When the mind leaves without asking
Unintentional mind wandering is not a moral failure. PsyPost summarizes research in the Journal of Attention Disorders: spontaneous mind wandering predicts distinct aspects of ADHD traits in adults, while deliberate wandering does not. Two routes of…
Under scrutiny, the nervous system learns differently
Social anxiety is often told as fear of people. The body knows it first as a change in learning: unpleasant outcomes hit harder, and avoidance starts to look like wisdom. A JNeurosci study (Liu & van der Molen, via Medical Xpress) maps how brain regions…
The distributed layered Self
The self is neither a little person inside the brain nor a vague everywhere. It is an emergent process, grounded in critical nodes, sustained by distributed interaction, and shaped by body, prediction, memory, language, relationship, culture, sleep, and…
The body is a distributed mind
The body is not a passive instrument controlled by the brain. It is a distributed system of sensing, processing, prediction, regulation, defense, memory, and identity. The self is not located in one place. It emerges from the integration of body, brain,…
Dopamine’s role in fear extinction is more precise than we thought
A mouse study published in PNAS and reported by MIT’s Picower Institute shows how one dopamine pathway helps the brain learn that a once-dangerous place is now safe. The finding is causal, not just correlational, but it should not be mistaken for a…