Brain & Behavior:
Last week we asked readers to tell us under what circumstances they would be likely to use a public restroom reserved for the other gender. We've all been in the situation where there's a long line for one restroom and...
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Posted on January 9, 2009 12:53 PM • 1 Comments •
A new artificial neural network revives an old debate on the benefits of constraints in learning.
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Posted on January 9, 2009 11:36 AM • 0 Comments •
Uwe Reinhardt, an economist at Princeton, has a thoughtful explanation of why macroeconomists were so blindsided by the economic downtown of 2008: Fewer than a dozen prominent economists saw this economic train wreck coming -- and the Federal Reserve chairman,...
Posted on January 9, 2009 9:59 AM • 1 Comments •
The familiar buzzing sound made by a mosquito may be irritating to us humans, but it is an important mating signal. The sound, produced by the beats of the insect's wings, has a characteristic frequency called the "flight tone"; when...
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Posted on January 9, 2009 9:26 AM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on January 9, 2009 7:38 AM • 0 Comments •
I caught this neuroscience question over at a new blog I like, Think Markets. Sandy Ikeda comments on a section of Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness: I've been thinking about the following from Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness: Experiments...
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Posted on January 9, 2009 7:21 AM • 1 Comments •
As a young child, my family was poor and we had to go to a public clinic for dental work. Since we were being seen by dental students, often the process was painful and took much longer than it should...
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Posted on January 8, 2009 2:51 PM • 7 Comments •
For those of you at this year's Terry talks, you'll obviously be aware of our little YouTube experiment. In any event, I present to you the fruit of that labour below. If you weren't at the conference, here is the...
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Posted on January 8, 2009 2:42 PM • 2 Comments •
They think racist slurs will upset them but actually act indifferently to them and those saying them.
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Posted on January 8, 2009 2:00 PM • 5 Comments •
An early classic in computational neuroscience was a 1993 paper by Elman called "The Importance of Starting Small." The paper describes how initial limitations in a network's memory capacity could actually be beneficial to its learning of complex sentences, relative...
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Posted on January 8, 2009 11:00 AM • 8 Comments •
You'd never know it from my recent article on the urban brain (and the cognitive benefits of nature) but I love walking in cities. In fact, a leisurely stroll in a metropolis is one of my favorite things to do....
Posted on January 8, 2009 9:46 AM • 5 Comments •
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Posted on January 8, 2009 8:19 AM • 0 Comments •
Every year about this time, we start thinking about an exciting television event: the Super Bowl. I'm excited because it's the biggest football game of the year. The rest of the family just likes to watch the commercials. No doubt,...
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Posted on January 7, 2009 5:10 PM • 3 Comments •
The ability to suppress unwanted thoughts and actions is thought (by some) to be crucial in your ability to control behavior. However, alternative perspectives suggest that this emphasis on suppression or "inhibition" is misplaced. These perspectives, largely motivated by computational...
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Posted on January 7, 2009 12:30 PM • 1 Comments •
Healthy aging is characterized by a gradual decline in cognitive function. Mental processes such as attention, memory and the ability to process information are at their peak when people are in their 30s and 40s, but as we get older,...
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Posted on January 7, 2009 12:15 PM • 3 Comments •
Neuroskeptic has written a great post evaluating the much-hyped 2008 study that showed people will more readily accept information if a neurosciency-explanation is attached - even if the neuroscience is irrelevant. If this effect is real, it has big implications...
Posted on January 7, 2009 3:17 AM • 0 Comments •
As all y'all know by now, I'm an experienced caffeine junkie. Currently, I'm trying to forgo it again (this Diet Coke right here is merely an aberration, do not look at the caffeine behind the curtain...). But really, it's everywhere...
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Posted on January 7, 2009 1:08 AM • 21 Comments •
From Mind Hacks: Deodorants boost sexiness by getting men in the groove: I keep running into fascinating articles that The Economist ran over the Christmas period and this one is no exception - it covers research that suggests that men's deodorants do increase sexual attractiveness, but by increasing confidence and hence the behaviour of the wearer. The smell alone seems to have little impact on women....
Posted on January 6, 2009 11:08 PM • 0 Comments •
'Tetris' as cure for PTSD? can birds smell? Panda genome and evolution; Sensing the Reproductive Environment; Allele-Specific Gene Expression; Endemic fauna in the Deep Ocean; Oxygen limits insect size; Sleep and Memory; DNA Barcoding in birds; Preferences across the Menstrual Cycle for Masculinity; Neighbourhood Socioeconomics and mortality....
Posted on January 6, 2009 7:38 PM • 0 Comments •
Or is it the kind of thing those other people do? In the car yesterday, I caught a story on Marketplace that was looking for insight into why people on Wall Street cheat. In the piece, host Kai Ryssdal interviewed...
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Posted on January 6, 2009 12:04 PM • 7 Comments •
For the basics about multivariate fMRI "mind-reading" techniques, see the video below. Some of it is based on this 2007 Haynes et al paper from Current Biology, described in more detail following the video....
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Posted on January 6, 2009 10:00 AM • 2 Comments •
Here's an interesting finding, which is summarized by Kevin Lewis in the Boston Globe Ideas section: If you've ever had to take a test in a room with a lot of people, you may be able to relate to this...
Posted on January 6, 2009 9:59 AM • 7 Comments •
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Posted on January 6, 2009 9:08 AM • 0 Comments •
When I was in training, the chairperson (John Greden) of the department never spoke about schizophrenia. Instead, he always used the phrase, "the schizophrenias." He believed that there were different disease states that all produced similar clinical presentations. But because...
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Posted on January 6, 2009 9:02 AM • 4 Comments •
After the New York Times ran an article last week reporting on an interesting review by a pair of university psychologists suggesting that religious belief is positively correlated with self-discipline, it was inevitable that this proposition would be extrapolated beyond...
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Posted on January 6, 2009 8:28 AM • 4 Comments •
A recent post up at the Frontal Cortex points approvingly to a study of strollers, prams, toddlers and parental conversation. Jonah Lehrer concludes: It would be nice to see this research filter down to stroller manufacturers, so that even cheap...
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Posted on January 5, 2009 8:48 PM • 29 Comments •
Professor Janet Mann of Georgetown looked at a population of bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay in Western Australia to observe the sponging behavior. Only female dolphins were witnessed using sponges as a means to protect their noses while disturbing the ocean floor, and only 11% seemed to display this behavior.
Posted on January 5, 2009 5:32 PM • 9 Comments •
I just wanted to draw attention to two fantastic blog posts that describe a new paper by Edward Vul, a grad student at MIT, and colleagues at UCSD. The first post comes from Vaughan over at MindHacks: I've just come...
Posted on January 5, 2009 4:30 PM • 6 Comments •
Is this video a rat loving a cat, or is it a cat kicking toxo's ass?
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Posted on January 5, 2009 3:30 PM • 23 Comments •
Seriously, when I read the headlines to this article, I wanted to wretch retch. (Ed. I need to learn how to spell.) Scientists discover true love Scientists: True love can last a lifetime I can feel it welling up now...eh...OK,...
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Posted on January 5, 2009 1:33 PM • 6 Comments •
I had a longish article in the Boston Globe Ideas section yesterday exploring some recent research on how living in a city affects the brain: The city has always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of...
Posted on January 5, 2009 9:16 AM • 10 Comments •
This streaming video is interesting, but it also is sort of creepy to see a human control an animal's actions so completely
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Posted on January 5, 2009 8:59 AM • 3 Comments •
Truism 3: Humans are moral because that is the nature of the species - moral is what humans do Corollary: Morality is not based on commands from on high Subcorollary: If God is dead, how could everything be permitted? We...
Posted on January 5, 2009 3:13 AM • 19 Comments •
The winners of Open Lab 2008 are finally out! Thanks to all of you that submitted entries on our behalf, we actually had seven entries up! And it turns out, one got in! It's that post of mine that never...
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Posted on January 4, 2009 8:39 AM • 4 Comments •
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Posted on January 4, 2009 6:33 AM • 0 Comments •
Continuing with the recent book review theme, allow me to say a few words about The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams and God, by David J. Linden. Linden is a professor of neuroscience at...
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Posted on January 4, 2009 4:03 AM • 13 Comments •
I posted last night (you can tell this is serious, I really am blogging on the weekend!) about the concept of "Prozac withdrawal". I drew a little heat from Drugmonkey about this, due to the distinction I used between "physical"...
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Posted on January 3, 2009 8:34 PM • 11 Comments •
A psychological study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shows how symbolic gestures matter in ideological battles.
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Posted on January 3, 2009 10:01 AM • 7 Comments •
I don't think I've ever heard of a Golden Eagle hunting in the way that this particular bird does -- have you?
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Posted on January 3, 2009 8:59 AM • 5 Comments •
There are 9 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services...
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Posted on January 3, 2009 12:07 AM • 0 Comments •
Ok, I tried to post this earlier, but then Sci's wireless internet went out (grrr). So Sci bore herself back to the lab at 8pm on a Friday night to prove how dedicated she is to SCIENCE. I saw an...
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Posted on January 2, 2009 8:15 PM • 8 Comments •
Yesterday on our way back from a vacation in New York, we stopped to get coffee and use the bathroom. There was a long line at the women's room, and a much shorter line at the men's restroom. These were...
Posted on January 2, 2009 4:20 PM • 41 Comments •
Baby strollers have become the latest bougie status symbol, but it's worth noting that one of the most important stroller features is almost always ignored. Here's VSL: According to a new study, babies who sat in strollers that faced their...
Posted on January 2, 2009 1:48 PM • 10 Comments •
Matt Fitzgerald, a senior editor at Triathlete and the author of a number of books on training for endurance sports, is currently hard at work on Racing Weight. Of a chapter called "Guidelines for Beginners," Matt notes: [It] encourages beginning...
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Posted on January 2, 2009 10:34 AM • 6 Comments •
This video of an (African?) owl species shows two different anti-predator behaviors
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Posted on January 2, 2009 8:59 AM • 12 Comments •
The Psychology of Cyberspace is a course taught by John Suler in the Department of Psychology at the Science and Technology Center at Rider University. The website is a collection of a large number of thought-provoking essays on various aspects...
Posted on January 1, 2009 2:41 PM • 2 Comments •
Truism 2: Nobody does anything they don't want to, on balance Corollary: Everything we want to do has a neurological foundation Discuss...
Posted on December 31, 2008 1:46 AM • 19 Comments •
There are 24 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social...
Posted on December 30, 2008 9:42 PM • 0 Comments •
Via Cute Overload and NVDH....
Posted on December 30, 2008 7:58 PM • 16 Comments •
Phew. Another year almost over and it's been a really good one. This time last year, I was still blogging at Wordpress, and it was only in late February that I beamed aboard the mighty ScienceBlog mothership. It's been a...
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Posted on December 30, 2008 5:25 PM • 3 Comments •
Several of the blogs have pointed to the Disco. Inst.'s shameful abuse of the suicide of Jesse Kilgore in an end-of-year fundraising pitch. Kilgore, a college student who had recently returned from military service in Iraq, had been challenging aspects of his upbringing, and his father (a fundamentalist pastor) concluded that reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion inspired Jesse to kill himself. The Disco. Inst. decided that the best thing to do was to glom onto that father's grief in order to drum up end-of-year donation. Given that the suicide rate for Iraq veterans keeps rising, I'd look past Jesse's...
Posted on December 30, 2008 5:02 PM • 5 Comments •
SciAm has a great article about the evolution of intelligence throughout the animal kingdom. The details are interesting--for example, certain birds have demonstrated a kind of recall not seen in nonhuman mammals--but perhaps the greatest value in the article lies...
Posted on December 30, 2008 4:07 PM • 2 Comments •
Being so closely related to our own species, monkeys serve as important model organisms, and have provided many insights into the workings of the human brain. Research performed on monkeys in the past 30 years or so has, for example,...
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Posted on December 30, 2008 10:40 AM • 1 Comments •
It is with great sadness that I learned that Dr.Greg Cahill died a few days ago, at the Houston airport, waiting for his flight. I have met Greg at several meetings of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms and...
Posted on December 30, 2008 9:37 AM • 3 Comments •
Cell phone use, car use, and a tendency to plan things at the last minute are all correlated
Posted on December 30, 2008 9:35 AM • 3 Comments •
I've written before about the the failure of basic neuroscience research to advance neuropharmacology (at least, it's been a failure so far), but it's nice to see Eric Kandel, my old mentor (and one of my scientific heroes), make the...
Posted on December 30, 2008 9:17 AM • 9 Comments •
[This entry was originally posted in April 2007] The Beck effect is difficult to replicate online, because it involves testing reaction times. However, I think I've figured out a way to approximate the effect. This movie (Quicktime required) will show...
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Posted on December 30, 2008 8:57 AM • 9 Comments •
Posted on December 30, 2008 8:56 AM • 3 Comments •
When I saw this article in the NY Times, I literally ignored everything else around me for about ten minutes straight. Working in drug abuse research (as I do), I get a lot of questions from people asking a) what...
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Posted on December 30, 2008 7:58 AM • 6 Comments •
My suspicion is that many of you went home for the holidays, and my suspicion is that many of you were not entirely honest with your relatives while you were there. While it is not my intention to encourage this...
Posted on December 29, 2008 2:47 PM • 1 Comments •
[This article was originally posted in February, 2007] The setting was an integrated suburban middle school: nearly evenly divided between black and white students. As is the case in many schools, white students outperformed black students both in grades and...
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Posted on December 29, 2008 10:14 AM • 7 Comments •
Posted on December 29, 2008 9:22 AM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on December 29, 2008 8:18 AM • 0 Comments •
We (I) here at Zooillogix have a thing for lobsters. It involves Belgium, pasta tongs, and a Dutch boy named Lourens. I'll leave it at that. Anyway, this mutant lobster was pulled out of the briny depths near Newport, RI...
Posted on December 28, 2008 3:13 PM • 11 Comments •
Posted on December 28, 2008 8:30 AM • 6 Comments •
People who lack control cope by Identifying coherent and meaningful relationships in their environment, even wrong ones.
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Posted on December 27, 2008 12:00 PM • 7 Comments •
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Posted on December 27, 2008 8:11 AM • 0 Comments •
Portuguese wine that isn't Port.
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Posted on December 26, 2008 10:43 PM • 3 Comments •
So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology and PLoS Pathogens this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own...
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Posted on December 26, 2008 8:16 PM • 0 Comments •
I have been informed that Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians (2007) is now available in audiobook format from Cherry Hill Publishing. Cherry Hill is now selling an eight-CD recording of the book read by the author, with a foreword by John...
Posted on December 26, 2008 1:15 PM • 5 Comments •
[Originally posted in December, 2006] So it's December 22, and you are one of the few people who hasn't already bagged out of work to get ready for the holidays. You've been absolutely deluged -- swamped with work -- the...
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Posted on December 26, 2008 10:52 AM • 2 Comments •
Larry, Amanda, John, Mike and others are comenting, quite positively, on the recent Scientific American article - Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology by David J. Buller. And I agree - this is an excellent, well-deserved and well-thought...
Posted on December 25, 2008 6:15 PM • 4 Comments •
Four pretty good reasons.
Posted on December 25, 2008 5:08 PM • 1 Comments •
Posted on December 25, 2008 9:18 AM • 1 Comments •
Your face is a major component of your self-identity, but when you look into a mirror, how do you know that the person you are seeing is really you? Is it because the person in the reflection looks just like...
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Posted on December 25, 2008 3:55 AM • 1 Comments •
I found this quite intriguing: Those thinking that online social networking is a substitute for face-to-face interactions might want to think again. Recent research in psychology suggests there are some benefits to real-life socializing that the Internet just can't provide;...
Posted on December 24, 2008 3:56 PM • 3 Comments •
There's a fair bit of evidence that playing games can enhance your cognitive ability and prevent decline as we age. Or at least that's the excuse I use when I take a few minutes off during the course of the...
Posted on December 24, 2008 12:35 PM • 21 Comments •
Naughty male Australian satin bower bird selectively steals blue items to decorate his nest. The female bower birds rate their partner by their home decor so they do a lot of stealing....
Posted on December 24, 2008 9:15 AM • 0 Comments •
Honeybees are known for responding strongly to rewards, with foraging varieties performing a "dace" in response to a particularly good cache of pollen. Cocaine is a drug which lights up the reward centers in the human brain with aplomb. Considering...
Posted on December 24, 2008 8:12 AM • 1 Comments •
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Posted on December 24, 2008 7:45 AM • 1 Comments •
Synchiria is a neurological condition in which a stimulus applied to one side of the body is referred to both sides. If, for example, one's left hand is touched, he experiences tactile sensations on both hands. People with intact brains...
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Posted on December 24, 2008 5:45 AM • 0 Comments •
My second article for the Scientific American Mind Matters website is online now. This one is about the recent study which demonstrated that distorting the body image alters pain perception - specifically, it was found that using inverted binoculars to...
Posted on December 24, 2008 4:35 AM • 2 Comments •
Deceit is a useful behavior if one can get away with it while pursuing happiness; in evolutionary terms that would be to live and leave behind more copies of ones genes. A NY Times article by Natalie Angier that connects...
Posted on December 24, 2008 1:15 AM • 0 Comments •
A well-written press release on a very well done and exciting study: Honey bees on cocaine dance more, changing ideas about the insect brain: In a study published in 2007, Robinson and his colleagues reported that treatment with octopamine caused...
Posted on December 23, 2008 8:57 PM • 1 Comments •
What a Christmas present - there are 32 new articles in PLoS ONE today and they are amazing! As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can...
Posted on December 23, 2008 6:34 PM • 0 Comments •
Two summers ago in Paris, I was astounded at the volume of traffic that somehow managed to negotiate the traffic circle at the Arc de Triomphe without incident. Here's the (poor quality) video I made to document traffic flow there:...
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Posted on December 23, 2008 1:04 PM • 15 Comments •
A NY Times article by Natalie Angier describes a study of primate behavior out of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland that found a direct relationship between an animal's capacity for deceiving others and its brain size. Not only...
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Posted on December 23, 2008 8:42 AM • 1 Comments •
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Posted on December 23, 2008 7:47 AM • 0 Comments •
I was very pleased when I received my first ever book from a reader! Granted, it was Mr. SiT, but still, I was pleased. It was a copy of "Welcome to your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but...
