ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections
jgoldman | August 24, 2010Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
Livia Blackburne asks what something called "visual noise exclusion" has to do with dyslexia. She classifies the post as "intermediate-advanced," but it's a good concise explanation of this complicated research finding.
People have been studying learning in aplysia, the sea hare, for decades. Bjorn Brembs has studied this critter himself for 10 years, but never saw one in the wild, until a recent trip to San Diego. There may be a reason that aplysia can learn.
Christian Jarrett of BPS Research Digest is hunting successful…
jgoldman | August 17, 2010Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week!
At BPS Research Digest, Christian Jarrett asks what makes for an effective apology?
Krystal D'Costa of the Urban Ethnographer blog describes an afternoon at a fish market in New York City, and ponders the relationship of smell and memory.
The Neuroskeptic asks "Are you addicted to Starcraft? Do you want to get off Battle.net and on a psychoactive drug?" Is there really a drug that can curb your addiction to video games?
Dirk Hanson of Addiction Inbox discusses the chase for the genes implicated in cocaine addiction.
jgoldman | August 10, 2010Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
In a post that is sure to stir up some controversy, The Neurocritic discusses a recent paper that failed to find an association between personality (which appears to be highly heritable) and specific genes.
Dr. Dan Simons of the Invisible Gorilla blog writes about a pervasive cognitive illusion in which "we easily mistake surface understanding for deep understanding" - the illusion of knowledge.
When it comes to language acquisition, is the mind more like a spreadsheet or a search engine? Melody Dye of Child's Play offers some…
jgoldman | August 3, 2010Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
"Touch imagery has always been a useful storytelling tool," says Livia Blackburne of her eponymous blog. "We talk about warm smiles, slippery personalities, getting caught between a rock and a hard place." But does touch imagery serve a larger purpose, perhaps helping give structure to human thought?
"The idea that mirror neurons support action understanding is by far the dominant interpretation of the function of these cells in the monkey motor system. However, it is not the only interpretation," according to Greg Hickock of…
jgoldman | July 27, 2010Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
EcoPhysioMichelle explains a giant methods FAIL on a recent paper that "claims that women who are approaching menopause become 'more willing to engage in a variety of sexual activities to capitalize on their remaining childbearing years.'"
NeuroKuz wonders, "Is it really possible to empathize with and emotionally respond to a robot while simultaneously knowing that it is just a robot?" What is the human neural response to emotional robots?
Eric Michael Johnson brought the Primate Diaries in Exile Tour to David Dobbs' Neuron…
jgoldman | July 20, 2010Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
Scicurious delights and entertains while explaining a study all about rat urine, in song and rhyme. She instructs: If You're Happy And You Know It, Smell Some Pee.
Christian Jarrett of BPS Research Digest asks, Did you see the unicycling clown?
More Vodka! It should all taste the same, considering vodka is just water and 40% ethyl alcohol. Right? Torah Kachur of Science in Seconds explains whether different types of vodka actually taste different.
And finally, a post of my own: do dogs have contagious yawning?
jgoldman | July 13, 2010Here are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week.
First, something near and dear to our hearts. BPS Research Digest explains a recent paper investigating the links between bloggers' personalities and their word choices. "Some commentators have suggested that the internet allows people to present idealised versions of themselves to the world. Contrary to that idea, Yarkoni found that bloggers' choice of words consistently related to their personality type just as has been found in past offline research."
A relative newcomer to the Psych/Neuro blogging community, Mike Lisieski of…
jgoldman | July 6, 2010Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
TwoYaks at the GeneFlow blog effectively criticizes the hypothesis that girls like pink and boys like blue because of evolved sex differences in hunting and foraging behaviors. Thankfully, a disclaimer is included so that evolutionary psychology isn't totally destroyed by the criticism: "Evo-Psych can be a good tool for exploring behaviour, when employed properly, and in a comparative context." My field thanks her.
The effects of magic mushrooms on the brain, via fMRI? Well, sort of. More like the effects of fMRI on the brain,…
jgoldman | June 29, 2010Here are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week.
Today's selections will appear in haiku form.
How hungry are you?
Hunger affects decisions,says Christian Jarrett.
Touch and texture, too,at Neurophilosophy,
alter decisions.
Science and Reason
explores creativity
and mental illness.
Social Rejection?
Study says take Tylenol.Neurocritic laughs.
jgoldman | June 22, 2010Here at my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
A few hours late, but full of psychological and neurosciencey goodness as always!
Bill Yates of Brain Posts asks, Can An iPhone Save Your Life?
A topic near and dear to my own heart: Do we learn through experience to navigate the world, or as the philosopher Immanuel Kant suggested, are we born with innate mental "building blocks" for things like space and time? Neuroskeptic reviews two new interesting papers which found support for the Kantian model.
Another recent paper suggested that the crayfish might be a good model for…
jgoldman | June 15, 2010Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week.
