Author Archives:

Meet me in Berlin

June 7, 2012 – 8:45 am

On July 11th I’ll be running a workshop as part of the BMW Guggenheim Lab in Berlin. The lab is a temporary public space, in the neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg, dedicated to encouraging ‘open dialogue about issues related to urban living’. I’ve been invited by Corinne Rose, a psychologist and artist who has an interest […]

Posted in News | Comments (5)

BBC Future column: Hypnic Jerks

May 28, 2012 – 7:48 am

Here’s my column at BBC Future from last week. You can see the original here. The full listof my columns is here and  there is now a RSS feed, should you need it As we give up our bodies to sleep, sudden twitches escape our brains, causing our arms and legs to jerk. Some people […]

Posted in Moving | Comments (16)

BBC Future column: why your brain loves to tune out

May 18, 2012 – 12:58 pm

My column for BBC Future from last week. The original is here. Thanks to Martin Thirkettle for telling me about the demo that leads the column. Our brains are programmed to cancel out all manner of constants in our everyday lives. If you don’t believe it, try a simple, but startling experiment. The constant whir of […]

Posted in Linkage | Comments (15)

BBC Future column: Does the internet rewire your brain?

May 2, 2012 – 11:35 am

My column for BBC Future from a few days ago. The original is here. Mindhacks.com readers will have heard most of this before, thanks to Vaughan’s coverage of the Baroness and her fellow travellers. Being online does change your brain, but so does making a cup of tea. A better question to ask is what […]

Posted in Inside the Brain, Linkage | Comments (11)

BBC Future column: earworms

April 29, 2012 – 6:23 pm

From a couple of weeks ago, my column from BBC Future, about everyday brain quirks (as I’ve mentioned previously). Thanks to Maria Panagiotidi for help with this one. “Earworms”, some people call them. Songs that get stuck in your head and go round and round, sometimes for days, sometimes for months. For no apparent reason […]

Posted in Hearing and Language, Linkage, Remembering | Comments (20)

BBC Future column: Personal superstitions

April 23, 2012 – 7:32 pm

I’m writing a fortnightly column for BBC Future, about everyday brain quirks (as I’ve mentioned previously). My marvellous editor has told me I can repost the columns here, with a three day delay. There’s a bit of a backlog, including Why can smells unlock memories?, Why you’re bad at names and good at faces, and […]

Posted in Learning, Linkage | Comments (3)

Neurohacks column at BBC Future

February 27, 2012 – 9:05 pm

The quite lovely BBC Future has launched (‘the home of new trends in the worlds of Science, Technology, Environment and Health’) and yours truly has a column there: Neurohacks (‘Neuroscience and the psychology of the everyday’). You can find it in the ‘Brain‘ section. At this point any UK-based surfers who have followed the above […]

Posted in Authors, Linkage | Comments (3)

goCognitive 2.0

February 4, 2012 – 1:30 pm

We’ve reported before on the Univeristy of Idaho’s goCognitive project. It’s a enticing collection of videos and demonstrations, including many guest spots by the glitterati of cognitive neuroscience. The site has more free video content in cognitive neuroscience than before – and it is more easily accessible as well. Check it out

Posted in Inside the Brain, Linkage | Comments (1)

Dressing psychologists as wizards in court

February 4, 2012 – 9:53 am

From overlawyered.com we hear that in 1995, New Mexico state senator Duncan Scott introduced a legislative ammendment providing that When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant’s competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The surface of the hat shall be imprinted […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (11)

A treasure hunt for the mysteries of mind and brain

January 21, 2012 – 2:22 pm

I’ve published a couple of free ebooks recently: Explore your blind spot shows you how to reveal the gap we all have in our visual experience of the world, and discusses what it means about consciousness that this gap is kept hidden from us most of the time. Control Your Dreams, co-written with Cathryn Bardsley […]

Posted in books | Comments (12)

Control your dreams (ebook)

December 30, 2011 – 2:43 pm

Anyone can learn to have lucid dreams, and this ebook tells you how. Lucid dreams are those dreams where you become aware you are dreaming, and can even begin to control the reality of the dream. Adventure, problem-solving and consequence-free indulgence await! And for those interested in the mind, lucid dreams are a great place […]

Posted in Authors, books | Comments (9)

Explore your blind spot (free ebook)

December 12, 2011 – 8:09 pm

I’ve written an ebook called ‘Explore your blind spot’. It’s about, er, exploring your blind spot! In the best tradition of Mind Hacks I take you from the raw experience to the cutting edge of scientific theory. The blind spot is a simple phenomenon of our visual processing, but one we don’t notice day to […]

Posted in Authors, books | Comments (7)

Neuro ears

November 10, 2011 – 9:56 am

WANT

Posted in Inside the Brain, Linkage | Comments (10)

Make study more effective, the easy way

October 24, 2011 – 8:59 am

Decades old research into how memory works should have revolutionised University teaching. It didn’t. If you’re a student, what I’m about to tell you will let you change how you study so that it is more effective, more enjoyable and easier. If you work at a University, you – like me – should hang your […]

Posted in Learning | Comments (49)

Games of Invention

October 12, 2011 – 2:58 pm

I’ve been collecting card decks. First I got the Oblique Strategies, Brian Eno’s deck of worthwhile dilemmas. When I’m stuck with something I’m working on I sit completely still for a few moments, holding the problem in mind. Then I take a breath, draw a card and apply what’s written to my problem. Trying this […]

Posted in Reasoning | Comments (12)

A profession with “no” at its core

October 3, 2011 – 6:44 am

I’ve just finished Randy Olson’s “Don’t be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an age of style” (after loving his article in New Scientist, “Top five tips for communicating science “). Olson is a marine biologist turned filmmaker, so knows the world of science from the inside, and from the outside perspective. This book is […]

Posted in books | Comments (16)
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