The British Psychological Society's Research Digest has reached the finals of the Research Blogging Awards in the categories 'Best Psychology Blog' and 'Best Research Twitterer'. The Research Digest blog, which is written by Dr Christian Jarrett, has been growing in popularity every year since it began five years ago...
8 Vote(s)
February 28, 2010
Are Dolphins People Too?
The blogosphere is all a-twitter with talk of the recent commentary in Science that dolphins should be considered people. Well, sort of people. Non-human people.On the heels of the incident at SeaWorld in Florida in which a trainer was killed by one of the killer whales, this is especially an important issue to consider.Frequent commenter [...]... Grimm, D. (2010) Is a Dolphin a Person?.
20 Vote(s)
20 Vote(s)
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Marriage Prevents Suicide…
Masocco et al. (2009) wonder why the suicide rate differs so much from region-to-region across Italy, although they note that marriage does indeed tend to protect some men from suicide. They call for greater understanding of the socio-cultural variables that might influence suicidal ideation.... Masocco, M., Pompili, M., Vanacore, N., Innamorati, M., Lester, D., Girardi, P., Tatarelli, R.
16 Vote(s)
16 Vote(s)
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Subliminal cigarette marketing
The Tobacco Documents Library is an online database of millions of tobacco industry documents made public through court cases. Included are letters written to cigarette companies including several where the public have complained about 'subliminal messages' hidden in adverts.Quite frankly, they are a joy to read, and this is my favourite among many hidden gems. It's a letter from an organisation
15 Vote(s)
15 Vote(s)
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The Health Care Summit In Exactly 25 Words: Part I
Democrats want to focus on increasing the access to health care insurance, while Republicans want to focus on cutting insurance premium and care delivery costs.Politics aside, these are the stated policy differences that clearly emerged at Thursday's so-called health care summit chaired by President Obama, and attended by leaders of both houses of Congress.Here's a bit more than 25 words of comme
5 Vote(s)
5 Vote(s)
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February 27, 2010
The Decline and Fall of the Cannabinoid Antagonists
Cannabinoid Receptor, Type 1 (CB1) antagonists were supposed to be the next big thing.They're weight loss drugs, and with obesity rates rising and the diet craze showing no signs of abating, that's a large and growing market (...sorry). They worked, at least in the short term, and they were at least as effective as existing pills. They may even have had health benefits over and above promoting we
13 Vote(s)
13 Vote(s)
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what’s adaptive about depression?
Jonah Lehrer has an interesting article in the NYT magazine about a recent Psych Review article by Paul Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson. The basic claim Andrews and Thomson make in their paper is that depression is “an adaptation that evolved as a response to complex problems and whose function is to minimize disruption of [...]... Andrews, P., & Thomson, J. (2009) The bright side o
6 Vote(s)
6 Vote(s)
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2010-02-26 Spike activity
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:Slate has a little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.An important study on how video games can hamper reading and writing skills in young boys by displacing other activities is covered by Not Exactly Rocket Science.The New Yorker has a long but shallow article on the scientific s
17 Vote(s)
17 Vote(s)
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Beneficial And Low Cost Treatment For Back Pain
An article published in this week's issue of The Lancet reports that group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can reduce low-back pain at a low cost to the health-care provider. Furthermore, one year after the start of treatment, the improvement was sustained. Ranked as one of the top three most disabling conditions in the developed World, persistent low-back pain is increasingly common...
5 Vote(s)
5 Vote(s)
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Clearing the fog of vision
Neuroscientist Pawan Sinha gave an inspiring talk to TED India about his work on providing treatment for visual problems and how this is over-turning many of our long-standing assumptions about how the brain develops the ability to make sense of the visual world.Sinha focuses on children and adults who have grown up with congenital cataracts - a clouding of the eye's lens that prevents light from
12 Vote(s)
12 Vote(s)
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