Psychology & Neuroscience Archives

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Psychology & Neuroscience

Stories We Tell: How we reconstruct the past

By Arthur P. Shimamura
Our memories, in many ways, define who we are as an individual or at least who we think we are. In the recent documentary, Stories We Tell, filmmaker Sarah Polley presents her own tale of the search for her biological father. Through interviews with relative and friends, snapshots, and re-enactments of pertinent events that look like old home movies, the documentary moves like a real-life Rashomon, wherein bits of the “truth” are revealed from various points of views.

X-rays and science: from molecules to galaxies

By Richard B. Gunderman
We often think of x-rays strictly in terms of medical diagnosis, but in fact they have played a huge role in scientific discovery beyond medicine. Though they are part of the same electromagnetic spectrum that includes visible light, their different properties enable them to reveal phenomena that the naked eye cannot perceive.

Dangerous assumptions in neuroscience

By Robert G. Shulman
I’ve spent decades in magnetic resonance research and since 1980 my colleagues and I have been studying the human brain. Like many fields of science, it is astounding to reflect on the progress made in the uses of magnetic resonance which has gone from being a physicist’s means of studying the nucleus to an omnipresent tool for clinical medicine and biological research, especially in neuroscience.

Mindful exercise and mental health

By Helen Lavretsky, M.D., M.S.
There is currently extensive use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) — also known as integrative or mind-body medicine — in the United States to sustain well-being in both aging baby boomers and in children and adolescents.

Clinician’s guide to DSM-5

By Joel Paris, MD
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a classification of all diagnoses given to patients by mental health professionals. Since the publication of the third edition in 1980, each edition has been a subject of intense interest to the general public. The current manual, DSM-5, is the first major revision since 1994.

American psychiatry is morally challenged

By Michael A. Taylor
The fundamental problem with American psychiatry is American psychiatrists. It seems every few months there’s fresh news about some well-known academic psychiatrist paid boatloads to endorse a new treatment that doesn’t work—or worse—causes harm. Among the 394 US physicians in 2010 who received over $100,000 from the pharmaceutical industry, 116 were psychiatrists, well out of proportion of the percentage of psychiatrists in medical practice.

Personality disorders in DSM-5

By Donald W. Black, M.D.
Those of us in the mental health professions anxiously await the release of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Others may wonder what the fuss is about, and may even wonder what the DSM-5 is. In short, it is psychiatry’s diagnostic Bible.

The classification of mental illness

By Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman
According to the UK Centre for Economic Performance, mental illness accounts for nearly half of all ill health in the under 65s. But this begs the question: what is mental illness? How can we judge whether our thoughts and feelings are healthy or harmful? What criteria should we use?

DSM-5 will be the last

By Edward Shorter
In assessing DSM-5, the fog of battle has covered the field. To go by media coverage, everything is wrong with the new DSM, from the way it classifies children with autism to its unremitting expansion of psychiatry into the reach of “normal.” What aspects should we really be concerned about?

100 years of psychopathology

By Paolo Fusar-Poli and Giovanni Stanghellini
In 1913, Allgemeine Psychopathologie (General Psychopathology) was published. A guide for young students, doctors and psychologists, it had been completed two years earlier by a 28-year-old German psychiatrist: Karl Jaspers. He aimed to overcome scientific reductionism and establish psychopathology as a new comprehensive science during a period of significant advances in neuroscience.

An Oxford Companion to NBC’s Hannibal

By Kimberly Hernandez
The new television show Hannibal resurrects Thomas Harris’s famous serial killer and offers a few new surprises bound to shock both newcomers and longtime fans of Dr. Lecter. So while you’re catching up on the latest incarnation of the series, why not brush up on criminology facts or learn something new about cannibalism?

DSM-5 and psychiatric progress

By Tom Burns
National Mental Health week in May this year will see the launch of the eagerly anticipated DSM-5. This is the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual which defines all psychiatric diagnoses and is often referred to as ‘the psychiatrists’ bible’. How can something so dry and dull sounding as a classificatory manual generate such fevered excitement? Indeed how did the DSM compete for space in a short book such as the VSI to Psychiatry?

The physiological, psychological, and biological reasons for crying

Are humans the only species to cry for emotional reasons? How are tears linked to human evolution and the development of language, self-consciousness, and religion? Which parts of the brain light up when we cry? How is crying related to empathy and tragedy? Why can some music bring people to tears? Below, you can listen to Michael Trimble talk about the topics raised in his book Why Humans Like to Cry: Tragedy, Evolution, and the Brain.

20 years since the Bishopsgate bombing

By John Horgan
On 24 April 1993, the city of London was brought to a standstill. A massive terrorist bomb exploded at the NatWest tower, killing one person and injuring at least 40 more. The truck bomb, planted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was designed to strike at the financial heartland of London, and it succeeded. In addition to the human casualties, what has since become known as the Bishopsgate bomb caused $1 billion in financial damages.

More than virtual: real community, many ways of connecting

By Karen Dill-Shackleford
Mike was a doctoral student profoundly appreciated and esteemed by faculty, peers, staff, and all who came in contact with him. As is typical in our community, Mike was already a successful mid-career professional. He worked in the tech world and brought his expertise to us. He didn’t have a background in research psychology, but in the last year of his doctoral program, his work was published on nine occasions.

Workplace mobbing: add Ann Curry to its slate of victims

By Maureen Duffy
Journalists want to report the news not be the news. But in the case of Ann Curry, the former Today show co-host who was pushed into stepping down from the co-anchor slot last June, she has become the news. New York Times reporter Brian Stelter’s recent feature article about morning television and the toxic culture at NBC’s Today show provides more than enough information to conclude that Ann Curry was a target of workplace mobbing.