Brain and Behavior
mixingmemory | November 18, 2006One of my favorite perceptual illusions isn't actually visual. It's often called the "cutaneous rabbit" illusion1, for reasons that will be apparent in a moment. I stumbled across it when reading a paper by Dennett and Kinsbourne2. Here's their description of the illusion (p. 188):
The subject's arm rests cushioned on a table, and mechanical square-wave tappers are placed at two or three locations along the arm, up to a foot apart. A series of taps in rhythm are delivered by the tappers, e.g., 5 at the wrist followed by 2 near the elbow and then 3 more on the upper arm. The taps are delivered…
cortex | November 17, 2006Milton Friedman was a magnificent economist, and I'll defer to other economists to sing his praises. But it's worth noting that, besides being an evangelical for free-markets, he was also a proponent of the rational-agent model. Those two facts aren't a coincidence. Friedman firmly believed that, when left alone, people will intelligently act in their own best interest, and that the market will coordinate their actions to produce outcomes beneficial for all. The wisdom of crowds depends upon the rational wisdom of the individual.
Of course, prospect theory, behavioral economics, neuroscience…
chaoticutopia | November 16, 2006
With my love for fractals, added to my experiences with a gigantic wasp/ladybug colony springing to order in front of my home, the subject of emergent behavior should feel quite natural to me. Indeed, as I listened to Monday night's program on NPR on emergence, I was not disappointed. Listening to the program, a common thread began to emerge, drawing together my subjects of interest... from the social systems of insects, the complexity of the brain and human consciousness, to google and the forces behind creation.
The program begins with firefly synchronization, but soon turns to the social…
pharyngula | November 15, 2006
Ian Musgrave has just posted an excellent article on the poor design of the vertebrate eye compared to the cephalopod eye; it's very thorough, and explains how the clumsy organization of the eye clearly indicates that it is the product of an evolutionary process rather than of any kind of intelligent design. A while back, Russ Fernald of Stanford University published a fine review of eye evolution that summarizes another part of the evolution argument: it's not just that the eye has awkward 'design' features that are best explained by contingent and developmental processes, but that the…
mixingmemory | November 14, 2006For several years, researchers have been contrasting human-human and human-computer interactions in order go gain more insight into theory of mind. The assumption is that people don't treat computers like, well, people. It's not a totally unfounded assumption, either. In several studies in which people have competed with computers in games like the prisoner's dilemma or the ultimatum game, their behavior has been different than when they played the same games with other humans. In the ultimatum game, for example, on player is given a sum of money and told to offer some of it to a second…
dmunger | November 14, 2006Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink -- and the real research it was based on -- made quite a splash when it was unveiled: the idea that a teacher evaluation made in just 30 seconds could actually reliably predict teacher performance over an entire semester was certainly surprising.
The Charlotte Observer has an excellent article about how the methods pioneered by Ambady and Rosenthal are being applied in real high school classrooms. Rather than 30 seconds, principals take 3 minutes to assess each teacher's performance, to catch problems early and intervene before they adversely affect the classroom…
cortex | November 13, 2006When Republicans talk about their plans for health-care, they are talking about people like me. My insurance plan has an extremely high deductible ($5000) which discourages me from excess "consumption" of health care resources. (This is known as the "moral hazard" effect, which economists use to describe the fact that insurance can change the behavior of the person being insured. If I know my doctor visits are free, I'll visit my doctor more.) Even preventative measures (like regular checkups) cost me lots of money. I don't have health insurance so much as I have catastrophe insurance.
So…
mixingmemory | November 13, 2006Originally posted on the old blog on 1/4/2005. Reposted here out of laziness.
Do Children Attribute False Beliefs to God?
Humans are fallible. This is a fact that most adults understand. God, on the other hand, is not, by definition This is also a fact that most adults, in most cultures, recognize. An interesting empirical question is whether children's views of the difference between the ability of humans and God to hold false beliefs is like adults, i.e., they recognize that humans can hold false beliefs, while God does not. There has been a great deal of research on children's ability to…
purepedantry | November 13, 2006I see that Simon Baron-Cohen has a piece in Seed about his theory of autism. I am really skeptical of many of his arguments related to autism, so I thought I would discuss a couple of them. Here is his core argument:
So what has all of this got to do with autism? We know that autism runs in families, and that if a child with autism is a twin, the chances of the other twin also having autism is much higher if the twins are identical. This tells us that genes are likely to be an important part of the explanation, and that one should look at the parents of children with autism for clues.…
mixingmemory | November 10, 2006Anytime I hear songs from when I was in high school or college, I get very nostalgic. I remember people I knew, places I went, good times I had. It's a powerful and complex feeling, with all sorts of interesting psychological aspects, but for some reason, I'd never really thought about studying it. Then I got an alert from ScienceDirect earlier this week that contained a paper titled "Nostalgia: Content, Triggers, Functions" by Wildschut et al.1, and I was immediately fascinated. And since I know you are all fascinated by the things that fascinate me, I thought I'd write about it a little.…
jrosenhouse | November 9, 2006Philosopher Thomas Nagel reviewed Dawkins' book for The New Republic. Sadly, the review does not seem to be freely available online.
