BBC Radio 4 has just broadcast the first part of a fantastic two part series on placebo, the most effective evidence-based treatment known to science.
It’s written and presented by Bad Science’s Ben Goldacre and is a wonderful trip through the history and science of what we know about this most psychological of treatments.
One of the most interesting recent placebo findings has been that children show a greater placebo response than adults as demonstrated in a systematic analysis of epilepsy treatment trials.
This matches up with the fact that children and generally more hypnotically suggestible than adults.
Various studies in the 1960s and 70s tracked hypnotisability through childhood and found that susceptibility to suggestion varies as a function of age. This summary is from p120 of the excellent academic book The Highly Hypnotizable Person :
Around the age of 7 children show measurable hypnotic ability, which appear to increase until ar...
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Encephalon 23 arrivesFrom: mindhacks.com
Post Date: 2007-05-22 12:35:28
The 23rd edition of psychology and neuroscience writing carnival Encephalon has just been published, this time ably hosted by Madam Fathom .
A couple of my favourites include a fantastic article on inducing slow wave sleep by stimulating the brain with magnets - from the wonderfully named Phineas Gage Fan Club , and some excellent coverage from The Neurocritic on an intriguing theory about how higher cognitive functions might be organised in the brain.
If you want more of t...
more A Secret not worth keepingFrom: mindhacks.com
Post Date: 2007-05-22 12:39:26
If you roll your eyes every time you hear more media hype surrounding the pseudoscientific ’think your way to victory’ film The Secret , Scientific American has a short, sharp, shock of a reply to its dodgy claims about the mind and brain.
A pantheon of shiny, happy people assures viewers that The Secret is grounded in science: "It has been proven scientifically that a positive thought is hundreds of times more powerful than a negative thought." No, it hasn’t. "...
more HemingwayFrom: mindhacks.com
Post Date: 2008-06-25 14:59:37
One of the many witty pieces on McSweeney’s, this one on the legendary American writer, Ernest Hemingway .
Signs of Impending Suicide That Hemingway’s Friends May Have Overlooked.
by Mark Wilcoxson
A Farewell to Arms
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Old Man and the Sea
Link to McSweeney’s post. ...
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