Psychologist logo
Feed your brain
Research

Link Feast

Our editor’s pick of this week’s 10 best psychology and neuroscience links.

31 October 2015

By Christian Jarrett

How the Scariest Video Games Use Our Own Minds to Terrify Us (see also)
A timely report from New Scientist‘s Buttonmasher column.

Professor Green: Suicide and Me (TV show)
In this BBC Three documentary, now on iPlayer, Rapper Professor Green takes an intensely personal journey to uncover the truth behind the suicide of his father – and why suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK. (see also this review by Psychologist magazine editor Jon Sutton).

Jeb Bush Has a Misthought
The wannabe US president says taking psychology at uni is bad for your career prospects. Except it isn’t, and ironically Bush has several psych grads in his own election team. Thanks to Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks for correcting the record and making me smile.

There Is Probably No Such Thing As a ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ Brain
WIRED UK reports on a new study of the hippocampus.

Teenage Mental Health (audio)
BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind is back with a new series and in the first episode Claudio Hammond is joined by a panel of experts to discuss teenage mental health.

Brain Surgery Live! (TV show. Channel subscription required for full access, trailer free)
National Geographic broadcasts the first ever live broadcast on US television of deep brain stimulation surgery performed on an awake patient.

A Brief History of Our Desire to Peer Into the Brain
Our attempts to unlock the secrets of the mind range from the pseudoscience of “bumpology” to the surprising part played by The Beatles, writes Melissa Hogenboom for BBC Future.

Can Neuroscience Explain Why People Are Sexist?
A Japanese study that I covered for New York‘s Science of Us claims to have found the brain-scan imprint of misogynistic views.

Inside The Mind of God (see also)
Punitive Big Brother; cosmic petty-thief-catcher; vigilant landlord. Why is God so interested in bad behaviour? An Aeon essay by Benjamin Grant Purzycki.

Britain’s Mental Health Crisis (TV show)
The BBC Panorama team go inside one of the UK’s largest frontline mental health trusts. With funding cuts drastically reducing bed numbers, they follow the teams through their daily decision making of who to let in and who send home.