Elsewhere

For when you've had enough of journal articles:

Laughter and humour are explored in an exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery: Laughing in a Foreign Language.

"Women are better long-term planners..." The BBC explains why businesses need female managers.

"The brain makes a million connections every second for the whole of our lifetime..." Prof Colin Blakemore argues in the Independent that the brain is an organ so complex we may never understand it.

Behavioural economist Tim Harford appeared on the latest edition of BBC Radio 4's Start the Week, claiming that rational, incentive-driven decision making permeates every aspect of our lives.

The latest issue of Scientific American has free articles on the neuroscience of kissing, and the evolutionary psychology of corporate environments.

Elsewhere

For when you've had enough of journal articles:

Time magazine describes what it's like for the siblings of children with autism.

Bad Science on how pill pushers and the media medicalise social problems (scroll down for link to MP3 audio file).

The Guardian explores the healing power of books.

What everyone should know about their own minds: Introspective insights from PsyBlog.

Decoding consciousness video webcast - watch Prof Geraint Rees give the latest Francis Crick Lecture at the Royal Society (via Real Player).

Who is more admirable: Bill Gates or Mother Theresa? Stephen Pinker raises the question in his search of our moral instinct, in an article for the New York Times. (Hat Tip Mind Hacks).

Elsewhere

Psychology-related radio clips, podcasts, magazine features and more, for when you've had enough of journal articles:

ABC Radio's All in the Mind series has continued with programmes on panic, blindness and the brain, and the neurobiology of suicide (links are to MP3 audio files).

Mind Hacks has a reductionist analysis of the cognitive dissonance research recently featured by the Digest.

Edge magazine's question for 2008 is "What have you changed your mind about? Why?" Several psychologists are among the respondents, including Daniel Kahneman, Geoffrey Miller, Simon Baron-Cohen, Susan Blackmore, Daniel Goleman, David Buss, Gerd Gigerenzer, Steve Pinker, Jon Haidt, Dan Gilbert, Marc Hauser and Martin Seligman.

BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind has continued with a programme on the British psychoanalytic movement, plus discussion of suicide bombers and chocolate cravings.

Bookslut has an interview with Christopher Lane, author of "Shyness: How normal behaviour became a sickness".

Would you take a pill to boost your brain power?

Is there any difference between drinking coffee to pep yourself up and taking a drug like Modafinil, which has been shown to increase alertness, planning and memory? There could be side effects and if everyone else in your office or class was popping Modafinil then perhaps you'd feel pressure to take it too. Is there anything wrong with that? Is such a scenario inevitable?

Drugs like Ritalin are already used routinely to help children with ADHD, and cholinesterase inhibitors are used to help people with Alzheimer's disease. Now in an open-access commentary for Nature magazine published today, psychologists Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir of the MRC/Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute in Cambridge, say they are aware many of their healthy colleagues are taking Modafinil to fight jet lag or enhance their productivity. There are also reports of the drug being used by ever greater numbers of healthy university students.

Sahkian and Morein-Zamir are calling on society to start discussing the implications of cognitive enhancers now and Nature is hosting a forum on the topic where experts and readers can discuss the ethical issues raised. In particular Sahkian and Morein-Zamir say regulation needs to catch up with the science: "Rather than individuals purchasing substances over the internet, we believe it would be better to ensure supervised access to safe and effective cognitive-enhancing drugs, particularly given dangerous drug-drug interactions."

This latest endeavour comes just weeks after a British Medical Association discussion paper raised many of the same issues, in some cases going further, to discuss the ethics of using transcranial magnetic stimulation, deep brain stimulation and genetic manipulation for the purposes of cognitive enhancement.

Indeed there have been several signs over the last few years of a powerful sense among the scientific and medical community that progress is racing so fast in psychology and the neurosciences that the public urgently needs to be kept up-to-date and intimately involved in the decisions that will surely shape all our futures.

