Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Brain Hammer is on fire at the moment, lots of great posts on philosophy of mind.
Dodgy fMRI ‘lie detection’ evidence to be submitted as evidence in court, reports Frontal Cortex and piece from Wired. Next in court, lie detection through reading the clouds.
Alzheimer International has an awesome short promo video. In Spanish but you don’t need the language to understand it. Beautiful.
Daniel Dennett discusses the risk of robot war in a short video for Big Think.
Technology Review has an article on an exciting new technology to chart human activity, on city maps, on mobile devices, in real time.
The excellent BPS Research Digest is now on Twitter.
PsyBlog has an excellent, and beautifully illustrated, article on the ‘attention spotlight‘.
The miracle fruit, which changes our taste by interfering with tongue receptors, is discussed on CNN.
Eric Schwitzgebel has more on his compelling exploration over whether philosophical study influences real world behaviour, finding political scientists don’t go to vote differently from most other people.
A fantastic study on the genetics of white matter structure and link to IQ is discussed by NPR. Take the stuff about ‘thinking faster’ with a pinch of salt. They didn’t analyse speed of processing directly, they’re just inferring ‘speed’ from white matter integrity.
The Frontal Cortex has a great piece on male female differences, or the lack of them, in the psychology of decision-making.
Philosopher Alva Noe discusses his new book on consciousness and embodiment in an interview for Salon.
Wall Street Journal Blog reports that the Journal of the American Medical Association has created an inadequate new policy after the editors bullied a neuroanatomy professor who pointed out undeclared conflicts of interest in a paper they published. The Economist covers the fall out, patients’ group call for editors to resign.
“The medial prefrontal cortex exhibits money illusion” reports paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I wondered where magicians get all those coins from.
The New York Times reports depression is linked to thinned brain cortex.
The American Psychiatric Association starts to remove the drug company teat from its mouth by halting industry-funded symposia and free lunches at its conferences – according to Medical News Today.
Mind Hacks 