Author Archives:

In the middle of a conflict

January 29, 2013 – 11:17 pm

One of the things I quickly discovered while working for Médecins Sans Frontières in Colombia, was that while there is lots of research on people who have experienced armed conflict in the past, there was very little information on the mental health of people living in active conflict zones. With MSF colleagues, we’ve just published […]

Posted in Togetherness | Comments (1)

2013-01-25 Spike activity

January 25, 2013 – 5:29 pm

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: The interesting concept of a ‘possession trance disorder’ diagnosis is discussed by Neurocritic. BBC News video reports on how Brazil is considering a law to forcibly remove crack addicts from the street into rehab. Goodbye PDD-NOS, hello Social Communication Disorder. A sneaked-out DSM-5 change […]

Posted in Attention, Linkage, Uncategorized | Comments (1)

A retrospective editing of consciousness

January 24, 2013 – 9:11 pm

A new study has found that conscious experience can be altered retrospectively, so that experience of visual information can be changed almost half a second later by manipulating where our attention is drawn. The research, led by cognitive scientist Claire Sergent, involved asking people to stare at a centre point of a screen with two […]

Posted in Seeing | Comments (14)

Back to the old school

January 21, 2013 – 9:58 pm

New York Magazine has a fantastic article on the psychological impact of high school and how it affects you through your adult life. It’s a fascinating subject because so much of developmental psychology has focused on childhood and yet our adolescent school years are probably the most formative for our view of the social world. […]

Posted in Togetherness | Comments (5)

Owner of Broca’s area identified

January 19, 2013 – 9:51 am

A patient who could only say the word ‘tan’ after suffering brain damage became one of the most important cases in the history of neuroscience. But the identity of the famously monosyllabic man has only just been revealed. Broca’s area was one of the first brain areas identified with a specific function after 19th Century […]

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

2012-01-18 Spike activity

January 18, 2013 – 9:10 pm

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: Yes, it’s the return of Spike Activity. As I no longer spend time in the jungle (no not that one) and 140 characters are just not enough for respectable levels of sarcasm, the weekly roundup is back. Cross-dressing meth priest liked sex in rectory, […]

Posted in Linkage | Comments (4)

A brain of warring neurons

January 17, 2013 – 8:00 pm

A fascinating talk from philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett where he refutes his earlier claims that neurons can be thought of like transistors in a computational machine that produces the mind. This section is particularly striking: The question is, what happens to your ideas about computational architecture when you think of individual neurons not as […]

Posted in Inside the Brain, Theory | Comments (2)

The search for a genetic killer

January 9, 2013 – 11:30 pm

The medical examiner for the Sandy Hook shooting has requested a genetic analysis of killer Adam Lanza. Following this, a powerful editorial in the science magazine Nature has condemned the move suggesting it is “misguided and could lead to dangerous stigmatization.” But the request to analyse the DNA of Lanza is just the latest in […]

Posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (13)

More than just bumps

January 8, 2013 – 9:07 pm

Phrenology was the practice of reading someone’s personality from the bumps on their head based on the idea that the shape of the brain affected the shape of the skull. Contemporary neuroscience lectures often have a part where the professor puts up an image of a phrenology head and says “although this was a rediculous […]

Posted in Inside the Brain, Remembering | Comments (3)

Moving through the waters of human attention

January 3, 2013 – 9:19 pm

The New Yorker has an amazing article on pickpocket and illusionist Apollo Robbins that is packed with gems about attention, misdirection and sleight-of-hand. Robbins is a self-taught but dedicated aficionado of human consciousness and has learnt the many ways in which our attention can be manipulated. The article discusses how Robbins does many of his […]

Posted in Integrating | Leave a Comment

Intoxicating tendencies

January 1, 2013 – 5:55 pm

The latest edition of BBC Radio 4′s Thinking Allowed is a special on ‘intoxication’ looking at the uses, abuses and social function of drugs through the ages. It’s a fascinating programme in itself but it is peppered with vivid excerpts from how drugs, altered states and drug users have been described historically and are discussed […]

Posted in Togetherness | Comments (7)

Fragments of identity

January 1, 2013 – 11:39 am

The Atlantic has a sublime article on identity, memory and amnesia – written as a reflection on meeting a friend who has lost much of his memory due to an advancing brain tumour. The author is neuropsychologist Daniel Levitin who is better known for his work on the cognitive science of music, but here he […]

Posted in Inside the Brain, Remembering | Leave a Comment

Rita Levi-Montalcini has left the building

December 31, 2012 – 12:39 pm

Nobel-prize winning neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini has passed away at the age of 103, just a few months after publishing her last scientific study. She won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of nerve growth factor along with her colleague Stanley Cohen and continued worked well past the time when most people would have retired. Her […]

Posted in Inside the Brain, Remembering | Leave a Comment

In other news: behind the video game scare

December 31, 2012 – 11:02 am

The research on the psychological impact of video games tells quite a different story from the stories we get from interest groups and the media. I look at what we know in an article for The Observer. Perhaps the two biggest concerns are that video games are ‘damaging the brain’ and that violent video games […]

Posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (7)

A depressing financial justification

December 30, 2012 – 11:18 am

One of the most controversial changes to the recently finalised DSM-5 diagnostic manual was the removal of the ‘bereavement exclusion’ from the diagnosis of depression – meaning that someone could be diagnosed as depressed even if they’ve just lost a loved on The Washington Post has been investigating the financial ties of those on the […]

Posted in News, Togetherness | Comments (7)

The stem cell scammers

December 24, 2012 – 10:31 pm

Ukraine has become a world centre for untested stem cell treatments where patients can fly in and have embryonic stem cells implanted in their brain to supposedly treat everything from Alzheimer’s disease to autism. These treatments are entirely unproven and are illegal in most of the world but are available for anyone wanting to pay […]

Posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (7)
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,615 other followers