2009-06-19 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

PsychCentral awards its 2009 Online Mental Health Journalism Awards. Mind Hacks makes the list. Still no word from Shakira.

The wonderful Dr Mezmer’s Psychopedia of Bad Psychology is released as a full free edition.

The Economist on a study finding that repeating positive statements to oneself has a negative effect of people with low self-esteem. Is this the death of Émile Coué?

An excellent article on the curious pharmacological properties of the curious hallucinogen salvia divinorum is on Terra Sigillata.

BBC News covers a new call to rethink how courts should handle eyewitness testimony in the light of the science of memory.

Stereotypes about the drivers of certain cars affect our perception of how fast we think the car is going, according to a study covered by BPS Research Digest.

The Guardian Book Club podcast discusses Steve Pinker’s The Blank Slate.

There’s an excellent special issue of ye olde Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on predictions in the brain – using our past to prepare for the future.

The Telegraph wees itself in public.

Mental time travel and the importance of remembering forward in time are discussed by the ever excellent Neurophilosophy.

The New York Times has a rough guide to borderline personality disorder.

Patients with schizophrenia least likely to commit suicide after being treated by young female psychiatrists, according to a study in Schizophrenia Bulletin. Via the excellent Spanish language blog Nietos de Kraepelin.

Frontier Psychiatrist has an excellent piece on the complexities and depression and antidepressant prescribing.

Can a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/can-lack-of-sleep-drive-you-mad-1705954.html
“>lack of sleep drive you mad? asks The Independent. Correlation-causation warning applies for some of the points.

The New York Times reports on a recent study finding a higher rate of mental illness in the Chinese population than previously thought.

Hooked on a feeling. Newsweek discusses the science of placebo.

Rethinking Autism has produced a series of sexy videos to promote sensible science on autism. A strange brew indeed.

Booze to brain in six minutes. Live Science covers a study of people getting pissed in brain scanners.

An article for the ACLU Blog delves into the history of the American Psychological Association’s collusion with war-on-terror interrogation / torture / shadyness. You may be interested to know that the APA are currently focussed on backpeddling.

The New York Times tackles the ‘a glass of wine a day is good for you‘ meme, which doesn’t actually have a lot of solid evidence backing it up.

There’s a good in-depth review of Flynn’s new book on intelligence and the Flynn effect over at American Scientist.

The Kinsey Institute has a twitter feed! Make your own coming thick and fast jokes. I’m above that sort of thing.

A dodgy study that, despite its claims, didn’t find antipsychotic aripiprazole is particularly associated with increased subjective well-being is tackled in an excellent analysis by Neuroskeptic.

Discover Magazine has an excellent Carl Zimmer article on the benefits of the wandering mind and the brain’s ‘default network’.

A Harvard psychiatrist writes a spoof article on zombie neurobiology – sadly we only have a secondhand <a href="http://io9.com/5286145/a-harvard-psychiatrist-explains-zombie-neurobiology
“>write-up from io9. If only those scientists in Day of the Dead had a copy, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out so bad.

Neuron Culture has the best write-up anywhere on the recent metanalysis of the link between the 5-HTTLPR gene and depression: The (Illusory) Rise and Fall of the “Depression Gene”.

To the bunkers! New Scientist covers a plan to teach military robots the rules of war. Don’t you realise, that’s exactly what they want you to believe!

The Splintered Mind has a philosophical dream.