Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Dec 14, 2011, 12:00 pm
This is a book review of Building Brainpower: turning grey matter into gold by Dilip Mukerjea. Mind mapping is a technique that I have been fascinated with ; I have tried my hands with some online mind mapping tools like the FreeMind and have also tried a few offline mind maps, but before rea...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Dec 14, 2011, 12:00 pm
This is a book review of Building Brainpower: turning grey matter into gold by Dilip Mukerjea. Mind mapping is a technique that I have been fascinated with ; I have tried my hands with some online mind mapping tools like the FreeMind and have also tried a few offline mind maps, but before rea...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Dec 13, 2011, 10:08 am
Image by ohdearbarb via Flickr Dear Mouse Trap readers, I have some good news to share.   I have started blogging on Psychology Today and my brand new PT blog is named The Fundamental Four . I am quite excited to be a part of a blogging platform as esteemed as that of PT, where I will be blogg...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Dec 13, 2011, 10:08 am
Image by ohdearbarb via Flickr Dear Mouse Trap readers, I have some good news to share.   I have started blogging on Psychology Today and my brand new PT blog is named The Fundamental Four . I am quite excited to be a part of a blogging platform as esteemed as that of PT, where I will be blogg...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Dec 6, 2011, 9:14 am
Image via Wikipedia In my last two posts I have briefly touched upon Indian aesthetics in the form of eight rasas/emotions. These rasas, it is said, had a mythological origin; when Baharat muni saw Shiva dancing as Nataraja, he got inspired and created the ‘Natyashastra‘ which is the root of th...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Dec 6, 2011, 9:14 am
Image via Wikipedia In my last two posts I have briefly touched upon Indian aesthetics in the form of eight rasas/emotions. These rasas, it is said, had a mythological origin; when Baharat muni saw Shiva dancing as Nataraja, he got inspired and created the ‘Natyashastra‘ which is the root of th...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 27, 2011, 10:27 am
Image via Wikipedia In the last post we looked at the eight Rasas and how they are related to the eight color terms and the eight basic emotions.   Another list of basic emotions follows from the work of Carroll Izard; Izard is interested in the infants facial expressions and believes that due t...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 27, 2011, 10:27 am
Image via Wikipedia In the last post we looked at the eight Rasas and how they are related to the eight color terms and the eight basic emotions.   Another list of basic emotions follows from the work of Carroll Izard; Izard is interested in the infants facial expressions and believes that due t...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 25, 2011, 8:40 am
Image via Wikipedia According to Indian Aesthetics , as outlined in Bharat Muni’s Natyashatra,  there are eight Rasas or impacts that an aesthetic piece of work like dance form/ literary piece, tries to achieve/invoke in the beholder/reader. These can be loosely thought of as eight different k...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 25, 2011, 8:40 am
Image via Wikipedia According to Indian Aesthetics , as outlined in Bharat Muni’s Natyashatra,  there are eight Rasas or impacts that an aesthetic piece of work like dance form/ literary piece, tries to achieve/invoke in the beholder/reader. These can be loosely thought of as eight different k...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Sep 18, 2011, 3:13 pm
Image via Wikipedia This post is an ambitious attempt to link the four causes delineated by Aristotle, to the four questions asked by Tinbergen to the four types of explanations that can be made for any human/animal ability. First a bit of a background. Aristotle had listed four causes – Materi...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Sep 18, 2011, 3:13 pm
Image via Wikipedia This post is an ambitious attempt to link the four causes delineated by Aristotle, to the four questions asked by Tinbergen to the four types of explanations that can be made for any human/animal ability. First a bit of a background. Aristotle had listed four causes – Materi...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Aug 31, 2011, 10:20 am
Image via Wikipedia This post is an attempt to get to the basic emotions. Regular readers of this blog will readily appreciate when I claim that there are eight basic emotions and that they follow a developmental/evolutionary time-course and follow a  particular order.   First let us review the...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Aug 31, 2011, 10:20 am
Image via Wikipedia This post is an attempt to get to the basic emotions. Regular readers of this blog will readily appreciate when I claim that there are eight basic emotions and that they follow a developmental/evolutionary time-course and follow a  particular order.   First let us review the...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Aug 21, 2011, 12:26 pm
Image via Wikipedia The exact role that dopamine plays in learning remains controversial; some think it acts as a prediction error signal, while Berrdige et al believe that dopamine codes for incentive salience.   A recent paper throws some light on the issue. It uses a  simple Pavlovian condit...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Aug 21, 2011, 12:26 pm
Image via Wikipedia The exact role that dopamine plays in learning remains controversial; some think it acts as a prediction error signal, while Berrdige et al believe that dopamine codes for incentive salience.   A recent paper throws some light on the issue. It uses a  simple Pavlovian condit...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Aug 18, 2011, 11:04 am
The term Schizophrenia , as many of the readers will recall, was coined by Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist , who  intended the ‘split personality’ to reflect the fact that there was an underlying dissociation between various functions like memory, cognition, emotion that are normally integr...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Aug 18, 2011, 11:04 am
