Category Archives: Integrating

The appliance of psychological science

November 6, 2011 – 7:30 pm

The BPS Research Digest is celebrating its 200th issue with a series of articles from well-known psychologists that describe how psychology has helped them out in everyday life. There’s a whole stack of people involved who have written on everything from love to scientific thinking to child rearing. Both myself and Tom have contributed pieces […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (3)

The hot hand smacks back

October 20, 2011 – 1:28 am

The idea of the ‘hot hand’, where a player who makes several successful shots has a higher chance of making some more, is popular with sports fans and team coaches, but has long been considered a classic example of a cognitive fallacy – an illusion of a ‘streak’ caused by our misinterpretation of naturally varying […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Reasoning, Theory | Comments (16)

The cutting edge of the easy high

October 10, 2011 – 2:56 am

Perhaps the most complete scientific review of what we know about synthetic cannabis or ‘spice’ products has just appeared in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. These ‘legal highs’ are typically sold as nudge-nudge wink-wink ‘incense’ but contain synthetic cannabinoids which have a similar effect to smoking dope but are legal in many countries. We covered the […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain, News | Comments (2)

The father of Randle P. McMurphy

October 10, 2011 – 12:56 am

An article in the Journal of Medical Humanities has a fascinating look at one of playwright Samuel Beckett’s early novels – an exploration of madness and mental health care that foreshadowed One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest. Beckett is best known for Waiting for Godot, but his novel Murphy was previously one of the best […]

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

Entertainingly mislead me

October 7, 2011 – 2:41 am

A beautifully recursive study has shown that viewing an episode of the psychology of deception TV series Lie To Me makes people worse at distinguishing truth from lies. The TV series is loosely based on the work of psychologist Paul Ekman who pioneered the study of emotions and developed the Facial Action Coding System or […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Reasoning | Comments (29)

The death of atypical antipsychotics

October 3, 2011 – 4:02 am

The British Journal of Psychiatry has just published the latest in a long line of studies to find that the newer ‘atypical’ or ‘second generation’ antipsychotic drugs are barely better than the old style medications and has a stinging editorial that accompanies the piece calling out years of drug company marketing spun as an illusory […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (7)

The New York Times wees itself in public

October 2, 2011 – 7:13 pm

The New York Times has just pissed its neuroscientific pants in public and is now running round the streets announcing the fact in an op-ed that could as easily been titled ‘Smell my wee!’ The piece is written by Martin Lindström, famous for writing the ‘neuromarketing’ best-seller Buyology, but infamous for not making any of […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain, Nonsense | Comments (18)

Swimming in the tides of war

September 30, 2011 – 12:07 am

My recent Beyond Boundaries column for The Psychologist explores how the micro-culture of Colombian paramilitary organisations may have shaped the expression of post-traumatic stress disorder in demobilised fighters. Dr Ricardo de la Espriella’s office is surprisingly quiet. Buried deep within San Ignacio University Hospital, the growl of the chaotic Bogotá traffic is perceptibly absent. Despite […]

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

Game not over

September 27, 2011 – 3:36 am

The Guardian covers a new study on how video games can persist in our perception as fleeting hallucinations in an effect labelled ‘game transfer phenomena’. Unfortunately, the study has been published in an obscure journal which means I’ve not been able to read it in full, although the write-up quotes the lead researcher, Mark Griffiths: […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Seeing | Comments (12)

The birth of ‘synthetic marijuana’

September 25, 2011 – 4:30 pm

Addiction Inbox has an interview with pharmacologist David Kroll where he discusses the origin of the countless synthetic cannabinoids that have recently flooded the market as ‘legal highs’ and ‘incense’. You may know Kroll better as the author of the long-running top-notch pharmacology blog Terra Sigillata where he has been tracking the ‘synthetic marijuana’ story […]

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

Teenage kicks

September 21, 2011 – 12:55 am

National Geographic has an excellent article on teenage risk-taking and adolescent brain development. It goes some way to explaining both the dangerous mistakes that typically peak in the late teens and, I like to think, the bad fashion sense which seems to follow a similar pattern. Importantly, the piece goes beyond the usually ‘well the […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (4)

Outside the criminal mind

September 20, 2011 – 1:57 am

ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind recently had a fascinating programme on the science behind offender profiling and whether it lives up to its ‘inside the criminal mind’ image. If you’re not familiar with the debates about criminal profiling you may be surprised to hear that a fair few forensic psychologists think it’s a […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Theory | Leave a Comment

A whiff of madness

September 11, 2011 – 11:26 pm

For a short time, the scientific community was excited about the smell of schizophrenia. In 1960, a curious article appeared in the Archives of General Psychiatry suggesting not only that people with schizophrenia had a distinctive smell, but that the odour could be experimentally verified. The paper by psychiatrists Kathleen Smith and Jacob Sines noted […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Remembering | Comments (28)

God, death, cannabis

September 2, 2011 – 6:25 pm

An amazing picture that takes pride of place on the cover of this month’s British Journal of Psychiatry by artist George Harding. The piece has the wonderful name of Everything is Real Except God and Death. From the description in the BJP: The artist writes: `I used to get art lessons when I was a […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (6)

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 Hearing and Language | Comments (2)

Witch on a hallucinogenic flying broomstick

August 14, 2011 – 11:25 pm

I’ve just found this fascinating discussion on the psychopharmacology of ‘witches ointments’, that supposedly allowed 16th century witches to ‘fly’. It’s from a fantastic 1998 Anesthesiology article about atropine containing plants, like belladona, deadly nightshade and hemlock, and their effects. De Laguna was not the sole commentator about the relationship of mind‐altering drugs and witchcraft […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Remembering | Comments (6)
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