Psychology
omnibrain | March 27, 2008 Growing up it seemed like the only science on television was Mr. Wizard, Nova, and Star Trek (ok ok ... it's fiction but most scientists love star trek). Now there are a number of channels that regularly feature science shows. National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, the Science Channel, Discovery Health, the Learning Channel, and even the History Channel. There are probably even a few more I don't even know about. It's great!
However, It seems like 90% of these 'science' shows are actually engineering shows or something else sciency but not quite science. Usually they build stuff and…
edyong | March 26, 2008Would you gamble on a safe bet for the promise of something more? Would you risk losing everything for the possibility of greater rewards? In psychological experiments, humans tend to play it safe when we stand to gain something - we're more likely to choose a certain reward over a larger but riskier one. Now, we're starting to understand how our two closest relatives deal with risk - bonobos, like us, tend to be risk-averse while chimpanzees usually play the odds.
Sarah Heilbronner from Harvard University studied the attitudes of five chimps and five bonobos to risky decisions. All the…
edyong | March 20, 2008
"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." - Douglas Adams
In this pithy paragraph, the sorely missed Douglas Adams sums up a puzzling paradox of modern life - we often link happiness to money and the spending of it, even though both proverbs and psychological surveys…
aardvarchaeology | March 15, 2008Dear Reader DuWayne asked what I think about prostitution. By way of answer, here's a re-run of an entry on that issue from May 2006. Two years later, I am no wiser.
News reports from the German brothel industry pending the World Soccer Championship have set me a-thinking about prostitution. It's one of those tricky issues where I find it hard to make up my mind.
Is prostitution a problem? If so, who are the victims? Who are the perpetrators? What are the ethical aspects of prostitution? Quite apart from ideals, what is the best practical stance for society to take regarding prostitution?…
neurophilosophy | March 15, 2008For the benefit of new readers, I've selected what I think are the best posts from this blog.
Wilder Penfield, Neural Cartographer: 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 throughout the procedure. Behind the surgical drapes, three large incisions are made in his scalp. A large flap of bone is then cut from his skull, and turned downward to expose the surface of his brain. The ultraviolet lights which illuminate…
omnibrain | March 14, 2008Here's a pretty cool African Grey doing crazy sound effects.
Another video after the fold.
Here's one of the most pointless - poorly drawn - boring you tube videos I've ever seen! I love it!
It's a girl drawing a neuron and all its parts :)
omnibrain | March 13, 2008Everyone and their mother is getting into the brain training game - researchers, the health care industry, video game companies, you name it! But... Every single one of them is a huckster trying to rip the elderly off (whether they realize it or not). Nearly every single one of these brain training systems simply takes established psychology experiments that we normally pay people to do since they are so damn boring and repackages them in a slightly glizier way to make you feel better for spending $299.95.
It is very very important to keep your brain active but there is no evidence…
neurophilosophy | March 10, 2008
From one angle, they look like miscellaneous wall markings. From another, they look like this...
[Via Crooked Brains]
omnibrain | March 7, 2008So I hate daylight savings time. It doesn't save energy, I doubt it helps farmers like it supposedly did, and I always forget to set my clocks back. How many of you have a clock that is only correct half of the year because you don't want to set it?
Now I have something else to get pissed off at for messing with my sleep. According to a study entitled "Cues for Timing and Coordination: Latitude, Letterman, and Longitude," by Daniel S. Hamermesh, Caitlin Knowles Myers, and Mark L. Pocock published in the Journal of Labor Economics, television is impacting our circadian rhythms, especially…
neurophilosophy | March 7, 2008
Here's the first 10 minutes of the recent episode of Horizon about sensory deprivation, which I discussed about 6 weeks ago. The entire program has been uploaded to YouTube: here are parts 2, 3, 4 and 5.
omnibrain | March 6, 2008Ahhh... The Onion. It's so made for dorky scientists. This one is especially relevant to me.
