The Neuro Week 19th June

Here's The Neuro Week.

Image of the week is this adorable, if anatomically not quite accurate, model of the brain which you can buy. It even has little eyes! This is not new, but what did come out this week was Google's image recognition search, which is how I found out about it.

You've probably heard of Bipolar 1 and 2, but 4 and 6? They're the next big thing, says a guy who's published no fewer than 155 papers in a journal he edits, as The Neurocritic reports.

What if autism Isn't a Neurodevelopmental Disorder? but rather a disorder caused by ongoing neurobiological processes in later life?

According to the BBC, children tend to be similar to their parents, presumably due to shared genes and/or environments. OK, they said that parents influence teenage drinking habits, but this is all the study showed. And maybe not even that. Not a great piece of journalism.

Two books about ethics are reviewed: Patricia Churchland's Braintrust is reviewed here while Blind Spots is covered here. I'm currently working on a joint review of both books so I won't comment further at this stage.

European neuroscientists including David Nutt warned this week that mental health research faces funding cuts, as pharmaceutical companies pull out of the psych market. It's certainly true that Pharma currently funds much of this research, however whether this has helped or hindered the progress of neuroscience and psychiatry is debatable.

"For the first time researchers have monitored the brain as it slips into unconsciousness", apparantly. Actually, people have been doing that for over 60 years, but this time around they did use an interesting new neuroimaging method.

Psych Your Mind blog has a list of psychology-based songs. Kind of. But it doesn't include any songs from the classic "The Mind's I", the only melodic death metal album named after a book about the nature of conciousness. Well, so far the only one. Rumours that In Flames are working on "Consciousness lost and found: A neuropsychological exploration" remain unconfirmed.

I can't read everything. So any tipoffs will be gratefully received. Either leave them in a comment or drop me an email.

The Neuro Week 19th June

Here's The Neuro Week.

Image of the week is this adorable, if anatomically not quite accurate, model of the brain which you can buy. It even has little eyes! This is not new, but what did come out this week was Google's image recognition search, which is how I found out about it.

You've probably heard of Bipolar 1 and 2, but 4 and 6? They're the next big thing, says a guy who's published no fewer than 155 papers in a journal he edits, as The Neurocritic reports.

What if autism Isn't a Neurodevelopmental Disorder? but rather a disorder caused by ongoing neurobiological processes in later life?

According to the BBC, children tend to be similar to their parents, presumably due to shared genes and/or environments. OK, they said that parents influence teenage drinking habits, but this is all the study showed. And maybe not even that. Not a great piece of journalism.

Two books about ethics are reviewed: Patricia Churchland's Braintrust is reviewed here while Blind Spots is covered here. I'm currently working on a joint review of both books so I won't comment further at this stage.

European neuroscientists including David Nutt warned this week that mental health research faces funding cuts, as pharmaceutical companies pull out of the psych market. It's certainly true that Pharma currently funds much of this research, however whether this has helped or hindered the progress of neuroscience and psychiatry is debatable.

"For the first time researchers have monitored the brain as it slips into unconsciousness", apparantly. Actually, people have been doing that for over 60 years, but this time around they did use an interesting new neuroimaging method.

Psych Your Mind blog has a list of psychology-based songs. Kind of. But it doesn't include any songs from the classic "The Mind's I", the only melodic death metal album named after a book about the nature of conciousness. Well, so far the only one. Rumours that In Flames are working on "Consciousness lost and found: A neuropsychological exploration" remain unconfirmed.

I can't read everything. So any tipoffs will be gratefully received. Either leave them in a comment or drop me an email.

The Neuro Week 12th June

Image of the week is this rather striking picture showing that slime moulds love to digest herbal sleeping tablets. This makes sense, because slime moulds are well known to experience severe insomnia. Because they're moulds, and moulds don't sleep.

Story of the week is that evolutionary biologist and writer Steven J. Gould relied on dodgy statistics in his classic book about race, science and intelligence, The Mismeasure of Man. That's according to a new paper, and there are excellent blog discussions here and here. Gould's to my mind the greatest science writer of all time. But you can write well without always being right.

Many neuroscience and psychology studies could be flawed because the "healthy controls" are just too healthy. This is a serious issue which doesn't get discussed enough.

Did dinosaurs sleep during the day, or the night? Until we get a working time machine, we'll never know for sure, but by examining the shapes of the eyes of different species, a new study has shed light on this question.