To start things off, two of ResearchBlogging's Editors did a joint blogcast this week. Listen to Travis and I discuss the relative benefits of using self-report data. Check out Travis's take on our conversation, and mine.
The Lies That Data Tell. Richard N. Landers describes an important new paper from the journal Psychological Science about how tests of statistical significance can mislead us.
The Plastic Brains of Birds. NeuroKuz reviews some recent research in the neurobiology of learning in songbirds, and its implications…
jgoldman | June 8, 2010Here are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week:
Which conflicts consume couples the most? eHarmony Labs has some answers.
Neurocritic has some issues with a recent paper describing differences in brain activation in omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans. Is it really a case of Amygdala Vegetariana?
Is junk food addictive? Another blog, Highlight Health, examines this study.
How does alcohol affect teenage brains? Are there correlations between availability and violence? Scepticon explores these questions.
jgoldman | June 1, 2010Here are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week:
I was away at the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science this week. Luckily, others were able to supply the sci-blogosphere with plenty of psychology and neuroscience blogging.
There's a saying that clothes don't make the man, but a lot of times the clothes we wear (accessories and tattoos included) do at least say something about who we are. Daniel Hawes tells us how wearing fake imitations of real products affects behavior.
Could Parkinson's Disease be a learning disorder? The blog Science Life reviews…
jgoldman | May 25, 2010More science, more blogging, more fantastic. Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections this week:
Angry people might play video games to release pent up energy and aggression...But researchers find that it doesn't really help. Neoacademic explains why.
Blue bananas and pink elephants. Kevin Mitchell at Wiring the Brain considers a rare condition called colour agnosia.
Stereotypically, men don't love housework, but most at least begrudingly help out. New research finds that men who do less paid work than their female partners also do less housework than average men. Read about why on…
jgoldman | May 18, 2010Fascinating Psychology and Neuroscience blogging as always this week. After several weeks behind me as Psych and Neuro Editor, I can confirm that is indeed really, really hard to just pick a few posts each week. But pick them I must...here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
Starting light, Neurokuz shares an interesting study looking at whether music choice affects exercise performance.
Moving on, Bill Yates of Brain Posts considers late maturation as a confounding variable in diagnosing ADHD.
Michelle Dawson, of The Autism Crisis, has an interesting look into the…
jgoldman | May 11, 2010Here are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week.
This week, Psychology and Neuroscience blogging brings us some fantastic science, as always.
First and second, the fearless leader of ResearchBlogging, Dave Munger, provides us with two awesome visual illusions, and explains them: the Troxler effect, and spinning ellipses.
Next, Krystal D'Costa of Anthopology in Practice discusses Bullying and Emotional Intelligence on the Web and the potential consequences of over-sharing online.
Finally, another gem from Scicurious of Neurotopia: The Incredible Healing Mouse. Pierced, then not…
jgoldman | May 4, 2010Here's are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week.
Topics covered this week are: chocolate, sex, the female touch, and cigarettes. Good times.
First, Bill Yates of the Brain Posts blog examines the relationship between eating chocolate and depression. I like his prescription: "If you like chocolate, depressed or not, enjoy in moderation."
Are male and female brains "wired" differently? Kevin Mitchell of Wiring the Brain suggests that "the behaviours that show the most robust and innate differences between the sexes are involved in mating, reproduction, parental behaviour,…
jgoldman | April 27, 2010Lots of great Psychology and Neuroscience blogging this week! Here's are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week, covering some complex psychological and neurological disorders.
"Faces are special," says Kevin Mitchell, who writes at Wiring the Brain. Read about the acquired and developmental forms of a fascinating disorder, prosopagnosia, characterized by impaired facial recognition.
Faces also figure into a recent post at BPS Research Digest. For the first time, MRI participants socially engaged with another person (via video feed), in a new study from the labs of Rebecca Saxe…
jgoldman | April 20, 2010As Psychology and Neuroscience Editor for ResearchBlogging.org, each week I choose 3-4 of the best posts from around the blogosphere in those categories. Here are my picks for this week:
This week, we've got an selection of posts exploring the increasingly complex and sometimes unsettling roles that social media and technology play in our social lives.
First, Erina Lee of eHarmony Labs writes about the accuracy of the online profile picture. Is an accurate photo better than a perfect photo?
Dr. Shock describes recent research investigating the relationship between Facebook use and academic…
jgoldman | April 13, 2010As Psychology and Neuroscience Editor for ResearchBlogging.org, each week I choose 3-4 of the best posts from around the blogosphere in those categories. Here are my picks for this week:
Why might spite have evolved? Upon first glance it may not seem a particularly useful survival strategy. But Tom Rees, who writes at Epiphenom, reviews a paper that suggests spite may simply be the inverse of kin-directed altruism, with the same net outcome.
Want to trick your co-workers into getting more exercise? Travis Saunders, who writes at Obesity Panacea, says, "Place a sign next to your workplace…