brain & behavior
From Flickr, by peasap
May 9, 2008
Mixing Memory
Is the Foundation of Prejudice in Native Language? Who says religion and science can't go together well? I just read an interesting paper by Kinzler et al.(1), published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with apparent Biblical inspiration (OK, maybe not), as it...
Pure Pedantry
A birdsong model of creole languages Language Log has a fascinating article about creole languages and birdsongs: Zebra finches are among the songbirds who learn their songs by imitating adults, just as human children learn their language by interaction with those who already know it. Male...
Pure Pedantry
Double dissociation of sound localization and identification in the auditory cortex of cats We have known for some time that there is a double dissociation (I will define that term in a minute) between location and identification in the visual system. Neuroscientists speak of a "where" pathway that goes from the primary visual...
The Frontal Cortex
GPS Sucks Your Brain is Better
Developing Intelligence
Single Unit Recordings Show NoGo Selectivity in vlPFC Our ability to suppress unwanted thoughts and behaviors is thought to be related to a process known as "inhibition," whereby ventrolateral regions of prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) actively suppress inappropriate representations. A 2001 study by Sakagami et al. recorded firing data...
May 8, 2008
Evolving Thoughts
Podblack Cat ... is a blogger on the paranormal and skeptical stuff. She has some nice posts on Women and superstition (parts one and two) and Skeptical Books for Children (parts one, two, three and four). Go check them and her...
Cognitive Daily
Perceived moral blame can change the memory of a crime Anton races home at speeds well in excess of the speed limit. He's rushing to beat his parents home so that he can hide their anniversary present so it will be a surprise. Suddenly, he hits a slick patch and...
Zooillogix
Crazy Cat People: Question of the Week Yet another crazy cat person has made the news.
Developing Intelligence
The Digital Resolution of the Mind: Discrete Precision in Working Memory Does the resolution or precision of human memory change with its available capacity? In other words, can you remember fewer items with greater precision than you can remember more items? Contradicting intuition, a new paper from yesterday's issue of Nature...
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)
Screaming Frog Can anyone identify this frog?
A Blog Around The Clock
My Picks From ScienceDaily Why Face Symmetry Is Sexy Across Cultures And Species: In humans, faces are an important source of social information. One property of faces that is rapidly noticed is attractiveness. Research has highlighted symmetry and sexual dimorphism (how masculine or...
May 7, 2008
Greg Laden's Blog
Fun And Instructive Classroom Exercise Your brain ... to explore the nature of the conscious mind. You are the teacher, and you've got a classroom full of reasonably well behaved students. Tell them: "I want you to close your eyes, and I'm going to ask you a question. ......
Cognitive Daily
When is it okay to lie? Teens answer Ask almost anyone whether willfully deceiving another person -- lying -- is wrong, and they'll say it is. But probe a little deeper and most people will say there are some instances where lying is okay: lying to prevent a...
Developing Intelligence
Modeling the Diffusion of Information In Brain and Behavior Complex cognition can be predicted by remarkably simple tasks. For example, the speed with which you choose one of two possible responses can reliably predict IQ. Some theories propose that this relationship is due to differences in something called "processing...
The Frontal Cortex
Mind Control by Cell Phone Over at Mind Matters, my other site, we just posted a rather interesting article on the ways in which ordinary cell phones can alter your patterns of brain activity, and even interfere with sleep. Here's Doug Fields: Hospitals and airplanes...
A Blog Around The Clock
New and Exciting in PLoS ONE There are 56 new articles published in PLoS ONE this week and it was hard to make the picks as this seems to be a very, very good week with lots of cool papers. Here are some of the highlights...
May 6, 2008
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)
What Makes Parrots Good Pets? After reading yesterday's essay about the drawbacks to parrot keeping, a reader asked me this question.
Uncertain Principles
Get a Grip! How our inability to judge risks leads to FutureBaby wearing a theft deterrent tag like a discount CD at Best Buy.
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)
Slow Motion Raspberries Some silliness to begin your day.
May 5, 2008
The Loom
The Cost of Smarts In tomorrow's New York Times, I take a look at the evolution of intelligence. Or rather, I look at its flip side. Scientists and the rest of us are obsessed with intelligence--not just the intelligence of our own species, but...
Evolving Thoughts
Religion and imagination In a piece reported on in New Scientist, Maurice Bloch has proposed another basis for religion: imagination. Because we can project ourselves and imagine the "transcendental" relation in social and personal relationships, we can imagine that there are agents...
Cognitive Daily
Non-musicians can identify minor-key tunes, but only when labeled "sad" If you've had a lot of musical training, you can probably tell the difference between a major and minor key. If you haven't had much training, even after having the difference explained to you, you're still not likely to be...
The Frontal Cortex
Brain Fitness Programs The Times recently had an article on the booming business of brain fitness: Decaying brains, or the fear thereof, have inspired a mini-industry of brain health products -- not just supplements like coenzyme Q10, ginseng and bacopa, but computer-based fitter-brain...
Cognitive Daily
More on Perceptual Restoration Last week's post on perceptual restoration in toddlers brought a lot of speculation from commenters. To answer some of the questions, I thought I'd elaborate a bit here on the phenomenon and how I created the demo. First, here's the...
The Frontal Cortex
Locked-In Syndrome It is, perhaps, the most nightmarish of neurological conditions: when the brain stem is selectively injured, a person can be perfectly self-aware and yet completely paralyzed, so that they lose control of virtually all voluntary muscles. The technical name of...
“The major message I'm hearing is that 97% of popular American music, and 73% of classical music is boring.” Matt Platte on Non-musicians can identify minor-key tunes, but only when labeled "sad"