Studying psychology at university is not a good idea if you want to get a high salary, according to an upcoming paper.

An interesting legal case from the U.S: judge overturns federal law to impose less than the minimum sentence in a child pornography case. According to Forensic Psychologist blog, the ruling contains discussions of everything from neuroimaging to the arguments over DSM-V.

Psych Your Mind blogger posts his 'favourite' anonymous peer review judgements, along with the suggestion that psychology reviewers seem to be especially vicious compared to those in other fields.

British doctors, charities, and politicians all agreed that antipsychotic drugs are being over-used in dementia this week. Which is something, because they don't agree about anything else right now. I previously blogged about how an earthquake in Italy caused a spike in local elderly people getting these drugs.

The LA Times has an excellent piece on the attempts to build prosthetic limbs with a sense of touch. We've already got artificial retinas, but an artificial sense of touch is even harder, because it requires implanting electrodes directly into the brain.

Mind Hacks discusses a major study into Alzheimer's disease, conducted with the help of a Columbian family with a hereditary form of the disorder.

I can't read everything. So any tipoffs will be gratefully received. Either leave them in a comment or drop me an email.

The Neuro Week 12th June

Image of the week is this rather striking picture showing that slime moulds love to digest herbal sleeping tablets. This makes sense, because slime moulds are well known to experience severe insomnia. Because they're moulds, and moulds don't sleep.

Story of the week is that evolutionary biologist and writer Steven J. Gould relied on dodgy statistics in his classic book about race, science and intelligence, The Mismeasure of Man. That's according to a new paper, and there are excellent blog discussions here and here. Gould's to my mind the greatest science writer of all time. But you can write well without always being right.

Many neuroscience and psychology studies could be flawed because the "healthy controls" are just too healthy. This is a serious issue which doesn't get discussed enough.

Did dinosaurs sleep during the day, or the night? Until we get a working time machine, we'll never know for sure, but by examining the shapes of the eyes of different species, a new study has shed light on this question.

Studying psychology at university is not a good idea if you want to get a high salary, according to an upcoming paper.

An interesting legal case from the U.S: judge overturns federal law to impose less than the minimum sentence in a child pornography case. According to Forensic Psychologist blog, the ruling contains discussions of everything from neuroimaging to the arguments over DSM-V.

Psych Your Mind blogger posts his 'favourite' anonymous peer review judgements, along with the suggestion that psychology reviewers seem to be especially vicious compared to those in other fields.

British doctors, charities, and politicians all agreed that antipsychotic drugs are being over-used in dementia this week. Which is something, because they don't agree about anything else right now. I previously blogged about how an earthquake in Italy caused a spike in local elderly people getting these drugs.

The LA Times has an excellent piece on the attempts to build prosthetic limbs with a sense of touch. We've already got artificial retinas, but an artificial sense of touch is even harder, because it requires implanting electrodes directly into the brain.

Mind Hacks discusses a major study into Alzheimer's disease, conducted with the help of a Columbian family with a hereditary form of the disorder.

I can't read everything. So any tipoffs will be gratefully received. Either leave them in a comment or drop me an email.

The Neuro Week 5th June 2011

A couple of months back Mind Hacks stopped doing their weekly "Spike Activity" round-up of neuroscience and psychology news. That's a pity because it was really handy. So I've decided to step in and fill the gap.

So...


Image of the week is this, which looks like some kind of delicious glazed doughnut covered in sprinkles. Mmm. It's actually a disk on which mouse hippocampal neurons are growing thanks to some clever work at Pittsburgh.

The big story this week is that Science asked for the retraction of the famous 2009 paper implicating a virus, XMRV, in chronic fatigue syndrome. The authors are holding fast, for now, but there's growing evidence that the results may have been caused by contaminated lab products. Mind Hacks has a good overview and there's a detailed discussion going on at VirologyBlog.

Acupuncture has minimal benefits for "medically unexplained symptoms", according to a new trial. Despite flawed methods that mean it's the kind of study that gives big placebo effects, it still barely worked, say skeptics.

Horrific undercover footage of serious abuse at a British hospital for people with autism and learning disabilities was shown on British TV. Not for the faint-hearted, at all.

Mobile phones "possibly" cause brain cancer, said a group of experts at the World Health Organization, who reviewed all the evidence. But they also found that the literature was poor. Skeptics say it's implausible.

