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Link feast

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

20 February 2016

By Christian Jarrett

Introducing The Psychologist App (new resource)
The Psychologist, the monthly publication of the British Psychological Society, has launched a new app. “It is free to download, and it will provide our readers with an improved way of accessing our content on devices (Apple and Android, smartphone and tablet). Our monthly edition will be joined by the occasional ‘special’. Users will be able to download editions for offline reading, search, share, and add content to a personal scrapbook.”

How Do You Keep Mentally Strong? (short video)
As part of the BBC’s In The Mind series, people have been sharing their tips for coping with mental ill health.

Is Pain an Emotion? (radio show)
On BBC World Service, Claudia Hammond speaks to pain researcher Irene Tracy for Exchanges at the Frontier. Prof Tracy’s work demonstrates how simple pain can develop into chronic pain, how our emotions can override the effect of pain killers and what anaesthesia can tell us about consciousness.

The Superhero of Artificial Intelligence: Can This Genius Keep it in Check?
Guardian profile of AI expert and entrepreneur Demis Cassabas whose London-based company DeepMind is leading Google’s project to build software more powerful than the human brain.

Why Your Brain Actually Works Better in Winter
Over at New York’s Science of Us, I looked at some new and old research findings that seem to debunk the myth of the winter blues.

Altered States
Can the new science of neurogastronomy – and one very creative chef – convince us that healthy food is delicious? Maria Konnikova at the New Republic meets Heston Blumenthal.

The Brain May Be Able To Repair Itself – With Help (video)
Newly released TED talk by Jocelyn Bloch. She and her colleagues may have found the key to neural repair: Doublecortin-positive cells. Similar to stem cells, they are extremely adaptable and, when extracted from a brain, cultured and then re-injected in a lesioned area of the same brain, they can help repair and rebuild it.

A First-Aid Class for Mental Health
Most people know how to help someone with a cut or a scrape. But what about a panic attack? Megan Morris reports for The Atlantic.

Why Brains and Airports Have a Lot in Common
At BBC online, Ed Bellumore, head of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge reflects on the beautiful intricacy of the brain’s collections.

All In The Mind? How Research is Proving The True Healing Power of the Placebo
Jo Marchant, author of Cure, explains at The Observer why the mind’s ability to heal the body is now being taken seriously by scientists who question alternative medicine