Tom Stafford's Blog, page 145

Psychopath researcher threatens to sue critics

[image error]Robert Hare is a psychologist who studies psychopaths and is best known for developing the 'Hare Psychopathy Checklist' or PCL-R, a standard diagnostic tool for assessing offenders. He is currently threatening to sue two psychologists who wrote an article critical of the theory underlying the checklist, as well as the academic journal, Psychologist Assessment, that accepted the piece for publication after it was peer-reviewed.

There's an account of the affair over at the excellent forensic...

French government begins 'neuropolicy'

[image error]ABC Radio National's Life Matters covers the surprising news that France has created a brain and behavioural research unit specifically to form public policy.

The public policy in question is not just to do with the mind and brain and the director of the unit describes a 'neuromarketing' approach where the programme seems set to advise on how, for example, anti-smoking messages can be formulated.

As we've discussed several times, the 'neuro' of 'neuromarketing' is an interesting research focus ...

Mouse ache

[image error]Nature Neuroscience are about to publish a study that attempts to explain the biological basis of mouse acupuncture. If you're checking in case you have accidentally slipped between universes, don't worry, you haven't. It's just that this one has gone a bit strange.

The full paper is not out until later today and will eventually appear here, so I will reserve my full judgement (because, you never know, mouse acupuncture might be the next cure for cancer) but Not Exactly Rocket Science has...

A scientific foil to your accidental brain injury

[image error]Inkling Magazine has a fantastic article detailing unusual objects which have accidentally ended up in the brain and have subsequently made the pages of medical journals as surprising case reports.

It covers everything from fairly lights to stiletto heels to human teeth and is cheekily titled 'Not Right in the Head'. The article also mentions that the Neurophilosophy blog published a similar article two years ago, but rather surprisingly there was only one case that overlapped between the...

An explosion of visual hysteria

[image error]I've written an article for the magazine fotografya about how photography was initially used by doctors to document 'hysteria' in the 19th century but quickly became a vector through which the condition was spread.

The most influential photos came from the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, where, under the direction of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, hysteria was redefined to mean the appearance of apparently neurological symptoms, like paralysis or epileptic-like movements, without any clear d...

2010-05-28 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

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Decorative illustrations of women scientists improves girls' test scores on a chemistry test, according to research covered by Big Think.

The Philosopher's Zone from ABC Radio National had a great discussion of Nietzsche and his idea of the 'will to power'.

fMRI in 1000 words. An excellent piece from Neuroskeptic discusses the technology behind the popular neuroimaging technique, minus the analysis.

All in the Mind (the BBC version) has just ...

Airport psych security: snake oil on a plane?

[image error]Nature has an extensive article on the 'deception detection training' that's been widely rolled out for airport security staff and anti-terrorism police despite that fact that is has barely been publicly tested.

As we reported in 2007, a great deal of this training seems to be based on psychologist Paul Ekman's various methods for focusing on facial expressions as a way of improving the ability to detect lies.

However, there is no convincing evidence that has been published in peer-reviewed...

Welcome to PsyOps Air

[image error]Wired's Danger Room blog took a trip on Commando Solo, the US Air Force plane that's been specially modified for the Psychological Operations or PsyOps division to create instant radio and television stations to broadcast persuasive messages to the people below.

As you might expect, the article doesn't reveal a huge amount and there's lots of close angle photos that look like the sort of thing a military avian perv might take on the subway.

However, it does reveal a little about what it's like ...

Three Christs

[image error]In the 1950s, three delusional Messiahs were gathered to live together in the same mental hospital. This is one of the most remarkable experiments in the history of psychology and I've written about it in an article for Slate.

I've had this tale told to me many times, but in a hazy way almost like a myth. I've been asked it as a question ("what would happen if three delusional Christs met each other?") other times it appears as a trite abbreviate anecdote ("did you hear about the three...

Singing in the rain

[image error]There's a common belief that the weather affects our mood, that we tend to become more depressed in the winter and that summer brings an emotional lift. This has been researched before in small studies that have found inconsistent results but a new study published in Psychiatry Research tested the idea on almost 14,500 people and found no link to weather, while the seasonal effects did not follow the common belief: depression was more common in summer and autumn.

The researchers, led by Dutch ...