Two years ago, the UK Government's Foresight programme published a report "Drug Futures 2025" that claimed "We are on the verge of a revolution in the specificity and function of the psychoactive substances available to us". We should take action now, the report said, in anticipation of the impact these advances will have on three key areas: mental health treatment; addiction and recreational drug use; and the use of a new breed of drug called cognitive enhancers.

Also, from 2004 through to this year, a European-wide project "Meeting of Minds" consulted 126 citizens from nine countries, allowing them to discuss the implications of brain science developments with leading experts.

Neuroscientific progress may be moving at shuttle-speed but fortunately it is easier than ever to keep abreast of new developments in psychology and the neurosciences - there's the Research Digest of course, but for a list of many other psychology/neuro blogs, take a look at the blog roll in the left-hand column of the Research Digest blog homepage.
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Link to Nature commentary "Professor's little helper" on the use of cognitive enhancers (open access).
Link to Nature forum on the use of cognitive enhancers.
Link to BMA discussion paper on cognitive enhancements.
Link to Government Foresight report.
Link to Meeting of Minds.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Elsewhere

Psychology-related radio clips, podcasts, magazine features and more, for when you've had enough of journal articles.

Richard Wiseman and the Daily Telegraph seek your help to find out how much information we really do garner from first impressions.

The Wellcome Collection are hosting an exhibition all about sleep and dreaming.

ABC Radio's All in the Mind continued with a programme that followed up on brain surgery patient Kia, another tackling the issue of whether psychiatrists and psychologists should be involved in interrogation, and mostly recently an episode that asked 'Who speaks for the chained and incarcerated?'(Links are to MP3 audio files).

Are twins still just as special now that there are so many more of them?

Can a 'will to live' really influence a patient's survival chances?

BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind continued with programmes featuring a new 'babble test' for schizophrenia, another focusing on the role of carers and mostly recently an episode with a focus on epilepsy.

Malcolm Gladwell dissects the IQ - race controversy (hat tip: Mind Hacks).

Professor James Flynn, discoverer of the eponymous Flynn Effect - the tendency for average IQ scores to rise over time - was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week.

Elsewhere

Psychology-related radio clips, podcasts, magazine features and more, for when you've had enough of journal articles.

"My brain made me do it". Debate at the Institute of Ideas on the use of neuroscience in politics and the courtroom. (Video Webcast).

A review of three books that reflect on the overmedicalisation of our mental lives.

BBC Radio 4's series of All in the Mind continues with a programme looking at the link between the moon and madness, and the role of traditional healing in psychiatry.

What 'psychopath' really means.

Oliver Sacks appeared on BBC Radio 4's Start The Week, discussing his new book Musicophilia.

Philip Zimbardo discusses his Stanford Prison Experiment on BBC Radio 4's new series of Mind Changers.

ABC Radio's All in The Mind looks at the psychology and neuroscience behind politics and voting (link is to MP3 file).

Mind Changers

I've just heard that a new series of BBC Radio 4's Mind Changers programme is starting on Wednesday 28 Nov, with the first episode focusing on The Stanford Prison Experiment, and the second on The Heinz Dilemma. The topic for the third and final episode isn't public yet.

From the BBC website: "Claudia Hammond presents a series looking at the development of the science of psychology during the 20th century."

Claudia Hammond is a writer and broadcaster who specialises in psychology. She's the author of Emotional Rollercoaster: A journey through the science of feelings, and she writes regularly for Psychologies magazine.

From a trawl around the BBC website it appears the Mind Changers series began with three episodes in 2003 (Asch, Piaget and Bartlett), and then returned with three more episodes in 2005 (Watson, Ainsworth, Eysenck) and 2006. If you click the links you'll be able to listen to past episodes again, but unfortunately, the 2006 shows don't seem to be available.

Link to Mind Changers.
Link to Mind Changers shows from 2005.
Link to Mind Changers shows from 2003.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Elsewhere

For when you've had enough of journal articles:

Mentally ill and a successful career.

Science meets meditation on ABC Radio's All in the Mind (MP3 audio file).

Tips on how to hone your mental ability.

Learn brain anatomy.

