‘It’s A Social Thing, Not a Nature Thing’: Popular Music Practices in Reykjavík, Iceland

Consciousness Is a Thing, Not a Process

The central dogma of cognitive psychology is ‘consciousness is a process, not a thing’. Hence, the main task of cognitive neuroscientists is generally seen as working out what kinds of neural processing are conscious and what kinds are not. I argue here that the central dogma is simply wrong. All neural processing is unconscious. The illusion that some of it is conscious results largely from a ...

Unification: Not Just a Thing of Beauty

There is a strong tendency in science to opt for simpler and more unified hypotheses. A view that has often been voiced is that such qualities, though aesthetically pleasing or beautiful, are at best pragmatic considerations in matters of choosing between rival hypotheses. This essay offers a novel conception and an associated measure of unification, both of which are manifestly more than just ...

Not a Sure Thing: Making Regulatory Choices

When change is not a good thing.

Over the past 40 years, our understanding of the epidemiology and natural history of a number of common chronic diseases has been markedly enhanced by serial, nationally representative, cross-sectional surveys such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (1 ), longitudinal cohorts such as the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study (2 ), and more disease-specif...

Music: The Last Thing We Forget

Have you ever wondered what happens in your brain when you think about your favorite songs? Recent research has revealed an area of the brain that is active when we listen to music that we know. This musical memory area is separate from the parts of your brain you use to remember things you have learned in school or details about events that happen in your life. In this article, we will show yo...