DURHAM, NC--According to a study published Tuesday in the Journal Of Neuroscience, snapping three times in rapid succession is the most effective method for remembering the names of films and actors that have slipped one's mind. "When denied access to IMDb, subjects who were able to correctly remember semi-obscure movie trivia invariably used the tri-snapping method," head researcher Dr. Ward Connell said of the study, which consisted of asking volunteers several questions pertaining to a photograph…
clock | March 5, 2008In 1986, 22-year-old Boston Celtics forward Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. This week, DrugMonkey argued that Bias' death--as opposed to educational programs like DARE--was the major reason why self-reported rates of cocaine use by 20-year-olds dropped from 20% in the mid-1980s to 7% in the early 1990s.
Now go and do the survey and check back in a week for the results.
omnibrain | March 5, 2008Ok... for reals... this is what Therapists actually do.
Recognize the young Gregory House? It's always a little weird hearing a British accent coming out of his mouth.
HT: Mitch Harden
omnibrain | March 5, 2008I'm a poor excuse for a psychologist. I have no idea, zero, ziltch, what clinical psychologists actually do on a day to day basis. I study vision - what do I need to know about the human psyche? I've never been anywhere even near a psych ward or a therapists office. Well unless I've walked by them unknowingly. I have a million and a half friends who are training to be clinicians and probably 1/3 of my friends parents are as well... but I still haven't been able to convince one of them to take me to the psych ward and observe. Promises have been made, "Come on Stacey! why won't you take…
omnibrain | March 4, 2008
A very shy guy goes into a bar and sees a beautiful woman sitting at the bar. After an hour of gathering up his courage, he finally goes over to her and asks, tentatively, "Um, would you mind if I chatted with you for a while?"
She responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, "NO! I won't sleep with you tonight!" Everyone in the bar is now staring at them. Naturally, the guy is hopelessly and completely embarrassed and he slinks back to his table.
After a few minutes, the woman walks over to him and apologizes. She smiles at him and says, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. You see, I'm a…
omnibrain | March 4, 2008If you have kids you might have seen them make some very funny errors early in their lives. They do things like try to sit on miniature chairs, try to climb into small houses, or drive toy cars. Why in the world do children make these scale errors?! Can't they see that the small versions only represent the real larger versions?
Research by Judy DeLoache and colleagues has given us some great insights into this problem as well as one of the most entertaining methods for a psychology study ever. Let's first visit the reasoning for what Dr. DeLoache studies,
My primary area of research is…
grrlscientist | February 28, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, bipolar disorder, clinical depression, mental illness, mood disorder, functional genomics, blood test, biomarkers
Image: Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, serious mental illnesses affect approximately 44 million Americans. Serious mental illnesses include mood disorders; depression and bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, correctly diagnosing mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, appears to be a sort of voodoo science that depends upon the skill of the mental health professional…
purepedantry | February 27, 2008It has been a big month for talking about the demographic transition here at Pure Pedantry. (See here and here.) Ronald Bailey at Reason had this interesting article speculating why people choose to have less children: children don't make you happy. If economic security no longer requires having children and they don't make you happy, why have them? To wit:
"Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact," reports Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher…
neurophilosophy | February 23, 2008
(Cartoon by Greg Williams, from Wikipedia)
The term hyperthymestic syndrome was proposed by James L. McGaugh, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues, following their case study of the woman known as A.J. (The study was published in the journal Neurocase, and is available as a PDF; there's also this story on NPR.)
Now in her mid-40s, A.J. contacted the researchers, telling them about her "non-stop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting" autobiographical memory. While researchers have been fortunate enough to study a number of amnesic patients (see…
neurophilosophy | February 16, 2008
The great filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock had a profound insight into the workings of the human mind. "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it," he once said, and the shower scene from Psycho, demonstrates this perfectly.
This scene is one of the most shocking ever filmed. Yet, it does not include any shots of the knife penetrating the flesh of Janet Leigh's character, and the only hint of blood comes right at the end, when it flows into the plughole.
The Mad Mother Psychoshower Curtain above is available from PrankPlace.com, and costs $24.99.