The life of a human calculator.

Landau-Kleffner syndrome: The rare brain disorder that robs children of language and leaves doctors perplexed.

The rise of cognitive-enhancing drugs.

BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind returned to the airwaves last week with an opening episode on concerns about taser guns and the mentally ill; the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival; and a tribute to pop psychiatrist Sir Anthony Clare who died recently.

Ten "brilliant social psychology studies".

The latest 'science extra' issue of the Guardian Science Podcast features prolific science writer Philip Ball talking about social physics. (MP3 audio file)

Elsewhere

For when you've had enough of journal articles:

Free will is not an illusion.

Pretty pictures of neural connections in mice. From the Guardian: "Using genetic tricks and fluorescent proteins researchers at Harvard have individually labeled hundreds of individual nerve cells with 90 different colour combinations. The end result they call a 'brainbow'"

A lack of sleep is having a detrimental effect on children's cognitive development.

A brief history of manic-depressive illness.

Take part in London-based research into the neuropsychology of hypnosis.

Nine propaganda techniques in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

Psychology A-level teachers - check out the new website of the ATP conference to be held in Lincoln in 2008.

Podcasts:

On recent issues of the Guardian Science Podcast: Imperial College geneticist Armand Leroi dissected James Watson's controversial remarks on race and intelligence (mp3); and the ubiquitous Steve Pinker discussed the relationship between language and thought (mp3).

On ABC radio's All in the Mind, you guessed it, Steve Pinker again (mp3), and in the latest issue, does mental health really affect physical well-being? (mp3)

Elsewhere

For when you've had enough of journal articles:

Stuart Baker-Brown, a photographer and writer, discusses his life with schizophrenia.

Amazing visual illusion (the image is not animated).

Former anorexia sufferer Grace Bowman describes her experience of becoming pregnant.

Is there really a communication gap between men and women?

Guardian review of Steve Pinker's new book, The Stuff of Thought. Pinker was also interviewed by Discover magazine and was a guest on BBC Radio 4s Start the Week.

Is there such a thing as narcissistic personality disorder?

Do liberals lack the full complement of moral systems?

Can physiology-based lie detectors be trusted?

On the Guardian Science podcast, Mark Buchanan explained the study of social physics - the application of mathematical and scientific principles to the study of human behaviour.

On ABC radio's All in the Mind podcast, medical anthropologist Monique Skidmore discussed her field work in Burma, where she has carefully probed the ways the State manipulates the emotional life of the Burmese, and the psychological strategies they adopt to survive under a military regime.

Portsmouth University claims T-shirt will make your baby smarter

The University of Portsmouth have launched a "clever baby" t-shirt for breast-feeding mothers (pictured, right), which they claim could make nursing babies "become smarter".

The University's press release says studies show "high contrast colours, especially black and white, register powerfully on a baby’s retina and send strong visual signals to the brain - the equivalent of a visual workout for the baby. It increases neurological connections in the brain and aids crucial cognitive development."

I'm not aware of any published research suggesting that babies' cognitive development is enhanced by them spending an unusual amount of time staring at swirly black lines against a white background, and the university's press release is not forthcoming in providing any references to properly controlled trials of this new t-shirt.

Of course development of the visual cortex is a dynamic, interactive process that depends on exposure to rich visual inputs. Indeed, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel won the Nobel prize for Physiology in 1981 for their discovery of how the visual cortex of cats was shaped by their early visual experiences.

But crucially, with the world around us already full of so much visual variety - so many colours, shades and shapes, lines, corners, movement and shadows - it seems risible to suggest that a few black swirls on a t-shirt will make any beneficial difference at all to a baby's maturing cortex. I will gladly stand corrected (email me) if a properly controlled study has shown this t-shirt brings the benefits it claims.

Link to Portsmouth University press relesase.
Link to Nobel press release on 1981 prize for physiology (scroll down, Sperry also won the prize that year and an account of his work comes first).

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are mine, not the British Psychological Society's.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Elsewhere

What are the long-term effects of weed? Three experts provide their view.

