Cognition
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Into the Uncanny Valley
November 16, 2009
New findings shed light on a century’s worth of bizarre explanations for the eerie feeling we get around lifelike robots.
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Overhyped Placebos of Doom?
October 28, 2009
Despite centuries of investigation, scientists still have much to learn about the origins and meaning of the placebo effect.
cognition, public perception, research, research blogging, truth
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Altruism vs. Selfishness
September 26, 2009
The idea that evolution explains selfishness well and altruism poorly is starting to stink. Can we please bury it now?
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Survival of the Kindest
September 24, 2009
In his new book, The Age of Empathy, Frans de Waal outlines an alternative to “Nature, red in tooth and claw.” Can a vision of a more empathic world change the way we behave toward each other?
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This Image Is Not Moving
September 16, 2009
Optical illusions may seem to deceive, but they actually reveal truths about how our brains construct reality.
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Invoking the Magic of the Mind
June 25, 2009
Are secrets of the evolution of the mind to be found by imagining the ancestors of tool-wielding crows, or is such an approach strictly for the birds?
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Light Mind Control
May 18, 2009
Light-sensitive proteins from algae illuminate the brain, providing a more sophisticated view of neural circuitry.
biotechnology, cognition, neuroscience, research, synthetic biology
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Creation on Command
May 06, 2009
From Jackson Pollock to John Coltrane — how creativity springs from a choreographed set of mental events.
cognition, intelligence, music, neuroscience, research, theory
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To Be a Baby
May 05, 2009
Alison Gopnik describes new experiments in developmental psychology that show everything we think we know about babies is wrong.
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This Is Your Brain on Facebook
April 21, 2009
Recent studies on the effects of the internet and other new media on brain plasticity raises an open research question: Is Google making us smarter?
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Automatic for the People
April 02, 2009
A team of British researchers take a robotic approach in rethinking the hypothetico-deductive method.
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Getting Over It
April 01, 2009
Forget about erasing bad memories. Researchers have located the receptor that enables our brains to override or “unlearn” traumatic past experiences.
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A Hormone to Remember
February 17, 2009
Oxytocin emerges as a key player in our facility for social memory.
cognition, disease, enhancement, medicine, neuroscience, research
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Thinking Meta
February 16, 2009
Good judgment is more than a matter of “gut feeling” — it’s the willingness to reflect on the decision-making process itself.
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Seeing in the Dark
January 14, 2009
A blind man shocks researchers with what he sees.
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Steven Pinker on Swearing and Violence
September 02, 2008
Ideas are connected in circuitous ways, and you never know when a discovery in one area will shed light on another.
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A New State of Mind
August 08, 2008
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Out of the Blue
March 03, 2008
Can a thinking, remembering, decision-making, biologically accurate brain be built from a supercomputer?
cognition, complexity, design, information, innovation, neuroscience
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The Listener
October 29, 2007
As Oliver Sacks observes the mind through music, his belief in a science of empathy takes on new dimension.
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How We Make a Memory
August 03, 2006
Researchers find that familiarity is the touchstone for being able to remember.
Now on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
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Innovation
Let There Be Light
Astronomers will soon find scores of Earth-sized exoplanets, but imaging them may be decades away. That is, unless NASA decides to build a starshade.
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Ideas
Into the Uncanny Valley
New findings shed light on a century’s worth of bizarre explanations for the eerie feeling we get around lifelike robots.
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World
Signs from Above
The release of an apocalyptic movie prompts NASA to debunk planetary rumors, fowl play shuts down the LHC, and the Catholic Church discusses alien life.
