Thursday, July 30, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/29/2009
Intelligence and EEG phase reset: A two compartmental model of phase shift and lock
ScienceDirect - NeuroImage :
A Patchwork Mind: How Your Parents' Genes Shape Your Brain
We each have two parents, but their genetic contributions to what makes us us are uneven. New research shows we are an amalgam of influences from Mom and Dad : Scientific American
Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain
In reality, your brain operates on the edge of chaos. Though much of the time it runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise. | 29 June 2009 - New Scientist
Modern neuroscience rests on the assumption that our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and behaviors emerge from electrical and chemical communication between brain cells: that whenever we recognize a face, read the newspaper, throw a ball, engage in a conversation, or recall a moment in childhood, a pattern of activity in our neurons makes such feats possible. It's a tenet of modern biology that sparks fascination--and disbelief. How can a tangle of cells produce the complexity and subtlety of a mind? | Harvard Magazine May-June 2009
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/28/2009
Secrets and Powers of the Brain | Channel N Video
Vision, the Brain and Memory: The ups and downs of forgetting (Samuel Wang)
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/27/2009
Inside Michael Gazzaniga's Head Video
Neuroscience and the Law Project
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/22/2009
Unlocking the Mysteries of The Artistic Mind
It might seem bizarre that science is using art to learn about the mind—looking for hard facts in the most ethereal of places. But great artists turn out to be the world's first neuroscientists. (Psychology Today)
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/21/2009
Close Call Counts: Neuroscience of Gambling Addictions
Scientific American
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/12/2009
Harvard Mind/Brain/Behavior - 2009 Distinguished Lecture Series with Professor Daniel Dennett (video)
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/08/2009
A researcher argues that peers are much more important than parents, that psychologists underestimate the power of genetics and that we have a lot to learn from Asian classrooms (Jonah Lehrer, Scientific American)
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/06/2009
Evolutionary Psychology Primer by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby
The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.
In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. This way of thinking about the brain, mind, and behavior is changing how scientists approach old topics, and opening up new ones. This chapter is a primer on the concepts and arguments that animate it.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/05/2009
Friday, July 03, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 07/03/2009
Evolutionary origins of the nervous system
THE HUMAN BRAIN is a true marvel of nature. This jelly-like 1.5kg mass inside our skulls, containing hundreds of billions of cells which between them form something like a quadrillion connections, is responsible for our every action, emotion and thought. How did this remarkable and extraordinarily complex structure evolve?
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 06/30/2009
Recent research at the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies (CNS) has not only found that moral sentiments are real and measurable, but we have been able to manipulate these mechanisms in human brains to cause people to be moral in the lab. (Psychology Today)
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 06/24/2009
Evolutionary Origins of Your Right and Left Brain
The division of labor by the two cerebral hemispheres—once thought to be uniquely human—predates us by half a billion years. Speech, right-handedness, facial recognition and the processing of spatial relations can be traced to brain asymmetries in early vertebrates (Scientific American)
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 06/23/2009
Brain Sees Tools as Extensions of Body | LiveScience
In the new study, researchers reasoned that if one incorporates a used tool into the body schema, his or her subsequent bodily movements should differ when compared to those performed before the tool was used.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 06/21/2009
Greene, J., Cushman, F., Stewart, L., Lowenberg, K., Nystrom, L., & Cohen, J. (2009). Pushing moral buttons: The interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment. Cognition, 111 (3), 364-371 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.02.001
Late Pleistocene Demography and the Appearance of Modern Human Behavior
Cultivating a persona of fairness and impartiality, David Buller has written a critique of theory and results from evolutionary psychology. To those unfamiliar with the primary literature, some of his claims may seem plausible. That has not, however, been the reaction of those who know this literature intimately.
Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology
Some evolutionary psychologists have made widely popularized claims about how the human mind evolved, but other scholars argue that the grand claims lack solid evidence (Scientific American)
Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around?
Founded in the late 1980s in the ashes of sociobiology, this field asserts that behaviors that conferred a fitness advantage during the era when modern humans were evolving are the result of hundreds of genetically based cognitive "modules" preprogrammed in the brain. Since they are genetic, these modules and the behaviors they encode are heritable—passed down to future generations—and, together, constitute a universal human nature that describes how people think, feel and act (Newsweek.com)
The article claims to question the whole field of evolutionary psychology but really only deals with specific studies, largely because has quite a limited view of the approach and is strangely wed to biological determinism. (Mind Hacks)
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 06/16/2009
Do Gay Animals Change Evolution?
Animals that engage in same-sex sexual behavior may be acting in accord with adaptational strategies rather than against them--and bending the way we think about evolution (Scientific American)
Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science: How the Cognitive Science Can Transform Traditional Debates
Four Stich video lectures
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 06/15/2009
A forensic examiner talks about decision making and developing brains in youth, for an audience of youth advocates. See also: Brain Science as a Means of Understanding Delinquency and Substance Abuse in Youth, The Teen Brain, and Teen Brain, an award-winning documentary on neuroethics and the juvenile justice system.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/31/2009
Allman was searching for a peculiar kind of brain cell that he suspects is a key to how the African elephant—like a human being—manages to stay attuned to the ever-shifting nuances of social interplay. These spindle-shaped brain cells, called von Economo neurons—named for the man who first described them—are found only in human beings, great apes and a handful of other notably gregarious creatures. Allman, 66, compares the brains of people and other animals to gain insight into the evolution of human behavior.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Cognitive Neuroscience Links 05/28/2009
Joseph LeDoux: Why the "Right Brain" Idea is Wrong-Headed
As someone who studies the brain and also tries to disseminate information about the brain in a user-friendly, but scientifically accurate, way, I cringe when I read some pop accounts of brain research. For example, I recently saw this CNN headline: "Will right-brainers rule this century?" Clicking on the link took me to OPRAH.com, which promised, less hesitantly, to explain "Why right-brainers will rule this century." At least CNN considered the possibility that there was some question about the veracity of the statement. Oprah's headline implied it's a done deal.
Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal
Some evolutionary psychologists believe that disgust emerged as a protective mechanism against health risks, like feces, spoiled food or corpses. Later, many societies came to apply the same emotion to social “threats.” Humans appear to be the only species that registers disgust, which is why a dog will wag its tail in puzzlement when its horrified owner yanks it back from eating excrement.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Fall 2009
Spring 2009
Fall 2008
Spring 2008
Fall 2007
Summer 2007
Spring 2007
Fall 2006
Spring 2006
Fall 2005
Summer 2005
Spring 2005
Fall 2004
Spring 2004
Fall 2003
Spring 2003
Fall 2002