TV is good for you. Article discusses research showing cable TV is having an empowering effect on women in rural India.

Stop this idiocy now. Opinion piece attacks the worth of research comparing men and women's colour preferences.

Interview with intuition expert Gerd Gigerenzer, who has a new book out: 'Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious' (free registration required).

Child psychologist Tanya Byron explains why she won't be making any more TV parenting programmes.

The nocebo effect: how expecting something will make you sick, can make you sick.

The effect of video games on cognition.

Is it possible to have too much ambition at work?

We have become a more vengeful and punitive society (opinion piece).

How to write effective emails (book review).

The effect on a couple's relationship when one person develops a mental illness (podcast).

Steve Pinker is on tour promoting his new book, The Stuff of Thought, and in Oct will be in several towns in the UK.

The sanity of hiring the mentally ill - how Hire-Ability in San Francisco helps poor people with mental illness into employment.
__________________________________

The evolution of memory in a paragraph

"Energy fell on an ancient cell; the cell registered. Some prodding set off a chemical cascade that incised the cell and changed its structure, forming a cast of the signals that fell on it. Eons later, two cells clasped, signalling each other, squaring the number of states they might inscribe. The link between them altered. The cells fired easier with each fire, their changing connections remembering a trace of the outside. A few dozen such cells slung together in a slowly moving slug: already an infinitely reshaping machine, halfway to knowing. Matter that mapped other matter, a plastic record of light and sound, place and motion, change and resistance. Some billions of years and hundreds of billions of neurons later, and these webbed cells wired up a grammar - a notion of nouns and verbs and even propositions. Those recording synapses, bent back onto themselves - brain piggy-backing and reading itself as it read the world - exploded into hopes and dreams, memories more elaborate than the experience that chiseled them, theories of other mind, invented places as real and detailed as anything material, themselves matter, microscopic electro-etched worlds within the world, a shape for every shape out there, with infinite shapes left over: all dimensions springing from this thing the universe floats in. But never hot or cold, solid or soft, left or right, high or low, but only the image, the store. Only the play of likeness cut by chemical cascades, always undoing the state that did the storing. Semaphores at night, cobbling up even the cliff they signaled from."

From The Echo Maker by Richard Powers, a novel about a Capgras sufferer; the hazy boundary between representation and reality; the limits of biological accounts of psychological phenomena; and the disintegration of an Oliver Sacks-like neurologist who made his name telling curious tales of brain-damaged patients. All set against the backdrop of the spectacular spring migrations of American Sandhill cranes.

Posted by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Psychology on Newsnight

Following the sad death of Jane Tomlinson who devoted years of her life to charity work, last night's edition of Newsnight on BBC 2 featured an item on altruism, involving Blair's former spinmeister Alistair Campbell (who is also known for his charity efforts) and psychologist Dr Aric Sigman. Paxman asks "What is the mental alchemy that takes the capacity for despair and turns it into something positive?". Among his contributions, Sigman explains the little known fact that caring and sharing - being altruistic - is one of the best forms of medicine and has been shown to have immunological benefits. (The item begins 37.49 mins into the programme).

Also on the Newsnight website is a recent video about the Flynn effect - the rise in IQ scores that has been observed around the world's developing nations over the last 50 years or so. The effect's discoverer Professor Jim Flynn features, as does Steven Johnson, author of 'Everything that's bad is good for you', and intelligence expert Nicholoas Macintosh. Flynn thinks we've become better at categorising the world (rather than seeing things in purely utilitarian terms as our ancestors did). Johnson thinks we should thank computer games and popular culture. Macintosh cautions that IQ tests are limited in what they measure.

Link to Newsnight programme featuring altruism feature (forward to 37.49 mins).
Link to Newsnight video on the Flynn effect and popular culture.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Elsewhere

For when you've had enough of journal articles:

A look at the social forces causing obesity.

Would you opt for a brain chip that could boost your mental powers, even if there was a chance it could backfire and leave you impaired?

