Scientific American - Mind & Brain

Readers Respond on "Do Parents Matter?"--And More...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST

Parents and Peers As a psychologist very familiar with the research, I think in “ Do Parents Matter? ” Judith Harris is conflating personality and behavior, which are two different concepts. Personality has more to do with genetic traits related to mood and energy (which plenty of research indicates are strongly influenced by genetics). Behavior, on the other hand, depends on context and is guided by laws of behaviorism--that is, reinforcement principles. If parents do (or do not) provide reinforcement for specific types of behavior, you will either see or not see those behaviors. Likewise, certain behaviors will be reinforced in the classroom by teachers.

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War Is Peace: Can Science Fight Media Disinformation?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST

When I saw the statement repeated online that theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge would be dead by now if he lived in the U.K. and had to depend on the National Health Service (he, of course, is alive and working in the U.K., where he always has), I reflected on something I had written a dozen years ago, in one of my first published commentaries:

“The increasingly blatant nature of the nonsense uttered with impunity in public discourse is chilling. Our democratic society is imperiled as much by this as any other single threat, regardless of whether the origins of the nonsense are religious fanaticism, simple ignorance or personal gain.”

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Sound During Sleep Fixes Learning

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:55:08 EST

There’s nothing like a good nap. It can refresh your mood--and possibly your memory. Because a new study in the journal Science shows that a quick snooze after a mental workout helps to consolidate learning. And that sounds heard during sleep can trigger associations that sharpen memory even more. [More]

Foreign Afflictions: Mental Disorders across Country Borders

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST

Let us start with a little quiz. How many of these conditions have you heard of?

Taijin kyofusho , hikikomori , hwa-byung , or qi-gong psychotic reaction.

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Ability to Guess Others' Thoughts Tied to Language Proficiency

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST

What’s this guy thinking? Does he know what I know? Most of us develop the ability to make inferences about what other people might be thinking, the hallmark of “theory of mind,” at age four. Scientists have long known that the acquisition of language plays a role in this process, but so far it had been unclear whether social experience could substitute for it. A new study suggests it cannot.

Jennie Pyers of Wellesley College and her colleagues studied deaf adults in Nicaragua. Some of the participants had learned an early, rudimentary form of Nicaraguan sign language (NSL), whereas others were fluent in a more sophisticated form of NSL that included mental state terms, such as “know” and “think.” Pyers and her team had all signers undergo a so-called false-belief test in which signers looked at a sequence of pictures showing two boys playing in a room and storing a toy underneath a bed. After one of the boys leaves the room, the other moves the toy to a different location. Study participants then had to choose between two pictures to complete the series: the first showed the returning boy looking for the toy in its original location on reentering the room, and the second showed him looking in its new location.

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The AMA eases its stance on marijuana

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST

The Obama administration announced last month that people who buy or sell medical marijuana in the growing number of states that have decriminalized its therapeutic usage should not be targeted for arrest or prosecution by federal authorities. Now, the American Medical Association (AMA) has called for the federal government to go one step further in easing restrictions, the Los Angeles Times reported last week . [More]

Ask the Brains: Are our Brains Constantly Making Subconscious Calculations?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST

Is it true that when we drive, walk or reach for something our brain performs calculations? Is this ability learned or innate? --Helena Larks, San Francisco [More]

For Sale: Human Eggs Become a Research Commodity

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST

Paying a woman for her eggs to use in stem cell research has been a bioethical no-no for years. But this past June, New York State decided to allow just that, becoming the first state to permit public money to be used in this way. The decision, which allows payment of up to $10,000, will likely jump-start donations--and thereby research. Many bioethicists, however, worry that the financial incentive could exploit women and compromise their health.

Ethical issues surround egg donation because the process is not without risk. It requires a series of hormonal stimulation injections as well as an invasive procedure to retrieve the eggs. The long-term health effects and risks of complication are not well known. A woman who provides eggs for research is “assuming unknown risk for unknown benefits,” says Debra Mathews, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University. The lingering unknowns prompted the National Academy of Science to issue in 2005 nonbinding guidelines to prohibit payment (but allow direct reimbursement for expenses), as a means to protect underprivileged women in particular.

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The Roots of Language

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:08 EST

One of the lingering challenges in cognitive psychology is the evolution of language. Even though it's so much a part of what it means to be human.

But a new clue to language's early formation comes from chimpanzee behavior.

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Your Brain on Books

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Stanislas Dehaene holds the chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France, and he is also the director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit at NeuroSpin, France’s most advanced neuroimaging research center. He is best known for his research into the brain basis of numbers, popularized in his book, “The Number Sense.” In his new book, “Reading in the Brain,” he describes his quest to understand an astounding feat that most of us take for granted: translating marks on a page (or a screen) into language. He answered questions recently from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. [More]

The Will to Power--Is "Free Will" All in Your Head?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST

Surely there must have been times in high school or college when you laid in bed, late at night, and wondered where your “free will” came from? What part of the brain--if it is the brain--is responsible for deciding to act one way or another? One traditional answer is that this is not the job of the brain at all but rather of the soul. Hovering above the brain like Casper the Friendly Ghost, the soul freely perturbs the networks of the brain, thereby triggering the neural activity that will ultimately lead to behavior.

Although such dualistic accounts are emotionally reassuring and intuitively satisfying, they break down as soon as one digs a bit deeper. How can this ghost, made out of some kind of metaphysical ectoplasm, influence brain matter without being detected? What sort of laws does Casper follow? Science has abandoned strong dualistic explanations in favor of natural accounts that assign causes and responsibility to specific actors and mechanisms that can be further studied. And so it is with the notion of the will.

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MIND Reviews: Shaken: Journey into the Mind of a Parkinson's Patient

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST

DVDs Shaken: Journey into the Mind of a Parkinson’s Patient [More]

Calendar: MIND events in November and December

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST

NOVEMBER

Dementia, you thief [More]

Who says love hurts? Romantic partners alter our perception of pain

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:26:00 EST