Nagel begins with the standard talking points about Dawkins working outside his field of expertise and about how contemptuous he is of religion. After a few hundred words of this, he gets down to business. He describes the argument from design, and then offers two objections commonly levelled at it. Let me briefly mention the second one:
Second, the designer and the manufacturer of a watch are human beings with bodies, using physical tools to mold and put…
revere | November 9, 2006The Lancet has just published (NOvember 8, 2006, online publication) a major review of the scientific evidence suggesting developmental disorders in children traceable to chemicals in the environment is significant and largely overlooked. Authored by two internationally recognized scientists, Philippe Grandjean (Harvard School of Public Health and University of Southern Denmark) and Philip Landrigan (Mt. Sinai School of Medicine), the paper identifies 201 industrial chemicals with the capacity to cause a neurodevelopmental defect (NDD) such as autism, attention deficit disorder and mental…
clock | November 7, 2006Fossil Is Missing Link In Elephant Lineage:
A pig-sized, tusked creature that roamed the earth some 27 million years ago represents a missing link between the oldest known relatives of elephants and the more recent group from which modern elephants descended, an international team that includes University of Michigan paleontologist William J. Sanders has found.
Saving Threatened Turtles In The Caribbean:
Ecology and conservation experts from the University of Exeter are urging international governments to work together to protect threatened Caribbean sea turtle populations. The Cayman Islands…
clock | November 6, 2006Welcome to the 10th edition of the Encephalon, the blog carnival of brains, minds, neurons, behavior and cognition. This was a busy week (and weekend) for me, so I decided to give up on the spectacularly difficult idea I had for creative hosting and go with a traditional style. After all, it is the contributors' posts that you came here to find, not my artistic aspirations. So, let's get right into it!
Coffee Mug, one of the bloggers on the original Gene Expression won the contest (by solving the neurotransmitter puzzle) last time I hosted The Synapse and the prize is - being highlighted…
dmunger | November 6, 2006If I get a phone call from a solicitor asking me to support my local fire department or the search for the cure for cancer, I refuse to give. If a live person shows up at my door asking me to donate to a worthy cause, I nearly always give something. Am I behaving irrationally? Surely seeking donations via the telephone is more efficient than traipsing door-to-door. Shouldn't I support the charities that are most efficient?
Tim Harford of Slate argues that such behavior on my part demonstrates that my charitable giving isn't truly altruistic. Indeed, the most altruistic donor would realize…
clock | November 5, 2006This is the last reminder to send me permalinks to your recent posts related to neurons, brains, behavior and cognition for the next edition of Encephalon, the neuroscience carnival. I need them by midnight today. I'll post the carnival tomorrow morning.
Send the links to:encephalon.host AT gmail DOT com
orCoturnix AT gmail DOT com
clock | November 1, 2006One of th efirst posts on Circadiana, just defining what the blog was about (January 17, 2005):
-----------------------------------------------
When I first took a class on Biological Clocks (eleven years ago), the instructor explained why biorhythms are not science. This was done with such fun, and as aside, I did not take it seriously. I did not realize I was supposed to study this exercise in Baloney Detection. I was surprised when I saw the question on the first mid-term exam, asking us to debunk biorhythms point-by-point. I lost several points there. I have learned since then to pay…
j7uy5 | November 1, 2006Jonah Lehrer, at
href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2006/10/depression_induces_bone_loss_1.php">The
Frontal Cortex,
points out a recent PNAS article (published online ahead of print) that
indicates an unexpected finding. Using a mouse model or
depression, they find that the risk of osteoporosis is increased.
Furthermore, they find that treatment with an antidepressant
reduces the risk.
href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0604234103v1">Depression
induces bone loss through stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system
Raz Yirmiya, Inbal Goshen, Alon Bajayo, Tirzah…
cortex | October 31, 2006So much for the body-brain duality. Researchers in the new PNAS claim that the sympathetic nervous system in depressed rodents causes a loss of bone mass. Treatment with anti-depressants rescues the situation.
These results define a linkage among depression, excessive adrenergic activity, and reduced bone formation, thus demonstrating an interaction among behavioral responses, the brain, and the skeleton, which leads to impaired bone structure. Together with the common occurrence of depression and bone loss in the aging population, the present data implicate depression as a potential major…
chaoticutopia | October 31, 2006I've kept this research paper in the archives for too long. Converging topics as diverse as bioethics and Gothic literature, it was one of the most enjoyable papers I've ever had to write. What better day could there be to bring it out of the shadows, than Halloween? Even though I wrote it over a year ago, it seems as relevant as ever. It summarizes a warning that we all must heed: If we prevent legitimate, honest scientists from studying stem cell usage or cloning, we may be leaving the irresponsible and dishonest to continue the work. Is biotechnology really something we should force into a…