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Posted on December 23, 2008 7:30 AM • 6 Comments •
At io9, Annalee Newitz asks, "can robots consent to have sex with humans?" Do you think the blondie bot in Cherry 2000 was really capable of giving consent to have sex with her human boyfriend? Or did her programming simply...
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Posted on December 23, 2008 12:30 AM • 14 Comments •
Evolutionary curveball for curvy?: While women with curvy figures might enjoy more attention from men in Western culture, and find it easier to become pregnant, new research suggests they may also face some evolutionary disadvantages compared to women with thicker...
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Posted on December 22, 2008 9:28 PM • 6 Comments •
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Posted on December 22, 2008 2:53 PM • 0 Comments •
A blind man flawlessly navigates an obstacle course despite having a completely inactive visual cortex.
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Posted on December 22, 2008 12:00 PM • 12 Comments •
Brian Knutson, a very clever neuroeconomist at Stanford, sheds light on some of the cognitive biases currently holding back the economy over at Edge.org. From the perspective of the brain, uncertainty is hell: The brain responds to uncertain future outcomes...
Posted on December 22, 2008 10:24 AM • 4 Comments •
Spatial navigation is the process on which we rely to orient ourselves within the environment and to negotiate our way through it. Our ability to do so depends upon cognitive maps, mental representations of the surrounding spaces, which are constructed...
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Posted on December 22, 2008 7:57 AM • 3 Comments •
I've been waiting for this day all month. My article "Predatory Intelligence," which considers the beauty and ugliness of spotted hyenas, is now available for free in the journal Antennae. For some reason it is not listed in the table...
Posted on December 21, 2008 6:13 PM • 6 Comments •
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Posted on December 21, 2008 1:56 PM • 0 Comments •
Those with a yen for philosophical musings are no doubt aware of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a repository of freely accessible articles. I don't read much on the subject compared to many here, but I did catch this piece,...
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Posted on December 20, 2008 9:16 PM • 4 Comments •
Happy Anniversary, PLoS ONE! Today is PLoS ONE's second anniversary and we're celebrating by announcing that the winner of the second PLoS synchroblogging competition is SciCurious of the Neurotopia 2.0 blog. "This fluent post captures the essence of the research...
Posted on December 20, 2008 12:00 PM • 2 Comments •
Researchers at Santa Clara University in California have replicated the results of a famous--and notorious--1961 study that found that the majority of people willingly deliver what they believe to be painful shocks to unseen, unknown, but very much heard victims...
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Posted on December 20, 2008 8:57 AM • 7 Comments •
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Posted on December 20, 2008 12:37 AM • 0 Comments •
Last week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by my (incorrect) observation that the latest beta version of Firefox always displays tabs. (Actually, while it defaults to that setting, it's possible to disable it.) When I pointed this out on Twitter,...
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Posted on December 19, 2008 5:45 PM • 13 Comments •
It turns out that female birds started out as the "love 'em and leave 'em" sex, not the boys!
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Posted on December 19, 2008 3:55 PM • 3 Comments •
As winter break approaches, the younger Free-Ride offspring had an unscheduled nightmare. OK, none of the nightmares is scheduled. Still, this is a week where we could all use more sleep, not less. Younger offspring: I thought I didn't have...
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Posted on December 19, 2008 11:39 AM • 6 Comments •
Over at the Daily Beast, Alexandra Penney describes what it feels like to lose all of your money to a Wall Street Ponzi scheme: Last Thursday at around 5 p.m., I had just checked on a rising cheese soufflé in...
Posted on December 19, 2008 10:55 AM • 17 Comments •
Last week, Nature published an editorial arguing for the mainstream acceptance of "cognitive enhancing drugs": Today, on university campuses around the world, students are striking deals to buy and sell prescription drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin -- not to...
Posted on December 19, 2008 10:07 AM • 9 Comments •
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Posted on December 19, 2008 8:46 AM • 0 Comments •
Two very interesting papers this week: The Circadian Clock in Arabidopsis Roots Is a Simplified Slave Version of the Clock in Shoots: The circadian oscillator in eukaryotes consists of several interlocking feedback loops through which the expression of clock genes...
Posted on December 19, 2008 12:49 AM • 0 Comments •
So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are...
Posted on December 18, 2008 11:43 PM • 0 Comments •
[This is our synchroblogging post in honor of PLoS ONE's second birthday. Why not write your own?] Ever wonder whether it's better to study all night before a big exam, or to get a good night's sleep, but maybe not...
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Posted on December 18, 2008 1:01 PM • 11 Comments •
Starting High School One Hour Later May Reduce Teen Traffic Accidents: A new study shows that after a one-hour delay of school start times, teens increased their average nightly hours of sleep and decreased their "catch-up sleep" on the weekends,...
Posted on December 18, 2008 9:45 AM • 0 Comments •
I already wrote one entry for PLoS ONE's second birthday, but I'm feeling sparky today, and I think I like this paper better. I don't know about you guys, but when I was a sprog, my parents dragged me to...
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Posted on December 18, 2008 7:50 AM • 14 Comments •
It sounds like the beginning of a joke: Why do dolphins carry sponges? To...um...to...well technically, it's to scoop up fish, but that's not funny...to get to the other side? No? Dang. This paper from PLoS ONE has recently been covered...
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Posted on December 18, 2008 2:55 AM • 12 Comments •
Hmmm so it seems that we have to abandon some old cherished beliefs: Scientists debunk the myth that you lose most heat through your head: When it comes to wrapping up on a cold winter's day, a cosy hat is...
Posted on December 17, 2008 10:48 PM • 5 Comments •
Other deadlines bar elaboration, but I wanted to draw attention to some worthwhile reading on the science front, mostly of the mind and brain variety
Posted on December 17, 2008 10:14 PM • 0 Comments •
There are 13 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services...
Posted on December 17, 2008 7:41 PM • 0 Comments •
Here's a peculiar little paper about the evolutionary reasons for yawning in warm-blooded vertebrates
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Posted on December 17, 2008 5:46 PM • 11 Comments •
Earlier today we asked readers to imagine an angry face. Then, in a surprise poll, we asked what gender the face was. So far our results match those of a study led by D. Vaughn Becker: over three-fourths of the...
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Posted on December 17, 2008 3:44 PM • 12 Comments •
Think about an angry face. Make a picture of it in your mind. Then, answer the poll below....
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Posted on December 17, 2008 2:05 PM • 19 Comments •
I really love coming to visit you, Grandpa. Researchers at the University of New South Wales are using sarcasm to determine whether patients have frontotemporal dementia (FTD), otherwise known as Pick's disease: Researchers at the University of New South Wales...
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Posted on December 16, 2008 1:00 PM • 1 Comments •
One of the bigger challenges facing researchers who are developing artificial limbs is to create prostheses that not only act but also feel like real limbs. This is especially true for the hand, which is one of the most sensitive...
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Posted on December 16, 2008 9:42 AM • 1 Comments •
When I was 12 years old, I sometimes got to ride the train from Seattle to my aunt's house in Portland. Staring at the countryside flashing past the train window, it seemed to me that the landscape was rotating in...
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Posted on December 15, 2008 4:58 PM • 5 Comments •
When you need to stop yourself from committing some response, do you simply freeze - like a deer in the headlights - or can you selectively inhibit only the undesired action? The question is important because the ability to stop...
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Posted on December 15, 2008 11:27 AM • 2 Comments •
I find the epic Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff morbidly fascinating. He managed to lose 50 billion dollars, which can't be easy: A busy stock-trading operation occupied the 19th floor, and the computers and paperwork of Bernard L. Madoff Investment...
Posted on December 15, 2008 9:59 AM • 12 Comments •
Scientists at the University of New South Wales, which is right up there with Harvard and Oxford in terms of its renown as a research locus, have proposed that sarcasm may be useful in diagnosing certain types of dementia. The...
Posted on December 15, 2008 9:24 AM • 2 Comments •
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Posted on December 15, 2008 7:25 AM • 0 Comments •
I'm sure everyone has heard by now about the commentary that appeared in Nature on use of stimulants as cognitive enhancers. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to read the commentary myself until this weekend, when I curled up (at...
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Posted on December 14, 2008 7:55 PM • 16 Comments •
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Posted on December 14, 2008 12:08 PM • 0 Comments •
Deborah Solomon and the Times Magazine were kind enough to ask me a few questions about my new book, How We Decide. You can read the interview here. And yes, I'm jumping in the photo....
Posted on December 14, 2008 8:23 AM • 12 Comments •
The New York Times has a piece, Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches: But why the evangelical churches seem to thrive especially in hard times is a Rorschach test of perspective. For some evangelicals, the answer is obvious. "We...
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Posted on December 14, 2008 2:04 AM • 5 Comments •
Are hypomanics happier normals, or are they different from both normal people and those with bipolar disorder?
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Posted on December 13, 2008 5:14 PM • 13 Comments •
This is certainly interesting, though it points more to a problem than to a solution. Researchers at UC-Berkeley have found that kids from low-income backgrounds demonstrate "a noticeably lower level of activity in the prefrontal cortext [sic], the part of...
Posted on December 13, 2008 5:02 PM • 3 Comments •
As you know, H.M. died last week. Listen to this brief (9 minutes) NPR Science Friday podcast - you will be able to hear Henry Gustav Molaison's voice. But most importantly, he has donated his brain to further scientific study....
Posted on December 13, 2008 2:12 PM • 0 Comments •
Why is mainstream media obsessively focused, out of all the cool science out there, on silly titillating EvoPsych garbage, presented in a "shocked! shoked!" tone? Here is today's crop - feel free to savage them on your own blogs: 46%...
Posted on December 12, 2008 11:52 PM • 2 Comments •
Hmmm, I am wondering if this is connected - adult sites are feeling the crunch so....are they now funding scientific consumer research?...
Posted on December 12, 2008 9:42 PM • 0 Comments •
There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services...
Posted on December 12, 2008 7:40 PM • 0 Comments •
A few days ago after downloading the latest beta version of the FireFox web browser, I posted what I thought was an innocuous complaint on Twitter: The software assumes you will always have multiple web pages open. Even if you're...
Posted on December 12, 2008 2:15 PM • 30 Comments •
Recent advances in functional neuroimaging have enabled researchers to predict perceptual experiences with a high degree of accuracy. For example, it is possible to determine whether a subject is looking at a face or some other category of visual stimulus,...
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Posted on December 12, 2008 11:57 AM • 12 Comments •
So I was showing Zooillogix to a few folks at my friend's party in San Francisco and this guy broke out this sweet dumbo octopus tattoo. I'll show you mine, if you show me yours can be a risky move...
Posted on December 12, 2008 9:58 AM • 3 Comments •
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Posted on December 12, 2008 8:41 AM • 0 Comments •
UGH. First off my apologies for the weird scheduling. I have no idea why it posted itself four days ago. And I have to start this with a personal porn anecdote. You KNOW you wanna hear it. Woodard et al....
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Posted on December 12, 2008 1:14 AM • 47 Comments •
There are 10 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services...
Posted on December 11, 2008 11:42 PM • 0 Comments •
I caught this article on ScienceDaily about the work of Professor Bart Hoebel at Princeton who has been attempting to show that sugar is an addictive substance like a drug. He presents data at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology meeting...
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Posted on December 11, 2008 8:43 PM • 9 Comments •
Yesterday's post showed that our memory for objects depends on the background information available when we first see the object: If you see a toy in a room, you remember it better later if you see it again in the...
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Posted on December 11, 2008 3:47 PM • 4 Comments •
A lot of evolutionary psychology goes into the "They did a study on what?" category. So check out Daniel Kruger's paper, Male Financial Consumption is Associated with Higher Mating Intentions and Mating Success: Cross-culturally, male economic power is directly related...
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Posted on December 11, 2008 1:18 PM • 2 Comments •
In the latest New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has a thought-provoking article on the difficulty of figuring out what sort of person is best suited for a particular job. He begins by discussing the challenge of choosing college quarterbacks, a topic...
Posted on December 11, 2008 9:54 AM • 14 Comments •
Portraying perception distortion
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Posted on December 11, 2008 2:00 AM • 2 Comments •
There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services...
Posted on December 10, 2008 11:18 PM • 1 Comments •
In the never ending quest for death gadgets Mercedes has come up with a specialized screen that will show the driver one thing and the passenger another. Just think, now in addition to a driver watching a movie while they...
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Posted on December 10, 2008 8:47 PM • 12 Comments •
Change blindness is a truly remarkable phenomenon. There are so many ways that the human perceptual system can be tricked into missing a change that appears right before our eyes, that it's sometimes astonishing that we aren't constantly running into...
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Posted on December 10, 2008 4:54 PM • 1 Comments •
In an update to their groundbreaking earlier demonstration that high-IQ children initially show a thinner cortex, and later show an initially thicker one than their average-IQ peers, Shaw et al. have now documented those trajectories of cortical thickening which are...
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Posted on December 10, 2008 11:00 AM • 4 Comments •
Sine-Wave speech is a wonderful example of the importance of patterns when it comes to our sense of sound. When people first hear a sentence that's been artificially degraded, the sentence sounds like a sequence of "simultaneous whistles, or science...
Posted on December 10, 2008 9:41 AM • 7 Comments •
On request from several people, I am here reposting my post that I wrote on cocaine way when I was but a little blogging larvae. Now, I think I have reached pupa stage, and then when I go into my...
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Posted on December 9, 2008 10:33 PM • 7 Comments •
"Why Do Dolphins Carry Sponges?" and answers to other life's persistent questions....
Posted on December 9, 2008 6:53 PM • 0 Comments •
In my department this year, someone has decided to hold a "deck the doors" contest. Basically, you sign up for a door, deck it out, and whoever has the best door gets pizza. I'm actually not a HUGE fan of...
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Posted on December 9, 2008 5:28 PM • 5 Comments •
Slow news day... Once again, ladies and gentleman, Nick Van Der Horst....
Posted on December 9, 2008 2:30 PM • 8 Comments •
Yes, indeedy, the neuroscience blog carnival has finally been published!
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Posted on December 9, 2008 1:14 PM • 0 Comments •
In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin noted that facial expressions vary little across cultures. We all recognize that someone whose eyes and mouth are wide open, and whose eyebrows are raised, is afraid. This...
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Posted on December 9, 2008 11:50 AM • 0 Comments •
I'm sitting at the dining room table eating lunch, when I get the feeling of being watched. I look around, and see the dog across the room, curled up on her pillows staring at me. She's quietly chanting to herself...
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Posted on December 9, 2008 10:34 AM • 18 Comments •
The absence of reward induces inequity aversion in dogs: One crucial element for the evolution of cooperation may be the sensitivity to others' efforts and payoffs compared with one's own costs and gains. Inequity aversion is thought to be the...
Posted on December 9, 2008 2:38 AM • 2 Comments •
The other day I was teaching a whole passel of high school students about cocaine and the brain. I usually give them choices about what they want to hear about, and they ALWAYS pick cocaine. I was so happy when...
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Posted on December 8, 2008 11:42 PM • 10 Comments •
Social status shapes racial identity
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Posted on December 8, 2008 5:00 PM • 7 Comments •
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Posted on December 8, 2008 3:44 PM • 1 Comments •
What you remember about your life is almost certainly not accurate. Adults have very few memories before age five, and there is a systematic bias to the memories most people have for the rest of their lives. We are more...
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Posted on December 8, 2008 3:21 PM • 10 Comments •
While researching this story, I came across a fascinating (and controversial) take on the "depression epidemic" called The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder. It took a few months, but I've got a new interview...
Posted on December 8, 2008 11:49 AM • 13 Comments •
Seriously... I'm totally amazed. I've seen pigeons play ping pong (well more like real life pong). But this is amazing. Check it out:...
Posted on December 8, 2008 11:31 AM • 9 Comments •
When University of Virginia neuroscientist Bankole Johnson first introduced the idea two decades ago that alcoholism lends itself to pharmacological treatment in just the same way other diseases do, he was regarded as something of a rogue by his peers....
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Posted on December 8, 2008 10:48 AM • 9 Comments •
Oh pareidolia. I mean I understand seeing something that maybe looks like something else in the clouds or one time I accidentally peeled an orange that looked like a penis. But thinking that there is something actually significant and...
Posted on December 7, 2008 4:54 PM • 9 Comments •
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Posted on December 7, 2008 12:15 PM • 0 Comments •
Why The 'Perfect' Body Isn't Always Perfect: How Hormones Interact With Waist-to-hip Ratios In Women: Having an imperfect body may come with some substantial benefits for some women, according to a new article in the December issue of Current Anthropology....
Posted on December 6, 2008 8:00 AM • 2 Comments •
Everyone who's ever taken a Neuroscience class in college remembers the strange case of H.M. H.M. suffered from epilepsy. Back in 1953, his brain was operated on - some large chunks (the hippocampi) were removed. Epilepsy was gone. So was...
Posted on December 5, 2008 10:21 PM • 3 Comments •
There are 9 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services...
Posted on December 5, 2008 6:05 PM • 0 Comments •
The last place I lived before small-town Davidson, North Carolina, was New York City. One thing that seemed extremely different to me when I moved from New York to Davidson was the behavior of pedestrians and drivers. In New York,...
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Posted on December 5, 2008 4:36 PM • 19 Comments •
The Radiological Society of America recently issued a press release entitled "Robotic Technology Improves Stroke Rehabilitation". It sounds like good, instantly Slashdottable fare: brain scans and robots? The only way to improve that would be to run it on Linux...
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Posted on December 5, 2008 12:51 PM • 4 Comments •
Patient H.M. just died: In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation in Hartford to correct a seizure disorder, only to emerge from it fundamentally and irreparably changed. He developed a syndrome neurologists call profound amnesia. He had lost the...
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Posted on December 5, 2008 10:02 AM • 3 Comments •
The National Academies is working to identify topics in science, engineering, and medicine that matter most to the public. They developed this 2-minute survey and we encourage Intersection readers to participate: What topics in science, engineering, and medicine matter most...
Posted on December 5, 2008 8:56 AM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on December 5, 2008 8:55 AM • 0 Comments •
Yawn. Just seeing that word made you more likely to open your mouth in a big inhalation, contort your face and stretch out your arms. In other words, yawning is a contagious experience. Now it turns out that happiness is...
Posted on December 5, 2008 8:52 AM • 9 Comments •
The amnesic patient known as H.M., who is the best known case study in neuropsychology, has died, at the age of 82.H.M., whose full name has now been revealed as Henry Gustav Molaison, lost completely the ability to form new...
