Tom Stafford's Blog, page 147

The eyes are a window on the dream world

[image error]During REM sleep, where most dreaming takes place, your eyes move around but it's never been clear exactly why. A new study just published online by neuroscience journal Brain suggests that they are looking at the ever-changing dream world.

The first question you might ask is how the researchers knew what the dreamers were looking at. To study this, the project recruited people with a condition called REM sleep behaviour disorder who lack the normal sleep paralysis that keeps us still when we ...

The rehabilitation of Phineas Gage

[image error]Medical journal Neuropsychological Rehabilitation has a fascinating article on Phineas Gage's years after his dramatic injury, updating previous accounts and suggesting he made a remarkable recovery after his initial change in character.

The piece is co-authored by Malcolm Macmillan, author of the definitive Gage book An Odd Kind of Fame and can contains many important updates and corrections on the story since the biography was released.

Unfortunately, the article is locked behind a $30...

Neurology daze

[image error]The latest Neuropod podcast tackles deep brain stimulation, blast injuries in soldiers, fibre-tracking brain scans and a group of hungover neurologists on an early morning run, in coverage from the recent American Academy of Neurology conference. In fact, it's one of the best Nature Neuroscience podcasts I've heard in ages.

There's also a fascinating bit about the history of phrenology by neurologist Daniel Schneider. Phrenology was the curious 19th practice of 'reading bumps' on the head to d...

Richard Gregory has left the building

[image error]The legendary perception researcher Richard Gregory has passed away and science is certainly the worse off for his departure.

As a student he worked with the great Frederic Bartlett and later became one of the most influential researchers in perception. He was key in demonstrating that expectations and prior experience have a 'top down' influence and that perceptions are often just best guesses or hypotheses about the world.

His liberal use of visual illusions demonstrated this in an instantly ...

Brain scan lie detection knocks on the court doors

[image error]Wired Science interviews a professional observer in the most important legal hearing for the use fMRI brain scan 'lie detection' technology yet to come to court.

The observer was Owen Jones, a professor of law and biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, and the hearing was over the scientific status of 'lie detection' scans done by commercial company Cephos and are been touted by the defence in a case of someone accused of defrauding medical insurance in the US.

The debate is over...

Ancient Egyptian neuroscience

[image error]The Edwin Smith papyrus is one of the oldest medical texts in the world and is an Ancient Egyptian treatise on surgery, particularly after head injuries. In contains perhaps the first ever recognition that a part of the brain can be linked to a specific function as it describes how someone can be left 'speechless' after a penetrating wound to their temple.

The Egyptian tourist board has put the full translation of the document online. It seems to be taken directly from the 1920s translation...

The difficulty of profiling killers

[image error]The Guardian has a compelling yet disturbing article on criminal profilers and how the practice is attempting to recover from the early days of profiler 'experts' who based their predictions on little more than guesswork, sometimes with disastrous results.

It's written by journalist Jon Ronson who takes an incisive look into the history of criminal profiling in the UK and the impact of the Rachel Nickell case where a profiler wrongly implicated a man who spent 14 months in custody while the...

2010-05-14 Spike activity

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

[image error]

The Pentagon jumps on the brain implants for everything bandwagon but suggesting they could be a treatment for trauma, according to a piece in Wired. Shorter tours of duty like other coalition forces apparently not an option.

The Neurocritic has CASES OF INJURY OF THE HEAD, ACCOMPANIED BY LOSS OF BRAIN (oozing from the skull). Dig those old skool neurology cases.

Some of the best visual illusions are rounded in a gallery by Scientific...

Built for sin

[image error]There's a fascinating short article in The New York Times about physical attributes and the chance of ending up becoming a criminal or ending up in the clink.

Linking physical traits to criminality may sound like a throwback to the biological determinism advocated by 19th-century social Darwinists who believed that there was a genetic predisposition for wrongdoing. Practitioners are quick to distance themselves from such ideas.

Mr. Price, for example, argues that crime can be viewed, at least...

Pereira morning

[image error]I'm in the beautifully green city of Pereira as I've been kindly asked to speak at the National Psychiatry Residents Conference here in Colombia.

I shall try and at least make sure Spike activity appears but otherwise the next few days might be a bit quite, not least as I admire the spectacular surroundings and enjoy the conference.