in the marketplace isn't necessarily correlated with quality.

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The Diesel Engine

Category: Culture

The diesel engine is a testament to the benefits of governmental regulation.

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April 18, 2007

How Many Kids Should You Have?

Category: Culture

Just one, at least according to the latest scientific research.

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April 17, 2007

Impressionism and Blindness

Category: Culture

Did failing eyesight lead to the abstraction of impressionism?

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April 16, 2007

Evolution and the Generation Gap

Category: Culture

Young people embrace evolution.

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Mass Delusions

Category: Culture

A fascinating case of collective hysteria.

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April 13, 2007

The Psychology of Genocide

Category: Neuroscience

Mother Theresa was right: "If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."

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April 12, 2007

Character Memory

Category: Neuroscience

Does the brain have a type of memory dedicated just to people?

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April 10, 2007

More Oysters

Category: Culture

We need more oyster farms.

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April 8, 2007

Can Economic Utility Be Measured?

Category: Neuroscience

Can neuroscience discover the cellular correlate of utility?

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April 6, 2007

Matsuzaka's Genius

Category:

Matsuzaka is one of the few pitchers who really uses psychology to his benefit.

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April 5, 2007

Poor People Learn Faster

Category: Neuroscience

Marginal utility can be measured. According to new research out of Wolfram Schultz's lab, poor people are much quicker learners than rich people when playing a Pavlovian paradigm for small amounts of money. (Poor people took about 12 trials to...

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Psychology and Neuroscience

Category: Neuroscience

Is the distinction between brain and behavior obsolete?

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April 4, 2007

Visiting Iraq

Category: Culture

The pernicious effects of confirmation bias.

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Power is Corrupting

Category: Neuroscience

Powerful people are more likely to treat other people unfairly.

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April 3, 2007

Is Depression Overdiagnosed?

Category: Neuroscience

A recent study in The Archives of General Psychiatry suggests that 25 percent of all Americans diagnosed with depression are actually just dealing with the normal disappointments of life, like divorce or the loss of a job. Their sadness is...

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Worst Case Scenarios and Irrational Fear

Category: Culture

We are so obsessed with the worst case scenario that we don't even consider the hassle caused by our attempts to avoid the worse case scenario.

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April 2, 2007

Poetry and Memory

Category: Culture

Why do we remember shards of poetry when we can't remember anything else? After Tom Chaffin's brain tumor was removed, he temporarily lost the ability to speak in coherent sentences. (He also lost the ability to move the right side...

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Dreams and Narrative Suspense

Category: Neuroscience

My unconscious knew what would happen before I did.

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