The term Schizophrenia , as many of the readers will recall, was coined by Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist , who  intended the ‘split personality’ to reflect the fact that there was an underlying dissociation between various functions like memory, cognition, emotion that are normally integr...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jul 17, 2011, 1:55 pm
Image via Wikipedia Much has been written about the seductive allure of fMRI brain images accompanying research papers and giving them more credence than is deserved; similarly much has been written about the whole enterprise of fMRI based research that tries to find the neural correlates of X,Y,an...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jul 17, 2011, 1:55 pm
Image via Wikipedia Much has been written about the seductive allure of fMRI brain images accompanying research papers and giving them more credence than is deserved; similarly much has been written about the whole enterprise of fMRI based research that tries to find the neural correlates of X,Y,an...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jul 9, 2011, 11:44 pm
Image via Wikipedia There is long-standing debate in psychology regrading whether ability is inborn or a result of environmental interactions? Whether it is fixed and constant over time or malleable and subject to interventions. We have also looked at research by Dweck et al that say that no matte...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jul 9, 2011, 11:44 pm
Image via Wikipedia There is long-standing debate in psychology regrading whether ability is inborn or a result of environmental interactions? Whether it is fixed and constant over time or malleable and subject to interventions. We have also looked at research by Dweck et al that say that no matte...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jun 18, 2011, 2:08 am
Image via Wikipedia This is a review of Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel’s new book ‘Blind Spots: why we fail to do what’s right and what to do about it‘ published by Princeton. Before I start a disclaimer seems right. I receive review books from Princeton and have received this book f...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jun 18, 2011, 2:08 am
Image via Wikipedia This is a review of Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel’s new book ‘Blind Spots: why we fail to do what’s right and what to do about it‘ published by Princeton. Before I start a disclaimer seems right. I receive review books from Princeton and have received this book f...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jun 11, 2011, 3:35 pm
Image via Wikipedia While most people are generally aware of the five factor model of personality (that is the FFM or OCEAN model that is revealed by factor analysis), the two factor models of personality may not be that readily apparent, though most readers will be familiar with some form or the ...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jun 11, 2011, 3:35 pm
Image via Wikipedia While most people are generally aware of the five factor model of personality (that is the FFM or OCEAN model that is revealed by factor analysis), the two factor models of personality may not be that readily apparent, though most readers will be familiar with some form or the ...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Apr 25, 2011, 1:57 pm
Image via Wikipedia The field of psychology abounds with dichotomies- some of which are patently false/outdated, as per the grapevine. The familiar ones include Nature-nurture and mind-brain; in the former it is assumed that now everything is a mixture of both nature and nurture while in the latter...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Apr 25, 2011, 1:57 pm
Image via Wikipedia The field of psychology abounds with dichotomies- some of which are patently false/outdated, as per the grapevine. The familiar ones include Nature-nurture and mind-brain; in the former it is assumed that now everything is a mixture of both nature and nurture while in the latter...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 18, 2011, 1:19 pm
Image via Wikipedia I had the pleasure recently of reading Guy Kawasaki‘s Enchantment, and it is a different type of fare from the stuff I read these days; despite this, I enjoyed it wholly and just breezed through it in a week . It is not a difficult read at all , as compared to some of the acad...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 18, 2011, 1:19 pm
Image via Wikipedia I had the pleasure recently of reading Guy Kawasaki‘s Enchantment, and it is a different type of fare from the stuff I read these days; despite this, I enjoyed it wholly and just breezed through it in a week . It is not a difficult read at all , as compared to some of the acad...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 16, 2011, 2:26 pm
In my last 3 posts, I have talked about ICNs and how they change over developmental time-frame and how many basic ICNs we have in the adult human brain.  This post will talk about neuroegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and how the underlying atrophy in neurodegenrative networks closely resemb...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 16, 2011, 2:26 pm
In my last 3 posts, I have talked about ICNs and how they change over developmental time-frame and how many basic ICNs we have in the adult human brain.  This post will talk about neuroegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and how the underlying atrophy in neurodegenrative networks closely resemb...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 14, 2011, 1:59 pm
In my last two posts I introduced the concept of ICNs and the form they take over developmental time-frame. This post focuses on the most common and consistent ICNs that have been found in the adult humans. To recap, ICNs are found by Independent Component Analysis (ICA) of Resting state functional ...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 14, 2011, 1:59 pm
