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

09 July 2016

By Christian Jarrett

This Is Your Brain on Silence
Contrary to popular belief, peace and quiet is all about the noise in your head.

The Most Terrifying Childhood Condition You’ve Never Heard Of
Childhood disintegrative disorder, a rare and severe condition, rapidly melts away a child’s abilities. A new theory proposes that this little-known condition turns back the developmental clock.

States of Mind: The Sky Is Wider (BBC Radio 4 drama developed in consultation with neuroscientist Anil Seth)
When Ella is asked questions pointing her towards places and memories, she begins to realise that the world she lives in now is just the imagined life of her mind and in reality she is in hospital in a minimally conscious state.

Irving Gottesman, Pioneering Psychologist on Schizophrenia, Dies at 85
NY Times Obit.

Can Attachment Theory Explain All Our Relationships?
The most important parenting you’ll ever do happens before your child turns one — and may affect her for the rest of her life. One mother’s journey through the science of attachment.

Review: Jonah Lehrer’s ‘A Book About Love’ Is Another Unoriginal Sin
The pop psychology wunderkind is back.

False-Positive fMRI Hits The Mainstream
Neuroskeptic takes a measured look at a new study that some have claimed invalidates 15 years of fMRI research.

Poignant and Fascinating
Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes for The Psychologist reviews a new Science Museum exhibition: Wounded: Conflict, Casualties and Care.

What Freudian Slips Really Reveal About Your Mind
Do our verbal stumblings unveil our unconscious desires – or are they simply an innocent glitch in the brain’s workings? BBC Future investigates.

The ‘Gay Cure’ Experiments That Were Written Out of Scientific History
Robert Heath claimed to have cured homosexuality by implanting electrodes into the pleasure centre of the brain. Robert Collie at Mosaic reports on one of the great forgotten stories of neuroscience.