September 2010
52 posts
yeah, now off to live the 2 most stressful days of my life. If your into voodoo, please take the pins out of my doll, at least ‘till friday. and if it’s santería, I’ll needs some “everything’s gonna be ok” beads. — thx.
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The Human Rights Implications of Using Brain Scans... →
“The June 12, 2008, conviction of a woman for the murder of her former fiancé in India marked the dawn of a new era for the use of scientific technology in law enforcement. For the first time, a brain scan was admitted by a court against a criminal defendant as evidence that she had experiential knowledge of the alleged crime. While the use of such technology is currently very limited,...
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Using neuroscience to identify bipolar disorder →
Researchers are getting closer to identifying the genes that cause bipolar disorder. They’re using brain imaging to track the illness in a person’s neural pathways. And they’re zeroing in on triggers that might cause it to flare up.
…and regarding kids with ADHD which is thought to be often misdiagnosed as early signs of bipolar:
The two conditions are frequently confused, especially...
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“Everyday intuitions suggest full conscious control of behavior, but evidence of...”
– Baumeister, R. F., Masicampo, E. J., & Vohs, K. D. (in press for 2011).
Does conscious thought cause behavior? Annual Review of Psychology.
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The unique predisposition to criminal violations... →
Different than Alzheimer’s, where people can be aggressive or violent, but not aware of their actions…are others legally responsible for their sociopathic behaviors caused by (often genetic) brain diseases?
“Brain disorders can lead to criminal violations. Patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are particularly prone to sociopathic behavior while retaining knowledge of...
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Turn around...
Every now and then I get a lil bit terrified something something central sulcus. Turnaround…
(The Dan Band version, obviously.)
scotttfriday-deactivated2011021 asked: you were one of the people to whom i was referring with that last post.
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Anonymous asked: Why are so many people hesitant in going to get their PhD? I want to major in psychology as well, but I'm not exactly sure what route to take... Any advice/tips for school? :) Thanks!
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"The degree of civilization in a society can be...
I highly encourage all of you to read the Bee series (I linked below). Muckraking journalism is practically dead these days, with the daily news biz more and more resembling interchangeable strip malls along the highways — corporate-owned, homogenized, and full of quick-and-dirty crime bytes. And the prison news beat is especially hard to cover, because access is so highly controlled and...
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"Nude psychotherapy grew out of the 60s encounter... →
The sessions included role-playing traumatic experiences and touching exercises in a swimming pool, but perhaps most notable was an exercise called “crotch eyeballing”, designed to dispel guilt about the body, in which participants were instructed to look at each others genitals and disclose the sexual experiences they felt most guilty about while lying naked in a circle with their legs in the...
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crookedindifference replied to your photo: I dug this out of the ruins for this.
any luck?
I think I saw it, but I can’t be 100% sure. I aimed for the general direction… and got my hopes up thinking I saw something red-ish, but it could have been just a big star and my imagination. I’m not very good at this. Didn’t they say we could see it most of the week before...
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““He is, in fact, a frighteningly ordinary man: rough, crude, a heavy...”
– The Chessboard Killer by Peter Savonik (Via Give Me Something To Read)
Interesting last part nodding to Hellen Morrison’s very controversial theory that says an addiction to killing (the prep/fantasy, the auditory/visual stimulus and the climatic rush) is what makes a serial killer tick.
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Right side: take a left. →
“A new study published in Psychological Bulletin has just reviewed all the neuroscience research on creative thinking and found no good evidence for the pop-culture idea that the right side of the brain is more involved in ‘creative thinking’.” (via)
A review of EEG, ERP, and neuroimaging studies of creativity and insight.
Psychol Bull. 2010 Sep;136(5):822-48.
Dietrich A, Kanso R.
...
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Is It Immoral to Punish the Heedless or Clueless? →
Criminal prosecutions for negligent conduct have long been controversial. As a policy matter, there are strong arguments both for and against criminalizing negligence. One obvious drawback of doctrines that insulate negligent conduct from criminal liability is that they reward heedless and clueless behavior. The actor who somehow fails to pay attention to well-know risks (driving while drunk or...
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Cockroach brains for your health. For realz. →
alhoyt:
And all these years we’ve just been squashing them when really we should have been squashing and eating them. Well, live and learn. And maybe live longer by munching on cockroach heads.
How bout that. “These new antibiotics could potentially provide alternatives to currently available drugs that may be effective but have serious and unwanted side effects.”
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Active ingredient in Shrooms ease... →
Yeah, that’s not a real site…but when I was in the Netherlands these mushrooms were sold right next to the “regular” mushrooms in the grocery stores for just a few Euros more…and they all seemed pretty chill. heh, I might have been a little chill myself…. Oh, anyway, actual studies emerging from legitimate universities continue to revisit what was once promising...
Study Tricks - encoding and recall →
The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard....
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Medical Papers by Ghostwriters Pushed Therapy →
aatombomb:
Meanwhile, in the “legitimate” world of pharma research…
Oh, good. Paid peer review taking the integrity of research down all the notches.
DesignWrite employee wrote a 14-page outline of the article; the author was listed as “TBD” — to be decided.
What else do these ghost writing companies do? (A: not much.) Looks like lit review farming company that pays a credentialed...
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"Almost everyone is pretty screwed up. That's not... →
To be fair to the authors, this is not the only argument in their paper. Their basic point is that personality disturbance is a spectrum: rather than it being a black-and-white question of “normal” vs.”PD”, there are degrees, ranging from “simple PD” which is associated with a moderate degree of life crap, up to “complex PD” which has much more and...
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Same as it ever was...
sojalvo:
And if this makes you want to cry, it only means the neuronal connection between your lacimal glands and limbic system are working.
(via psydoctor8)
Buddhism precedes any of this neuroscientific research into the function of the brain, the existence of a You or soul, and the nature of consciousness and experience, and it’s remarkably accurate.
There’s a really great...
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“The Astonishing Hypothesis is that “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your...”
– Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, 1994 cited in Mariano Artigas, The Mind of the Universe: Understanding Science and Religion, Templeton Foundation Press, 2001 p. 11. (via amiquote) (via myserendipities) (via gracielalala)
And if this makes you want to cry, it only means the neuronal...
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"Cures" for depression and anxiety - the juice is... →
Everyone knows the sexy psychopharmacology research area for depression & anxiety involves psychedelics. New findings attesting to the direct biological effects of these drugs improving mood are presented with increasing frequency.
Years ago, a friend of mine “going thu it” ran off to the jungles of Peru & Columbia do to a yagé treatment which is a several weeks long...
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"At what point we decide that something is a...
myserendipities:
“A study just published in the British Journal of Psychiatry has found that only 23% of the population are without symptoms of personality disorder. If you’re not familiar with it, personality disorder is a somewhat controversial diagnosis which essentially classifies people who we might otherwise called ‘extremely difficult’ – but to the point where they cause themselves...
