Monthly Archives: April 2010

Hypnotising lobsters etc

April 21, 2010 – 12:00 pm

This is a fantastically odd letter about hypnotising animals that appeared in a 1992 edition of the British Journal of Psychiatry. Hypnotising lobsters, etc. Sir: I was very surprised that the idea of hypnotising lobsters was thought to be evidence of gullibility requiring further photographic proof (Brooks, Journal, July 1992,161,134). As a young child in […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Nonsense | Comments (2)

A marriage made in hormones

April 21, 2010 – 8:00 am

The New York Times has a fantastic article on how the way married couples relate to each other can have a major impact on health, although there are many intriguing interpersonal subtleties that go beyond simply being in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ relationship. The piece reviews the extensive evidence on how stress impacts on the […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Togetherness | Leave a Comment

The madwoman in the attic

April 20, 2010 – 6:00 pm

BBC Radio 4 has an excellent programme on the depiction of the ‘madwoman in the attic’ in Victorian literature and how it reflects ideas about mental disturbance and femininity of the time. The programme discusses Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre, Anne Catherick from The Woman in White, and Madame Bovary from the book of the […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Theory | Comments (1)

Visual acuity improves by autopilot

April 20, 2010 – 12:00 pm

We tend to assume that visual acuity, the ability to distinguish fine detail with our eyes, is a physical limit of the body but a new study just published online by Psychological Science shows that prompting people with ideas about people who have excellent eyesight actually improves clearness of vision. The research was led by […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Reasoning, Seeing | Comments (2)

The YouTube drug observatory

April 20, 2010 – 8:00 am

An innovative new study has analysed YouTube videos of people tripping on a hallucinogenic plant called salvia to understand the behavioural effects of the ‘legal high’ that is still relatively new to science. Salvia divinorum is a strongly hallucinogenic plant that has been used by indigenous Mexican shamans for many centuries but has recently become […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in News | Comments (1)

Silent stopwatch

April 19, 2010 – 8:00 am

This is just a quick tip for psychologists who want a silent or beepless stopwatch, as they are very easy to make. Stopwatches are often used when psychologists do neuropsychological assessments as they involve the timing of participant responses. Beeps can sometimes be distracting, especially to people who may have brain injury or might be […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Integrating | Comments (5)

Decisions, decisions

April 18, 2010 – 8:00 am

The New York Times has a review of a new book called ‘The Art of Choosing’, by psychologist Sheena Iyengar, that tackles the psychology of choice and decision-making. I’ve not read the book myself but the review is very positive and like all good book reviews, it is full of interesting snippets and is worth […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Reasoning | Leave a Comment

Inner strength

April 17, 2010 – 8:00 am

Discover Magazine has an excellent piece by Carl Zimmer on the brains of elite athletes and how they have adapted with practice to process movement and the body differently. There are lots of fascinating aspects to the article, but this particularly caught my eye: To understand how athletes arrive at these better solutions, other neuroscientists […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Integrating | Comments (1)

High time for psychedelic medicine?

April 16, 2010 – 12:00 pm

There’s an excellent article on the history of the Multidiscplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, an organisation that has done much to bring psychedelic drug investigation back into the mainstream of medical research, in that well known bastion of science journalism, Playboy. I must admit to being a bit embarrassed when I was caught reading the […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in News | Leave a Comment

2010-04-16 Spike activity

April 16, 2010 – 8:00 am

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: Should kids be bribed to do well in school? asks Time magazine. Oldest trick in the book tested out by researchers. Neurophilosophy covers a study finding that wrinkle smoothing Botox injections may diminish the experience of emotion owing to their paralysing effect on facial […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Linkage | Leave a Comment

Breezy people

April 15, 2010 – 6:00 pm

The Times has an interview with neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, largely to do with the recent political tussles in UK science, but where she uses the opportunity to comment on how computer games are ‘as much of a risk to mankind as climate change’. But wait, the best is yet to come – this part is […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Nonsense | Comments (1)

Corridors of the mind

April 15, 2010 – 12:00 pm

I’ve just discovered the joy of searching Flickr for photos of psychiatric ward corridors which turns up some amazing images of hospitals past and present, and photos of institutions that are slowly, and sometimes beautifully, decaying. The great numbers of abandoned hospitals are mostly due to the shutting down of the old monolithic psychiatric hospitals […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Remembering | Comments (1)

Hacking toy EEGs

April 15, 2010 – 8:00 am

Frontier Nerds has an excellent guide to toy EEGs (the commercially available ‘mind control’ games) and detailed instructions on how to hack the MindFlex to use it as a brain-computer interface. In the last year or so, numerous ‘mind control’ games have appeared that are essentially cheap consumer EEG devices with a dull as ditch-water […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (2)

Social warfare

April 14, 2010 – 12:00 pm

A news story in today’s Nature notes that the US military are pumping more money into social science research which is considered to be an important ‘game changing’ component of 21st century warfare. The unconventional wars now being fought by the US military have also bolstered interest in the social sciences. With the military trying […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Theory | Leave a Comment

From madhouse to mainstream

April 14, 2010 – 8:00 am

It’s not often that historians are described as kicking ass, but the latest issue of the The Lancet has a barnstorming piece by Andrew Scull that gives an uncompromising history of psychiatry from the mad house to Big Pharma. It must be said that the article is oriented more toward American psychiatry. Although similar influences […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Remembering | Comments (2)

Neurodemonology

April 13, 2010 – 6:00 pm

There is a long-standing myth that before the Enlightenment, all the experiences and behaviours we would now classify as madness were thought to be due to demonic possession. This idea has been comprehensively debunked and it is now clear that both of these concepts have run side-by-side and medieval courts often went to great lengths […]

By vaughanbell | Posted in Remembering | Comments (1)
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