In my last two posts I introduced the concept of ICNs and the form they take over developmental time-frame. This post focuses on the most common and consistent ICNs that have been found in the adult humans. To recap, ICNs are found by Independent Component Analysis (ICA) of Resting state functional ...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 10, 2011, 12:45 pm
In my last post I introduced the mouse trap readers to ICNs , ICA and the rs-fcMRI (resting state Functional connectivity fMRI) procedure that is used to detect such networks. This post extends that exciting line of work by commenting on 3 papers that list the ICNs found in the developing brain (inf...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 10, 2011, 12:45 pm
In my last post I introduced the mouse trap readers to ICNs , ICA and the rs-fcMRI (resting state Functional connectivity fMRI) procedure that is used to detect such networks. This post extends that exciting line of work by commenting on 3 papers that list the ICNs found in the developing brain (inf...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 9, 2011, 1:03 pm
Image via Wikipedia fMRI has become an important investigation and research tool in trying to locate neural correlates of a function X,Y,Z in the brain. However notwithstanding the allure of seductive neuroscan images, fMRI studies at times leaves us as clueless about the brain and its organization...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Mar 9, 2011, 1:03 pm
Image via Wikipedia fMRI has become an important investigation and research tool in trying to locate neural correlates of a function X,Y,Z in the brain. However notwithstanding the allure of seductive neuroscan images, fMRI studies at times leaves us as clueless about the brain and its organization...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Feb 20, 2011, 5:41 am
Image via Wikipedia If you plan to read only one book on brain this year, make it a point to read ‘The Other Brain’ by Douglas Fields. While most of us in the psycho-neuro field have been focusing on the neurons, there is a silent revolution that is taking place about our understanding of Gli...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Feb 20, 2011, 5:41 am
Image via Wikipedia If you plan to read only one book on brain this year, make it a point to read ‘The Other Brain’ by Douglas Fields. While most of us in the psycho-neuro field have been focusing on the neurons, there is a silent revolution that is taking place about our understanding of Gli...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jan 21, 2011, 1:41 pm
Image via Wikipedia It has been this blog’s thesis that autism and its milder form autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are diametrically opposed to psychosis and its milder form schizotypy.  In no area is this more apparent than in the perception or attribution of minds to others. It thus gave me im...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jan 21, 2011, 1:41 pm
Image via Wikipedia It has been this blog’s thesis that autism and its milder form autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are diametrically opposed to psychosis and its milder form schizotypy.  In no area is this more apparent than in the perception or attribution of minds to others. It thus gave me im...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jan 6, 2011, 1:52 pm
Image via Wikipedia What can you say about an academic paper that starts with references to Milan Kundera and ends with a quote from Shakespeare.  Well you gotta love it and blog about it; but I might have easily passed over that paper for something more interesting ; also how much is it to luck t...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Jan 6, 2011, 1:52 pm
Image via Wikipedia What can you say about an academic paper that starts with references to Milan Kundera and ends with a quote from Shakespeare.  Well you gotta love it and blog about it; but I might have easily passed over that paper for something more interesting ; also how much is it to luck t...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 25, 2010, 9:17 am
Image via Wikipedia I have blogged extensively about personality and how it may be related to emotions. A common theme underlying my discussion of personality and emotion has been these traits/states arising as a result of adaptation to basic evolutionary tasks or problems that each living organism...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 25, 2010, 9:17 am
Image via Wikipedia I have blogged extensively about personality and how it may be related to emotions. A common theme underlying my discussion of personality and emotion has been these traits/states arising as a result of adaptation to basic evolutionary tasks or problems that each living organism...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 22, 2010, 2:21 pm
Image by The Happy Robot via Flickr I am an avid personality researcher and most recently have posted a series on personality and emotion. I have also talked a bit about life-history theories and thus am aware of  the broad filed of behavioral ecology. A recent paper by Nettle and Penke brings the...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 22, 2010, 2:21 pm
Image by The Happy Robot via Flickr I am an avid personality researcher and most recently have posted a series on personality and emotion. I have also talked a bit about life-history theories and thus am aware of  the broad filed of behavioral ecology. A recent paper by Nettle and Penke brings the...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 15, 2010, 12:07 pm
Image by imago via Flickr Come 21st Nov and I will be delivering my first ever talk on ‘positive psychology: The science behind happiness and well-being‘ at the local (pune) Symbiosis Center for distance learning.  The event will happen in Pune and there is a small and negligible ticket fees t...
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Sandeep G. posted an article on The Mouse Trap - Nov 15, 2010, 12:07 pm
Image by imago via Flickr Come 21st Nov and I will be delivering my first ever talk on ‘positive psychology: The science behind happiness and well-being‘ at the local (pune) Symbiosis Center for distance learning.  The event will happen in Pune and there is a small and negligible ticket fees t...
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