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Posted on December 5, 2008 8:47 AM • 5 Comments •
A sports magazine writer asked me about the different techniques one could use to distract an athlete... here's what I said: About a year ago another graduate student and I were planning on doing some research in my lab...
Posted on December 4, 2008 9:28 PM • 8 Comments •
When I was asked to review Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and my My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend, by Barbara Oakley, I was pretty certain that my life as a Science Blogger had reached its...
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Posted on December 4, 2008 9:01 PM • 6 Comments •
The man who constituted one of the best explored case studies in cognitive psychology, perhaps the best explored case study ever, has passed away. As reported in the Montreal Gazette: The 82-year-old man scientists have known only as HM died...
Posted on December 4, 2008 7:50 PM • 11 Comments •
Can you hear colors? Can you see sounds? Do words have colors or images associated with them? It may sound impossible, but there are many documented cases of people who experience all these things. We've discussed it before on Cognitive...
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Posted on December 4, 2008 3:42 PM • 20 Comments •
Over time, the ability to punish one another increases cooperation in groups and increases rewards for individuals
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Posted on December 4, 2008 2:00 PM • 8 Comments •
Arguably the most important and certainly the most famous single case study patient in Psychology and Neuroscience passed away on Tuesday December 2nd. H.M. as he was known to probably every student of Psychology can now be revealed as...
Posted on December 4, 2008 12:00 PM • 4 Comments •
Believe it or not, there have been studies that determine why we use wrapping paper on gifts!
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Posted on December 4, 2008 11:29 AM • 10 Comments •
Tired of the same old crap for Christmas?...
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Posted on December 4, 2008 11:27 AM • 0 Comments •
"Henry G. Molaison, 82, of Windsor Locks, CT died on Tuesday. He is known in the medical and scientific literatures as "the amnesic patient, H.M." He was born in Manchester, CT and graduated from East Hartford High School. In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain...
Posted on December 4, 2008 10:56 AM • 1 Comments •
Nicholas Kristof has an important column on the link between iodized salt and IQ in developing countries: Almost one-third of the world's people don't get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that...
Posted on December 4, 2008 8:17 AM • 6 Comments •
I am impressed by the gay dolphins' invention of nasal intercourse.
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Posted on December 4, 2008 7:21 AM • 14 Comments •
Though Barbara Oakley's Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend is ostensibly about Machiavellian behavior, it is also a testament to her intellectual ambition. The subheading is a clear pointer to...
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Posted on December 3, 2008 11:24 AM • 13 Comments •
'Try to be the smartest boy in class.' ..writes 9 yr old Alec Greven in How To Talk To Girls. Sure, he may not have much dating experience--and admittedly, I haven't read the book--but this charming little guy is onto...
Posted on December 3, 2008 9:12 AM • 1 Comments •
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Posted on December 3, 2008 7:24 AM • 0 Comments •
There are 10 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services...
Posted on December 3, 2008 12:28 AM • 0 Comments •
An illusion so powerful that people can shake hands with their own bodies without breaking the spell.
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Posted on December 2, 2008 7:19 PM • 8 Comments •
We can quickly spot a face staring at us in a crowd. We can do this much quicker, for example, than we can determine that no one is staring at us, as this movie demonstrates. A grid of 100 pictures...
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Posted on December 2, 2008 4:46 PM • 13 Comments •
What would it be like to have an immaculate memory, so that every detail of life was instantly inscribed in the brain? It's actually unbearable. Here's Der Spiegel: Price can rattle off, without hesitation, what she saw and heard on...
Posted on December 2, 2008 2:21 PM • 11 Comments •
Vaughan Bell, of Mindhacks fame, wrote a really interesting article on "post-bereavement ghosts" over at Mind Matters. I had no idea that such hallucinations were so ubiquitous: Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common, to the...
Posted on December 2, 2008 2:16 PM • 7 Comments •
Body ownership - the sense that one's body belongs to one's self - is central to self-awareness, and yet is something that most of us take completely for granted. We experience our bodies as being an integral part of ourselves,...
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Posted on December 2, 2008 12:15 PM • 11 Comments •
Give this video at least a minute and you'll see some spectacular shadow art. I particularly like the last style (1:15) using sculptured mass to create recognizable form:...
Posted on December 2, 2008 8:27 AM • 1 Comments •
Podcast with the $100 Spike authors
Posted on December 2, 2008 2:10 AM • 2 Comments •
Let's see what is new in PLoS Medicine, PLoS Biology and PLoS ONE today: Time-of-Day-Dependent Enhancement of Adult Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus: Adult neurogenesis occurs in specific regions of the mammalian brain such as the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus....
Posted on December 1, 2008 10:18 PM • 0 Comments •
A pair of gay penguins at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China has taken to stealing the eggs of straight couples and leaving rocks in place to fool their victims.
Posted on December 1, 2008 8:02 PM • 10 Comments •
One of the...conceits? tropes? myths? facts? benefits? poorly realized aspirations? of the scientist has been perplexing me today whilst skirmishing elsewhere. In theory, science is all about the unknown outcome and empiricism. We start an experiment, test or inquiry as...
Posted on December 1, 2008 5:50 PM • 89 Comments •
I encourage you to read Behind the Stick, a new blog by a penetrating observer of the habits of one of the more charismatic primates.
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Posted on December 1, 2008 2:45 PM • 10 Comments •
by Irene Pepperberg, this book tells the story of her 30 year relationship with an African grey parrot, Alex
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Posted on December 1, 2008 12:59 PM • 1 Comments •
Synaesthesia is a neurological condition in which stimuli of one sensory modality evoke experiences in another modality. This is thought to occur as a result of insufficient "pruning" during development, so that most of the pathways connecting parts of the...
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Posted on December 1, 2008 11:30 AM • 12 Comments •
Cerebrum just published an interesting article on the ethical implications of using drugs to treat drug addiction. In particular, the scientists examine the benefits of naltrexone, an opioid receptor antagonist. (This means that the drug blocks receptors that normally bind...
Posted on December 1, 2008 10:51 AM • 11 Comments •
It's the best show on the radio* and it's all about science. If you're not listening to Radio Lab, then you're missing something quite special. The new season has just begun with a fantastic episode on "Choice," and I'm not...
Posted on December 1, 2008 9:26 AM • 4 Comments •
A few years ago I blogged about prosopagnosia, "face blindness." Nature Neuroscience now has a new paper finding some correlates with brain architecture, Reduced structural connectivity in ventral visual cortex in congenital prosopagnosia: Using diffusion tensor imaging and tractography, we...
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Posted on November 30, 2008 10:23 PM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on November 30, 2008 6:49 PM • 0 Comments •
The raw material for Miriam Sach's solo contemporary dance was her 2004 Ph.D. thesis at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, titled "Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography: A comparison between single subject and group analysis."...
Posted on November 29, 2008 12:30 PM • 1 Comments •
Greta walks a mile to work every day. I work at home, so I don't walk around town much. I'm much more likely to be driving down the street where we live than walking on it. Does this affect our...
Posted on November 28, 2008 4:10 PM • 42 Comments •
Can physics tell us about ourselves? To phrase the question more narrowly: can the statistical tools which physicists have developed to understand the collective motion of large agglutinations of particles help us figure out what our brains are doing? If...
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Posted on November 27, 2008 1:06 PM • 6 Comments •
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Posted on November 27, 2008 12:57 PM • 0 Comments •
You can control the severity of pain and swelling in an aching hand by making it seem larger or smaller.
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Posted on November 27, 2008 8:30 AM • 7 Comments •
The good Dr. Isis has posted her concern that recent developmental advances exhibited by Little Isis will permanently ruin Dr. Isis' sleep. Little Isis is no longer contained by the four walls of his crib and Dr. Isis awoke to...
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Posted on November 26, 2008 6:20 PM • 8 Comments •
It's Thanksgiving tomorrow and the question (of the title of this post) pops up on the internets again. See SciCurious and Janet for the latest local offerings. Short answer: we don't know. But there is endless speculation about it, each...
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Posted on November 26, 2008 4:03 PM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on November 26, 2008 2:55 PM • 3 Comments •
(This entry was originally posted in May, 2006) We've discussed implicit attitudes on Cognitive Daily before, but never in the context of food. The standard implicit attitude task asks you to identify items belonging to two different categories. Consider the...
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Posted on November 26, 2008 2:36 PM • 8 Comments •
The term body image was coined by the great neurologist Henry Head and refers to a mental representation of one's physical appearance. Constructed by the brain from past experience and present sensations, the body image is a fundamental aspect of...
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Posted on November 26, 2008 12:40 PM • 8 Comments •
Play cognitive engineer: if you were designing an intelligent system, you'd probably use the same system to detect novelty as that used to detect familiarity. After all, one is simply the inverse of the other - so novelty can be...
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Posted on November 26, 2008 12:40 PM • 1 Comments •
My latest Science Progress column, about a recent, cutting edge attempt to bring science and Hollywood together, is now up. It's entitled, "Attack of the Nerds from Outer Space," which should be more than enough of a teaser. You...
Posted on November 26, 2008 12:00 PM • 0 Comments •
For years, you've heard the tremendous fatigue experienced after an American Thanksgiving dinner laid at the feet of the turkey -- or more precisely, at the tryptophan in that turkey. Trytophan, apparently, is the go-to amino acid for those who...
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Posted on November 26, 2008 8:29 AM • 11 Comments •
Throughout our language, the vocabulary of physical cleanliness is also used to describe moral cleanliness. We describe saints as pure and thieves as dirty; consciences can be clean and sins can be washed away. But more and more, psychological studies...
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Posted on November 26, 2008 7:30 AM • 3 Comments •
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, hands down. Well, ok, I also celebrate a series of personal holidays on the day after Valentine's, the day after Easter, the day after Halloween, and the day after Christmas. Why hinge your emotions on...
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Posted on November 26, 2008 3:14 AM • 11 Comments •
There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services...
Posted on November 25, 2008 10:25 PM • 1 Comments •
To efficiently direct learning, it may be useful for the brain to attend to those items which are maximally novel - this novelty may obscure some predictive or rewarding value that has not yet been learned or exploited. This is...
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Posted on November 25, 2008 2:19 PM • 1 Comments •
The next few months are going to be full of news and riffs on my next book, How We Decide, which comes out in February. As a result, I'm trying to pace myself and limit the shameless self-promotion, at least...
Posted on November 25, 2008 1:30 PM • 4 Comments •
For most of us, visual perception is crucial for spatial navigation. We rely on vision to find our way around, to position ourselves and localize objects within the surroundings, and to plan our trajectory on the basis of the layout...
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Posted on November 25, 2008 10:23 AM • 0 Comments •
This is from an interesting open-access article in Annals of General Psychiatry. It describes two studies, relating to two different catastrophic events. The authors examine the differences in how various risk factors may contribute to the development of PTSD in...
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Posted on November 25, 2008 7:39 AM • 0 Comments •
[From]...
Posted on November 24, 2008 8:39 PM • 2 Comments •
Prosopagnosia is a neurological condition characterised by an inability to recognize faces. In the most extreme cases, the prosopagnosic patient cannot even recognize their own face in the mirror or a photograph, and in his 1985 book The Man Who...
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Posted on November 24, 2008 6:00 PM • 3 Comments •
Boundary extension is a phenomenon we've discussed a lot on Cognitive Daily. It's typically described as a memory error: We remember scenes as having bigger boundaries than what we originally saw. Take a look at these two pictures of Jim:...
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Posted on November 24, 2008 5:26 PM • 10 Comments •
Rest assured that some wise recommendations will be made for keeping the Thanksgiving table free of corporate plonk and proletariat swill.
Posted on November 24, 2008 12:10 PM • 0 Comments •
I have a feeling that this holiday season there will be even more drinking than usual, as people self-medicate with booze. Worried about your 401(k)? Have some egg nog. The good news is that there's a new studyshowing, once again,...
Posted on November 24, 2008 9:49 AM • 15 Comments •
An inherited inability to recognise faces is caused by faulty white matter tracts linking face-processing brain regions
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Posted on November 24, 2008 8:30 AM • 4 Comments •
Think of a copper tea kettle (I'm cold, tea is warm...). When you think about it, where is it? It's in a kitchen, right? Possibly on a stove. It's definitely in a context where you would expect it to be....
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Posted on November 24, 2008 1:31 AM • 5 Comments •
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Posted on November 23, 2008 9:02 PM • 0 Comments •
"Defective Man A. Age, 45 years. ....Ranch laborer in the experimenter's employ... nervous suspicious, "muddled" person, with a grievance against society in general, and a surprising fund of self-acquired misinterpretations relating to social environment. He expressed a belief that my experiment was dangerous meddling with the human mind... constant dread of apparatus...labored under a suspicion that it was not the simple structure that it pretended to be"
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Posted on November 22, 2008 10:33 AM • 3 Comments •
The flavors of Greece, Sicily, and even Croatia (don't tell Bora Zivkovic) - but who would've intended for their wine to smell of Vicks VapoRub? Some great values, great drinking, and great company!
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Posted on November 21, 2008 6:02 PM • 7 Comments •
Last week we wondered how having kids affects our own childhood memories. In many ways, our kids remind us of our own childhood, allowing us to relive our favorite memories. But kids also distract us by being so adorable (or...
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Posted on November 21, 2008 4:30 PM • 16 Comments •
OK, not really, but I have a new piece in The Guardian's Comment Is Free on polygamy....
Posted on November 21, 2008 12:16 AM • 11 Comments •
So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens, PLoS ONE and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about...
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Posted on November 20, 2008 10:20 PM • 0 Comments •
. . . or, brain worms could be on the rise! Mo at Neurophilosophy has a really freaky story/video about a parasitic worm that invaded a woman's brain. This one is worth watching. . . and you can use it...
Posted on November 20, 2008 5:00 PM • 3 Comments •
Real-world experiments show that signs of petty crime make passers-by more likely to litter or steal
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Posted on November 20, 2008 2:00 PM • 20 Comments •
I'm a contributor to Very Short List: Science, the latest offshoot of the VSL brand. (David Dobbs is another contributor.) For those who don't know, VSL is a very short email on something interesting sent daily to your inbox. We...
Posted on November 20, 2008 7:59 AM • 4 Comments •
A Necker cube is bi-stable figure, meaning that it can be perceived as two different three-dimensional objects, depending on how you look at it: Cube A is ambiguous -- the true Necker cube. Cube B and cube C show the...
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Posted on November 19, 2008 3:00 PM • 12 Comments •
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Posted on November 19, 2008 9:18 AM • 0 Comments •
Last Thursday's episode of the Radio 4 programme In Our Time featured a very interesting discussion about recent developments in neuroscience research. Presenter Melvynn Bragg was joined by psychologist Martin Conway of Leeds University, cognitive neuroscientist Gemma Calvert of the...
Posted on November 19, 2008 8:25 AM • 2 Comments •
Except that someone I trust far more than I do myself thinks this might not be so bad. To most of you I'm a semidescript blogger who tends to wax and wane in his anti-religious, anti-nonsense ways, coming and going...
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Posted on November 19, 2008 3:43 AM • 9 Comments •
Mass Mortality of Adult Male Subantarctic Fur Seals: Are Alien Mice the Culprits?; GP-9s Are Ubiquitous Proteins Unlikely Involved in Olfactory Mediation of Social Organization in the Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta; The Neural Basis of Object-Context Relationships on Aesthetic Judgment; A Green Fluorescent Protein with Photoswitchable Emission from the Deep Sea
Posted on November 18, 2008 11:30 PM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on November 18, 2008 1:55 PM • 0 Comments •
Optogenetics is a recently developed technique based on microbial proteins called channelrhodopsins (ChRs), which render neurons sensitive to light when inserted into them, thus enabling researchers to manipulate the activity of the cells using laser pulses. Although still very new...
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Posted on November 18, 2008 12:18 PM • 5 Comments •
This looks like a pile of wooden cubes with odd images on them. Assemble them correctly, and you get a 3-D image of the brain...except you can't see it when you are done... ...because the image is entirely inside....
Posted on November 18, 2008 7:42 AM • 2 Comments •
One of things I was taught over and over again when I was in education school was the importance of getting parents involved in kids' learning. If you get the parents on your side, my professors insisted, then you're going...
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Posted on November 17, 2008 1:18 PM • 10 Comments •
A nice summary of "humaniquness," or the cognitive talents that make homo sapiens such an unprecedented species: [Marc] Hauser describes animals as having "laser-beam" intelligence, in which each cognitive capacity is locked into a specific function. Humans, by contrast, have...
Posted on November 17, 2008 11:21 AM • 6 Comments •
While at The Salk last month for Beyond Belief 3, I also taped this episode of The Science Review for The Science Network with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Nita Farahany, Lawrence Krauss, and Roger Bingham. It's a discussion on neurolaw, neuropolitics, and...
Posted on November 17, 2008 10:08 AM • 0 Comments •
"Does electrophysiology really need to be out of reach of the amateur or budget-restricted scientist? What if you were to leave your lab tomorrow? What if the zombie apocalypse happened, you somehow survived, and you still wanted to do neuroscience?"
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Posted on November 16, 2008 4:58 PM • 17 Comments •
More movies here...
Posted on November 16, 2008 1:47 PM • 2 Comments •
Atheists are smarter than Calvinists in Dutch Study. But, the Calvinists are quicker at identifying small shapes than the Atheists. Despite the abundance of evidence that human perception is penetrated by beliefs and expectations, scientific research so far has entirely neglected the possible impact of...
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Posted on November 15, 2008 6:03 PM • 4 Comments •
From the SfN website: G20 Summit in Downtown Washington As Neuroscience 2008 approaches, SfN is monitoring Washington heightened security in effect due to the G20 summit meeting at the National Building Museum. No disruption of meeting activities is anticipated, but...
Posted on November 14, 2008 4:35 PM • 2 Comments •
The current issue of Nature contains an interesting article about Sir Christopher Wren's contribution to neuroanatomy, by art historians Martin Kemp and Nathan Flis of Oxford University.The article focuses on the anatomical illustrations produced by Wren for Thomas Willis's 1664...
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Posted on November 14, 2008 4:17 PM • 2 Comments •
This morning I was having a conversation with Nora about her AP European history class, and it got me thinking about my own experience taking the same class about 25 years ago (yes, kids, they did have AP classes back...
