Mind Hacks Latest Blog Posts

Don't miss a special edition of the Nature NeuroPod podcast which is dedicated to highlights from the recent Society for Neuroscience annual gathering of the tribes which took place in Chicago in October. The discussion looks at the big themes in this year's conference, including ...

Online poster shop Ork Posters! have this fantastic brain poster which is not only brilliantly designed but anatomically correct as well. They do a Tan and Black version, which is pictured here and an identical one in Burgundy, which turns out to be a little more expensive. So if you want ...

Slate has a great article discussing how psychologists have used the subway as a natural laboratory to study the social psychology of humans forced to interact in strange and unusual ways during their travels across the city. I never knew before, but it turns out there's been quite a bit ...

ABC Radio National's Artworks programme interviews two creators of a new play about the mind and motivations of psychologist and serial monkey abuser Harry Harlow . Harlow was a fascinating and troubled fellow who completed some of the most notorious studies in psychology where he raised ...

The Chicago Tribune has just published two important articles on how untested and potentially dangerous medical treatments are being used on autistic children by US parents desperate for a cure. Many of these treatments are based on flimsy or non-existent evidence and they are being ...

BBC Radio 4 has an excellent documentary on how 'brain washing' techniques and psychological coercion were used by the British military for interrogations during the Second World War. Newly uncovered documents implicate psychiatrist Alexander Kennedy in the use of sensory deprivation, ...

Originally published earlier this year in Prospect magazine, Tom has put a copy of his fantastic article online where he discusses our capacity for improvisation and how it links with a post-brain damage condition call confabulation where patients seem unable to stop themselves inventing ...

New Scientist has a gallery of striking photos taken from Christopher Payne's book that details his photographic tour of abandoned asylums in the US. In both the UK and the US, and, I suspect, in many other countries, there are numerous unused decaying mental asylums that have become ...

Colombia has an official Day of the Psychologist and you might be forgiven for thinking that it's a self-declared promotional event by the psychology association here, but it isn't, the day is established by law. Article 92 of Law 1090 establishes 20th November as the official celebration.  ...

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: Neuroanthropology has an excellent piece on the late Lévi-Strauss and the development of the scientific study of cultural cognition and anthropology. The Book of the Week in the Times Higher Education Supplement is 'What ...

Neurophilosophy has an excellent piece on 'time-space' synaesthesia where affected individuals experience units of time - such as hours, days, or months - as occupying specific locations in space relative to their own body. The image on the right is taken from a BBC News article on ...

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 ...

A study on male gamblers just published in the Journal of Gambling Studies found that having a girl on your arm does bring 'luck' of sorts, as slot machine gamblers had fewer losses when accompanied by a female. I am tempted to label this the 'James Bond Effect' but in gambling, good fortune ...

Seed Magazine has an interesting piece on the ' uncanny valley ' effect, where humanoid figures become increasingly more attractive until they're 'a bit too lifelike' and start seeming uncomfortably eerie. It's a fantastic piece because it discusses the development of the concept of ...

The New York Times has a fascinating article on how surgeons are attempting to treat aggressive and fatal brain tumours by injecting chemotherapy drugs directly into the brain. One of the challenges for drug makers is that there are many substances that would otherwise have an effect in the ...

The Wall Street Journal has a revealing article on why Argentina has the largest concentration of psychologists anywhere in the world and why it has a long-standing cultural fascination with psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a set of psychological theories and form of psychotherapy based ...

Writer Malcolm Gladwell recently published a collection of his essays in his new book What the Dog Saw . It was recently reviewed in The New York Times by cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker who complements Gladwell as "a writer of many gifts" but notes that "he is apt to offer generalizations ...

Havelock Ellis is better known as a pioneering sexologist but I've just found this account of a young man with striking synaesthesia from a 1904 edition of the British Journal of Psychiatry Ellis is apparently recounting a case from a Dr. Ulrich of the 'Asylum for Epileptics at Zurich', ...