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Link Feast

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

17 October 2015

By Christian Jarrett

Take an Interactive Look Inside an Anxious Brain with Neurotic Neurons
Boing Boing reports on an interactive work by Nicky Case that explores the neuroscience of anxiety, particularly the theory of Hebbian learning, wherein “neurons that fire together, wire together”.

Nobody Cares How Hard You Work
It’s dangerously easy, writes Oliver Burkeman at 99U, to feel as though a 10-hour day spent ploughing through your inbox was much more worthwhile than two hours spent in deep concentration on hard thinking, followed by a leisurely afternoon off. Yet any writer, designer or web developer will tell you it’s the two focused hours that pay the most—both in terms of money and fulfilment.

A Short History of Empathy
The term’s only been around for about a century, says Susan Lanzoni at The Atlantic—but over the course of its existence, its meaning has continually changed.

The Latest Self-Help Advice? “F*ck Feelings”
Daniel Akst reviews a new self-help book for Acculturated. There isn’t much new, he says, but nonetheless, the book’s message that your feelings don’t serve you particularly well is likely to benefit the average reader.

Has the Age of Neuromarketing Finally Arrived?
I reported on a pair of exciting new studies for New York’s Science of Us. Get ready for debates about what is and isn’t an appropriate use of an fMRI machine.

How Attitudes to Autism Have Radically Changed (audio)
The latest episode of The Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast features Steve Silberman, whose new book Neurotribes charts the evolution of autism, from its origins in the shadows of the second world war, up to the current campaign to reframe autism as something to be accepted and accommodated, rather than eradicated.

No, Scientists Have Not Found the ‘Gay Gene’
The media is hyping a study that doesn’t do what it says it does, says Ed Yong at The Atlantic.

Harvard Neuroscience Blog
A group of neuroscience grad students at Harvard have started a new blog.

Dinosaurs in the Workplace
At The Psychologist, Andrew Clements provides an organisational psychology perspective on the blockbuster film Jurassic World.

Will You Ever Be Able to Upload Your Brain?
Neuroscientist Kenneth Miller explains in the New York Times why the answer, at least for the foreseeable future, is No.