Category Archives: Hearing and Language

A world of swearing

May 15, 2013 – 6:19 pm

The Boston Globe has a short but fascinating interview on the history of swearing where author Melissa Mohr describes how the meaning of the act of swearing has changed over time. IDEAS: Are there other old curses that 21st-century people would be surprised to hear about? MOHR: Because [bad words] were mostly religious in the […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (3)

The uncertain dance of the spoken word

March 7, 2013 – 9:12 pm

Stanford Magazine has a wonderful article by a writer who relies on lip-reading and experiences speech through this subtle movement-based language. Rachel Kolb skilfully describes how this works, and more importantly, feels. The part where she describes how she experiences accents is just amazing: Accents are a visible tang on people’s lips. Witnessing someone with […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Deaf police to monitor security cameras in Mexico

September 8, 2012 – 8:54 am

Deaf police officers have been recruited to monitor security cameras in the Mexican city of Oaxaca because of their ‘heightened visual abilities’. There’s a brief and somewhat clunky English-language news article from the local paper that describes the project: Ignacio Villalobos Carranza, Deputy Secretary for the Ministry of Public Security of Oaxaca, said most of […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Seeing | Comments (5)

An unplanned post-mortem

June 1, 2012 – 1:02 pm

My latest Beyond Boundaries column for The Psychologist explores the space between he we study suicide and the experience of families affected by it: Suicide is often considered a silencing, but for many it is only the beginning of the conversation. A common approach to understand those who have ended their own lives is the […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (2)

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 […]

By tomstafford | Also posted in Linkage, Remembering | Comments (20)

Sound trip

April 8, 2012 – 9:34 pm

A fascinating excerpt about a hallucinogenic drug called DiPT that only causes hearing distortions – from p310 of the book Hallucinations: Research and Practice: A member of the tryptamine chemical family, diisopropyltryptamine (DiPT) is a fascinating substance because, unlike most hallucinogens, its effect are predominantly auditory. It is also probably less sensitive than other hallucinogens […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (1)

Buried words

March 22, 2012 – 9:30 am

I’ve just found a fantastic video that explains the speech-impairing disorder aphasia to children of all ages. Its called ‘The Treasure Hunt’ and was created by speech pathologist Shiree Heath and it went on to win first place in the Society for Neuroscience’s video competition. The video combines a cartoon treasure hunt with recordings of […]

By vaughanbell | Leave a Comment

Mixing up a decade of All in the Mind

December 12, 2011 – 2:51 am

The amazing ABC Radio National programme All in the Mind is ten years old and is celebrating by mixing up some specially themed editions from its extensive archives. First up is the psychology and neuroscience of sex that tackles everything from gender myths to the neuroscience of female orgasm. The following edition, to hit the […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in News | Leave a Comment

I am yours for 2 coppers

November 4, 2011 – 8:15 pm

I’ve just found a wonderful 1973 study on the psychoanalysis of graffiti that discusses how unconscious desires might be expressed through public scrawlings. It has a completely charming table that compares graffiti from A.D. 79 Pompeii with 1960′s Los Angeles to demonstrate the similarity of themes across the centuries.     The author concludes that […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Graffiti, Remembering | Comments (7)

Ten years of the language gene that wasn’t

October 26, 2011 – 2:03 am

It’s now ten years since mutations in the FOXP2 gene were linked to language problems, which led to lots of overblown headlines about a ‘language gene’, which it isn’t. The actual science is no less interesting, however, and Discover Magazine has a fantastic article that looks back on the last decade since the gene’s discovery […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Remembering | Comments (3)

The secret life of the inner voice

October 23, 2011 – 3:56 pm

Don’t miss the latest RadioLab short, a programme about a guy whose world has been unevenly slowed down. Psychological fascinating but also a beautiful piece of storytelling. When Andy first met Kohn, he saw a college freshman in a wheelchair who moved slow and talked slow. But it only took one conversation for Andy to […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Leave a Comment

Strong piano at high fruitiness

August 23, 2011 – 5:32 pm

A wonderful graph which shows how strongly the sounds of the piano, strings, woodwind and brass instruments are associated with fruity smells, across smells of low, medium and high fruitiness. From a recent study entitled ‘A Fruity Note: Crossmodal associations between odors and musical notes’. The study also tests how strongly these instruments are associated […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating | Comments (2)

Auditory brain trip

August 18, 2011 – 12:24 am

If you’ve got 15 minutes to spare, you could do far worse than spending it listening to an excellent edition of the Guardian Science Podcast on the neuropsychology of hearing and language. Perceptual and linguistic neuroscience has a tendency to bit a little technical and difficult to engage with but the programme is both wonderfully […]

By vaughanbell | Leave a Comment

Reaching for the high notes

August 17, 2011 – 5:48 pm

Science writer Emily Anthes has a fascinating interview with a speech therapist who works with male-to-female transsexuals to help make their voice sound more feminine. It gives both an insight into a little known area of speech therapy as well as highlighting some of the often overlooked differences between male and female voices. EA: So, […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (1)

It’s pronoun or never

August 17, 2011 – 2:06 am

Scientific American has a fascinating interview with psychologist James Pennebaker​ about how your use of pronouns can reveal a surprising amount about you. Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that the ways people used pronouns in their essays predicted whose health would improve the most. Specifically, those people who benefited the most from writing […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (3)

Diagnostic dilemma, innit bruv

July 27, 2011 – 12:16 am

I’ve just been directed to a wonderful 2007 case study from the British Medical Journal that reports how middle aged doctors can mistake street slang for symptoms of schizophrenia. Detailed and repeated assessment of [the patient's] mental state found a normal affect, no delusions, hallucinations, or catatonia, and no cognitive dysfunction. His speech, however, was […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Theory, Togetherness | Comments (17)
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,703 other followers