Our editor’s pick of the 10 best psychology and neuroscience links from the last week or so:

The Case For Shyness
“Joe Moran’s book Shrinking Violets is a sweeping history that doubles as a (quiet) defense of timidity,” says Megan Garber at The Atlantic.

Andrew Marr: My Brain and Me (BBC TV Documentary)
After suffering a life-threatening stroke four years ago, the broadcaster and political journalist Andrew Marr quickly regained his ability to speak and was able to resume work. But he is still frustrated by lack of movement in his left arm, hand and leg. In this very intimate story, Andrew is on a mission to understand the mysteries of the human brain and to achieve further recovery.

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.

Continue reading “The Case for Shyness +9 more of the week’s best psychology links” →

Our editor’s pick of this week’s 10 best psychology and neuroscience links:

What’s It Like To Lose Your Short-term Memory?
Longreads hosts an exclusive excerpt from Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life, the forthcoming memoir by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee.

Sex Differences in Brain Size
Next time someone asks you “Are men and women’s brains different?”, you can answer, without hesitation, “Yes”, says Tom Stafford at Mind Hacks.

The King of Dreams
BBC Radio 4 documentary about lucid dreaming. In fin de siècle Paris a shy young aristocrat, the Marquis Leon d’Hervey taught himself how to control his own dreams and wrote a book detailing years of his nocturnal adventures. In ‘King of Dreams’ Professor Alice Roberts learns how to advance her own skills in lucid dreaming and finds out why the work of the Marquis is inspiring neuroscientists and psychologists today.

Continue reading “What’s it like to lose your short-term memory?” →

Our editor’s pick of this week’s 10 best psychology and neuroscience links:

The Two Kinds of Stories We Tell About Ourselves
“One of the great contributions of psychology and psychotherapy research is the idea that we can edit, revise and interpret the stories we tell about our lives even as we are constrained by the facts,” writes Emily Esfahani Smith at Ideas.TED.com

Split Brain, Undivided Consciousness?
Neuroskeptic says a new paper challenges a decades-old theory in neuroscience.

The Secret To Living a Meaningful Life
Your ambitions to improve your life do not need to be confined by your personality. For my latest Personology column at BBC Future I looked at the inspiring research of Professor Brian Little.

Continue reading “The two kinds of stories we tell about ourselves” →

Our editor’s pick of this week’s 10 best psychology and neuroscience links:

Autistic People of Reddit, What is Autism Really Like?
Find many thousands of answers on this new AskReddit topic.

Koons, Temkin and Kandel: An Artist’s Creative Process in Action
From 42.22 mins in, this is a video of an event held last week at the New York Historical Society: “an exclusive conversation between American Artist and Zuckerman Institute’s first artist-in-residence, Jeff Koons and Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the MoMA as they discuss Jeff Koons’ creative process in art and interest in neuroscience. Moderated by Nobel Laureate, Eric Kandel.”

Annette Karmiloff-Smith Obituary
From The Guardian: Psychologist who provided fresh insights into our development as individuals.

Continue reading “What is it like to be autistic?” →

Our editor’s pick of this week’s 10 best psychology and neuroscience links:

How East And West Think In Profoundly Different Ways
Psychologists are uncovering the surprising influence of geography on our reasoning, behaviour, and sense of self, writes David Robson at BBC Future.

Mind Maps: The Beauty of Brain Cells in Pictures
The 19th-century Spanish scientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, was one of the first people to unravel the mysteries of the structure of the brain – and he made stunning drawings to describe and explain his discoveries, as shown in this feature from The Guardian.

How To Overcome Unconscious Bias
We all have prejudices we’re not even aware of—but they don’t have to govern our behaviour, by Jordan Axt for Scientific American.

Continue reading “How East and West think in profoundly different ways” →

Our editor’s pick of this week’s 10 best psychology and neuroscience links:

Psychology’s Favorite Tool for Measuring Racism Isn’t Up to the Job
Almost two decades after its introduction, the implicit association test has failed to deliver on its lofty promises. By Jesse Singal for New York’s Science of Us.

BPS Response to Theresa May’s Speech on Mental Health
Professor Peter Kinderman, the President of the British Psychological Society, has welcomed Theresa May’s pledge to introduce new measures to improve mental health care.

Do 1 In 4 People Really Have A Mental Illness Right Now?
Theresa May says a quarter of Britons suffer from mental health problems at any given time. But it’s really not clear where that number comes from. By Tom Chivers for Buzz Feed.

The Voices in Our Heads: Why Do People Talk To Themselves And When Does It Become a Problem?
By Jerome Groopman for the New Yorker.

Continue reading “Psychology’s Favorite Tool for Measuring Racism Isn’t Up to the Job” →

Our editor’s pick of the 10 best psychology and neuroscience links from the last week or so:

The Surprising Self-interest In Being Kind to Strangers
Amy Alkon’s recent TED talk dealt with “Trickle-Down Humanity,” about why we need to do small kindnesses for strangers and why that’s the most powerful kind of kindness.

Why Magazines Matter
As The Psychologist relaunches, Ella Rhodes considers style and impact in the printed form.

Beyond Grit: The Science of Creativity, Purpose, and Motivation
A conversation between the psychologists and best-selling authors Adam Grant and Angela Duckworth: “Your interests and your passion develop over time. I want to disabuse people of this mythology of ‘it happens to you and if you’re lucky, you find it, and then that’s all you have to do.’”

Continue reading “The surprising self-interest in being kind to strangers” →

Our editor’s pick of the 10 best psychology and neuroscience links from the last week or so:

Self-Control Is Just Empathy With Your Future Self
The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves, writes Ed Yong at The Atlantic.

Is Psychosis An ‘Immune Disorder’?
Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks on a new study that’s been generating lots of media attention.

Your Beautiful Brain …
… Dispatches from the frontiers of neuroscience – a long read about the impressive brain research taking place at Columbia University in New York.

Continue reading “Self-Control Is Just Empathy With Your Future Self” →

Our editor’s pick of the 10 best psychology and neuroscience links spotted in the last week:

The Power of Negative Thinking
New BBC Radio 4 series presented by writer Oliver Burkeman.

A Maturing Picture of Emotion
At The Psychologist, Louisa Lawrie and Louise Phillips on how we process emotions in ourselves and others as we age.

It Is Pretty Easy to Get Art Experts to Fall for Fakes
Simon Oxenham aka Neurobonkers makes his debut on Science of Us.

Continue reading “The Power of Negative Thinking” →

Our editor’s pick of this week’s 10 best psychology and neuroscience links:

The Real Problem
It looks like scientists and philosophers might have made consciousness far more mysterious than it needs to be. Anil Seth for Aeon

The Medieval Mind
Scholars are finding that medieval science – in various fields – is more sophisticated than previously thought. Over at The Psychologist, Corinne Saunders and Charles Fernyhough show that psychology is no exception.

Why Pride is Good
Try to forget about the idea of pride as a deadly sin. The latest research shows that pride can be a powerful motivational force. Christian Jarrett for 99U

Continue reading “Scientists may have made consciousness more mysterious than necessary” →