Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 Hearing and Language | Comments (1)

The rise of everyday neuroscience

March 3, 2013 – 1:17 pm

I’ve got a feature article in The Observer about how our culture has become saturated with ‘neuroscience talk’ and how this has led to unhelpful simplifications of the brain to make the same old arguments. This is often framed as a problem with ‘the media’ but this is just the most obvious aspect of the […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (2)

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 […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Attention, Linkage | Comments (1)

BBC Column: when you want what you don’t like

December 21, 2012 – 11:34 am

My BBC Future column from Tuesday. The original is here. It’s a Christmas theme folks, but hopefully I cover an interesting research area too: Berridge, Robinson and colleagues’ work on the wanting/liking distinction. As the holiday season approaches, Tom Stafford looks at festive overindulgence, and explains how our minds tell us we want something even […]

By tomstafford | Comments (4)

Where is your mind?

November 23, 2012 – 12:03 pm

My BBC Future column from a few days ago. The original is here. I’m donating the fee from this article to Wikipedia. Read the column and it should be obvious why. Perhaps you should too: donate.wikimedia.org.   We like to think our intelligence is self-made; it happens inside our heads, the product of our inner […]

By tomstafford | Comments (12)

Human Touch

September 15, 2012 – 5:33 pm

A curious article has just appeared in the latest edition of the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy. The opening line of the summary is oddly delightful: The group, with its intensity, interaction, roles and dynamics, is an important unit of experience in everyday life, in psychotherapy groups, and in Bruce Springsteen’s music. The author, psychotherapist […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (1)

One who studies the soul

September 9, 2012 – 1:03 pm

i-D magazine has an interview with instrumental dubstep fusion maestro Psychologist. As part of the interview they asked him where the name came from and he gave quite a beautiful answer What’s behind the name? Literally, Psychologist means ‘one who studies the soul’, we think of it as a scary word in our harsh-sounding, Germanic […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (2)

Berlin cognitive science safari: report

July 16, 2012 – 12:16 pm

So I’m back from my time in Berlin at the BMW Guggenheim Lab. As announced previously, I was there to give a talk about how perception works, and how cities control our perception. If you’re a regular mindhacks.com reader nothing I said would have been earth-shattering – it was a tour through some basics of […]

By tomstafford | Comments (9)

BBC Column: What makes us laugh?

June 20, 2012 – 12:45 pm

This is my BBC Future column from a couple of weeks ago. You can find the original here   A simple question with a surprisingly complex answer – understanding laughter means understanding fundamental issues of human nature. Why do we laugh? Well it’s funny you should ask, but this question was suggested by reader Andrew […]

By tomstafford | Comments (8)

The seers and oracles

March 26, 2012 – 6:47 pm

An evocative passage from the 1976 book Hallucinogens and Shamanism about the use of the hallucinogenic Psilocybe mexicana mushroom by the Mazatec people of Mexico. The Mazatecs say that the mushrooms speak. If you ask a shaman where his imagery comes from, he is likely to reply: I didn’t say it, the mushrooms did. The […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (3)

Dressing psychologists as wizards in court

February 4, 2012 – 9:53 am

From overlawyered.com we hear that in 1995, New Mexico state senator Duncan Scott introduced a legislative ammendment providing that When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant’s competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The surface of the hat shall be imprinted […]

By tomstafford | Comments (11)

Gimme Shelter

January 17, 2012 – 1:44 am

The Rolling Stones launched their career in a social therapeutic club, designed to help troubled youth with communication skills. The club became legendary in rock ‘n roll history but its therapeutic roots have almost been forgotten. Eel Pie Island is a small patch on the River Thames famous for the underground club that earned a […]

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

Bookended by amnesia and neurofeedback

October 9, 2011 – 12:29 am

A new edition of RadioLab has just hit the wires which riffs on the concept of loops and is bookended by an initial piece on transient global amnesia and a closing piece on the use of neurofeedback to control pain. The programme is a sublime, lucid trip into a series of cycles, from the effects […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (1)

Relax, it’s just a reversible drug-induced coma

March 4, 2011 – 2:47 am

The New York Times has a fantastic interview with Emery Neal Brown, a neuroscientist and doctor who is trying to understand how anaesthesia works to better understand the brain and to build better drugs. It’s a great interview because he address several of the common beliefs and myths about anaesthesia as well as the challenge […]

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

Quito bound

February 20, 2010 – 12:00 pm

Due to the complexities of the Colombian visa system, I am off to the beautiful city of Quito, Ecuador, for a week to organise the paperwork. I’m not sure how internet access will work out, so apologies if updates are a little less frequent than usual. If anyone knows any good mind and brain things […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (5)

The Maudsley cat

July 30, 2008 – 2:00 pm

The not very good photo is of Coco, the Maudsley Hospital cat and one in a long line of felines who reside in psychiatric hospitals. Not all psychiatric hospitals have cats, but they’re not uncommon and exist as a sort of informal tradition of live-in feline therapy. They’re very popular with both staff and patients, […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (1)
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