Link feast

1. Scientists from Germany and Canada have created the most detailed map of the brain ever. The Big Brain Atlas is part of the EU’s €1-billion Human Brain Project. Nature has a plain English report with video.

2. David Dobbs reports on an exciting, though preliminary, brain imaging study that hints at a possible biomarker for whether a depressed patient will respond better to drug treatment or psychotherapy.

3. The latest run of BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind reached its conclusion on Tues with an episode that looked at mental health services for the over 65s.

4. Gary Marcus provided a counter-balance to the recent mood for neuroscepticism: “Our aim should not be to pick the brain over the mind, or vice versa, but to build stronger bridges between our understandings of the two,” he wrote. (see also the footnote at the end of Dobbs’ blog post).

5. Virginia Hughes gathered together a great round up of illusory effects for Nautilus Magazine, including the bizarre Flashed Face Distortion Effect, which turns celebrities ugly. We’ve reported on many of these effects here at the Digest, including inattentional blindness, pareidolia, and misdirection.

6. Length of applause influenced not by quality of performance but by how much other people are clapping.

7. Jon Ronson reviews ‘Confessions of a Sociopath,’ by M. E. Thomas

8. Our Occupational Digest reports a new finding – People assume that conflict at work between two women will be worse longer term than conflict between two men, in terms of less chance of reconciliation and willingness of the parties to stay in their work roles. But as editor Alex Fradera points out, it’s not clear if this perception is justified. He adds: “we need research that goes beyond attitudes to what actually happens in the workplace, in all-male relationships as well as all-female.”

9. How caffeine can cramp creativity.

10. Real life cases of amnesia can be even stranger than fiction.