Is anorexia the female Asperger's? Professor Janet Treasure writes: "Traits that may appear present in childhood, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or overperfectionism, can often indicate a vulnerability to developing an eating disorder later in adolescence."

Do animals worry? One reader answers:"Having been a squirrel in a previous life, I can affirm that animals do indeed worry."

Do parents love their adopted children differently from their biological children?

Food for thought: What some of Britain's top scientists eat.

There is no such thing as internet addiction, argues Mind Hacks' Dr Vaughan Bell.

This is what happened when some of the world's most famous magicians attended to the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.

Where does the Self go when it is battered and bruised beyond recognition? (ABC Radio podcast).

The science of out-of-body experiences (featured in the latest Guardian Science podcast). But Slate magazine questions whether the research tells us anything about why the experience occurs in everyday life.

Elsewhere

New, free psychology stuff on the global interweb:

Why too much choice can be a bad thing.

Wiring the nervous system.

The neuroscience of decision making.

How to make time slow down.

Did the Diana moment make Britain a more emotionally healthy country ? (Prospect debate).

The last interview given by Albert Ellis, the 'father of cognitive therapy'.

Animation of deep brain stimulation.

It's ungifted children who need the help (Opinion piece).

The AAICS Award from Mind Hacks (Win a prize for spotting the most Awkward Acronyms in Cognitive Science).

Why people vote the way they do.

In defence of parapsychology research.

Do IQ tests really work? Dr Colin Cooper provides the case for the defence on BBC Radio 4's Today programme (audio file).

Elsewhere

Conversations on consciousness: Sue Blackmore interviews Dan Dennett (MP3), VS Ramachandran (MP3), and Francis Crick (MP3).

IQ: the brilliant idea that failed (book review).

The spinning silhouette optical illusion - worth checking out. Brief discussion at Mind Hacks about how it might work.

July 24 edition of BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind featuring BPS President Pam Maras discussing the statutory regulation of psychologists, plus the intoxication of power, and more.

Who's in charge? When the unity of self breaks down. Hilarious.

Elsewhere

Gerald Edelman's neural Darwinism applied to the moral debate surrounding the use of embryonic stem cells. "This Nobel prize-winning scientist says he has discovered how human souls are made."

Edelman interviewed in Discover magazine.

The psychology of rejection.

Thoughts projected in 3D using visualisations of EEG readings.

Ten important differences between brains and computers. "Appreciating these differences may be crucial to understanding the mechanisms of neural information processing, and ultimately for the creation of artificial intelligence."

Preventing suicide and self-harm among prisoners. "Instead of self-harming or bullying others, we help prisoners to talk about their problems. They are not used to that. Quite often we ask 'how are you feeling?' and it will be the first time they will have ever been asked that question. Basically we are helping them to manage their feelings."

Elsewhere

For when you've had enough of journal articles:

Hollywood actress Natalie Portman is a cognitive neuroscientist.

Workaholics Anonymous has launched in America - the trouble is people are too busy to attend.

Does the language of the Pirahã tribe challenge Chomsky's theory of universal grammar?

Academic Benjamin Gray gives a first-hand account of what it's like to hear voices that other people can't hear. "I learned several important lessons: never admit you hear voices; certainly never answer them...."

Surviving boredom.

The psychology of suicide bombers. "It is hard to get our heads around the idea that someone who is great with children might, given the right (or wrong) situation, be more easily persuaded by extremists into killing (and being killed) for a cause. But that is the extraordinary lesson that we must take on board about the 7/7 bombers: that they were ordinary."

Following our guest feature on psychological research in virtual worlds, the online realm of Second Life was the focus of the Guardian's latest weekly science podcast.

Elsewhere

Times newspaper special on depression.

What can psychologists do in response to the Virginia school massacre?

When to go with your gut instinct.

Science journalist James Randerson takes part in an experiment at the Institute of Psychiatry to find out about the psychological effects of THC (the main ingredient of cannabis) - podcast.

The science of team success.

The effect of antidepressants on kids.