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Tuck into our latest round-up of the best psych and neuro links.

22 June 2012

By Christian Jarrett

A close-up surface photo of the cortex of a living human brain has won this year’s Wellcome Trust Image Awards.

Don’t Call a 9-Year-Old a “Psychopath”, says Discover magazine blogger Emily Willingham.

The UK Government’s Behavioural Insight Team, together with medic and Bad Science columnist Ben Goldacre, has published a new report into the use of RCTs in developing public policy (pdf).

Echoes of Gage – Florida teenager survives a harpoon passing straight through his head.

Rats and other animals laugh, does that mean they have a sense of humour? (Jesse Bering blog post for Scientific American).

The Laughing Brains Exhibit is one of twenty at the Royal Society’s Summer Exhibition, to be held between the 3rd and 8th of July.

Mark Changizi and his colleagues have developed sunglasses that help wearers see “the emotions and health visible in the color and pallor of other people’s skin”.

This week’s All in the Mind on BBC Radio 4 investigated deaths among people detained under the Mental Health Act (now on iPlayer).

New Scientist had an excellent cover feature on the creative benefits of mind wandering (£).

Neuroskeptic highlights an under-recognised methodological problem in psychology research – unanticipated and uncontrolled effects of the stimuli.

Scientific American had a cover feature on the evolution of altruism (£).

Horizontal stripes on clothes really do make you look wider, according to research by the winner of the BBC’s amateur scientist of the year award.

Genes are not our destiny, says Bryan Appleyard in his review of Tim Spector’s Identically Different, Why You Can Change Your Genes.

Why Crowded Coffee Shops Fire Up Your Creativity – it’s not all about the caffeine.

The Royal Society has announced the 2012 Winton Prize for Science Books long-list, featuring several titles of interest to psych-fans.

A damning new report says mental illness loses out in the NHS. Writing for the Guardian, Psychologist David Clark says the situation is inexcusable.