Jonah "Proust Was A Neuroscientist" Lehrer is not a neuroscientist... and he's quoted some dodgy data on the 'wisdom of crowds', says new blog Neuroself in a blistering critique. Lehrer replies in the comments. I haven't read Lehrer's books so I'm staying out of this one.

There's a review of three books critical of modern psychiatry over at the NYROB. One of them is Daniel Carlat's Unhinged which I praised in my review a while back.

I'm sure more happened, but I can't read everything. So any tipoffs will be gratefully received, and ought to help make next week's round-up a bit bigger. Either leave them in a comment or drop me an email.

The Neuro Week 5th June 2011

A couple of months back Mind Hacks stopped doing their weekly "Spike Activity" round-up of neuroscience and psychology news. That's a pity because it was really handy. So I've decided to step in and fill the gap.

So...


Image of the week is this, which looks like some kind of delicious glazed doughnut covered in sprinkles. Mmm. It's actually a disk on which mouse hippocampal neurons are growing thanks to some clever work at Pittsburgh.

The big story this week is that Science asked for the retraction of the famous 2009 paper implicating a virus, XMRV, in chronic fatigue syndrome. The authors are holding fast, for now, but there's growing evidence that the results may have been caused by contaminated lab products. Mind Hacks has a good overview and there's a detailed discussion going on at VirologyBlog.

Acupuncture has minimal benefits for "medically unexplained symptoms", according to a new trial. Despite flawed methods that mean it's the kind of study that gives big placebo effects, it still barely worked, say skeptics.

Horrific undercover footage of serious abuse at a British hospital for people with autism and learning disabilities was shown on British TV. Not for the faint-hearted, at all.

Mobile phones "possibly" cause brain cancer, said a group of experts at the World Health Organization, who reviewed all the evidence. But they also found that the literature was poor. Skeptics say it's implausible.

Jonah "Proust Was A Neuroscientist" Lehrer is not a neuroscientist... and he's quoted some dodgy data on the 'wisdom of crowds', says new blog Neuroself in a blistering critique. Lehrer replies in the comments. I haven't read Lehrer's books so I'm staying out of this one.

There's a review of three books critical of modern psychiatry over at the NYROB. One of them is Daniel Carlat's Unhinged which I praised in my review a while back.

I'm sure more happened, but I can't read everything. So any tipoffs will be gratefully received, and ought to help make next week's round-up a bit bigger. Either leave them in a comment or drop me an email.

How To Fix Science

Over at Bad Science, Ben Goldacre discusses a big problem with modern science - the published literature is all very well and good, but we don't know what people are finding that goes unpublished:

The scale of the academic universe is dizzying, after all. Our most recent estimate is that there are over 24,000 academic journals in existence, 1.3 million academic papers published every year, and over 50 million papers published since scholarship began.

And for every one of these 50 million papers there will be unknowable quantities of blind alleys, abandoned experiments, conference presentations, work in progress seminars, and more. Look at the vast number of undergraduate and masters dissertations that had an interesting finding, and got turned into finished academic papers: and then think about the even vaster number that don’t...

We are living in the age of information, and vast tracts of data are being generated around the world on every continent and every question. A £200 laptop will let you run endless statistical analyses. The most interesting questions aren’t around individual nuggets of data, but rather how we can corral it to create an information architecture which serves up the whole picture.

I agree with all of this. It is a problem. In fact I'd say it's the single biggest problem with science today. Scientists are required to publish ever-increasing numbers of high-impact papers, in order to get grants and promotions, with the "best" papers, usually meaning the ones with the most interesting positive results, being favored.

Findings that show that nothing especially interesting is going on here all too often get swept under the carpet or re-re-analyzed until a positive result falls out. If you do a study of a certain gene and its association to brain function, say, and find it has no association: that's bad news for you. That will make a low-impact paper, if it makes a paper at all. But maybe it has an association with brain structure? Or personality?

Anyway, that's the problem. What to do about it? Goldacre notes that in medicine, there are mechanisms in place to deal with this:

In medicine, where the stakes are tangible, systems have grown up to try and cope with this problem: trials are supposed registered before they begin, so we can notice the results that get left unpublished. But even here, the systems are imperfect; and pre-registration is very rarely done, even in medical research, for anything other than trials.