Posted on November 14, 2008 1:48 PM • 18 Comments •
It's one of the more annoying side-effects of the financial collapse: instant updates of the Dow Jones Industrial Average are suddenly everywhere, popping up in the corner of cable news shows, in between weather reports on the radio, highlighted on...
Posted on November 14, 2008 12:55 PM • 18 Comments •
Now that the Election is over, there is the serious business of communicating and framing science to get back to.
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Posted on November 14, 2008 11:58 AM • 20 Comments •
This interesting video shows just how smart ravens really are
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Posted on November 14, 2008 8:59 AM • 3 Comments •
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Posted on November 14, 2008 7:29 AM • 0 Comments •
The internal oscillatory brain region that allows songbirds to properly time their song rhythm has been identified (includes streaming sonograms!)
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Posted on November 14, 2008 6:49 AM • 1 Comments •
I actually had another piece in mind for this Friday's Weird Science, but a friend of mine sent me a link to this paper, and I HAD to do it. It's not just weird, it's awesome! Long, Fee. "Using temperature...
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Posted on November 14, 2008 12:09 AM • 3 Comments •
Here are a few examples. One will feed you greasy bacon every morning. The other will donate to the GOP. Others will force you to perform either menial or mental tasks. I prefer a more gradual approach - a system...
Posted on November 13, 2008 5:05 PM • 3 Comments •
This is an exciting time for chessplayers. First the big Anand-Kramnik match, which certianly exceeded expectations. Possibly a Kamsky-Topalov match later this month. And now the big olympiad in Dresden, Germany. The U.S. is represented by a strong team consisting...
Posted on November 13, 2008 4:18 PM • 1 Comments •
Yesterday, I wrote about the sad case of Motl Brody, a 12-year-old Orthodox Jew whose brain tumor had rendered him brain dead and whose parents are fighting the efforts of the hospital to disconnect him from the ventilator and to...
Posted on November 13, 2008 3:28 PM • 21 Comments •
Remember this video? A few weeks ago we used it to demonstrate that facial expressions can disrupt the perceptual system in fundamental ways. Actually, because we could only show a few short clips, we weren't able to duplicate the research...
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Posted on November 13, 2008 3:02 PM • 1 Comments •
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Posted on November 13, 2008 10:30 AM • 0 Comments •
I WAS going to blog on the history of action potentials tonight, but it's late, I'm really tired (14 hour days in the lab add up), and action potential history is hard. Luckily for all of us, a new and...
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Posted on November 12, 2008 11:59 PM • 5 Comments •
So wrote the renaissance humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam: Man is to man either a god or a wolf. Here, courtesy of Leiter, is an article in The Telegraph, in which philosopher Mark Rowlands describes his life with a wolf,...
Posted on November 12, 2008 10:31 PM • 6 Comments •
When Jim and Nora were toddlers, they were huge fans of everything Disney. Here they're wearing their Disney pajamas as they play next to their Seven Dwarves figurines, underneath their TV, which was frequently used to watch Disney videos. We...
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Posted on November 12, 2008 4:59 PM • 12 Comments •
I've been really enjoying Alex and Me, the new book by Irene Pepperberg, and not only because I've got an African Grey of my own. It's full of wonderful anecdotes like this: The students occasionally took Alex to the washroom,...
Posted on November 12, 2008 3:15 PM • 2 Comments •
It is now well established that the adult mammalian brain - including that of humans - contains at least two discrete populations of neural stem cells which continue to generate new nerve cells throughout life. These newborn neurons are quickly...
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Posted on November 12, 2008 10:28 AM • 5 Comments •
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Posted on November 12, 2008 9:05 AM • 0 Comments •
(Previously: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4) O.K. o.k. so I've been ultra delinquent with keeping on top of the PF3 puzzle, and for that I heartily apologize. But here we go - the proverbial home stretch. As it...
Posted on November 12, 2008 7:11 AM • 8 Comments •
There are 13 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services,...
Posted on November 11, 2008 11:45 PM • 2 Comments •
Philosophers have wondered for centuries whether someone who was blind from birth would "see" the world in the same way as people with normal vision. After all, there's much more to perceiving the world than properly functioning eyes. Think of...
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Posted on November 11, 2008 3:50 PM • 16 Comments •
Think, for a moment, about one of your cherished childhood memories, one of those sepia-tinged recollections that you've repeated countless times. I've got some bad news: big chunks of that memory are almost certainly not true. According to scientists, the...
Posted on November 11, 2008 11:15 AM • 10 Comments •
Every autumn, millions of songbirds embark upon long distance southerly migrations to warmer climes. Some species migrate during the day, but the majority - including sparrows, thrushes and warblers - do so at night, leaving their daytime habitats just after...
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Posted on November 11, 2008 10:59 AM • 1 Comments •
If you watch this video and remain unaffected by the cuteness of this kitten, then you are a prime candidate for psychiatric evaluation
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Posted on November 11, 2008 8:59 AM • 7 Comments •
My first contribution to the Scientific American Mind Matters website is now online. The article, called "The Power of the Memory Molecule", is about the recent study which showed that memories can be selectively erased from the brains of mice...
Posted on November 11, 2008 8:05 AM • 4 Comments •
Action potentials are special to me. They are special to me because action potentials are what got me into science in the first place. Well, ok, they didn't really get me in to science. Little Sci had been a Biology...
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Posted on November 10, 2008 11:33 PM • 10 Comments •
There are 10 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on November 10, 2008 7:56 PM • 0 Comments •
A team of Japanese researchers has demonstrated that embryonic stem cells obtained from mice and humans can spontaneously organize themselves into cortical tissues when grown in a culture dish under special conditions. Reporting in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the...
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Posted on November 10, 2008 1:35 PM • 2 Comments •
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Posted on November 10, 2008 11:56 AM • 0 Comments •
Thoreau would have liked this study: interacting with nature (at least when compared to a hectic urban landscape) dramatically improves improve cognitive function. In particular, being in natural settings restores our ability to exercise directed attention and working memory, which...
Posted on November 10, 2008 11:10 AM • 20 Comments •
Political Behavior through the Lens of Behavior Genetics: These are all fascinating questions and Fowler and colleagues are only beginning to uncover the answers. I anticipate that Fowler and his partners in crime will continue to leave a trail of...
Posted on November 9, 2008 9:49 PM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on November 9, 2008 1:07 PM • 0 Comments •
With a silly cat like this as a pet, who needs a TV?
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Posted on November 9, 2008 8:59 AM • 2 Comments •
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Posted on November 7, 2008 10:32 PM • 1 Comments •
Cyprodenate is an old-timey antidote for benzodiazepene overdose:...
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Posted on November 7, 2008 7:27 PM • 5 Comments •
Last week we asked our readers to predict the result of the election. How did they do? Out of the 474 people who guessed the results of this year's presidential election, only six got the electoral vote right - 365...
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Posted on November 7, 2008 4:37 PM • 9 Comments •
Otto, an octopus living at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, seems to have a flair for interior decoration.
Posted on November 7, 2008 2:33 PM • 4 Comments •
Anthropology.net & prefonal both have posts up which survey a new paper, A Functional Genetic Link between Distinct Developmental Language Disorders: We found that FOXP2 binds to and dramatically down-regulates CNTNAP2, a gene that encodes a neurexin and is expressed...
Posted on November 7, 2008 1:23 PM • 1 Comments •
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Posted on November 6, 2008 8:57 PM • 0 Comments •
Now that the big election is over, it's time to get away from political blogging for a while and return to what this blog was created to do: bash creationists. So have a look at this article from The New...
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Posted on November 6, 2008 6:19 PM • 106 Comments •
PalMD poses a really interesting question regarding the medical ethics of running lab tests on a patient to determine if they are drunk: So here's a non-life-and-death question: if a patient comes to see you and smells of alcohol, can...
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Posted on November 6, 2008 5:20 PM • 11 Comments •
From the fanastic series of just-released Newsweek articles on the presidential campaign: Obama was something unusual in a politician: genuinely self-aware. In late May 2007, he had stumbled through a couple of early debates and was feeling uncertain about what...
Posted on November 6, 2008 12:10 PM • 11 Comments •
Whatever It Takes, the new book by Paul Tough that profiles Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone, is one of the most bracing, sobering and inspiring books I've read in a while. It's the story of one man's attempt...
Posted on November 6, 2008 10:56 AM • 17 Comments •
Variants of CNTNAP2 (a gene controlled by FOXP2) are linked to both specific language impairment and autism
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Posted on November 6, 2008 8:30 AM • 0 Comments •
Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, has a great article in Scientific American about the limits of interpreting fMRI scanning studies -- particularly how they are presented in the media. The biggest point is that the brain is not a...
Posted on November 5, 2008 6:19 PM • 3 Comments •
First of all, I just want to say that I am in a wonderful mood today. This day would have to totally kick puppies to ruin my mood. The only dark spot is Prop 8 in California. But there is...
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Posted on November 5, 2008 6:00 PM • 3 Comments •
I play soccer every week with an ever-changing group of people. We're all busy, and people get injured or lose interest, so every week the crowd is slightly different; it often feels like we need to re-acquaint ourselves before every...
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Posted on November 5, 2008 4:57 PM • 6 Comments •
Stupid BoingBoing always has the best stuff. Reminds me of my puppy when he escapes out of the door. Once again, thanks to that Asian guy we know....
Posted on November 5, 2008 2:50 PM • 10 Comments •
There were 15 new articles in PLoS ONE published last night but I was too busy watching the election returns. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers....
Posted on November 5, 2008 1:27 PM • 0 Comments •
The Boston Globe Ideas section recently published a short interview I did with Kelly Bulkeley, author of the quite interesting "Dreaming in the World's Religions". It's an attempt to extract some common psychological themes from the descriptions of dreaming and...
Posted on November 5, 2008 9:49 AM • 6 Comments •
Rolling Stone recently published a truly excellent article by David Lipsky on the struggles, triumphs and suicide of David Foster Wallace. It's a heart-breaking read, a chronicle of a genius done in by a mental illness. (It reminded me, in...
Posted on November 5, 2008 9:34 AM • 5 Comments •
this is a sweet video that shows the bond between a parrot and his human
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Posted on November 4, 2008 8:59 AM • 1 Comments •
The Men's Final of the 1981 Wimbledon Tennis Championships is one of the most memorable events in sporting history. John McEnroe, who was playing against Bjorn Borg, famously challenged one of the referee's calls by throwing a tantrum, during which...
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Posted on November 4, 2008 8:00 AM • 4 Comments •
FuturePundit points me to new work on a genetic mutation which might predispose one to Season Affective Disorder, A missense variant (P10L) of the melanopsin (OPN4) gene in seasonal affective disorder: SAD participants had a higher frequency of the homozygous...
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Posted on November 4, 2008 2:17 AM • 0 Comments •
OMG, teh blags aspoloded! And it's all revolving around Dr. Isis. I urge everyone to check out Bora's post, it generated some great discussion and it appears that people are friendly again. And Bora said nice things about me, which...
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Posted on November 3, 2008 10:19 PM • 6 Comments •
Take a look at this quick movie. You'll be shown a "ready" screen, followed by a quick flash of eight letters arranged in a circle. Your job is to spot either a "Z" or a "K" in that circle of...
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Posted on November 3, 2008 7:05 PM • 19 Comments •
Duke's behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of "Predictably Irrational" and founder of MIT's Center for Advanced Hindsight, was in DC for a talk today. He is a damn entertaining speaker. For example, his advice on wingmen/women: "If you ever go...
Posted on November 3, 2008 6:00 PM • 4 Comments •
Yesterday's episode of the CBS programme 60 Minutes featured this report called Brain Power, about the use of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) by a number of patients who have been paralysed by various conditions. (The 12-minute report is preceded by...
Posted on November 3, 2008 1:34 PM • 2 Comments •
Learning and memory are widely thought to involve long-term potentiation (LTP), a form of synaptic plasticity in which a neuron's response to the chemical signals it receives is enhanced. This leads to a strengthening of the neuronal circuit, so that...
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Posted on November 3, 2008 12:20 PM • 6 Comments •
Last night, I attended a reading by Irene Pepperberg, so I am sharing this video interview with Irene about Alex
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Posted on November 3, 2008 8:59 AM • 1 Comments •
This is an image of a human brain. It is constructed using an imaging method known as diffusion spectrum imaging. The technique has been discussed at Neurophilosophy and Anthropology.net; both posts were based upon a paper in PLOS Biology....
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Posted on November 3, 2008 7:37 AM • 3 Comments •
Ageism More Prevalent Than Racism Among Presidential Voters, Study Finds: An ongoing study by UCLA and Stanford University researchers of 20,000 registered voters has found that far more of them would vote against Sen. John McCain because of his age...
Posted on November 3, 2008 7:07 AM • 2 Comments •
If you live in (most places in) the United States as well as many other countries, you have reset your clocks back by one hour last night (or last week). How will that affect you and other people? One possibility...
Posted on November 2, 2008 2:46 PM • 54 Comments •
This video provides a brief glimpse into the relationship between Alex and Irene Pepperberg. Irene is in NYC today, promoting her new book about Alex
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Posted on November 2, 2008 8:59 AM • 2 Comments •
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Posted on November 2, 2008 12:03 AM • 0 Comments •
A pet talking Indian Ringnecked parakeet -- this is a blue color variant as the species is normally green
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Posted on November 1, 2008 8:59 AM • 2 Comments •
An affordable Viognier and a half-decent 6-string guitar enables one to approximate a very complicated 40-year mystery.
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Posted on October 31, 2008 9:34 PM • 5 Comments •
An affecting series of images documenting a healthy bird's attempt to save its mortally injured companion
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Posted on October 31, 2008 8:45 PM • 24 Comments •
Wildlife photographer Ad Sprang snapped these shots while shooting in Vianen, Holland as seen in the
Telegraph.
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Posted on October 31, 2008 3:16 PM • 19 Comments •
With the U.S. presidential election just a few days away, many of us are in a frenzy to get information about the polls and who might be the winner. And everyone has an opinion about who'll win. Today, you can...
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Posted on October 31, 2008 2:50 PM • 3 Comments •
Strange things happen when it's Halloween week in the lab. (reposted in honor of Halloween) Catch up on the story by reading part I....
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Posted on October 31, 2008 10:01 AM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on October 31, 2008 9:21 AM • 0 Comments •
I can't freehand a parallelogram to save my life, but I can bisect an angle with the best of 'em! Woohoo! How good are you at eyeballing geometry? Test yourself with this game. It's addictive, although your eyes will tire...
Posted on October 30, 2008 10:18 PM • 6 Comments •
Carmen Miranda is probably best-known today as the former spokesperson for Chiquita bananas, but she was equally famous -- and outrageous -- as an actress, singer, and dancer in the 1940s and 1950s. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that...
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Posted on October 30, 2008 11:16 AM • 14 Comments •
This is a talking pet eclectus parrot named Riley
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Posted on October 30, 2008 8:59 AM • 1 Comments •
Evolution of trust and trustworthiness: social awareness favours personality differences (Open Access): Interest in the evolution and maintenance of personality is burgeoning. Individuals of diverse animal species differ in their aggressiveness, fearfulness, sociability and activity. Strong trade-offs, mutation-selection balance, spatio-temporal...
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Posted on October 30, 2008 8:59 AM • 0 Comments •
Over at Mind Hacks, Vaughan discusses a fascinating new paper on how psychotic delusions take on different manifestations over time: A Slovenian research team, led by psychiatrist Borut Skodlar, discovered that the Ljubljana psychiatric hospital had patient records going as...
Posted on October 30, 2008 7:18 AM • 4 Comments •
Irene Pepperberg will be making a book tour appearance this Sunday in NYC that I will be attending
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Posted on October 29, 2008 5:00 PM • 5 Comments •
Wow, wow, wow. Just, WOW!
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Posted on October 29, 2008 8:59 AM • 4 Comments •
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Posted on October 29, 2008 8:41 AM • 0 Comments •
There are 25 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
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Posted on October 28, 2008 9:41 PM • 0 Comments •
Female blue tits might be unfaithful based both on their body condition and on that of their mates
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Posted on October 28, 2008 7:05 PM • 2 Comments •
Dienekes has a interesting, if not surprising, post on how names can mold how we perceive people. I've posted on this before. The most extreme illustration of this tendency I've ever read is the fact that during segregation some southern...
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Posted on October 28, 2008 6:37 PM • 5 Comments •
A coming wave of PTSD suffering warfighters motivates urgent research into new therapeutic approaches.
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Posted on October 28, 2008 3:25 PM • 5 Comments •
The pioneering experiments performed by Hubel and Weisel in the late 1950s and early 60s taught us much about the development of the visual system. We now know, for example, that neurons in the visual cortex are organized into alternating...
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Posted on October 28, 2008 12:15 PM • 5 Comments •
Encephalon is up at Mind Hacks! Go check it out! Greta and I are off to vote today, so you'll have to get your psychology fix over there. Oh, and out of curiousity: Have you voted yet? ( surveys)...
Posted on October 28, 2008 10:16 AM • 5 Comments •
Until I read this paper, I seriously had no idea that spontaneous eyeblink was a clinical indicator for dopaminergic function. I guess this shows you how divorced the pure research side can be from the clinic. But before I cover...
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Posted on October 27, 2008 11:30 PM • 5 Comments •
There are 13 new articles published Friday night and 10 new articles tonight in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my...
Posted on October 27, 2008 11:00 PM • 0 Comments •
When Jimmy was around 18 months old, Greta and I were both in graduate school. I attended classes at night and Greta taught and worked in the lab during the day. In the late afternoon I'd drive into the city...
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Posted on October 27, 2008 5:30 PM • 15 Comments •
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Posted on October 27, 2008 4:20 PM • 0 Comments •
Ewan made a generous donation to one of the projects in my challenge and, as he did last year, he requested a poem illustrated by the sprogs on the subject of memory. It turns out that drawing "memory" is pretty...
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Posted on October 27, 2008 4:17 PM • 1 Comments •
The term phonagnosia refers to an inablity to recognize familiar voices or to discriminate between unfamiliar ones. This is a rare condition that is usually associated with brain damage: the ability to recognize familiar voices is impaired by damage to...
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Posted on October 27, 2008 12:05 PM • 3 Comments •
There's something poignant about the possibility that one of the reasons obese people eat too much is because they are unable to take pleasure in the taste of their food. But according to a new study published in Science, that's...
