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Could it soon really be possible to look inside the brain in ‘real time’. Over the last three decades we have made leaps-and-bounds in developing non-invasive processes to scan brains; PET, MRI, fMRI etc. These scanning techniques have allowed psychologists an insight into the processes of the brain during specific tasks or just to investigate the size, location and use of particular brain structures, but the time [...]

In a ‘hot off the press’ news story the Januray Issue of The Psychologist has published a trial open access issue for all to view. I’ve spent a few minutes playing with this ‘new way of publishing’ and I’m quite impressed. A nice way to read The Psychologist. A few words of encouragement and guidance from the Managing Editor of The Psychologist:

This electronic magazine is best viewed with [...]

Probably one of the most iconic tests that jump to mind when a person starts talking about going to a psychologist (or ’shrink’) is the inkblot tests.  These tests, correctly referred to as the Rorschach Inkblot tests were surrounded in ’secrecy’ as practicing psychologists who used them thought that the tests would be invalid if they had been seen previously.

The Rorschach Inkblot tests are one of a type of [...]

Only the other week I was talking about the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task that Baron-Cohen employed in his 1997 research looking at high functioning adults with Autism and Aspergers.

In order to validate the Eyes Task as a theory of mind task, participants in the two clinical groups (ASD & Tourette’s) were also tested on Happe’s Strange Stories.
This assesses the ability to interpret a nonliteral statement. Relative [...]

As we’ve evolved, the human stress response has saved our lives. Today, we turn on the same life-saving physical reaction to cope with intense, ongoing stressors – and we can’t seem to turn it off. “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” reveals just how dangerous prolonged exposure to stress can be.
Is stress a saviour, tyrant or plague? This, along with many other questions are raised in a recent KPBS television programmme [...]

I’m often bullied into watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy (honest – it was just on!) and occasionally I understand what McDreamy might be saying about hemispherectomies and neural-pathways; but I didn’t realise that Grey’s is raising awareness of health issues throughout the globe.  Well done Dr. Grey and cast.

According to a recent article on the CBS News site a Grey’s Anatomy episode with embedded messages about HIV awareness shifted [...]

The addition of the new Reicher & Haslam study to the course has introduced to many a long-argued debate surrounding Zimbardo’s original Stanford Prison Experiment; calling into question his conclusions and situational explanation for the behaviour that was seen.  

Reicher & Haslam argue against this in their 2006 research from the BBC’s The Experiment (and they have a great new website to support the study now).  The feel that the SPE [...]

A short article in the current BJ of Psychiatry where psychologits are asked to condense an important point, concept or theory into only 100 words.  A need for succinctness required.  This time around Baron-Cohen was asked for Autism in 100 words … here’s what he said: 
Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) occur in 1% of the population, are strongly heritable, and result from atypical neurodevelopment. Classic autism and Asperger Syndrome (AS) share difficulties [...]

Hot off the press: The new Official BBC prison website has been launched by Reicher & Haslam.
www.BBCPrisonStudy.org

Having had a link through this new site it offers a massive amount of resources, insight and information about the study that is new to the 2008 specification.

The site has a great resources section with ideas in depth, related publications and loads of quantitative data from the study.
The BBC Prison Study explores the social [...]

I’ve written a lot about Autism here over the years and spoken about the different ways in which it has been suggested it was possible to find out if a person or child was autistic; from the Sally-Anne test to this more recent suggestion from Baron-Cohen et al. – the eyes and emotion recognition. 

In his 1997 study Baron-Cohen used adult participants with autism or Aspergers and compared there ability to recognise [...]