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Link feast

Our pick of the best psychology and neuroscience links from the past week.

23 August 2014

By Christian Jarrett

Our pick of the best psychology and neuroscience links from the past week.

Finding a Good Therapist
Jules Evans’ (author of Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations) recent encounter with a “somatic therapist” didn’t go too well.

Why Nurture Is Just As Important As Nature For Understanding Genetics

The influence of genetics on our health and behaviour is not fixed, explains Claire Howarth, but depends on complex interactions with the environment. 

Why Do We Fear the Wrong Things?
Over at the Talk Psych blog David Myers reflects on the misleading power of the “availability heuristic”.

Why Do Amputees Feel the Ache of Nothingness?
A new study on phantom limb pain highlights the role of nerves that send information to the spine.

Ten Tips on Organizing Your Mind, from Dr. Daniel Levitin
The Wall Street Journal shares lessons from the new book: The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload.

Super Senses: The Secret Power of Animals
A new three-part series from the BBC. Episode one focused on animal vision. Available on BBC iPlayer for 18 more days.

How to Speak the Language of Thought
Tom Stafford on the challenge of decoding the way the brain speaks to itself.

Hilary Mantel and Virginia Woolf on The Sounds in Writers’ Minds
“Many writers, like Woolf, hear voices and see images so intensely they take on the presence of the real,” says Patricia Waugh.

Asking for Advice Makes You Seem More Competent, Not Less
Yet most participants in this research thought the opposite would be so, reports Melissa Dahl.

All You Need To Know About the 10 Percent Brain Myth, in 60 Seconds
“The average person uses 10% of their brain capacity” says the promotional poster for the film Lucy, which opens across the UK this weekend.