Where are the rats at the cage fights

by Lorimer on March 10, 2010 · 2 comments

in Neuroscience

I sometimes wonder if we have all been hoodwinked about the whole Roman Colosseum stories of thousands of supposedly normal everyday Romans, presumably wearing sandals (not that that is important to this), cheered on as their fellow humans were slain, eaten, speared and mutilated. Then again, cage fighting, described by Senator John McCain as human [...]

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Alberto Gallace responds to Little Touches Do Mean So Much

8 March 2010 Pain psychology

The New York Times recently published an article Evidence That Little Touches Do Mean So Much
Touch is our first sense to develop, and it provides not only direct information about the objects that we manipulate (e.g., whether they are soft or hard, smooth or rough, etc), but also emotional sensations regarding those interpersonal events that [...]

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Research Blogging Awards Finalists

5 March 2010 General

Body in Mind has made the finals of the Research Blogging Awards for the Best Blog in Psychology, THANKS to all of you who nominated us.
Voting has begun, but you can only vote if you’re registered with research blogging so we thought we’d tell you about some of the outstanding blogs in the final categories and [...]

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EVEN MORE on the complex interaction between us and our environment

3 March 2010 General

Here is some more groovy stuff - Scientific American just alerted us to a new article in J Neuroscience.  It is right up Charles Spence’s alley but I am stealing his thunder by passing it on now.  Charles showed in humans that potato crisps taste better when you hear a crackling noise (I think he might have [...]

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More on the complex interaction between us and our environment….

1 March 2010 Abstracts

There is a very clever Belgian psychologist called Stefaan Van Damme.  He has done some excellent work on attentional mechanisms involved in pain.  More importantly, however, is that he is a jolly nice fellow.  Anyway, he came to Oxford and did a great little experiment (actually, we did a couple but the other one is [...]

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Six Myths About The Brain

25 February 2010 General

People get many ideas about how their brains work from entertainment or folk wisdom. But modern neuroscience has proved many of these ideas to be wrong. The facts are more fun – and more useful.
Myth 1: You only use 10 percent of your brain
Truth: You use all of your brain. The 10-percent myth became popular [...]

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Is that training diary doing anything?

22 February 2010 Abstracts

One really cool aspect of using a software program like Recognise, is that you can keep tabs on whether or not patients actually do what we ask them to do.  This is an important issue because any treatment that involves home exercises or training depends on people doing it!  Historically, clinicians have used a training [...]

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The Inaugural Body in Mind Riddle Competition

18 February 2010 General

See if you can solve this riddle.  A picture, they say, tells a thousand words. This one doesn’t tell that many but if you can work out what it is saying, we will give you are prize….
The hint: We are starting a series of new experiments, each item in this picture contributes to a description of [...]

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I love it when a plan comes together

16 February 2010 Acupuncture

Here is an email I got from Rebecca Erlewein.  I love stories like hers because they show an impressive degree of self-awareness and they reveal, first hand, what I reckon is going on in the brain of many people who being to understand how complex pain REALLY is, and how complex we REALLY are, and [...]

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Neil OConnell on A Cup of weak Qi

12 February 2010 Acupuncture

Brain imaging studies are often both fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. They shine a light on activity patterns within the brain that occur during various aspects of behaviour, movement and perception. The problem comes when we try to negotiate the minefield of drawing conclusions.
Acupuncture is a widely used and advocated treatment for pain (as [...]

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Nonsense in the media – acupuncture, pain and the brain

10 February 2010 Acupuncture

I hope that title got your attention. The Telegraph (UK) has just published a story on a brain imaging study of acupuncture for pain relief.  The article is titled:
Acupuncture ‘lessens pain in brain not body’

Scientists discover acupuncture works by making the brain, rather than the body, no longer experience pain, according to [...]

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