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Latest articles on executive functions and will

The scientific study of choice, aka decision making, willed action or executive functions, has provided plenty of new articles just during the past few weeks. Here we provide some of them.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Scicon Review
 

Narrative selves

From MindHacks — Philosophy Now has an article on how the self might be based on our ability to create narratives. The article looks at how the self has been related to our ability to make narratives out of the disconnect...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Scicon Review
 

Does the brain show a lie?

Amanda lies flat on her back, clad in a steel blue hospital gown and an air of anticipation, as she is rolled headfirst into a beeping, 10-ton functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) unit. Once inside, the 20-something blo...
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
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Visual hallucinations? Draw it!

Visual (and other non-visual) hallucinations sometimes occur during epileptic seizures. A relatively straightforward but little used method to describe these experiences is to ask the sufferer to draw the hallucinations —...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Scicon Review
 

The unconscious motivator

A study (PDF) recently reported in Science shows how unconsciously processed information about monetary rewards influences behaviour. Furthermore, the researchers identify a basal forebrain region that specifically underpin thi...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Scicon Review
 

Minds, brains and programs — Searle BBS draft

An unedited penultimate draft of a BBS target article by John Searle is now available. It has been accepted for publication (Copyright 1980: Cambridge University Press U.K./U.S. — publication date provisional) and is curr...
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
Scicon Review
 

The units of thought

What is the nature of thought? And what is the resting state? Moshe Bar and colleagues argues in a new paper (PDF) in the journal Hippocampus that besides the long-held idea that associative processing provides the vehicle of t...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Resting states in unconscious monkeys

Nature has an interesting report from Marc Raichle‘s laboratory that studies the resting states in monkeys. This study not only demonstrates that resting states occur in non-human primates, but that it is possible to find...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Scicon Review
 

Smarter, sentient whales

Recent studies have shown that the brains of sperm whales is second in size only to human (relative to body size). It is about 60% larger in absolute mass than that of an elephant. How this brain evolution has occurred is the t...
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
Scicon Review
 

Who’s superstitious?

What makes some people supersticious, or believe in the paranormal? In the latest issue of the Journal of Research in Personality, researchers Marjaana Lindeman and Kia Aarnio from Helsinki, Finland, first set out by conceptual...