Category: Psychology

The BBC Magazine has a thought provoking article about suicides on the railway system. This comes in the wake of a rail accident in the UK possibly caused by a suicide.

It seems a number of efforts have been made to try and alleviate the problems of suicide on the railways. These preventative measures include training staff in suspicious behaviour, use of CCTV and placing more adverts for The Samaritans in stations.

While all of these things are laudable it seems to me that if someone is determined to kill themselves then they will succeed. Unintentionally, they may well do it in such a way as to endanger other people.

In that case it is important that we take whatever precautions we can.

Ultimately though we need to recognise that sometimes there are tragedies that no amount of forward planning can avoid.

From BBC News

Optimists may live longer but with Bush looking like he’ll get a second term, they’re obviously sadly deluded.

> Go to Harvard Medical School

> Go to anywhere else you care to mention to get the latest on the presidential election.

“A criminal psychology lecturer used techniques she teaches in class to talk a intruder she found in her bedroom out of her house.”

Now that’s what I call applied psychology.

> From BBC News

“Professor Theodore W. Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, is creating a silicon chip implant that mimics the hippocampus, an area of the brain known for creating memories. If successful, the artificial brain prosthesis could replace its biological counterpart, enabling people who suffer from memory disorders to regain the ability to store new memories.”

> From Wired News

Keeping my ear to the Internet ground as I do sometimes turns up a story that gives me renewed hope for the human race. A genius called Mitch Altman has invented a universal remote that turns off almost any television. And it is small enough to fit onto a key ring.

If we are lucky this will create thousands, maybe millions, of anti-TV vigilantes. Each one fighting for our collective right not to have our minds filled with inane crap. Perhaps in desperation some people will be tempted to pick up a book.

> From Wired News

The beauty of research like this is that you can go around pulling people’s fingers all day. Simply tell them that a longer index compared to ring finger is a sign of higher oestrogen levels in the womb. Follow this this up by explaining that higher oestrogen levels in men are associated with better right-brain or analytical development.

One word of caution though: hope that people don’t ask you why women, who have higher oestrogen levels, aren’t well represented in the hard sciences (Maths and Physics). There’s no explanation for that yet. That may undermine your aura of wisdom.

> From The Guardian, BBC News

And it’s not a machine, it’s human and there are in fact thirty of them! Whittled down from a cast of thousands, Professor Maureen O’Sullivan from the University of San Francisco, went searching for the people who could spot lies better than a polygraph (60-70% acccuracy). The ‘wizards’ as she calls them have developed their skills by themselves over the years and were able to spot the liars in virtually all the cases presented to them.

They claim to look for clues in flickering facial expressions as well as general body language and voice tone. The plan is try to break down what these people are doing and teach it to those who need to be able to detect lies, such as police officers. But as Aldert Vrij, professor of social psychology at the University of Portsmouth, points out – will they be able to explain exactly what they are doing?

It seems likely to me that accurately detecting people’s lies is the kind of skill picked up implicitly through years of experience. It may be difficult to teach others the fundamentals in a short amount of time.

> From BBC News

The first survey of asexuality has just been published drawing on work done ten years ago investigating sexuality. It was found that 1% of participants claimed never to have felt sexually attracted to anyone, while 2% had never had sex. Asexuals are now making a claim for recognition in society as a genuine alternative orientation.

Both The Independent and The Guardian report this with a moderate level of credulity. Still, both hint at ’causes’ of asexuality including: a reaction to a highly sexed society and the effect of social stress on sexual desire.

> From The Independent and The Guardian

One in five women and one in twenty men will suffer from being stalked at some point in their lives. It is still a very little understood and often disturbing crime. To investigate this area the Network for Surviving Stalking in conjunction with the Uni of Leicester are conducting research. If you have ever been stalked then they are conducting a survey you can take part in online.

> From BBC News

> Go to the Stalking Survey

Epilepsy is a debilitating illness which doctors are still struggling to understand. What we do understand is that it is a kind of electrical storm in the brain. At its most extreme it can make a person’s life very hard to lead. Even apart from the immediate physical problems associated with seizures, memory loss is a freqent side-effect. Imagine how difficult it would be to lead your life if you temporarily lost your memory three times a day for an hour at a time.

For a child, memory loss is an even greater problem. It is very difficult to learn about the world if you are continually interrupted and have to start again. When epilepsy is at its most extreme, an extreme intervention is sometimes necessary. One method for dealing with epilepsy is by surgically disconnecting the two hemispheres of the brain.

> From The Guardian

> Succinct information about types of epileptic fits and how to deal with them from Epilepsy Action