2010-01-01 Spike activity

Quick links from the past two weeks in mind and brain news:

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on the psychology of will power in light of the season for New Year’s resolutions.

As a follow-up to the review of the year, Dr Petra discusses some sex and relationships predictions for 2010. By the way, Dr Petra just arrived on Twitter. You can follow her @DrPetra

The New York Times discusses ‘pleasure procrastination’ where people put off pleasurable activities often to the point of never doing them. See also the psychological concept of ‘hyperopia‘.

An innovative study finding it’s possible to treat tinnitus with specially designed music is covered by Not Exactly Rocket Science.

The LA Times has a brief obituary for Ruth Lilly, heiress to the Eli Lilly fortune and philanthropist, who spent much of her life in psychiatric hospital struggling with depression.

The 12 psychology studies of Christmas are featured on PsyBlog.

Science Daily covers a study finding that lighting can influence how we perceive the taste of wine.

There’s an excellent piece on the health effects of television viewing over at Seed Magazine.

The Neurocritic covers one of the brilliant light-hearted studies in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal. This one on the relationship between the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the value of coins swallowed by children.

The brief history of how psychoanalysis shaped consumer culture via Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays is discussed in the APA Monitor magazine.

The Neuroskeptic covers the launch of the free online neuropathology database – the Stanley Neuropathology Consortium brain collection.

Elyn Saks is a law professor at the University of Southern California, a Marshall scholar, and a graduate of Yale Law School, and has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Scientific American has an interview.

Frontier Psychiatrist has a brief piece on Couvade Syndrome where men show ‘sympathetic’ signs pregnancy-like when their partners are pregnant.

There’s an interview with fear specialising psychologist Daniela Schiller in the latest Discover Magazine.

The BPS Research Digest covers a studying on how doodling can boost memory and concentration.

Why do more women than men still believe in God? asks Double X magazine.

Scientific American has an article on optogenetics or the use of light and genes to probe the brain.

Seeing the humanity in brain-damaged youths. The Boston Globe has a piece on looking beyond the sometimes erratic behaviour of young people with neurological problems.

Psychiatric Times has a good write-up on atypical antipsychotics increasing cardiometabolic risks in children.

The development of the brain in old age and ‘how to train the aging brain‘ is tackled by The New York Times.

If you’re a Twitter user and interested in criminology and crime, I recommend following @crime_economist.

Discover Magazine has a brief piece on how child abuse leaves its mark on the victim’s DNA.

There’s an articulate, almost poetic account, of living with ALS motor neuron disease in the New York Review of Books.