Psy News

July 20, 2010

Cognitive control: when less is more!

Filed under: Psychology Articles — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 9:02 pm
Yesterday I wrote a post about ADHD and creativity and how the frontal lobes hypo-function and dopamine may be the mediating factors involved.  Today I serendipitously came across this article by Thomson-Schill et al in which they posit that frontal cortex hypofunction during childhood is beneficial, on average, as it enables convention learning and thus More >Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)Rel

19 Vote(s)

June 15, 2010

Damage to the frontal cortex of the brain affects ability to react quickly to a stimulus

Researchers have demonstrated that patients who have damage to the right prefrontal cortex of the brain present a deficit in intentional anticipation (for example, when we put the vehicle in gear before the traffic light turns green).

12 Vote(s)

June 10, 2010

Frontal cortex dysfunction may contribute to compulsive sexual behavior, study suggests

Sex "addiction" is a concept that has had particularly high visibility recently with the publicity associated with Tiger Woods. Persons with addictive or compulsive disorders frequently display an inability to inhibit behaviors once they become maladaptive, despite adverse consequences of their behavior. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is a brain region involved in decision-making and behavio

8 Vote(s)

June 4, 2010

2010-06-04 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:Brain scan 'lie detection' not admissible in a landmark case which has been considered a test for the legal acceptability of the technology, reports Wired Science.The Frontal Cortex argues that the BP engineers should take a break from tying to solve the oil spill crisis from what we know about the psychology of creativity.Video gamers are mor

16 Vote(s)

March 6, 2010

2010-03-05 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:Time magazine reports on how darkness can encourage dishonest acts even when anonymity is accounted for.A study finding a link with aversion to inequality an activity in the ventral striatum is brilliantly covered by The Frontal Cortex.The Point of Inquiry podcast has an excellent discussion on the psychology of cold reading.A preview of a spe

11 Vote(s)

January 29, 2010

2010-01-29 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:io9 has a great brief summary of a citation analysis that describe how neuroscience became a major scientific discipline in just one decade. Interestingly, it didn't happen in the Decade of the Brain.The ability to resist temptation is contagious, according a new study covered by The Frontal Cortex. I suspect this means I am patient zero of gi

17 Vote(s)

January 27, 2010

Information channelling

Filed under: Psychology Articles — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 8:00 am
The Frontal Cortex has a fantastic piece discussing a new study finding that people choose TV news based on which channels are more likely to agree with their pre-existing opinions and how we have a tendency to filter for information that confirms, rather than challenges, what we believe.Lehrer discusses various ways in which we selectively attend to information we agree with but the best bit is

9 Vote(s)

December 20, 2009

The psychological effects of brain theories

The Frontal Cortex has an interesting piece on how giving people information suggesting that neuroscience undermines our everyday concept of free will can alter our ethical behaviour.The post discusses two experiments where participants had been given information suggesting that free will was an illusion - one passage taken from Francis Crick's book The Astonishing Hypothesis that argues against

17 Vote(s)

May 20, 2009

Tall people have slower nerves, sensory lag

Filed under: Psychology Articles — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 5:00 am
Frontal Cortex has alerted me to an interesting NPR radio segment on the fact that taller people have longer nerves and so will have slight sensory lag in comparison to shorter people.It prompted me to look up some of the research in the area and I found an eye-opening study looking at a range of factors that can effect nerve conduction.The researchers found that, after controlling for sex, age a

14 Vote(s)

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