Category Archives: Integrating

Painful relief for a guilty act

January 20, 2011 – 6:29 pm

The idea that physical pain can alleviate guilt has a long heritage but a new study just published in Psychological Science has produced evidence that helps confirm this long-held belief. The experiment, led by psychologist Brock Bastian, asked people to recall a time when they had behaved unacceptably and then rate their current level of […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (4)

The myth of the tongue map

January 7, 2011 – 3:51 am

I have just discovered Wikipedia’s page on a ‘List of common misconceptions’ that includes, among many other wonders, a great piece about the myth of the tongue taste map. Different tastes can be detected on all parts of the tongue by taste buds, with slightly increased sensitivities in different locations depending on the person, contrary […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (7)

Words about The Scream

January 4, 2011 – 11:55 am

January’s British Journal of Psychiatry has another short article in its fantastic ’100 words’ series, this time on Edvard Munch’s classic painting ‘The Scream‘. The image is perhaps one of the most iconic artworks of the 20th century and has spurned as many parodies and light-hearted take offs as straight-up tributes. However, the BJP piece […]

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Road kill for hot lady drivers

December 28, 2010 – 2:51 am

In 1960, the American Journal of Psychiatry reported on “an unusual perversion”, in a case of a man with “the desire to be injured by an automobile operated by a woman.” The patient, a man in his late twenties, reported a periodic desire to be injured by a woman operating an automobile. This wish, present […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (10)

Post-coma nail trauma

December 20, 2010 – 11:39 pm

Being in coma could play havoc with your nail care routine. A 1997 report from the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry notes how discoloured fingernails may be a secondary effect of coma owing to the side-effects of a common medical assessment for consciousness. The test is nothing more high-tech than giving the finger a […]

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The plant of human puppets

December 19, 2010 – 4:23 pm

I’ve made a radio programme with ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind about burundanga, a mysterious street drug used in South America which is widely believed to remove free will. The name ‘burundanga’ is a popular term and doesn’t refer to a single thing, but its most commonly associated with the brugmansia plants. They […]

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

Air on a G thing

December 16, 2010 – 9:09 pm

Seed Magazine has an absolutely wonderful article on the neuroscience of musical improvisation that looks at how skilled musicians from the jazz greats to the classical masters take us on unplanned melodic journeys. It’s a brilliantly written piece, a compelling fusion of music and science journalism, that skilfully captures the emerging scientific interest in musical […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (3)

The brain isn’t going to take it lying down

December 12, 2010 – 12:58 am

The brain may manage anger differently depending on whether we’re lying down or sitting up, according to a study published in Psychological Science that may also have worrying implications for how we are trying to understand brain function. Anger experiments that have measured electrical signals from the brain (using EEG) or that have altered neural […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (9)

Rough sleeper

December 7, 2010 – 12:55 am

The guy fighting the nurses, in the photo on the right, is asleep. Although usually considered a restful state, sleep, for a minority of people with specific disorders, is a trigger for violence. Neurology journal Brain has just published a review paper (sadly locked) that discusses how violence can be triggered in the somnolent, noting […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (1)

On the touchstone of consciousness

November 26, 2010 – 8:33 pm

A wonderful poem simply titled ‘Thought’ by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. Thought, I love thought. But not the juggling and twisting of already existent ideas. I despise that self-important game. Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness, Thought is the testing of statements on the touchstone of consciousness, Thought is […]

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

Magic at the dawn of psychology

November 25, 2010 – 11:03 pm

Some of the world’s best illusionists are now collaborating with cognitive scientists to better understand the mind and brain but this turns out to be old news. A brilliant article in The Psychologist charts the remarkably long history of magicians and psychologists working together to understand the human mind. The piece is by psychologist and […]

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

Walk this sway

November 23, 2010 – 3:08 am

NPR has a fascinating segment about how humans can’t walk in a straight line unless we have an external guide. We just end up walking in circles. It turns out, no one is really sure why this happens but experiments on walkers, drivers and swimmers have all found the tendency to circle back on ourselves […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (7)

I stopped talking when I was six years old

November 20, 2010 – 3:39 pm

I’ve just revisited the indifferent indie classic Child Psychology by British band Black Box Recorder that has perhaps the only description of ‘selective mutism’ in pop music. Selective mutism is a curious psychological disorder where children refuse to speak, or refuse to speak in certain situations (like school), despite having no speech problems. The first […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (8)

I can’t hold it any longer

November 18, 2010 – 10:35 pm

Sometimes, medical case studies tell as much of a story by what they omit as by what they include. This sentence, from a recent case study published in the Canadian Journal of Urology, is one such example: To complete the therapeutic approach, we focused also on the possible psychiatric implications of the self insertion of […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (4)

Surgery beyond your wildest dreams

November 18, 2010 – 6:43 pm

I’ve just read a fascinating 2009 study on dreaming during anaesthesia that looks at how different drugs can alter our unconscious reveries during surgery. One section was on ‘near-miss awareness’ where dreams incorporate the outside reality of the hospital because the patient is on the threshold of consciousness. This is the wonderful list of these […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (9)

Scentsuality

November 10, 2010 – 11:52 pm

I think I may have found the only psychological analysis ever written on the scent of semen. The discussion is from a book called The Smell Culture Reader and it starts with a memorable anecdote about Oscar Wilde whacking off in jail. I realise none of you are actually reading any more, because you’ve all […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (4)
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