Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: New Scientist has a good feature article on how ‘crossing the senses‘ can help blind people ‘see’ with sounds and the like. There’s good update on the biology and effects of the recently ex-’legal high’ mephedrone over at DrugMonkey. NPR has been running a [...]
16 Vote(s)
August 21, 2010
2010-08-20 Spike activity
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June 17, 2010
A lucid insight into consciousness
New Scientist has an intriguing article on how the study of people who have been trained to have lucid dreams may help us understand the neuroscience of consciousness.Lucid dreams are where the sleeper becomes aware that they are dreaming inside the dream. My first thought was that the combination of these and consciousness sounded a bit gimmicky but the justification seem like an interesting bit
9 Vote(s)
9 Vote(s)
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February 18, 2010
State of the art in cave painting
France has some of the world's most spectacular cave paintings that depict wild animals in vivid outline surrounded by what were thought to be purely decorative markings.These markings have been all but ignored until recent research, covered in a fascinating New Scientist article, gathered examples from 146 cave sites and found they shared core symbols and were arranged in meaningful patterns.Whi
16 Vote(s)
16 Vote(s)
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January 21, 2010
Lost in frustration
New Scientist has a piece on culture and psychological distress by Ethan Watters, the same chap who wrote the recent and widely discussed New York Times article on the 'globalisation of mental illness'. This new article looks at similar territory but also pulls out some examples of where concepts and symptoms don't translate well between different societies.The meaning matters as much as the even
7 Vote(s)
7 Vote(s)
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January 12, 2010
The temperance pill
New Scientist has an excellent article looking at current attempts to develop a pill that will treat alcoholism or help people reduce their cravings for booze.It's a really well-rounded piece that captures the problems with the 'cure in a pill' method as well as the neuroscience behind attempts to alter the chemistry of craving and addiction.Apart from drugs to treat associated mental illnesses,
6 Vote(s)
6 Vote(s)
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January 8, 2010
2010-01-08 Spike activity
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:New Scientist looks at a new theory of synaesthesia that goes beyond the 'crossed senses' idea.Looking younger may be a matter of looking less masculine, according to a study covered by the Psychology of Beauty blog.The Psych Files show interviews psychologist Scott Lilienfeld on his new book on 50 myths of popular psychology.There's a review
9 Vote(s)
9 Vote(s)
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December 30, 2009
Religious rituals explained by how we memorise?
There's a nice article over at New Scientist on the theories of Paul Whitehouse, an anthropologist at the University of Oxford. He's been looking at religious rituals, and thinks he can explain why dramatic rituals tend to occur only in small, fringe religions - and why religious rituals are so undramatic in the complex, hierarchical religions that dominate most of the world (Christianity, Islam,
6 Vote(s)
6 Vote(s)
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December 16, 2009
On the soul of robots
New Scientist has an interesting article discussing research on how we attribute personality traits to robots. This is not just the human-like android from research labs, it's the robots that are already in widespread use in the workplace and home like the floor-cleaning Roomba.This is a fantastic snippet about a study on the commercially available Aethon TUG robot, used to deliver supplies on ho
11 Vote(s)
11 Vote(s)
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The psychiatric bible: the state of play
New Scientist has a good piece which outlines the current state of play in the contentious and recently delayed revision of the forthcoming psychiatric diagnostic manual, the DSM 5.If you've been following the bad-tempered tussling among the psychiatric community over the re-writing of the manual, you probably won't find much new in the main piece but it is a great summary and is accompanied by s
5 Vote(s)
5 Vote(s)
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November 20, 2009
Selecting for kuru resistant cannibals
New Scientist reports on a new study on how a gene that gives protection against the deadly brain disease kuru became more common in people exposed to the condition through their cannibalistic tradition of eating the bodies of dead relatives.Kuru is a prion disease, meaning the damage is caused by a poorly arranged or folded protein molecule which can trigger the same damaging changes in other pr
16 Vote(s)
16 Vote(s)
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