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    Basic Emotions

    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 attempts made till now to classify and identify the basic emotions- foremost amongst them is the tradition of Tomkins and ...
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    The Four Fundamental Causes

    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 - Material,  Efficient, Formal and Final causes. From the Wikipedia: Aristotle held that there were four kinds of causes: A thing's ...
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  • Buddha's Brain

    I recently came across an authors@google talk by Rick Hanson, who is the author of 'Buddha's Brain:  the practical neuroscience of happiness, love and wisdom' and was immediately drawn by the similarity of the framework he uses and my ABCD model. Rick draws a lot from the Buddhist tradition and its humbling to find many similarities between what buddha preached thousands of years ago and what neuroscience tell ...
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  • Schizophrenia: 4 a's and ABCD

    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 integrated in normal people. He also gave the famous 4 a's that he presumed lied at the core of the schizophrenia and were ...
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  • Dopamine: prediction-error vs. incentive salience

    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 conditioning paradigm. To recap, US and CS are paired and after some time CS starts predicting the reward ; however the twist ...
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  • The four mechanisms of evolution

    Regular readers of the blog will know of my enthusiasm for evolutionary and developmental theories especially the eight stage evo-devo theory. I have also advocated the four primary problems faced by all creatures undergoing evolution, as delineated by Theodore Millon- the problems of Existence; Adaptation; Replication and Abstraction which lead to polarities of pain/pleasure;  active/passive; self/other and ...
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    The Eight Rasas/Emotions (contd)

    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 to lack of socialization etc there is perfect concordance between the infants facial expressions and infants emotional...
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  • The Eight Rasas (aesthetic essences)

    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 kinds of aesthetic experiences.   As is evident I like all things eight, as I believe they have an underlying eight fold evo-devo st...
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About

This is the new Mouse Trap blog- a blog purportedly dedicated to cognitive and developmental psychology- but which in fact has musings on all aspects of psychology and neuroscience, that are conceivable.

Sandeep Gautam

Sandeep Gautam

This blog is an effort of Sandeep Gautam (sandygautam on most social web services) to learn and at the same time document his journey and share his knowledge of psychology and neuroscience with like-minded folks – a rider is in place at this point: He is primarily a software professional (a computer science major) and has developed expertise in psychology and neuroscience, on his own, by reading popular books, textbooks and of course utilizing the ubiquitous Internet and through this blog. As such, all his musings need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
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  • #1 written by Swamykant
    about 1 year ago
    Reply Quote

    Hi Sandeep

    This is really an awesome blog . Your blog posts makes the readers to understand teh Concepts and ideas very clear..

    Smart Guy’s Mouse Trap :)

  • #2 written by Love in India
    about 6 months ago
    Reply Quote

    You learnt all that psychology on your own?????????? Without going to school????????? That’s just unbelievable Sandeep!
    Thank you for your blog, It’s very informative and useful.

  • #3 written by Bhavin Sangoi
    about 3 months ago
    Reply Quote

    Hi Sandeep,

    What an outstanding blog you have built. I really loved your blog. A blog like this on Psychology that too without having any formal education of it is unimaginable, but you did it. You proved it that if you have real passion for something nothing can stop you. I even liked template of your blog. its really nice.

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