Straight outta Bedlam
I've just found an odd study on whether rap and heavy rock music encourages 'inappropriate behaviour' in psychiatric patients when compared to easy listening and country tunes. It sounds like it could be something from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest but as I don't have access to the full text, I'm still not sure what the 'inappropriate behaviours' were (air guitar? MC Hammer trousers?) A comparison of the effects of hard rock and easy listening on the frequency of obser

Psychiatric tales
Darryl Cunningham draws amazing comics about psychiatry and mental illness, drawn from his time working as a student nurse on psychiatric wards. His comic strip Psychiatric Tales has been regularly appearing online and he's just posted the amazing and heartfelt last chapter along with an announcement that the series is to be published as a book by Blank Slate Publishing in February. If you

2009-11-06 Spike activity
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

Psychologist says
I've discovered that if you search for "says psychologist" on Google, you get a giant avalanche of wtf. I encourage you to try it for yourself, but here are a few of the highlights, all taken from headlines of news stories. Twitter makes you dumb, says psychologist Boys have it worse, says psychologist Faith schools breed terrorism, says psychologist Change is possible for gays, says psychologist Music tugs at monkeys' hearts, says psy

The mind and brain in 2010
The latest issue of Wired UK has a cover feature on breaking ideas for 2010. Mind and brain innovations feature strongly and several are freely available online. I might immodestly recommend the piece on 'neurosecurity' and how researchers are having harden neural implants against hackers, as it was written by me. Regular readers will know we broke the story