Clinical trial pre-registration is a fantastic idea. The systems are certainly imperfect, but they're getting better, and they're much better than nothing. Back in 2008 I proposed that all scientific studies, not just clinical trials, should be publically pre-registered. That way everyone could know what science was going unpublished and could tell when authors were doing analyzes they hadn't originally planned to do (which is fine, so long as you admit to it.)

I still think that would be a good idea. But how would it work in practice? Here's what I've come up with:

Scientific papers should be submitted to journals for publication before the research has started. The Introduction and the Methods section, detailing what you plan to do and why, would then get peer reviewed. The rest of the paper would obviously be a blank at this stage. Anonymous experts would have a chance to critique the methods and rationale.

If the paper's accepted, you then do the research, get the results, and write the Results and Discussion section of the paper. The journal is then required to publish the final paper, assuming that you kept to the original plan. The Introducion and primary Methods would be fixed - you can't change them once the data come in.

You can do additional stuff and run additional analyses all you like, but they'll be marked as secondary, which of course is what they are. Publication would therefore be based on the scientific merits of the experiment, the importance of the question and the quality of the methods, not the "interestingness" of the results. If you want a paper in Nature, it needs to be a great idea, not a lucky shot.

This would be a radical change from the current system. Too radical, almost certainly, to ever happen in one go. So here's another idea as to a kind of stepping-stone on the way:

Already, scientists have to spell out their original rationale and original methods before they do any work - when they apply for funding from a grant awarding body. These grant applications are often very detailed, but at the moment, they're private. And people don't always stick to them.

Why not make the full publication of the grant application a condition of being awarded the money? This would be rather like preregistration of the Introduction and Methods, although less elegant, but it would do the job. And given that most grants consist of public cash, the public really have a right to know this. These applications are usually just PDF files. It would be trivial to put them online - after redacting personal information like applicant résumés, if desired.

How To Fix Science

Over at Bad Science, Ben Goldacre discusses a big problem with modern science - the published literature is all very well and good, but we don't know what people are finding that goes unpublished:

The scale of the academic universe is dizzying, after all. Our most recent estimate is that there are over 24,000 academic journals in existence, 1.3 million academic papers published every year, and over 50 million papers published since scholarship began.

And for every one of these 50 million papers there will be unknowable quantities of blind alleys, abandoned experiments, conference presentations, work in progress seminars, and more. Look at the vast number of undergraduate and masters dissertations that had an interesting finding, and got turned into finished academic papers: and then think about the even vaster number that don’t...

We are living in the age of information, and vast tracts of data are being generated around the world on every continent and every question. A £200 laptop will let you run endless statistical analyses. The most interesting questions aren’t around individual nuggets of data, but rather how we can corral it to create an information architecture which serves up the whole picture.

I agree with all of this. It is a problem. In fact I'd say it's the single biggest problem with science today. Scientists are required to publish ever-increasing numbers of high-impact papers, in order to get grants and promotions, with the "best" papers, usually meaning the ones with the most interesting positive results, being favored.

Findings that show that nothing especially interesting is going on here all too often get swept under the carpet or re-re-analyzed until a positive result falls out. If you do a study of a certain gene and its association to brain function, say, and find it has no association: that's bad news for you. That will make a low-impact paper, if it makes a paper at all. But maybe it has an association with brain structure? Or personality?

Anyway, that's the problem. What to do about it? Goldacre notes that in medicine, there are mechanisms in place to deal with this:

In medicine, where the stakes are tangible, systems have grown up to try and cope with this problem: trials are supposed registered before they begin, so we can notice the results that get left unpublished. But even here, the systems are imperfect; and pre-registration is very rarely done, even in medical research, for anything other than trials.

Clinical trial pre-registration is a fantastic idea. The systems are certainly imperfect, but they're getting better, and they're much better than nothing. Back in 2008 I proposed that all scientific studies, not just clinical trials, should be publically pre-registered. That way everyone could know what science was going unpublished and could tell when authors were doing analyzes they hadn't originally planned to do (which is fine, so long as you admit to it.)

I still think that would be a good idea. But how would it work in practice? Here's what I've come up with:

Scientific papers should be submitted to journals for publication before the research has started. The Introduction and the Methods section, detailing what you plan to do and why, would then get peer reviewed. The rest of the paper would obviously be a blank at this stage. Anonymous experts would have a chance to critique the methods and rationale.

