Updated: 2022-12-30 06:00:00
: Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Friday , December 30, 2022 The pitfalls of defining neural correlates of brain functions Rust and Le Doux do a useful brief opinion piece from which I pass on two clips , and recommend you read the whole open source text . neuroscientists should avoid conflating circuits that control behavior with mental states , especially in the absence of evidence that the two map onto one another . These equivalencies need to be very carefully investigated rather than presumed . Considerable evidence suggests that circuits involving the amygdala control behavioral and physiological responses to threats . In animal research labs , threats are often recapitulated
Updated: 2022-12-28 06:00:00
I pass on this link to a YouTube video sent out by the Chaos and Complex Systems Discussion group at the University of Wisconsin. Totally fun to watch, but I don't think any of us understand it.
Updated: 2022-12-26 06:00:00
: . Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Monday , December 26, 2022 Rigorous study does not find that exercise and mindfulness training improve cognitive function in older adults . Wow , here is a study by Lenze et . al not confirming the results of numerous other less rigorous studies reported in MindBlog posts that is unable to demonstrate that the use of mindfulness training , exercise , or a combination of both can significantly improving cognitive function in older adults with subjective cognitive concerns . In their randomized clinical trial that included 585 participants , mindfulness training , exercise , or both did not result in significant differences in improvement in
Updated: 2022-12-23 06:00:00
: . Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Friday , December 23, 2022 A smart phone intervention that enhances memory in older adults . Martin et al . nbsp offer an open source article that describes a smartphone intervention that enhances real-world memory and promotes differentiation of hippocampal activity in older adults . nbsp I have downloaded the HippoCamera smartphone App described in the text from the Apple App Store , and found a research passcode is required , for which the following clip of text from the article is relevant : As of the time of writing , this is a research-dedicated application that requires an access code that can be obtained from a corresponding author .
Updated: 2022-12-21 06:00:00
: Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Wednesday , December 21, 2022 Neurocomputational evidence that conflicting prosocial motives guide distributive justice A fascinating perspective and analysis from Hu et . al who show that three prosocial motives fairness , harm aversion , and rank reversal aversion are encoded by separate neural systems , compete for representation in various brain areas processing equality and harm signals , and are integrated in the striatum , which functions as a crucial hub for translating the motives to behavior see also the commentary by Armstrong and McKee Significance Resource allocation in human societies usually triggers discussions about fairness , but
Updated: 2022-12-16 06:00:00
: . Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Friday , December 16, 2022 The dawn of mediocre computing . This post is a followup on MindBlog's 12 07 22 post on OpenAI's ChatGPT essay generating system . It was mentioned in Venkatesh Rao's essay The Dawn of Mediocre Computing that my techie son , Jonathan Bownds,sent to me . After pasting in the first two paragraphs of Rao's article , I want to pass on some essential clips that Jon extracted from Rao's overly long text , the sort of logorrheic writing that is responsible for the TLDR too long didn't read acronym . nbsp Well , we all knew it was coming . Computers already easily overwhelm the best humans at chess and Go . Now they have done
Updated: 2022-12-14 06:00:00
: Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Wednesday , December 14, 2022 Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group From Gershon and Fridman Significance Understanding the principles guiding decisions in intergroup conflicts is essential to recognizing the psychological barriers to compromise and cooperation . We introduce a novel paradigm for studying group decision-making , demonstrating that individuals are so averse to supporting opposing groups that they prefer equivalent or greater harm to their own group instead . While previous models of group decision-making claim that group members are driven by a desire to benefit their in-group in-group love”
Updated: 2022-12-12 06:00:00
: Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Monday , December 12, 2022 Autism attenuates the perception of the mind-body divide A fascinating piece of work from Berent et . al Significance Across cultures , people consider the mind as ethereal , distinct from the body . But whether Dualism arises only from culture nurture or also spontaneously from human nature is unknown . To address this question , here , we turn to autism spectrum disorder ASD a congenital disorder that compromises intuitive reasoning about the minds of others theory of mind , ToM If ToM promotes Dualist reasoning , then Dualist reasoning ought to be attenuated in ASD . Our results show that , compared to controls , people
Updated: 2022-12-09 06:00:00
: . Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Friday , December 09, 2022 How modern human brains are different from those of other hominids and chimps . Work pointed to in the previous post continues to add to the list of behaviors once presumed to be unique to humans that have now been found in other animals morality , having a self’ , etc . Previous MindBlog posts list , von Economo neurons etc . do search . have noted emerging evidence for brain features unique to or much more pronounced in humans than other primates . Now Pinson et . al have found that a single amino acid change in the transketolase-like 1 TKTL1 protein on production of basal radial glia , the workhorses that generate
Updated: 2022-12-07 06:00:00
: Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Wednesday , December 07, 2022 OpenAI’s ChatGPT answers some questions from MindBlog Given a recent posting in which I played with the DALL-E 2 A.I . system that generates images when you tell it what you want to see , I was motivated by a Venkatesh Rao essay The Dawn of Mediocre Computing to try out an essay generating system OpenAI's ChatGPT released as a research beta several days ago . After puttering through a number of references and joining the OpenAI Discord Server , I fundamentally don't get it and have nothing original to pass on in this post , but I thought some MindBlog readers might enjoy spending some time in the rabbit hole I am just
Updated: 2022-12-05 06:00:00
: Deric's MindBlog This blog reports new ideas and work on mind , brain , behavior , psychology , and politics as well as random curious stuff Monday , December 05, 2022 A collection of animal stories I've accumulated several items on animal behaviors in my list of potential post subjects , and have decided to simply pass them on to allow animal curious MindBlog readers to have a look . nbsp Farad Manjoo notes that ants , not humans , own the world . nbsp Not only land animals like humans toss objects at irritating neighbors , octopuses who gather at feeding sites with abundant food and competition for it sometimes throw silt at each . other Crows understand the concept of recursion as well as children , and better than macaque monkeys . nbsp Wild Chimpanzees display declarative
