Link feast

In case you missed them, 10 of the best psychology and neuroscience links from the past week:

Steve Pinker wrote a magisterial essay this week on why science, including psychology and neuroscience, is not the enemy of the humanities. "This is an extraordinary time for the understanding of the human condition," he writes. "Intellectual problems from antiquity are being illuminated by insights from the sciences of mind, brain, genes, and evolution."

"Screw you! The psychology of anger and aggression" - neuroscientist Dean Burnett provides a wry overview. [from the Digest archive: "Beat anger by imagining you're a fly on the wall"; "How anger can make us more rational"]

Radio Four broadcast The Pregnant Brain this week (4 days left to listen on iPlayer) - "Zoe Williams explores the radical changes that take place in a woman's brain over the course of pregnancy." [I wrote an article on the maternal brain for The Psychologist in 2010; and I caught up with the latest findings this year for Psychology Today]

Writing for the Observer Vaughan Bell highlights an important but heretofore largely overlooked  change in DSM 5 (psychiatry's new diagnostic code). The central definition of a delusion is no longer based on whether a person's beliefs are wrong and outlandish, but on how they believe, including whether they are willing to modify their belief in the face of contradictory evidence. It's a change that will make it more difficult dismiss whistle-blowers as deluded, as Vaugh...

Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 9, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Christian Jarrett Source Type: blogs