If the paper's accepted, you then do the research, get the results, and write the Results and Discussion section of the paper. The journal is then required to publish the final paper, assuming that you kept to the original plan. The Introducion and primary Methods would be fixed - you can't change them once the data come in.

You can do additional stuff and run additional analyses all you like, but they'll be marked as secondary, which of course is what they are. Publication would therefore be based on the scientific merits of the experiment, the importance of the question and the quality of the methods, not the "interestingness" of the results. If you want a paper in Nature, it needs to be a great idea, not a lucky shot.

This would be a radical change from the current system. Too radical, almost certainly, to ever happen in one go. So here's another idea as to a kind of stepping-stone on the way:

Already, scientists have to spell out their original rationale and original methods before they do any work - when they apply for funding from a grant awarding body. These grant applications are often very detailed, but at the moment, they're private. And people don't always stick to them.

Why not make the full publication of the grant application a condition of being awarded the money? This would be rather like preregistration of the Introduction and Methods, although less elegant, but it would do the job. And given that most grants consist of public cash, the public really have a right to know this. These applications are usually just PDF files. It would be trivial to put them online - after redacting personal information like applicant résumés, if desired.

"1 Boring Old Man" Blog Isn't

Just wanted to let everyone know about a blog called 1 boring old man, which is a very poor name as it isn't boring at all.


I don't know if it's written by an old man or not, one can only assume so, but whoever writes it, it has got a lot of extremely good stuff about psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Fans of Daniel Carlat's blog or even former readers of the now seemingly defuct Furious Seasons will find it extremely interesting.

It's actually been going since 2005, but for some reason I've only just found out about it (many thanks to regular Neuroskeptic commentator Bernard Carroll).

"1 Boring Old Man" Blog Isn't

Just wanted to let everyone know about a blog called 1 boring old man, which is a very poor name as it isn't boring at all.


I don't know if it's written by an old man or not, one can only assume so, but whoever writes it, it has got a lot of extremely good stuff about psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Fans of Daniel Carlat's blog or even former readers of the now seemingly defuct Furious Seasons will find it extremely interesting.

It's actually been going since 2005, but for some reason I've only just found out about it (many thanks to regular Neuroskeptic commentator Bernard Carroll).

Two Blogs and a Public Service Announcement

First up, here are two new(ish) blogs which have been consistently excellent since I started reading them:

• Neurobonkers (see e.g. this post)
  
• Psych Gripe (e.g. this post)

Second, an announcement: Blogger has a spam filter for comments.

It's rubbish.

It seems to think that any comment containing more than one hyperlink is spam. Actually, all the spam I get contains one link, and hence makes it through, while the real comments with multiple links, which are usually interesting and sensible, get blocked. A Mr. "Generic Viagra" (no really) can leave 20 comments in 5 minutes with impunity, but more than one link, and you're out.

I would love to turn it off, but you can't. Thanks Google. My comment policy is, as it's always been, that all comments except spam are welcome. So if your comment hasn't appeared, it's not that I've deleted it, it's the spam filter.

I check the spam folder as often as I can, and allow the proper comments through, but you might want to avoid comments with more than one link. Maybe split them into multiple comments. It's not ideal but, as I said, it's not my filter.

Two Blogs and a Public Service Announcement

First up, here are two new(ish) blogs which have been consistently excellent since I started reading them:

• Neurobonkers (see e.g. this post)
  
• Psych Gripe (e.g. this post)

Second, an announcement: Blogger has a spam filter for comments.

It's rubbish.

It seems to think that any comment containing more than one hyperlink is spam. Actually, all the spam I get contains one link, and hence makes it through, while the real comments with multiple links, which are usually interesting and sensible, get blocked. A Mr. "Generic Viagra" (no really) can leave 20 comments in 5 minutes with impunity, but more than one link, and you're out.

I would love to turn it off, but you can't. Thanks Google. My comment policy is, as it's always been, that all comments except spam are welcome. So if your comment hasn't appeared, it's not that I've deleted it, it's the spam filter.

I check the spam folder as often as I can, and allow the proper comments through, but you might want to avoid comments with more than one link. Maybe split them into multiple comments. It's not ideal but, as I said, it's not my filter.

Science Bloggers vs. Science

First NASA had quite possibly discovered an alien lifeform.

Then it was an earth bacteria that has a unique kind of arsenic-based DNA - an entirely new kind of organism.