Posted on October 27, 2008 10:31 AM • 9 Comments •
this is a video of an amazing talking raven named Terry
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Posted on October 27, 2008 8:59 AM • 1 Comments •
Last week, I reviewed Buyology, a new book on neuromarketing, in the Washington Post. Although the book is based on a large, privately funded neuromarketing experiment, I wasn't so wowed by the science: If "Buy-ology" itself is any indication, these...
Posted on October 27, 2008 8:54 AM • 11 Comments •
There are many ways one can paint a portrait of the brain: as an organ that evolved from the simple beginnings as a few neuronal tissues in worms to one of the most interconnected mass of tissues anywhere in the...
Posted on October 27, 2008 7:52 AM • 0 Comments •
Holding a hot cup of coffee can sway a person's impressions of a stranger.
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Posted on October 26, 2008 10:00 AM • 2 Comments •
This species has a sweet little talking voice that will make you smile
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Posted on October 26, 2008 8:59 AM • 3 Comments •
Posted on October 26, 2008 8:25 AM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on October 25, 2008 7:05 PM • 0 Comments •
Another remarkable pet talking european starling -- yes, it's legal to keep them as pets in the USA!
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Posted on October 25, 2008 8:59 AM • 4 Comments •
Erasing memories has long been a popular plot device for Hollywood scriptwriters. In the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play a separated couple who undergo a radical treatment in order...
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Posted on October 24, 2008 7:16 PM • 7 Comments •
Aren't grandparents adorable? They're sweet and kind, they've been married for decades, and they've got wonderful archaic 1920s names like Edward and Edwina. Last week, based on the anecdotal evidence of my own grandparents and a couple from an NPR...
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Posted on October 24, 2008 3:22 PM • 12 Comments •
Does anyone else find "priapism" a horrifically difficult thing to pronouce? This may partially be because it's so...entertaining. Well, ok, it's entertaining for me. I imagine it leaves most guys wincing. Tran et al. "Priapism, ecstasy, and marijuana: is there...
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Posted on October 24, 2008 2:04 PM • 8 Comments •
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Posted on October 24, 2008 9:35 AM • 0 Comments •
Here's a pet European starling named Damar, talking for the camera
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Posted on October 24, 2008 8:59 AM • 6 Comments •
Over at Mind Matters, I've got an interview with Sheldon Solomon. We talk about fear, death, the fear of death, and politics. In this excerpt, Solomon describes an extremely clever experiment, in which he primed judges to think about death...
Posted on October 24, 2008 7:36 AM • 0 Comments •
John Wilkins points me to a piece by Pascal Boyer,* Being human: Religion: Bound to believe?: So is religion an adaptation or a by-product of our evolution? Perhaps one day we will find compelling evidence that a capacity for religious...
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Posted on October 23, 2008 9:58 PM • 4 Comments •
There's a new scientific appreciation for the importance of self-control. This trend began with Walter Mischel's astonishing marshmallow experiments, in which the ability of a four-year old to resist the temptation of a second marshmallow turned out to be a...
Posted on October 23, 2008 12:37 PM • 11 Comments •
This streaming video provides stunning footage of wild parrots of Australia, courtesy of PBS
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Posted on October 23, 2008 8:59 AM • 2 Comments •
So this is the second installment for general information on the things I like to blog about. Today's topic: DOPAMINE As you might be able to tell from many of my older and newer posts, I like dopamine. It's one...
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Posted on October 22, 2008 6:25 PM • 18 Comments •
Nora was an excellent talker, starting at a very young age, but that didn't mean that she couldn't express herself in other ways. Here, for example, she points to a the item she wants. It's entirely possible that she didn't...
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Posted on October 22, 2008 4:58 PM • 14 Comments •
There are 26 new articles published last night and 12 new articles published today in PLoS ONE. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are...
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Posted on October 22, 2008 4:36 PM • 0 Comments •
The fourth dimension - time - is essential for many cognitive processes, and for rhythmic movements such as walking. Recent research has begun to elucidate how neuronal activity encodes events that occur on the timescale of tens to hundredths of...
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Posted on October 22, 2008 11:26 AM • 2 Comments •
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Posted on October 22, 2008 11:22 AM • 0 Comments •
This streaming video provides a longer look at the PBS program about the wild parrots of Australia
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Posted on October 22, 2008 8:59 AM • 3 Comments •
Yesterday Dan Ariely came to Davidson to give a few lectures and meet with faculty in the Economics, Philosophy, and Psychology departments. Greta attended two of the lectures and had dinner with him (along with the rest of the Davidson...
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Posted on October 21, 2008 2:35 PM • 34 Comments •
I am a little late to this party, but I do want to talk about this paper in Nature Neuroscience. Moritz et al. implanted an electrode into a monkey's motor cortex. The electrode was designed to only record from a...
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Posted on October 21, 2008 12:03 PM • 2 Comments •
Last Saturday I penned a snarky comment about the philosophy of science, and within a week I read something that's particularly interesting from that very perspective. Well, might as well use it when it has its uses. Some preliminary: It...
Posted on October 21, 2008 10:00 AM • 19 Comments •
Another fascinating look at wild parrots that are endemic to Australia, courtesy of PBS.
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Posted on October 21, 2008 8:59 AM • 6 Comments •
There is a new blog some readers might find of interest, Culture and Cognition. Dan Sperber, who did a 10 questions nearly 3 years ago, is a contributor. Imagine, what if cultural anthropology was dominated by people who didn't behave...
Posted on October 21, 2008 4:11 AM • 2 Comments •
I'm a big proponent of exercise. I'm a runner, and when you've had a stressful day, it's amazing what a good run can do to make you feel better. I've noticed for grad students (at least at my school), when...
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Posted on October 20, 2008 9:31 PM • 6 Comments •
You know I have a soft spot for crayfish, so I was excited to read about the new study about their nervous system, nicely explained by Mo: When confronted with threatening stimuli and predators, the crayfish responds with an innate...
Posted on October 20, 2008 5:05 PM • 0 Comments •
When confronted with threatening stimuli and predators, the crayfish responds with an innate escape machanism called the startle reflex. Also known as tailflipping, this stereotyped behaviour involves rapid flexions of the abdominal muscles which produce powerful swimming strokes that...
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Posted on October 20, 2008 1:40 PM • 8 Comments •
You're given $15. Which of these bets would you gamble your $15 on? An 80 percent chance of winning $18.75 A 40 percent chance of winning $37.50 A 20 percent chance of winning $75 A 5 percent chance of $300...
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Posted on October 20, 2008 1:23 PM • 23 Comments •
Carborexia is not a word. Any string that garners only six hits on Google is not a word. But the string appears in the New York Times, so maybe it will be a word soon. Perhaps even by the...
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Posted on October 20, 2008 9:03 AM • 4 Comments •
Here's a streaming video of the spectacular Black Palm Cockatoo courtship, courtesy of PBS!
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Posted on October 20, 2008 8:59 AM • 2 Comments •
Dashi, a Japanese stock made from kelp and dried fish, is going mainstream. It's suddenly appearing on the menus of all sorts of fancy restaurants, many of which have little to do with Japanese food. The reason? Umami. "It's basically...
Posted on October 20, 2008 7:59 AM • 11 Comments •
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Posted on October 19, 2008 4:47 PM • 0 Comments •
Eric Schwitzgebel, Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, and Fiery Cushman, a psychology post-doc at Harvard, are conducting an online experiment which involves comparing philosophers' and non-philosophers' responses to questions about moral dilemmas....
Posted on October 19, 2008 1:29 PM • 0 Comments •
A list of biology, ecology, environment, natural history and animal books that are (or will soon be) available for purchase.
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Posted on October 19, 2008 11:59 AM • 0 Comments •
We've all acted impulsively before, and we have the horrendous clothes, echoing bank accounts and hilarious memories to show for it. But science is beginning to show that impulsive people may be particularly vulnerable to drug addiction, and there...
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Posted on October 19, 2008 10:00 AM • 4 Comments •
Who would guess that life with Asperger's syndrome could be so entertaining?
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Posted on October 18, 2008 11:24 PM • 3 Comments •
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Posted on October 18, 2008 1:02 PM • 0 Comments •
If you're in Australia or North America, chances are your first experience with Shiraz was in the form widely-available from Rosemount Estates. Shiraz is derived from the same stock as Syrah that is grown in France's Rhone Valley. The Australian...
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Posted on October 17, 2008 5:03 PM • 4 Comments •
My grandfather's name was Vern, and he married a woman named Verna. They were together for more than 30 years until she died. Then he married Elvira. That's them (and great-granddaughter Nora) off to the right. They were together another...
Posted on October 17, 2008 11:52 AM • 29 Comments •
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Posted on October 17, 2008 8:16 AM • 0 Comments •
Another way that credit cards dupe the brain into spending way too much money on interest payments: New research by the University of Warwick reveals that many credit card customers become fixated on the level of minimum payments given on...
Posted on October 16, 2008 8:22 PM • 5 Comments •
Researchers from the University of Washington have demonstrated that paralysed monkeys can move using a simple neuroprosthesis consisting of an external electrical circuit which connects individual neurons in the motor cortex to muscles in the arm. Similar prostheses have been...
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Posted on October 16, 2008 7:46 PM • 2 Comments •
Ben and Bernice Finn have been married for 60 years. And they still remember their first date. "I was very nervous," Ben said. "She was so pretty." "I remember that day very well," Bernice said. "And no, you weren't pretty."...
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Posted on October 16, 2008 4:22 PM • 8 Comments •
It occurred to me that some readers may be interested in the grant project, so I put the details beneath the fold. I am funded for an Australian Postdoctoral (APD) research fellowship for three years....
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Posted on October 16, 2008 4:54 AM • 30 Comments •
more research suggests that bipolar disorder can start in childhood and continue into adulthood
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Posted on October 15, 2008 5:38 PM • 17 Comments •
The scientific process is composed of generating hypotheses and testing those hypotheses through experiment. Yet we don't know a whole lot about how about hypothesis generation happens on the level of the brain. Recognizing that I am dealing with a...
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Posted on October 15, 2008 2:35 PM • 2 Comments •
The exploratorium needs scientists to share their knowledge-building process on a new interactive web application
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Posted on October 15, 2008 8:52 AM • 24 Comments •
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Posted on October 15, 2008 7:16 AM • 0 Comments •
Along with my passion for science (say it with me, "SCIENCE!" Don't you feel awesome now?), I have a passion for history. I love history books (yes, really) and history podcasts, and nothing is cooler than when Mr. SiT takes...
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Posted on October 14, 2008 11:16 PM • 7 Comments •
Yesterday we tried to replicate the effect that John Eastwood, Daniel Smilek, and Philip Merikle observed -- that negative facial expressions distract us from even the simplest tasks more than positive facial expressions. Hundreds of our readers watched one of...
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Posted on October 14, 2008 1:26 PM • 2 Comments •
Or so says this BBC article: A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulates centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The researchers say this might even help to counter-act the age-related physiological...
Posted on October 14, 2008 11:56 AM • 3 Comments •
It seems that, due to the increased number of people who are out and about, you are 18% more likely to die in an auto accident on Election Day then other days of the year (Superbowl Sunday included). Yes sir, voting can be hazardous to your health!
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Posted on October 14, 2008 10:12 AM • 4 Comments •
I have only ever seen one car crash and I remember it with crystal clarity. I was driving home along a motorway and a car heading the opposite way simply veered into the central reservation. Its hood crumpled like...
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Posted on October 14, 2008 10:00 AM • 5 Comments •
When David Savage was 19 years old, his right hand was crushed in a metal-stamping machine and subsequently amputated at the wrist by doctors. Afterwards, Savage was fitted with a mechanical cable-hook prosthesis, which he wore until December, 2006, when...
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Posted on October 14, 2008 7:12 AM • 19 Comments •
An Autonomous Circadian Clock in the Inner Mouse Retina Regulated by Dopamine and GABA: The circadian clock in the mammalian retina regulates many retinal functions, and its output modulates the central circadian clock in the brain. Details about the cellular...
Posted on October 14, 2008 12:30 AM • 0 Comments •
There are 12 new articles in PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week -...
Posted on October 14, 2008 12:26 AM • 0 Comments •
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Posted on October 14, 2008 12:15 AM • 3 Comments •
Over at Mind Matters, I've got an interview with Dr. Robert Burton on the danger of certainty and its relevance during a presidential election: LEHRER: To what extent does the certainty bias come into play during a presidential election? It...
Posted on October 13, 2008 9:26 PM • 4 Comments •
I realize it's been a few weeks, but I'm FINALLY getting a look at all the responses that poured in in response to this post. I'm a good little scientist, and we all have to look carefully at our data....
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Posted on October 13, 2008 8:32 PM • 5 Comments •
Here's a really interesting experiment that we may be able to replicate online. Take a look at this very short video. You'll be shown a set of 12 arcs. Some of the arcs will be upturned and some of them...
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Posted on October 13, 2008 3:47 PM • 9 Comments •
The Archives of General Psychiatry has an open-access article about bipolar disorder in childhood (Child Bipolar I Disorder). I started to write about that. But then, as often happens, I stumbled upon something else. The LA Times has a consumer-oriented...
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Posted on October 13, 2008 7:50 AM • 7 Comments •
The BBC has film footage of the legendary Bluegrass musician Eddie Adcock playing the banjo whilst having his brain operated on.Adcock is suffering from essential tremor, a progressive neurological condition characterised by tremors in the arms which appear during voluntary...
Posted on October 12, 2008 6:22 PM • 5 Comments •
When empathy attacks scientists...
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Posted on October 12, 2008 12:00 PM • 50 Comments •
It's mid-October. For most of us, our New Year's resolutions have long been forgotten and our bad habits remain frustratingly habitual. The things that are bad for us often feel strongly compelling, be they high-fat foods, gambling or alcohol....
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Posted on October 12, 2008 10:00 AM • 3 Comments •
The frame returns.
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Posted on October 12, 2008 12:00 AM • 8 Comments •
Finally, a vaccine scientist pushes back against antivaccinationists.
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Posted on October 11, 2008 12:00 PM • 3 Comments •
In today's PLoS Computation Biology: Circadian rhythm is universally present from unicellular organisms to complex organisms and plays an important role in physiological processes such as the sleep-wake cycle in mammals. The mammalian circadian rhythm presents an excellent system for...
Posted on October 10, 2008 11:20 PM • 0 Comments •
So, er, why don't I travel with Erleichda and Sweetpea???
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Posted on October 10, 2008 9:13 PM • 1 Comments •
Last week we asked our readers about an illusion (created by Nobuyuki Kayahara) that's been circulated very widely recently: While the illusion can't actually determine whether you're "right-brained" or "left-brained," we were curious about what actually affects people's perception of...
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Posted on October 10, 2008 2:38 PM • 69 Comments •
For Friday Weird Science, there is really nothing better than a good case report. And you guys are getting a GOOD one this week. Partially because it's really good, and partially because I have just returned from the bachelorette...
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Posted on October 10, 2008 1:10 AM • 37 Comments •
At any given moment, the cortex is riven by disagreement, as rival bits of tissue contradict each other. Different brain areas think different things for different reasons; all those mental components stuffed inside our head are constantly fighting for influence...
Posted on October 9, 2008 6:00 PM • 5 Comments •
There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on October 9, 2008 5:45 PM • 1 Comments •
Circadian Clock May Be Critical For Remembering What You Learn, Researchers Say: The circadian rhythm that quietly pulses inside us all, guiding our daily cycle from sleep to wakefulness and back to sleep again, may be doing much more than...
Posted on October 9, 2008 5:03 PM • 0 Comments •
There's a new paper out which models human behavioral ecology, Dynamics of Alliance Formation and the Egalitarian Revolution. Anthropology.net has a good review, so I'll just point you there. I was going to read this paper, and a few others...
Posted on October 9, 2008 4:07 PM • 6 Comments •
Take a look at this video: You may have seen it before -- it's the work of a CGI animation studio that takes the motions of human actors and turns them into animated models, giving them the ability to put...
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Posted on October 9, 2008 3:17 PM • 7 Comments •
There are 8 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on October 8, 2008 4:33 PM • 0 Comments •
In his 1941 book Man on His Nature, the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington described the brain as "an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern." Little could he have known that within 50 years...
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Posted on October 8, 2008 8:23 AM • 2 Comments •
When Sarah Palin was introduced to the country, most Americans had never heard of her -- but many people noticed that she looked very similar to the then-more-famous actor Tina Fey. Can you tell which is which? Let's make this...
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Posted on October 7, 2008 4:19 PM • 24 Comments •
According to this research, addictive drugs and intense social interactions look the same to the brain
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Posted on October 7, 2008 3:59 PM • 5 Comments •
The transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), which include variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans, "Mad Cow" Disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep, are progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorders characterized by the accumulation within nerve cells of an abnormally folded and insoluble...
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Posted on October 7, 2008 11:10 AM • 8 Comments •
It is the instinct of every mother to protect their children as they grow up, shielding them from the dangers of the outside world. Right from birth, life can be a difficult experience. Within a few hours, the child...
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Posted on October 7, 2008 10:00 AM • 2 Comments •
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Posted on October 7, 2008 9:34 AM • 0 Comments •
From SCONC: Tuesday, Oct. 14 6:30-8:30 pm Science Cafe Raleigh: The Behavior and Misbehavior of Dogs Barbara Sherman, of NC State's College of Veterinary Medicine and president of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists (pet whisperers) discusses dog behavior, and...
Posted on October 7, 2008 8:12 AM • 1 Comments •
A fundamental problem in the financial markets right now - a problem that's often traced to the failure of Lehman Brothers last month - is the breakdown of trust. Because financial institutions don't "trust" the solvency of other institutions and...
Posted on October 7, 2008 7:48 AM • 5 Comments •
Gene Expression In Alligators Suggests Birds Have 'Thumbs': The latest breakthrough in a 120 year-old debate on the evolution of the bird wing was published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, October 3, by Alexander Vargas and colleagues at Yale...
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Posted on October 6, 2008 1:35 PM • 0 Comments •
I'm pretty sure that if Dante had known about locked-in syndrome he would have rewritten the chapter in the Inferno devoted to the ninth circle of hell. In the most recent Esquire, Joshua Foer has an excellent profile of Erik...
Posted on October 6, 2008 9:49 AM • 8 Comments •
My latest article in the Boston Globe Ideas section is on presidential decision-making and the virtues of metacognition, or being able to think about thinking: For the last eight years, America has had a president with an audacious approach to...
