Category Archives: News

‘Legal marijuana’ and a ban on brain function

December 9, 2011 – 1:33 am

The United States Congress has just passed a bill to ban ‘legal marijuana’ incense products and ‘bath salts’ stimulants – a legal move which, possibly for the first time, prohibits substances based on their action in the brain and not solely their chemical structure. The bill is an amendment to the Controlled Substances Act which [...]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (11)

On the perimeter of the synthetic cannabinoids

November 20, 2011 – 5:09 pm

The synthetic weed story has just taken an interesting turn. Until now, all synthetic cannabinoids found in ‘herbal incense’ products have been taken from the scientific literature but a new previously unknown compound has just been discovered suggesting the underground labs are starting to innovate. Cannabinoids are a type of compound related to the active [...]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (7)

Radio 4′s brilliant brain season now being scattered

November 12, 2011 – 7:42 pm

BBC Radio 4′s Brain Season is in full swing, which, in typical BBC fashion, is both brilliantly conceived and chaotically scattered over their webpages like a drunken farmer chasing birds off his field with a seed planter. A good place to start is the brain season blog post which lists all the programmes in the [...]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (7)

Steven Pinker: a life in brawls

October 23, 2011 – 8:15 pm

There’s an excellent interview with Steven Pinker on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Life Scientific that takes a look back at his work and his involvement with a long list of enjoyable controversies. For those over-saturated with discussion about his new book on the decline of violence, The Life Scientific interview is actually a [...]

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

A case of simulated fragmentation

October 15, 2011 – 5:19 pm

The New York Times has an excerpt of a book that claims to expose one of the most famous psychiatric cases in popular culture as a fraud. Based on an analysis of previously locked archives the book suggests that the patient at the centre of the ‘Sybil’ case of ‘multiple personality disorder’ was, in fact, [...]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in books | Comments (8)

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, Integrating | Comments (2)

Book review: Willpower by Baumeister & Tierney

September 27, 2011 – 2:41 pm

“Willpower: Rediscovering the greatest human strength”, Roy Baumeister & John Tierney, 2011 I’ve just finished this book, and yet I still couldn’t tell you what it was trying to claim. It’s a grab-bag of research on willpower, nearly all of it done by social psychologist Baumeister and colleagues, and including his celebrated experiments on ego-depletion. [...]

By tomstafford | Also posted in books | Comments (17)

Masters on the mind

September 15, 2011 – 2:52 am

Edge has just kicked off their 2011 Master Class with a fantastic course on ‘The Science of Human Nature’ delivered by an impressive line-up of leading cognitive scientists. Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman on the marvels and the flaws of intuitive thinking; Harvard mathematical biologist Martin Nowak on the evolution of cooperation; UC-Santa Barbara evolutionary psychologist [...]

By vaughanbell | Leave a Comment

Bad riot neuroscience: cite the power

August 28, 2011 – 12:25 am

The Guardian Notes and Theories blog has a fantastic article on media science distortion by brain researchers whose study got falsely reported as showing a link between rioting and ‘low levels of a brain chemical’. The actual study, which you can read online as a pdf, did not mention rioting and did not investigate it, [...]

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

A response to the Baroness

August 19, 2011 – 5:19 pm

The Independent have just published a letter I wrote to them in response to their recent opinion piece by Susan Greenfield. She claims that computers are at risk of causing ‘mind change’ while scientists are ignoring the issue. Needless to say, I was not impressed. I was interested to read Professor Susan Greenfield’s opinion piece [...]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (8)

Doubts about social contagion

July 5, 2011 – 3:27 am

Slate has an important article about how the studies behind last year’s headlines saying that things like divorce, obesity and loneliness spread through social networks like a ‘contagion’ may not be as sound as the stories suggested. The headline grabbing study on ‘divorce contagion’ has still yet to be published as it hasn’t made it [...]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Theory, Togetherness | Comments (3)

The malware of medical science

June 28, 2011 – 4:54 am

Just when you thought the pharmaceutical industry had used up every dirty trick in the book, it has been revealed that a ‘study’ of the epilepsy drug gabapentin (aka Neurontin) was never really intended to investigate the medication, but was primarily intended to get doctors to prescribe it more often. A report published in the [...]

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

A 30 second piece of our minds

June 26, 2011 – 11:15 pm

A new book has been published called 30 Second Psychology. It’s been written by some familiar folks and aims to capture fifty of the most important theories of psychology in one punchy package. It’s been edited by Christian Jarret of the BPS Research Digest and includes contributions from me, Mo Costandi, Dave Munger and Tom [...]

By vaughanbell | Comments (2)

Where next for chronic fatigue after XMRV a bust

June 3, 2011 – 5:48 pm

Nature News has an excellent piece reviewing the state of play after the first reports of the XMRV virus in people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have been put in doubt both by a string of failed replications and evidence of contamination in the original research samples. Chronic fatigue syndrome or CFS is associated with [...]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (11)

It came from the Amazon

May 31, 2011 – 2:05 am

The Guardian has a curious report about “the latest drug to emerge from South America” which is supposedly “twice as powerful as crack cocaine at just a fraction of the price”. What the journalist doesn’t know, I suspect, is that this is a common form of cocaine paste that is widely known around the region. [...]

By vaughanbell | Comments (5)

The return of BBC All in the Mind

May 11, 2011 – 12:37 pm

I’ve just realised the latest series of BBC Radio 4′s excellent All in the Mind has started and has been running some fantastic shows. So far, the programmes have covered everything from portable baby labs to psychopaths to mirror-touch synaesthesia where people feel the sensations that they see in other people. If you want the [...]

By vaughanbell | Comments (4)
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 706 other followers