Then it merely could use arsenic in its DNA, if forced to, although under normal conditions it didn't.

But now, it's looking like it's just a regular (albeit tough) bug - and a lot of hot air.

*

The "arsenic-based alien bacteria" story attracted more media attention than any other scientific paper of the last year. At first, I was very pleased by this: to a scientist, the discovery of an organism that can use arsenic instead of phosphorous in its DNA would have been massive news, with big implications for every branch of biology. How great that the media picked up on the importance of this story, even though it's about a specialized point of biochemistry, I thought.

Unfortunately, as you've probably heard, serious questions have been asked about the Science paper announcing the findings. For details, see microbiologist Rosie Redfield's devastating post on the topic: Arsenic-associated bacteria (NASA's claims), and this one from Alex Bradley: Arsenate-based DNA: a big idea with big holes. In a nutshell, the critics make a very strong case that the evidence supposedly showing arsenic-containing DNA is flawed, and fairly obviously so.

As I've said before, this kind of thing is why science blogging is so important. Thanks to bloggers such as those I've linked to, and many others, this paper - which has enormous implications, if true - has been subject to detailed scrutiny within days of publication.

Without blogs, these questions would certainly have been asked sooner or later - but with the emphasis on "later". The traditional way to criticize a paper is to write a Letter to the Editor of the journal that published it but this usually takes, at best, weeks, and usually months to appear.

Some journals now feature "e-letters" which can appear within hours, or public comment threads attached to each paper, and this is certainly a big step forward. Blogs still have the edge, though, because it's often hard to incorporate pictures, html, etc. into these comments, and these discussion threads often become very hard to read as the important comments get mixed up with less useful, or simply out of date, ones.

A blog post, clearly setting out the arguments, and updated as new information comes to light, is, to my mind, the best form of scientific peer review we currently have.

Science Bloggers vs. Science

First NASA had quite possibly discovered an alien lifeform.

Then it was an earth bacteria that has a unique kind of arsenic-based DNA - an entirely new kind of organism.

Then it merely could use arsenic in its DNA, if forced to, although under normal conditions it didn't.

But now, it's looking like it's just a regular (albeit tough) bug - and a lot of hot air.

*

The "arsenic-based alien bacteria" story attracted more media attention than any other scientific paper of the last year. At first, I was very pleased by this: to a scientist, the discovery of an organism that can use arsenic instead of phosphorous in its DNA would have been massive news, with big implications for every branch of biology. How great that the media picked up on the importance of this story, even though it's about a specialized point of biochemistry, I thought.

Unfortunately, as you've probably heard, serious questions have been asked about the Science paper announcing the findings. For details, see microbiologist Rosie Redfield's devastating post on the topic: Arsenic-associated bacteria (NASA's claims), and this one from Alex Bradley: Arsenate-based DNA: a big idea with big holes. In a nutshell, the critics make a very strong case that the evidence supposedly showing arsenic-containing DNA is flawed, and fairly obviously so.

As I've said before, this kind of thing is why science blogging is so important. Thanks to bloggers such as those I've linked to, and many others, this paper - which has enormous implications, if true - has been subject to detailed scrutiny within days of publication.

Without blogs, these questions would certainly have been asked sooner or later - but with the emphasis on "later". The traditional way to criticize a paper is to write a Letter to the Editor of the journal that published it but this usually takes, at best, weeks, and usually months to appear.

Some journals now feature "e-letters" which can appear within hours, or public comment threads attached to each paper, and this is certainly a big step forward. Blogs still have the edge, though, because it's often hard to incorporate pictures, html, etc. into these comments, and these discussion threads often become very hard to read as the important comments get mixed up with less useful, or simply out of date, ones.

A blog post, clearly setting out the arguments, and updated as new information comes to light, is, to my mind, the best form of scientific peer review we currently have.

New Neuroblogs!

It seems like every week nowadays that I find a new neuroscience or psychology blog. Which is great. So here's a list of blogs that have started since 2010... more or less. Or late 2009 in some cases. If I've missed one out, it is because I suck, not because it sucks, so let me know and I'll add it.