Posted on October 6, 2008 9:37 AM • 7 Comments •
This is a peculiar article: Costs and effects of paliperidone extended release compared with alternative oral antipsychotic agents in patients with schizophrenia in Greece: A cost effectiveness study. It's a open-access article in the Annals of General Psychiatry, dated 28...
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Posted on October 6, 2008 9:10 AM • 2 Comments •
Thanks again for all of your comments. I'll try to address a few of your excellent suggestions and criticisms. Regarding my characterization of children with autism: I think one of my limitations in writing this book is that I'm not...
Posted on October 6, 2008 6:19 AM • 12 Comments •
Source (where you will also find a Bush train)....
Posted on October 5, 2008 4:57 PM • 6 Comments •
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Posted on October 5, 2008 2:09 PM • 2 Comments •
We like to think that we are masters of our own fates. The thought that others might be instead controlling our actions makes us uneasy. We rail against nanny states, we react badly to media hype and we are...
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Posted on October 5, 2008 10:00 AM • 8 Comments •
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Posted on October 4, 2008 9:32 PM • 0 Comments •
Constructivism. Determinism. It is all a bunch of hooey. A recent paper published by PLoS (Culture Shapes How We Look at Faces) throws a sopping wet blanket on widely held deterministic models of human behavior. In addition, the work underscores the sometimes spooky cultural differences...
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Posted on October 4, 2008 12:07 PM • 13 Comments •
Last night, while stuck in an airport (the inevitable delay), I decided to get a Wendy's milkshake. Not a particularly noteworthy decision - when traveling, I like to subsist entirely on fast food - but it occurred to me, while...
Posted on October 4, 2008 9:52 AM • 8 Comments •
There are 12 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on October 3, 2008 5:16 PM • 5 Comments •
I actually heard about this paper from the glorious Dr. Isis, who covered it a few weeks ago with her usual panache and sparkles. Since I read her post, I've been itching to get my hands on this paper,...
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Posted on October 3, 2008 2:07 PM • 14 Comments •
You've probably seen the "spinning woman" illusion as it circulated around the internet, complete with bogus claims that it can somehow be used to determine whether you're "right-brained" or "left-brained" (themselves concepts of amorphous meaning and validity). But nonetheless it's...
Posted on October 3, 2008 1:46 PM • 29 Comments •
What if training ourselves on one task yielded improvements in all other tasks we perform? This is the promise of the cognitive training movement, which is increasingly showing that such "far transfer" of training is indeed possible, while short of...
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Posted on October 3, 2008 11:23 AM • 7 Comments •
Most people don't think of themselves first and foremost as economic agents, but as human beings and citizens.
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Posted on October 3, 2008 10:58 AM • 1 Comments •
There are 13 new articles published last night and another 12 new articles published today in PLoS ONE. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are...
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Posted on October 2, 2008 4:34 PM • 0 Comments •
You're at a bar, club, or church social and you've just met an absolutely stunning member of the opposite sex. You're single and available, and you detect no signs of romantic commitment in your new conversation-partner. Could he/she be interested...
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Posted on October 2, 2008 3:04 PM • 9 Comments •
When elephants become separated from their group they can use their keen senses of smell and sight to locate their brethren, OR they can use the Earth like a giant telephone and call their herd with rumble vocalizations.
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Posted on October 2, 2008 2:31 PM • 3 Comments •
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Posted on October 2, 2008 11:02 AM • 1 Comments •
According to a recent National Geographic article primates pay a lot of attention to their friends asses. But not only that, they can actually identify them based on their fabulous booties. In humans facial recognition is based on a...
Posted on October 2, 2008 10:30 AM • 7 Comments •
You are not the person you used to be. Two weeks ago, the surface of your skin was covered with a completely different set of cells, which have since died and flaked off. Four month ago, you had a...
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Posted on October 2, 2008 10:00 AM • 8 Comments •
Behind only 9/11 and the Challenger disaster...
Posted on October 2, 2008 9:15 AM • 0 Comments •
One of the enduring mysteries of neurogenesis - the process of creating new neurons in the brain - is the purpose of all these new cells. After all, one of the reasons scientists believed that neurogenesis didn't exist (this was...
Posted on October 2, 2008 8:42 AM • 4 Comments •
I want to thank all of you who took the time to read the book and comment. Many of you had kind things to say about the writing and content, clearly understanding what I was trying to do and...
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Posted on October 2, 2008 5:52 AM • 38 Comments •
When Jim was 12 or 13, he seemed to want to watch almost every R-rated movie that came out. PG-13 movies were okay, and PG and G-rated movies were beneath his dignity. Was he simply interested in these movies because...
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Posted on October 1, 2008 2:30 PM • 13 Comments •
The Dark Lord of Vaccination has published a book, and it should me mandatory reading for antivaccine activists. Jenny McCarthy, are you listening?
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Posted on October 1, 2008 1:50 PM • 50 Comments •
Cataract 3, Bridget Riley, 1967. In the 1960s, the British artist Bridget Riley began to develop a distinctive style characterised by simple and repetitive geometric patterns which create vivid illusions of movement and sometimes colour and often have a...
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Posted on October 1, 2008 10:55 AM • 2 Comments •
Autism's False Prophets at The ScienceBlogs Book Club. Be there, Aloha.
Posted on October 1, 2008 10:30 AM • •
My name is Paul Offit. I'm the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and my published expertise is in the area of vaccine safety and rotavirus-specific immune responses. (I'm the co-inventor of the...
Posted on October 1, 2008 4:51 AM • 146 Comments •
There are 13 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on September 30, 2008 10:35 PM • 0 Comments •
If you said 1/1000, you've given the answer provided more often by second graders than by undergraduates. And you're also right....
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Posted on September 30, 2008 2:51 PM • 8 Comments •
First ever footage of dolphins trying to save one of their own. Warning: Sad ending!
Posted on September 30, 2008 2:34 PM • 2 Comments •
Over the next few days, lots of people are going to be poring over their investment portfolio, trying to figure out which stocks to keep and which stocks to sell. Unfortunately, many of these investors will make the exact same...
Posted on September 30, 2008 12:51 PM • 4 Comments •
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Posted on September 29, 2008 9:37 PM • 0 Comments •
Thomas Levenson has written an interesting post about John McCain and his fascination with high-stakes gambling. While it's clear that his gambling habit isn't going to put McCain in any serious financial danger, it does raise questions about his personality....
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Posted on September 29, 2008 12:20 PM • 19 Comments •
Learning to play a musical instrument is known to involve both structural and functional changes in the brain. Studies published in recent years have established, for example, that professional keyboard players have increased gray matter volume in motor, auditory and...
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Posted on September 29, 2008 12:05 PM • 4 Comments •
The hypocrisy is dazzling. Charles Murray (of Bell Curve fame) just wrote a book arguing that the vast majority of American college students shouldn't actually be attending college, since they lack the cognitive ability to "deal with college-level material." Instead,...
Posted on September 29, 2008 10:44 AM • 33 Comments •
The PLoS ONE paper about the way shimmering wave behavior in honeybees repels hornets, as discussed by high-school students here, has an aaccompanying video of the behavior on YouTube:...
Posted on September 27, 2008 7:34 PM • 0 Comments •
Around 15 years ago, researchers discovered that the adult rodent brain contains discrete populations of stem cells which continue to divide and produce new neurons throughout life. This discovery was an important one, as it overturned a persistent dogma in...
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Posted on September 26, 2008 5:28 PM • 3 Comments •
I think the best part about this weird Friday is that I don't have to write it! A good thing too, I have a life outside the blog (crazy, I know), and that life has been nothing short of...
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Posted on September 26, 2008 3:07 PM • 5 Comments •
My friend Geoff once said that "all cognition is social." Smugly, I reminded myself that the conclusions of cognitive psychologists are drawn on evidence where social cues are kept constant. But even in the absence of confounding social cues, perhaps...
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Posted on September 26, 2008 2:32 PM • 0 Comments •
Last week we sought to uncover the truth behind the stereotype: Are Prius owners really just like Mac owners? In a non-scientific fashion, we quizzed our readers about several of the most common stereotypes that seem to follow these two...
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Posted on September 26, 2008 2:27 PM • 17 Comments •
In this post: the large versions of the Medicine and Health, Brain and Behavior and Technology channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Medicine and Health. From Flickr, by sevenbirches...
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Posted on September 26, 2008 1:57 PM • 0 Comments •
The train of thought drives political reaction....
Posted on September 26, 2008 8:42 AM • 2 Comments •
Posted on September 26, 2008 8:16 AM • 1 Comments •
Notwithstanding the cute pictures from yesterday's post, Jim is now nearly seventeen years old. He's taller than me, has a beard, and is much less interested in having his photo taken, so I don't have any recent pictures. He also...
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Posted on September 25, 2008 3:21 PM • 31 Comments •
Or, "How a very rare bird species predicted the current worldwide economic collapse"
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Posted on September 25, 2008 2:37 PM • 1 Comments •
It's not for the joy ofwinning, or for fear of taking risks but fear of losing
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Posted on September 25, 2008 2:00 PM • 7 Comments •
Dave, Maria, Grrl, and I will all be at Ozzie's in Lower Queen Anne on Saturday afternoon. I've never met the other three bloggers but after checking out Maria's wedding...
Posted on September 25, 2008 1:00 PM • 0 Comments •
Radiation therapy is a common treatment for adults and children who present with tumours in or close to the brain. In the last 20 years, advances in radiotherapy have significantly improved the prognosis for brain cancer patients. However, the resulting...
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Posted on September 25, 2008 10:17 AM • 2 Comments •
I couldn't sleep last night. As far as I can tell, there was no particular reason for my insomnia. I wasn't stressed, or anxious, or caffeinated, or sick. My mind was tired, but my brain just wasn't in the sleeping...
Posted on September 25, 2008 9:39 AM • 9 Comments •
Formula Discovered For Longer Plant Life: Molecular biologists from Tuebingen, Germany, have discovered how the growth of leaves and the aging process of plants are coordinated. Human Or Animal Faces Associated With At Least 90 Percent Of Cars By One-third...
Posted on September 24, 2008 10:24 PM • 0 Comments •
When Jimmy and Nora were toddlers, we bought them great little plastic scooters to ride around the house. They were the perfect size for a small child. Yet Jimmy preferred to ride around on a plastic garbage truck instead, despite...
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Posted on September 24, 2008 11:38 AM • 18 Comments •
The September issue of Scientific American contains an excellent and lengthy article about a state-of-the-art technique called optogenetics, by molecular physiologist Gero Miesenböck, who has been instrumental in its development. As its name suggests, optogenetics is a combination of optics...
Posted on September 24, 2008 11:05 AM • 2 Comments •
The power of Warren Buffett is impressive. He decides to invest a few billion in Goldman Sachs and panicked investors calm down. And why not? Nobody has an investing record that can even come close to comparing with Buffett's record:...
Posted on September 24, 2008 10:57 AM • 5 Comments •
Over at BLDGBLOG, Geoffrey makes an astute observation about how the latest consumer technologies have a way of becoming metaphors for the mind. Before the brain was a binary code running on three pounds of cellular microchips, it was an...
Posted on September 23, 2008 12:57 PM • 5 Comments •
We continually rely on our abilities of spatial navigation, be it for the daily commute to work, a trip to the local supermarket, or simply to make our way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. These tasks...
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Posted on September 23, 2008 12:42 PM • 8 Comments •
This is interesting stuff. As G.K. Chesterton is said to have once said: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything." "What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor...
Posted on September 23, 2008 10:49 AM • 21 Comments •
Ever since the inception of the Global and Perpetual War on Terror, there has been concern about the role of professionals with training in psychology and psychiatry in the design, conduct, and interpretation of torture programs. The American Psychiatric Association...
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Posted on September 23, 2008 7:49 AM • 8 Comments •
Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.
Posted on September 22, 2008 12:07 PM • 3 Comments •
Last week, I had a short article in Play, the NY Times sports magazine. It was on how quarterbacks make decisions and why the Wonderlic is such a waste of time: Three and a half seconds: that's how long, on...
Posted on September 22, 2008 11:12 AM • 5 Comments •
Your must-read academic link of the week is today's Inside Higher Ed article by Gary Lewandoski, with the provocative title: Stop Trying to Get Tenure and Start Trying to Enjoy Yourself. His thesis is pretty much clear from the title:...
Posted on September 22, 2008 9:51 AM • 6 Comments •
This video is a humorous way to start your work week
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Posted on September 22, 2008 8:59 AM • 6 Comments •
You might think the zoo is an odd place for psychology bloggers to meet up. But on Saturday not only did Greta and I get a chance to connect with some of our readers and fellow bloggers, we also received...
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Posted on September 22, 2008 8:36 AM • 7 Comments •
Carl Zimmer has a post up where he points to a piece he just wrote for Scientific American, Searching for Intelligence in Our Genes. Here's the major point: Intelligence tests do identify a difference among people that has predictive power,...
Posted on September 22, 2008 2:38 AM • 4 Comments •
The economic crisis is reported to be responsible for a recent increase in calls for mental health services: Economy worries driving more people to seek help By ROB WATERS and DAVID OLMOS September 20, 2008...
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Posted on September 21, 2008 8:05 AM • 0 Comments •
Hey high school teachers! Are your students interested in the brain? Who isn't? Three winners will win all-expense-paid trips to present their work in a poster session in Seattle at...
Posted on September 20, 2008 8:08 PM • 0 Comments •
And an attention differential among young voters...
Posted on September 20, 2008 3:01 PM • 0 Comments •
Political Views Affect Firms' Corporate Social Responsibility, Study Finds: A new study in The Financial Review establishes a relationship between political beliefs of corporate stakeholders and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of their firms. Companies with a high CSR rating...
Posted on September 19, 2008 9:43 PM • 0 Comments •
Taming the Savage Nation...
Posted on September 19, 2008 11:38 AM • 1 Comments •
A few days ago I noticed a comment on an online forum: "Prius owners are just like Mac owners." As a Mac owner and Prius owner, I felt that this comment needlessly stereotyped me. Were they implying that there was...
Posted on September 19, 2008 11:09 AM • 62 Comments •
FuturePundit points me to a new paper in Science, Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits: Although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals' experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis. We present evidence...
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Posted on September 19, 2008 5:08 AM • 40 Comments •
Absinthe, the storied liquor that Hemingway and other artists drank, was once thought to induce neurological effects far beyond that which could be explained by its alcohol content (which is almost always high - three-digit proof)....
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Posted on September 18, 2008 10:34 PM • 9 Comments •
Posted on September 18, 2008 10:04 PM • 1 Comments •
How come no one ever told me John Cleese had a video podcast?
Posted on September 18, 2008 5:00 PM • 9 Comments •
Skin moisture and blink strength correspond to views on abortion, the Iraq war and the death penalty.
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Posted on September 18, 2008 2:00 PM • 5 Comments •
In the new Atlantic, Ross Douthat argues that porn is a moral slippery slope, and is part of the adultery continuum: Yes, adultery is inevitable, but it's never been universal in the way that pornography has the potential to become--at...
Posted on September 18, 2008 10:28 AM • 35 Comments •
One of the most depressing things about an election cycle is the way it splits America into a series of demographic and ideological tribes. There's red states and blue states, whites and blacks, liberals and conservatives, hockey moms and soccer...
Posted on September 18, 2008 10:26 AM • 7 Comments •
Well, well, well, well. Sometimes science and ethics do win out after all: CHICAGO (AP) -- A government agency has dropped plans for a study of a controversial treatment for autism that critics had called an unethical experiment on children....
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Posted on September 18, 2008 12:00 AM • 30 Comments •
What a bleak day on Wall Street. Although the financial contagion long ago spread beyond subprime mortgages, it's worth remembering that this all began when lenders decided that millions of people could afford loans that were actually unaffordable, at least...
Posted on September 17, 2008 5:51 PM • 7 Comments •
Fastest Flights In Nature: High-speed Spore Discharge Mechanisms Among Fungi: Microscopic coprophilous or dung-loving fungi help make our planet habitable by degrading the billions of tons of feces produced by herbivores. But the fungi have a problem: survival depends upon...
Posted on September 17, 2008 4:14 PM • 0 Comments •
Well, looky here: The ScienceBlogs Book Club is back! From October 1 through October 10, we'll be discussing Autism's False Prophets, by Dr. Paul Offit. Dr. Offit will be joined on the blog by a panel of experts, and we're...
Posted on September 17, 2008 4:00 PM • 8 Comments •
One of Jimmy's favorite toys as a toddler was a simple little bucket of blocks. There were three shapes: a rectangular prism, a triangular prism, and a cylinder. The bucket's lid had three holes: a square, a triangle, and a...
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Posted on September 17, 2008 3:07 PM • 9 Comments •
In response to my post yesterday which argued that Democrats and Republicans are both vulnerable to what's politely referred to as "motivated reasoning" - in other words, we're all partisan hacks - some commenters objected. They pointed out that the...
Posted on September 17, 2008 10:26 AM • 7 Comments •
The new issue of Seed contains a short piece by me called Beauty and the Brain, about the emerging field of neuroaesthetics, which seeks to investigate the neural correlates of the appreciation of beauty in art. Neuroaesthetics was pioneered...
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Posted on September 17, 2008 7:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Another pre-election re-post.... ;-)
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Posted on September 16, 2008 9:58 PM • 0 Comments •
We've settled on some final plans for the Midwest middle of nowhere cornfield Scienceblogs millionth comment party!. Here's the details: Time and Place Date: Saturday, September 27, 2008 Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Location: Jupiter's Pizza Street: 39 Main St City/Town:...
Posted on September 16, 2008 8:07 PM • 1 Comments •
Yesterday, we looked at some new research that found that when conservatives were exposed to evidence demonstrating the falsity of a partisan belief - such as a report demonstrating that Iraq didn't have WMD, or that lowering taxes doesn't increase...
Posted on September 16, 2008 12:58 PM • 22 Comments •
How much can we learn about disease from studying genetics? A few months ago, Nature published an interesting article on the possible impossibility of ever finding the faulty genes behind many mental illnesses. Today, Nicholas Wade in the Times had...
Posted on September 16, 2008 10:23 AM • 7 Comments •
The SAUSAGE links...mmm...sausage... sorry, that was brought to you by the list of things I wish I had for breakfast. The life of a starving grad student is full of things you WISH you had for breakfast. Or lunch. Or...
