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

02 March 2012

By Christian Jarrett

The New York Times published an obituary for cognitive psychology legend Ulric Neisser, who died on Feb 17. Vaughan Bell of Mind Hacks blog reminds us that Neisser criticised the short-comings of the cognitive approach later in his career. And here’s a report on Neisser’s passing from the Cornell Daily Sun.

Why do we procrastinate at work and some ways to stop (don’t worry, it’s fine to wait until you’ve finished reading these links, really).

Great news for history of psychology fans – Christopher Green and his crew have started recording several new psych history podcasts.

BeTipul, the Israeli forerunner to the critically acclaimed psychotherapy drama In Treatment, has started screening on the UK channel Sky Arts 1.

New book that’s worth a look “Memory: Fragments of a Modern History’ by Alison Winter. According to Brainpickings, the book “explores how the science and understanding of memory evolved over the past century, from early metaphors that likened it to a filing cabinet to the quasi-science of the prewar era’s “truth serums” to the psychology of false confessions and the latest neuroscience breakthroughs on how remembering works.”

Video interviews with Chris Frith and others about the brain basis of consciousness. The same gang appeared on this week’s Guardian Science podcast. And here’s Anil Seth outlining the 8 questions science must answer about consciousness.

Here’s the transcript of Jonah Lehrer’s live NewYorker webchat about the genetics of altruism.

Why working at home is more stressful than the office.

French neuroscientist Olivier Oullier laments the fact that his country has banned the commercial use of neuroimaging, but not its use in court.

Will we ever be able to decode our dreams using brain scanning technologies? Probably not, says Ed Yong.

The Office for National Statistics has published the initial results from its well-being survey of the UK   (pdf).

“Dinner table neuropsychology”: How neuropsychology terms and knowledge are filtering down into everyday conversations and understandings.

Teller of the Penn and Teller double-act explains how magicians manipulate the human mind.

The NeuroSkeptic blog reports on an important study that used real objects in a brain scanner and found different results compared with the traditional method of presenting participants with pictures.

Brain training games as a treatment for schizophrenia.

Worth a look, new book: The Aha Moment by the chemist David Jones. His personal take on the creative process.

Childline have launched an online therapeutic game for kids called “Sky’s the limit”; designed to take their mind off sad things.

One for the diary: Social psychologist Steve Reicher will be talking at LSE on March 14 about last year’s English riots.

The latest Neuropod podcast (the 50th) is now online and includes some neuro myth busting.

On a related note, the human brain may have several billion fewer neurons than previously thought (but the study does suffer from a small, all-male sample).

Last up, here’s a video tour of the brain regions involved in recognising and processing other people’s moods, courtesy of Scientific American Mind.

That’s all – have a super duper weekend!