Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Sleep Paralysis’ Demons: Influenced by Culture and Fed by Our Fears. Interesting piece at Brain Decoder.
The Telegraph has an excellent piece on artist Alice Evans, her work and her experience of schizophrenia.
What we can learn about the latest epidemic of opioid drug abuse from the opium wave of 100 years ago. Good piece in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Aeon has a good piece on the possibilities of stem cell therapy for fixing neurodegeneration in dementia.
Beard-envy, Freud and the gentleman’s excuse-me. Amusing look at facial furniture by neuroscientist Sophie Scott in Standard Issue.
Neuroskeptic has a fascinating piece on whether bilingual people have a cognitive advantage.
Felton et al. ranked the relative hotness quotients of professors in 36 different fields. The Monkey Cage has the data.
The New Yorker has a typically brilliant piece from Rachel Aviv on war, refugees and mental health. One of the best writers on mental health anywhere.
Was the counterculture’s favourite psychiatrist a dangerous renegade or a true visionary? The Independent has an extended piece on R.D. Laing.
TechCrunch has an excellent piece on decision science – an increasingly important area in cognitive science.
Mind Hacks 
In all the sleep paralysis articles I’ve read, I keep wondering why they never mention the folk remedy – don’t sleep on your back. So many of us find it works I don’t know why it isn’t researched.
Don’t miss out on the follow-up to the hotness ranking over at the hardest science:
https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/the-hotness-iq-tradeoff-in-academia/