• David Nutt's Blog Evidence Not Exaggeration - the bad boy of British psychopharmacology now has a blog.
• BishopBlog - Another celebrity blog, this time from Oxford developmental psychologist Prof. Dorothy Bishop.
• NeuroKüz - the only neüroblog with an umlaut
• Reading the Papers - mostly about movement and perception so far
  
• Neuroconscience - that's neuroconscience.com to you
  
• Colonial Psychiatry - about the history of psychiatry in Africa
  
• The Shelled Walnut - sadly has not been posting much recently
  
• Neurobites - just a month old, seems to be focussed on food and appetite
  
• Quantimind - about quantitative psychology, not quantum physics
  
• Brain Posts - clinical neuroscience - Neuroskeptic readers should be especially interested in these.
• Sleeprunning - about brains and stuff, not sleep or running.
• Neuromancy - Research and ramblings of a neuroscience postgrad
• Mood Spectrum Indigo - Reflections on Mood Disorders
• Cerescan Imaging Blog - Imaging, neuroscience, psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders
• Abby Noyce's Blog - Cognitive neuroscience, and lots of purple.
• rewireyourbrainforlove.com - A neuropsychologist's exploration of mindfulness meditation, relationships, and the brain.

New Neuroblogs!

It seems like every week nowadays that I find a new neuroscience or psychology blog. Which is great. So here's a list of blogs that have started since 2010... more or less. Or late 2009 in some cases. If I've missed one out, it is because I suck, not because it sucks, so let me know and I'll add it.

• David Nutt's Blog Evidence Not Exaggeration - the bad boy of British psychopharmacology now has a blog.
• BishopBlog - Another celebrity blog, this time from Oxford developmental psychologist Prof. Dorothy Bishop.
• NeuroKüz - the only neüroblog with an umlaut
• Reading the Papers - mostly about movement and perception so far
  
• Neuroconscience - that's neuroconscience.com to you
  
• Colonial Psychiatry - about the history of psychiatry in Africa
  
• The Shelled Walnut - sadly has not been posting much recently
  
• Neurobites - just a month old, seems to be focussed on food and appetite
  
• Quantimind - about quantitative psychology, not quantum physics
  
• Brain Posts - clinical neuroscience - Neuroskeptic readers should be especially interested in these.
• Sleeprunning - about brains and stuff, not sleep or running.
• Neuromancy - Research and ramblings of a neuroscience postgrad
• Mood Spectrum Indigo - Reflections on Mood Disorders
• Cerescan Imaging Blog - Imaging, neuroscience, psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders
• Abby Noyce's Blog - Cognitive neuroscience, and lots of purple.
• rewireyourbrainforlove.com - A neuropsychologist's exploration of mindfulness meditation, relationships, and the brain.

Neuroskeptic in Hebrew

Wow. The author of Hebrew psychology blog alhasapa has done me the honor of offering to translate one of my posts, Commericalization vs Medicalization, into Hebrew. The translation is up here.

I have no idea what it means, but when I put it into Google Translate it comes back with some surprisingly recognizable English. Given that Google Translate is incredibly rubbish, I think it must be a pretty good translation...

Neuroskeptic in Hebrew

Wow. The author of Hebrew psychology blog alhasapa has done me the honor of offering to translate one of my posts, Commericalization vs Medicalization, into Hebrew. The translation is up here.

I have no idea what it means, but when I put it into Google Translate it comes back with some surprisingly recognizable English. Given that Google Translate is incredibly rubbish, I think it must be a pretty good translation...

Neuro4Kids Stuff

Neuroscience For Kids is a long-standing website hosted by the University of Washington and run by Dr. Eric H. Chudler.


It's extremely good, and even if you're no longer a kid you'll find it an interesting resource - I'm not ashamed to admit that I learned stuff from pages like this one on ancient Egyptian brain damage or the questions and answers section.

Anyway, Dr Chudler has just launched the Neuro4Kids.com store where you can buy brain-based items. I particularly like the Stroop effect bag (also t-shirt) and the "I misplaced my brain" late-birthday cards...

Neuro4Kids Stuff

Neuroscience For Kids is a long-standing website hosted by the University of Washington and run by Dr. Eric H. Chudler.


It's extremely good, and even if you're no longer a kid you'll find it an interesting resource - I'm not ashamed to admit that I learned stuff from pages like this one on ancient Egyptian brain damage or the questions and answers section.

Anyway, Dr Chudler has just launched the Neuro4Kids.com store where you can buy brain-based items. I particularly like the Stroop effect bag (also t-shirt) and the "I misplaced my brain" late-birthday cards...