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Posted on September 16, 2008 9:59 AM • 1 Comments •
Being ostracised, or a memory of exclusion can drum up literal chills and a desire for warmth
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Posted on September 16, 2008 8:30 AM • 5 Comments •
Allen MacNeill of the Evolution List has a new weblog, Evolutionary Psychology. Check it out....
Posted on September 16, 2008 1:05 AM • 0 Comments •
How Corals Adapt To Day And Night: Researchers have uncovered a gene in corals that responds to day/night cycles, which provides some tantalizing clues into how symbiotic corals work together with their plankton partners. Corals are fascinating animals that form...
Posted on September 15, 2008 6:51 PM • 1 Comments •
Much has been written about the nonspatial functions of the parietal lobe, but these nonspatial functions are rarely evaluated as to whether they are also nonmotoric or reflect some covert form of spatial attention. Establishing whether the parietal lobe has...
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Posted on September 15, 2008 6:04 PM • 5 Comments •
Mice without the stathmin gene are fearless, strangely inattentive towards pups and unusually sociable towards their peers
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Posted on September 15, 2008 5:00 PM • 4 Comments •
It's now taken as a given that the musical score of a movie can have huge influence on our perception of the movie. From the pulsating terror achieved in films like Psycho and Jaws, to the triumphant victories in Star...
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Posted on September 15, 2008 2:30 PM • 5 Comments •
This makes me sad: When gasoline prices shot up this year, Peggy Seemann thought about saving the $10 she spends weekly on lottery tickets. But the prospect that the $10 could become $100 million or more was too appealing. So...
Posted on September 15, 2008 10:58 AM • 11 Comments •
A few months ago, when it looked as if the financial maelstrom had mostly passed - after the Bear Stearns bailout, things calmed down - I decided to write an article about Read Montague and the weird habits of dopamine...
Posted on September 15, 2008 10:55 AM • 1 Comments •
Welcome to the 54th edition of Encephalon, the neuroscience and psychology blog carnival. This edition has everything from the perception of colour and shapes to behavioural economics, the neuroscience of sports and squabbling psychologists.First up is the editor's choice: an...
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Posted on September 15, 2008 7:50 AM • 3 Comments •
Sleep researchers rarely pay attention to stuff like sleep position and sleep behavior, as opposed to EEG data, sleep duration, timing and patterns. But now Darren reviews that neglected aspect of animal sleep. Also see my post on the same...
Posted on September 15, 2008 7:43 AM • 0 Comments •
Photos Reveal Myanmar's Large And Small Predators: Using remote camera traps to lift the veil on Myanmar's dense northern wild lands, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society have painstakingly gathered a bank of valuable data on the country's populations...
Posted on September 14, 2008 8:16 PM • 0 Comments •
One important concept in psychotherapy studies is the concept of ambiguous loss. This is a loss that is, in some way, less than definitive. If you are at the hospital visiting an ill beloved family member, and see the death,...
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Posted on September 14, 2008 8:47 AM • 4 Comments •
Posted on September 13, 2008 8:04 PM • 3 Comments •
A condensed version of an informative piece about bipolar disorder in children by Jennifer Egan that will appear in tomorrow's NYTimes Magazine
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Posted on September 13, 2008 5:30 PM • 10 Comments •
Male-specific Neurons Directly Linked To Gender-specific Behaviors: New research identifies a few critical neurons that initiate sex-specific behaviors in fruit flies and, when masculinized, can elicit male-typical courtship behaviors from females. The study, published by Cell Press in the September...
Posted on September 13, 2008 12:40 PM • 1 Comments •
As you read this post, your computer is probably busy. You may have multiple programs running in the background, with email clients, anti-virus software or file-sharing software all competing for valuable memory. The ability of computers to multi-task has...
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Posted on September 13, 2008 12:00 PM • 4 Comments •
A local treasure with a national following is overwhelmed by their one-year celebration.
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Posted on September 12, 2008 11:59 PM • 6 Comments •
There are 10 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on September 12, 2008 9:52 PM • 0 Comments •
For the first time: researchers have discovered a novel pathogenic mutation linked to mad cow disease
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Posted on September 12, 2008 6:29 PM • 12 Comments •
I would love to watch this sport in person: Goalball participants compete in teams of three, and try to throw a ball that has bells embedded in it, into the opponents' goal. They must use the sound of the bell...
Posted on September 12, 2008 4:47 PM • 4 Comments •
Last week we asked readers how much sleep they lost staying up to watch the political coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions, and how that compared to the sleep they lost a few weeks earlier watching the coverage of...
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Posted on September 12, 2008 3:22 PM • 5 Comments •
Much evidence supports the idea that parietal cortex is involved in the simple maintenance of information, such as in object permanence paradigms (also here) and other tasks. This evidence is part of the justification for the "parietofrontal integration theory", which...
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Posted on September 12, 2008 1:01 PM • 1 Comments •
In recent days, there has been a lot of discussion about Sarah Palin's lack of experience in foreign policy. These criticisms all depend on the same assumption: that knowing more about foreign policy is always better. (Experience is typically used...
Posted on September 12, 2008 9:49 AM • 19 Comments •
Female Spiders Eat Small Males When They Mate: Female spiders are voracious predators and consume a wide range of prey, which sometimes includes their mates. A number of hypotheses have been proposed for why females eat males before or after...
Posted on September 12, 2008 6:11 AM • 0 Comments •
So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers....
Posted on September 11, 2008 9:59 PM • 0 Comments •
There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on September 11, 2008 9:55 PM • 0 Comments •
Hallucinations are often associated with psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia or with LSD and related drugs. Hearing voices is a characteristic symptom which is reported by about 70% of schizophrenic patients, as well as by some 15% of patients with...
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Posted on September 11, 2008 6:20 PM • 8 Comments •
Let me first start by saying that if your doctor tells you that praying is your last hope of your loved ones survival GET A NEW DOCTOR. Now that I've said that let me show you part of this ridiculous...
Posted on September 11, 2008 3:57 PM • 7 Comments •
Are you concerned that you are just sleeping with waaaay too many people? Do you want to avoid getting STD's? Do your neighbors give you dirty looks in every morning when a new person comes waltzing out of your apartment?...
Posted on September 11, 2008 3:33 PM • 8 Comments •
In this post: the large versions of the Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
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Posted on September 11, 2008 12:24 PM • 0 Comments •
One big problem with many of the studies of video game violence is that they compare different games. Sure, people might behave more aggressively after playing Carmaggeddon instead of Tetris -- they're completely different games! What would be more impressive...
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Posted on September 11, 2008 12:02 PM • 29 Comments •
The only thing I can conclude is that swing voters are f-cking morons.
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Posted on September 11, 2008 11:06 AM • 7 Comments •
I was living in Manhattan on 9/11. I can vividly recall the horrifying details of the day. I can still smell the acrid odor of burnt plastic and the pall of oily smoke and the feeling of disbelief, the sense...
Posted on September 11, 2008 10:23 AM • 4 Comments •
The inspirational story of a severely disabled person who expresses himself through music
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Posted on September 11, 2008 8:59 AM • 0 Comments •
You have to give Uncommon Descent poster DaveScot credit. He's not one of life's overly specialized intellects. He's a good, old fashioned generalist, able to talk about absolutely any area of science with exactly the same degree of spectacular...
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Posted on September 10, 2008 11:43 PM • 73 Comments •
Anyone who read my previous blog will probably know that I've got a couple of big interests: blows to the head, diabetes, sex (who doesn't?). I've also got a really big interest in both psychiatric disorders such as depression...
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Posted on September 10, 2008 10:40 PM • 3 Comments •
There are 12 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on September 10, 2008 5:06 PM • 0 Comments •
Let's say I flash you a picture containing a mixture of blue and yellow dots for one-fifth of a second. You clearly don't have time to count the dots - you barely have time to register the image - but...
Posted on September 10, 2008 10:19 AM • 4 Comments •
Anthropologists Develop New Approach To Explain Religious Behavior: Without a way to measure religious beliefs, anthropologists have had difficulty studying religion. Now, two anthropologists from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have developed a new approach to...
Posted on September 10, 2008 9:03 AM • 0 Comments •
Irene Pepperberg is appearing in NYC -- twice -- and I am attending one of her presentations!
Posted on September 9, 2008 9:28 PM • 1 Comments •
There are 12 new articles in PLoS ONE today. I guess picking all 12 would not really be 'picking'? But all 12 are interesting to me! OK, here are six, and you go and look at the other six as...
Posted on September 9, 2008 5:41 PM • 0 Comments •
Can I just say how much I LOVE these old papers! Today I present to you one of the best historical papers neuroscience has to offer, and a real classic in the field. Parkinson, J. "An Essay on the Shaking...
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Posted on September 9, 2008 5:36 PM • 8 Comments •
Fake News Shows Don't Teach Viewers Much About Political Issues, Study Finds: A new study suggests that entertainment news shows such as The Daily Show or The Colbert Report may not be as influential in teaching voters about political issues...
Posted on September 9, 2008 3:52 PM • 0 Comments •
Over at Economics of Contempt, there is an argument that liberal media bias has to exist because there is evidence that partisanship changes the way that our brains process information. (This is not his only evidence, but it is part...
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Posted on September 9, 2008 2:31 PM • 4 Comments •
PLoS ONE has already published a large number of papers in chronobiology. But we want more. Hey, I work there - I want to see more. So, when I went to the SRBR meeting in May, I did whatever I...
Posted on September 9, 2008 1:09 PM • 2 Comments •
Readers of my blog are surely familiar with Scicurious, a frequent commenter here and someone whose posts I have linked several times over the past few months because they are, well, sooooo cool! So, I am super-happy to announce that...
Posted on September 9, 2008 12:42 PM • 0 Comments •
My first reaction on hearing that SciMonkbling Evil Monkey had signed up a co-blogger was "Did you vet properly?" I mean, geez, you all know what can happen when you fail to properly vet the person who will be sharing...
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Posted on September 9, 2008 12:15 PM • 2 Comments •
Oliver Sacks, writing on mania and manic depressive disorder in the New York Review of Books: One may call it mania, madness, or psychosis--a chemical imbalance in the brain--but it presents itself as energy of a primordial sort. Greenberg likens...
Posted on September 9, 2008 10:39 AM • 9 Comments •
Not only can we remember a massive number of images, we can remember them in great detail
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Posted on September 9, 2008 8:00 AM • 1 Comments •
Take a look at these pictures. Each picture depicts four shapes -- irregular vertical columns spanning the height of the picture. It's easy to tell which letter is on a column and which is not, right? If our readers are...
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Posted on September 8, 2008 4:25 PM • 6 Comments •
There was a request for a Millionth Comment party here in Champaign-Urbana Illinois... I would totally be up for getting together with a bunch of like minded folk and throwing a few down.... say at the Blind Pig? Anyone else...
Posted on September 8, 2008 4:19 PM • 3 Comments •
A couple months ago I became a subscriber to Very Short List, an email list that sends you just ONE web link a day, 5 days a week, as a way of clueing you in to something that is both good and overlooked: Might be a movie, a web site, a blog, a book. I've now become a (modestly) paid "advisor" to a new VSL email sub-offering, VSL Science, a science-only version of the same daily email. The Shirky talk on Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus in my previous post is today's VSL Science offering, and it was something I managed to stumble over and offer up in my advisor role. It's a fun list to get, so you might want to subscribe (free) and see if you like it. In any case, from time to time I'll include...
Posted on September 8, 2008 12:11 PM • 0 Comments •
The great Laurie Colwin, on learning to cook and eat without salt: After a few weeks I felt I had gotten the hang of my new regime. I had discovered saltless bread, smoked mozarella, green peppercorns and fresh sage. I...
Posted on September 8, 2008 11:29 AM • 5 Comments •
Long-held Assumptions Of Flightless Bird Evolution Challenged By New Research: Large flightless birds of the southern continents - African ostriches, Australian emus and cassowaries, South American rheas and the New Zealand kiwi - do not share a common flightless...
Posted on September 7, 2008 10:25 PM • 0 Comments •
...and wins:...
Posted on September 6, 2008 8:46 PM • 3 Comments •
Posted on September 6, 2008 1:22 PM • 0 Comments •
A 2001 Unicef report said that the United States teenage birthrate was higher than any other member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. tied Hungary for the most abortions. This was in spite of the fact...
Posted on September 6, 2008 12:06 PM • 6 Comments •
A stranger walks up to you and a friend and offers to give you both £100. As always, there is a catch - your friend must choose how to split the money between you. Accept his offer, and you...
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Posted on September 6, 2008 10:00 AM • 8 Comments •
Language Log has an excellent critique of the media stories around AVPR1a and its effect on male behavior. This sort of media criticism is warranted, but I don't know exactly how headline writing will clearly communicate that a given dependent...
Posted on September 6, 2008 2:18 AM • 0 Comments •
Thinking People Eat Too Much: Intellectual Work Found To Induce Excessive Calorie Intake: A Universite Laval research team has demonstrated that intellectual work induces a substantial increase in calorie intake. The details of this discovery, which could go some way...
Posted on September 5, 2008 7:25 PM • 1 Comments •
Read the following text. As you read it, try to empty your mind. When you encounter grammatical errors or jargon that is impossible to understand, do not try to translate what you are reading. Rather, become one with the obscurity. Read slowly, thoughtlessly, with emptiness...
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Posted on September 5, 2008 3:24 PM • 6 Comments •
In this clip from The Simpsons, Homer explains why he wouldn't benefit from an adult education course: "How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of...
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Posted on September 5, 2008 2:54 PM • 9 Comments •
Which event is the winner: Do political conventions disrupt sleeping habits more, or do sporting events? Now we'll find out!
Posted on September 5, 2008 11:44 AM • 12 Comments •
In this post: the large version of the Brain & Behavior and Technology channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
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Posted on September 5, 2008 11:36 AM • 0 Comments •
What is your preferred route between two familiar points?
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Posted on September 5, 2008 10:13 AM • 52 Comments •
Can anyone send me the actual paper that is described in the first press release on this list, please? What Is A Gene? Media Define the Concept In Many Different Ways: Even scientists define 'a gene' in different ways, so...
Posted on September 5, 2008 9:28 AM • 4 Comments •
A Woman's History of Vaginal Orgasm is Discernible from Her Walk: In the sample of healthy young Belgian women (half of whom were vaginally orgasmic), history of vaginal orgasm (triggered solely by penile-vaginal intercourse) was diagnosable at far better than...
Posted on September 5, 2008 3:47 AM • 12 Comments •
From the Science Communication Consortium: "Ten Lessons from the Political Psychology" A talk by John Jost The Center for Science Writings Stevens Institute of Technology October 29, 4:00pm, Babbio Center Room 122 Jost is an authority on the "cognitive and...
Posted on September 4, 2008 10:13 PM • 5 Comments •
There are 10 new articles in PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you...
Posted on September 4, 2008 4:32 PM • 0 Comments •
Cigarettes' Power May Not Be In Nicotine Itself, New Study Suggests: There may be a very good reason why coffee and cigarettes often seem to go hand in hand. A Kansas State University psychology professor's research suggests that nicotine's power...
Posted on September 4, 2008 4:17 PM • 2 Comments •
Is it football season already? It seems like I just got over the epic disappointment of the Superbowl. (Yes, I'm a Pats fan) So, in honor of football season, I think it's worth highlighting one of the major trends to...
Posted on September 4, 2008 10:53 AM • 28 Comments •
I am sure this has happened to many. I find catching myself out at times in that strange land where an Explanation has taken the place of Truth. I stand there looking lovingly at the face of Clarity and Certainty...
Posted on September 4, 2008 7:51 AM • 2 Comments •
Monotony is good when it's the monotony of yet another large study failing to find a link between vaccines and autism.
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Posted on September 4, 2008 3:00 AM • 125 Comments •
In the Nature Neuroscience podcast NeuroPod, presenter Kerri Smith talks to authors of new papers from that journal about their research. The August 2008 episode (which is embedded below) includes discussions about the development of the concept of fairness in...
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Posted on September 3, 2008 8:17 PM • 2 Comments •
The media is the only thing keeping Palin from working her message magic...
Posted on September 3, 2008 6:08 PM • 0 Comments •
The 53rd edition of Encephalon is online now at Ionian Enchantment and includes entries about grid cells, cochlear implants and how culture affects the perception of faces. The carnival comes back to it's original home for the next edition -...
Posted on September 3, 2008 4:11 PM • 2 Comments •
Media portrayals and instant judgments...
Posted on September 3, 2008 3:36 PM • 0 Comments •
You may have heard of the idea that people can only remember seven things at a time -- a seven-digit phone number, a license-plate, etc. While the size of working memory actually varies from person to person (it usually ranges...
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Posted on September 3, 2008 3:08 PM • 3 Comments •
I was just kidding about that Sarah Palin-osmosis-experience crack...but apparently Frank Gaffney at TownHall.com takes it all seriously!...
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Posted on September 3, 2008 2:49 PM • 1 Comments •
When young tree hoppers feel threatened they will shake the leaves and stems that they live on, signaling their mothers to sit on top of them and chase away any attackers. Burying beetles and earwigs kick their mothers in the face until they regurgitate delicious filth into their babies' open mouths...
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Posted on September 3, 2008 1:58 PM • 8 Comments •
So there's been a lot of talk about how John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for VP demonstrates the danger of trusting your instincts and making important decisions with your gut. But I think such a conclusion is unfair -...
Posted on September 3, 2008 1:11 PM • 15 Comments •
Visual perception is constantly challenged by visual occlusion: objects in our environment constantly obscure one another, and seem to "disappear" when in fact they are nonetheless present. Young infants begin to demonstrate a basic understanding of "object permanence" at some...
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Posted on September 3, 2008 11:30 AM • 1 Comments •
Brain Imaging Links Chronic Insomnia To Reversible Cognitive Deficits Without Changes In Behavior: A neuroimaging study has found that cognitive processes related to verbal fluency are compromised in people with insomnia despite the absence of a behavioral deficit. These specific...
Posted on September 3, 2008 11:03 AM • 2 Comments •
Panhandling is a surprisingly lucrative profession: Anecdotal surveys by journalists and police, and even testimony by panhandlers themselves, suggest that begging can yield anywhere from $20 to $100 a day--though police in Coos Bay, Oregon, found that local panhandlers were...
