Image by whatsthatpicture via Flickr This post is part of an ongoing exploration of “mindfulness” biology and the neurobiology of reflecting inwardly on one’s mental life. I hope it helps support the self-discovery aim of the blog. In some ways, the 8 limbs of yoga described in the yoga sutras, seem a bit like a [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Psychology’
On mindfulness: old yogis and latent biological adaptations
Posted in Mindfulness, tagged Brain, Cognition, Meditation, Psychology, Religion and Spirituality, Yoga on July 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Interview with Professor Chandan Vaidya, Georgetown University
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Add new tag, Dopamine transporter, Georgetown University, Podcast, Professor, Psychology on March 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia It was a delight to speak with Professor Vaidya this morning on her recent article, Neural response to working memory load varies by dopamine transporter genotype in children. An understanding of how a single genetic variant can relate to brain function, behavior and clinical intervention involves the synthesis of a great many [...]
RARB says I was born when my late born striosomal cells were born
Posted in Basal Ganglia, RARB, Striatum, tagged Ann Graybiel, Basal Ganglia, Brain, Cognition, Development, Dopamine, Mental health, Neural network, Psychology, schizophrenia, self, self awareness, Striatum on February 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia Everyone has a birthday right. Its the day you (your infant self) popped into the world and started breathing, right? But what about the day “you” were born – that is – “you” in the more philosophical, Jungian, spiritual, social, etc. kind of a way when you became aware of being in [...]
C.H. Waddington provides conceptual framework for shifting influences of genes and environment in the development of mind
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Add new tag, Brain, Cognition, cognitive development, Development, evolution, Genetics, Human behavior, Intelligence, Mutation, Population genetics, Psychology, Twin, University of Edinburgh on January 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Just a pointer to onetime University of Edinburgh Professor C.H. Waddington’s 1972 Gifford Lecture on framing the genes vs. environment debate of human behavior. Although Waddington is famous for his work on population genetics and evolutionary change over time, several of his concepts are experiencing some resurgence in the neuroimaging and psychological development literatures these [...]
Thousands of genes together with thousands of resting-state nodes actually makes the genes-to-cognition problem LESS complex
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Biology, Brain, Cognition, connectome, default network, Development, DNA, Dopamine, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Genetics, Memory, Mental health, Prefrontal cortex, Psychology, resting state network on January 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
DON’T tell the grant funding agencies, but, in at least one way, the effort to relate genetic variation to individual differences in cognitive function is a totally intractable waste of money. Let’s say we ask a population of folks to perform a task – perhaps a word memory task – and then we use neuroimaging [...]
echoblog: Educational resources for cognitive science
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cognitive science, Education, Psychology on January 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
pointer to: Al Fin’s recent post chock full of great links to educational videos. Incredible wealth of expertise just a few clicks away. Thanks Al Fin!!
Recalling finch beaks using variable decision criteria to learn from whence we came
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Charles Darwin, Development, episodic memory, evolution, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Galápagos Islands, Genetics, individual differences, John Gould, Jonathan Weiner, Memory, Natural selection, Neuroimaging, Psychology on December 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia In his book, The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner describes the great diversity of finches on the Galapagos Islands – so much diversity – that Darwin himself initially thought the finch variants to be completely different birds (wrens, mockingbirds, blackbirds and “gross-bills”). It turns out that one of the pivotal events [...]
Video library of mental illness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Depression, Major depressive disorder, Mental disorder, Mental health, Psychology, schizophrenia, symptoms, videos on November 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia pointer to symptommedia.org – fantastic video resource of specific symptoms of mental illness. “The intention of these clips are to be used in the classroom setting as visual compliments to the written description of symptoms for psychological phenomena found in the DSM handbook.”
Building and maintaining synapses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brain, Chemical synapse, Development, Genetics, Human behavior, Neuron, Psychology, synapse, synaptic plasticity on October 17, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Phrenological thinking, a popular pseudoscientific practice in the 1800′s suggested that the structure of the head and underlying brain held the clues to understanding human behavior. Today, amidst the ongoing convergence of developmental science, molecular & biochemical science and systems-dynamical science (to name just a few), there is – of course – no single or [...]
Sharpening the cognitive-genetic scalpel
Posted in Angular gyrus, Middle frontal gyrus, Supramarginal gyrus, tagged Brain, Cognition, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Magnetic resonance imaging, Prefrontal cortex, Psychology, Sigmund Freud, Twin on October 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image by bethd821 via Flickr Whether you are a carpenter, plumber, mechanic, electrician, surgeon or chef, your livelihood depends on a set of sturdy, reliable, well-honed, precision tools. Similarly, neuroscientists depend on their electrodes, brain scanners, microscopes and more recently their genome sequencers. This is because they are not just trying to dissect the brain [...]
Catecholaminergic genes may help my son hear things more clearly
Posted in ADRA2A, Frontal cortex, Noradrenaline, Parietal cortex, TH, tagged 23andMe, Brain, Dopamine, Electroencephalography, Frontal lobe, Genetic testing, Noradrenaline, Single-nucleotide polymorphism, Psychology, Signal transduction, Perception, Reading, Literacy, Independent Component Analysis, ICA, ERP on October 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This year, my 5 year-old son and I have passed many afternoons sitting on the living room rug learning to read. While he ever so gradually learns to decode words, eg. “C-A-T” sound by sound, letter by letter – I can’t help but marvel at the human brain and wonder what is going on inside. [...]
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