Classical explanations of social cognition assume that complex social interaction involves social understanding and that social understanding in turn depends on the ability to read others’ minds, i.e. on the ability to attribute mental states, such as beliefs and desires, to others for the purposes of predicting and explaining their …
In The Atlantic, the neuroscientist Nancy Andreason discusses her research on the neural underpinnings of creativity. At Aesthetics for Birds, Bence Nanay discusses the role of attention in aesthetic perception. (h/t Leiter Reports) An article in Nature discusses a new push to fund neuroscience research in California. (h/t David Rosenthal) And on a lighter note, here’s …
This is really cool. Doesn’t strike me as an illusion, though, but rather as an illustration of the cognitive penetrability of of auditory perception. (h/t Richard Brown and others on Facebook) A new exhibition in London’s National Gallery explores how the “color-blind” see art. (h/t the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience …
A donor has given $7.7 million to the University of Michigan to fund an institute in cognitive science. Here’s another excellent reply to Neil deGraase Tyson’s remarks on philosophy, this time from Massimo Pigliucci. (h/t Daily Nous) Should we move beyond blame? Barbara H. Fried and other philosophers discuss. (h/t Kyle Fritz on …
Below are some links that I thought would be of interest to readers of the Brains blog. I intend to start publishing posts like this with some frequency, but am not a great surfer of the Internet, so feel free to share links in the comments, or pass them along …
This is a very nice essay (h/t to Shannon Spaulding on Facebook), with many things relevant to the discussion in the comments to Cameron Buckner’s post from last month. An excerpt: I had (naively, as it turns out) assumed that having more than a quarter century of experience in science, but also …
You may (or may not) have noticed that Pete Mandik and Richard Brown (me) have started a podcast, called SpaceTimeMind, where we talk about tax law updates for 2014, uh, I mean, er, we talk about space and time and mind! The first episode is up now (and has been …