Posted on September 3, 2008 10:13 AM • 6 Comments •
Once again, Seed is planning parties with readers and you're invited! Around the world, wherever sciblings are, we'll be celebrating our one millionth comment (expected to happen some time mid-September). There will be shindigs in Michigan, Oklahoma, Iowa, Minnesota, New...
Posted on September 3, 2008 9:08 AM • 0 Comments •
Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) currently is under investigation for treatment of sever, treatment-resistant depression (TRD). It is not really news. I wrote about it in 2005. The background information in the earlier post still is pertinent, so I won't repeat...
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Posted on September 3, 2008 7:49 AM • 3 Comments •
The post below on AVPR1A and fidelity alluded to the fact that this locus has been implicated in many other behavioral traits. I spent some of today digging through the literature. So check it.... AVPR1a and SLC6A4 Gene Polymorphisms Are...
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Posted on September 3, 2008 2:13 AM • 5 Comments •
Groaning deer, rats in pain, grapes and zen meditation....
Posted on September 2, 2008 6:17 PM • 0 Comments •
I love these experiments, if only because everyone assumes that the basic finding doesn't apply to them. It's only these other simpletons who can't tell the difference between red and white wine, or cheap plonk and fancy Bordeaux, or strawberry...
Posted on September 2, 2008 1:42 PM • 6 Comments •
Over the years I've blogged a fair amount on the AVPR1A gene. Variation on this locus has been associated with differences altruism in humans and mating preferences in voles. Now a new paper is out in PNAS, at some point...
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Posted on September 2, 2008 12:46 PM • 2 Comments •
I definitely think it's a contender. This is a slide I quickly made for the "Things to avoid when speaking publicly" video (see below), where I tried my best to make it as jarring as possible....
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Posted on September 2, 2008 12:43 PM • 16 Comments •
A slow-mo video shows how to swat a fly.
Posted on September 2, 2008 12:24 PM • 1 Comments •
On the last day of every golf tournament, Tiger Woods insists on wearing a bright red polo shirt. Woods says the habit is merely superstition, but new research suggests that his fashion sense might actually come with athletic benefits. A...
Posted on September 2, 2008 11:44 AM • 2 Comments •
An absence of evidence is not itself evidence for the absence of a particular effect. This simple problem - generally known as the problem of null effects - yields many difficulties in cognitive science, making it relatively easier to parcellate...
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Posted on September 2, 2008 10:13 AM • 2 Comments •
You've got to feel very sorry for Bristol Palin. The poor teenager isn't running for political office and yet she's the subject of two front page stories in the NY Times today. All of a sudden, every talking head on...
Posted on September 2, 2008 9:59 AM • 13 Comments •
Variation in a gene called AVPR1A has a small but evident influence on human relationships
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Posted on September 2, 2008 8:00 AM • 6 Comments •
The London Eye is a gigantic tourist trap rotating wheel, which you can ride to get a great view of London. The trip takes about 30 minutes. While riding it the other day, I noticed an odd illusion. The London...
Posted on September 1, 2008 11:54 AM • 2 Comments •
Sorry for the radio silence - I've been out and about doing some reporting. But I've got a story in the Sunday Boston Globe on the benefits of daydreaming and the default network: Teresa Belton, a research associate at East...
Posted on September 1, 2008 8:48 AM • 4 Comments •
More Genes Are Controlled By Biological Clocks Than Previously Thought: The tick-tock of your biological clock may have just gotten a little louder. Researchers at the University of Georgia report that the number of genes under control of the...
Posted on August 31, 2008 3:55 PM • 3 Comments •
While everyone else has been focused on politics this week, several science bloggers posted some amazing posts about, gasp, science! Check these out - amazing weekend reading (and potential anthology entries!): Neurophilosophy: Wilder Penfield, Neural Cartographer: The patient lies on...
Posted on August 29, 2008 7:51 PM • 3 Comments •
War and the evolution of belligerence and bravery: Tribal war occurs when a coalition of individuals use force to seize reproduction-enhancing resources, and it may have affected human evolution. Here, we develop a population-genetic model for the coevolution of costly...
Posted on August 29, 2008 7:29 PM • 1 Comments •
Unexpected Large Monkey Population Discovered In Cambodia: Tens Of Thousands Of Threatened Primates: A Wildlife Conservation Society report reveals surprisingly large populations of two globally threatened primates in a protected area in Cambodia. 'Pristine' Amazonian Region Hosted Large, Urban Civilization:...
Posted on August 29, 2008 7:21 PM • 0 Comments •
One of the problems brains must overcome to behave effectively is to discretely encode all the different responses that they can produce. Considering movement alone, you can move in a lot of different ways. Selecting which one is appropriate is...
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Posted on August 29, 2008 12:57 PM • 0 Comments •
Is it possible to form and execute motor intentions without being aware of when those intentions were formed? Precisely this pattern was observed by among (ha!) patients with parietal damage, as reported by Sirigu et al. They showed that patients...
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Posted on August 29, 2008 10:46 AM • 6 Comments •
Eyes Evolved For 'X-Ray Vision': Forward-facing Eyes Allow Animals To 'See Through' Clutter In The World: The advantage of using two eyes to see the world around us has long been associated solely with our capacity to see in 3-D....
Posted on August 29, 2008 10:06 AM • 0 Comments •
So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers....
Posted on August 29, 2008 9:06 AM • 0 Comments •
I've always been a fan of literary studies -- I was an English major in college and I continue to blog about literature on my personal blog. But when I first learned about the concept of alliteration (I must have...
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Posted on August 29, 2008 8:07 AM • 5 Comments •
There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on August 28, 2008 8:56 PM • 0 Comments •
Noah Gray, previously of the Action Potential blog of Nature Neuroscience, skirmisher on the old DM, and occasional punching bag of YHN has started a new blog called Nothing's Shocking at our mortal enemy friendly rival science-blogging-network-thingy place. I've found...
Posted on August 28, 2008 7:59 PM • 1 Comments •
Fortune favours the brave; but the brave are motivated by favours of another kind: If courage makes it significantly more likely that small bands of tribes-men will win military confrontations with their neighbours, its overall advantages can easily outweigh its...
Posted on August 28, 2008 2:41 PM • 3 Comments •
In this post: the large versions of the Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Read on »
Posted on August 28, 2008 12:21 PM • 1 Comments •
Ideally, our real-world behavior is strongly determined by our context, for the simple reason that some behaviors are only appropriate in some situations (e.g., eating during an internal context of hunger, or using slang during an external context of casual...
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Posted on August 28, 2008 10:37 AM • 0 Comments •
There are 13 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on August 27, 2008 6:43 PM • 1 Comments •
Wilder Penfield (1891-1976) The patient lies on the operating table, with the right side of his body raised slightly. The anaesthetist sterilizes his scalp and injects it with Nupercaine to produce analgesia - the patient will remain fully conscious...
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Posted on August 27, 2008 5:30 PM • 11 Comments •
"Impossible objects" like the etchings of M.C. Escher have fascinated adults for centuries. You can't help but stare and wonder at a drawing like this, which seems to defy the laws of nature: The drawing seems strange to us because...
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Posted on August 27, 2008 2:30 PM • 4 Comments •
Seven-year-old children will share sweets with others, but three-year-olds aren't so generous
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Posted on August 27, 2008 1:00 PM • 5 Comments •
Parietal cortex is critical for the maintenance of object information over delays. This is true both in tests of working memory (e.g., 1, 2 and 3) as well as simple visual manipulations involving the occlusion of visible objects. A great...
Posted on August 27, 2008 11:49 AM • 1 Comments •
Dare I broach the topic sans Chris?
Posted on August 27, 2008 8:50 AM • 1 Comments •
Posted on August 27, 2008 4:23 AM • 22 Comments •
Exploring The Function Of Sleep: Is sleep essential? Ask that question to a sleep-deprived new parent or a student who has just pulled an "all-nighter," and the answer will be a grouchy, "Of course!" But to a sleep scientist, the...
Posted on August 26, 2008 10:46 PM • 1 Comments •
Small Scattered Fragments Do Not a Dwarf Make: Biological and Archaeological Data Indicate that Prehistoric Inhabitants of Palau Were Normal Sized: Current archaeological evidence from Palau in western Micronesia indicates that the archipelago was settled around 3000-3300 BP by normal...
Posted on August 26, 2008 7:10 PM • 1 Comments •
A classic Candid Camera prank using some social psychology. I'll be posting many more of my Psych 100 videos as I run across them for the rest of the semester :)...
Posted on August 26, 2008 3:19 PM • 1 Comments •
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has dementia.In her forthcoming book, which is serialized in the Mail on Sunday (a paper which, I hasten to add, I do not read), Carol Thatcher reveals that her mother's mental faculties have been...
Posted on August 26, 2008 2:50 PM • 11 Comments •
The latest Men's Vogue has a rather interesting article (not online) by Jay McInerney on a small group of real estate moguls who like to drink very, very expensive wine. For these oenophiles, a 1982 Romanee-Conti is a young wine...
Posted on August 26, 2008 1:41 PM • 13 Comments •
originally published August 16, 2007 by Chris C. Mooney So: Whenever I have a new book out--or an old one out in paperback--I tend to do a lot of radio shows. And as a result, I've noticed a particular phenomenon...
Posted on August 26, 2008 11:08 AM • 14 Comments •
Once upon a time, back when the Human Genome Project threatened to unravel the mystery of human nature - every aspect of individuality would be reduced to a SNIP - the Nature/Nurture debate seemed like the most hotly contested question...
Posted on August 26, 2008 10:16 AM • 12 Comments •
Andersen et al discuss both the attentional and intentional aspects to the function of the intraparietal sulcus. What's the distinction between attention and intention? First, let's talk about attention. The modal view, based on the biased competition model of Desimone...
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Posted on August 26, 2008 10:13 AM • 0 Comments •
Could capuchin monkeys get a feel-good factor from helping out other capuchins?
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Posted on August 26, 2008 10:00 AM • 5 Comments •
Cells In Eye Could Help Control Sleep: A set of nerve cells in the eye control our levels of sleepiness according to the brightness of our surroundings, Oxford University researchers have discovered. The cells directly regulate the activity of sleep...
Posted on August 26, 2008 8:27 AM • 1 Comments •
People often use the concept "hand-eye coordination" without appreciating its neural basis. Evidence collected by Andersen & colleagues over the past ten years indicates that different areas of parietal cortex are recruited to represent targets which require different effectors, all...
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Posted on August 25, 2008 2:56 PM • 1 Comments •
In their already-classic 2001 article, Miller & Cohen use a "train track" metaphor to illustrate the function of prefrontal cortex. The idea is that myriad learned associations interconnect sensory representations with motor commands (metaphorically, these are the "train tracks"). The...
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Posted on August 25, 2008 2:24 PM • 2 Comments •
Take a look at this short video -- it's a list of animals. Try to remember as many animals as you can. If you're like me, you're pretty confident that you will remember the entire list, even after ten minutes...
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Posted on August 25, 2008 11:04 AM • 10 Comments •
Tiny Cellular Antennae Trigger Neural Stem Cells: Yale University scientists today reported evidence suggesting that the tiny cilia found on brain cells of mammals, thought to be vestiges of a primeval past, actually play a critical role in relaying molecular...
Posted on August 25, 2008 10:00 AM • 1 Comments •
The BBC has produced an interesting series called Blood and Guts about the modern history of surgery and the first episode, which is about neurosurgery, is now available online at the BBC iPlayer website. (For those outside the U.K., it...
Posted on August 24, 2008 4:22 PM • 4 Comments •
Foul Owls Use Feces To Show They Are In Fine Feather: Some years ago, within the Department of Conservation Biology of the Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; Seville, Spain), a recently established group (colloquially named...
Posted on August 24, 2008 3:51 PM • 0 Comments •
Nearly 70 years ago, Karl von Frisch described the alarm response in a species of small freshwater fish called the European minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus). Frisch, who was one of the founders ethology - the scientific study of animal behaviour -...
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Posted on August 23, 2008 8:50 PM • 8 Comments •
With Skate Eyes, Scientists Peer Into Human Disease: Paradoxically, the photoreceptor cells in our retinas release more of their neurotransmitter, glutamate, in the dark, when there is nothing to see, than they do in the light. This is doubly surprising...
Posted on August 23, 2008 7:56 AM • 0 Comments •
Stroke can be extremely debilitating, but if the damage is not too severe, and appropriate rehabilitation is administered, the brain can reorganize itself to compensate for the loss of function. This reorganization can occur because the brain remains 'plastic' throughout...
Posted on August 23, 2008 1:30 AM • 1 Comments •
In my Fun with Christians and worldviews piece, I made a passing comment: Some views are just not amenable to a good life. I think Christianity is one, and not because I have some well-worked alternative I'd like to...
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Posted on August 22, 2008 9:56 PM • 38 Comments •
Face Recognition: Nurture Not Nature: Researchers have discovered that our society can influence the way we recognise other people's faces. Because face recognition is effortlessly achieved by people from all different cultures it was considered to be a basic mechanism...
Posted on August 22, 2008 1:48 PM • 1 Comments •
In this post: the large version of the Brain & Behavior and Technology channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
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Posted on August 22, 2008 1:13 PM • 0 Comments •
Since vaccines seem to be back in the news again, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a fantastic post that I saw the other day over at A Photon in the Darkness. Read it. Read it now. I've...
Posted on August 22, 2008 11:42 AM • 39 Comments •
Six more new ones: EncefalusMissives from the Frontal LobeNeuromicsNeoCorTEXTNeurospeculationNothing's ShockingPlastic, Elastic, the PFC...
Posted on August 22, 2008 11:25 AM • 0 Comments •
There have been many collections and compendia of artistic works by persons with psychiatric illness. They are interesting. In fact, it was a chance encounter with such a book that first got me interested in psychology. Thre is a story...
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Posted on August 22, 2008 9:30 AM • 2 Comments •
This advertisement for Ritalin comes from a 1966 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Ritalin, or methylphenidate, is widely - and controversially - prescribed to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The drug is an amphetamine-like...
Posted on August 22, 2008 9:15 AM • 5 Comments •
Short alkanoic acids stink. Apparently hexanoic acid smells of goats:...
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Posted on August 21, 2008 11:23 PM • 2 Comments •
In 2000, researchers from the Yale University School of Medicine made a surprising discovery that would start to change the way we think about the causes of depression. Ronald Duman and his colleagues chronically administered different classes of antidepressants to...
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Posted on August 21, 2008 8:40 PM • 9 Comments •
I've often suspected (based on a highly unsystematic series of conversations with classic New Hampshire independents) that most undecided voters are really just low-information voters, who have actually made a decision but don't quite know how to explain their decision....
Posted on August 21, 2008 4:53 PM • 4 Comments •
There are 10 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go...
Posted on August 21, 2008 4:49 PM • 3 Comments •
Over at Neurophilosophy, Mo highlights one of my favorite William James quotes: The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage....
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Posted on August 21, 2008 2:19 PM • 1 Comments •
Conscious decision-making is just the tip of a psychological iceberg, and unconscious biases wield strong influences
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Posted on August 21, 2008 2:00 PM • 2 Comments •
Tailor-made Functional Garments For Olympic Horses: When the horses and competitors go through their paces at the Summer Olympics in Hong Kong in 2008, it will be very hot and very humid - just as it is every summer there....
Posted on August 21, 2008 1:39 PM • 0 Comments •
As a child (and like most children, I imagine) I used to think conducting an orchestra entailed something like what Bugs Bunny does in this video: Waving the hands, as conductors frequently do, seemed largely for show. The conductor appeared...
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Posted on August 21, 2008 1:32 PM • 20 Comments •
William James on consciousness and memory: The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to...
Posted on August 21, 2008 7:52 AM • 2 Comments •
A typical adult human recognizes that the image one sees in a mirror is oneself. We do not know how much training a mirror-naive adult requires to do this, but we think very little. When a typical adult macaque (a species of monkey) looks in...
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Posted on August 20, 2008 1:00 PM • 26 Comments •
Here's Seth Godin: A journalist asked me, Most people have a better standard of living today than Louis XIV did in his day. So why are so many people unhappy? What you have doesn't make you unhappy. What you want...
Posted on August 20, 2008 12:47 PM • 11 Comments •
As I announced this morning, there will be several guest posts here over the next several weeks. The first one, by Barn Owl of the lovely Guadalupe Storm-Petrel blog, is likely to appeal to a lot of my readers as...
Posted on August 20, 2008 11:52 AM • 0 Comments •
Over at Mind Matters, we've got an interesting article on how believing in free will can affect our ethical behavior: In a clever new study, psychologists Kathleen Vohs at the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler at the University of...
Posted on August 20, 2008 10:55 AM • 6 Comments •
There are 45 new articles in PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you...
Posted on August 19, 2008 9:07 PM • 0 Comments •
The notorious Australian bushranger Edward "Ned" Kelly was apprehended in 1878, following a confrontation during which he and his gang killed three policemen. Upon his arrest, Kelly was thus described by the police: 5'10" tall, weight 11st 4lbs, medium build,...
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Posted on August 19, 2008 8:10 PM • 1 Comments •
Despite a different brain architecture, birds are self-aware: which is essential for consciousness to evolve
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Posted on August 19, 2008 8:05 PM • 15 Comments •
A field study published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research manipulated sound levels in a bar while observing the beer drinking behavior of male patrons....
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Posted on August 19, 2008 7:59 PM • 9 Comments •
Culture affects the way that people process faces
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Posted on August 19, 2008 5:00 PM • 9 Comments •
Self-recognition was long believed to be unique to humans. However, it was established more than 30 years ago that the great apes are capable of recognizing themselves in the mirror, and more recently it has been found that dolphins and...
Posted on August 19, 2008 4:00 PM • 9 Comments •
You read blogs, and many of you write them, too. But what sort of person writes a blog? Are there certain personalities that are more likely to blog?
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Posted on August 19, 2008 3:29 PM • 14 Comments •
A German researchers has proven that a species other than a mammal is capable of recognizing its own reflection: the magpie.
Posted on August 19, 2008 3:00 PM • 11 Comments •
Encephalon 52 is online now at Ouroboros, and includes entries about grandmother cells, the neurobiology of sleep and the use of transcranial direct current stimulation to improve bad driving....
Posted on August 19, 2008 2:04 PM •
Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, the Boston Globe and is a contributor to Radio Lab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.
