The magazine that can change your mind.
Jerome Kagan, Ph.D., writes that Making Sense of People "fails to tell readers what they have to do in order to attain the prize they hoped they would command—decoding the personalities of themselves and others—when they began reading the book."
Juvenile court judges are asked to determine what is in the best interest of the child in every case they hear. Until about a decade ago, court decisions were routinely made without taking into consideration the needs of toddlers and infants. The Miami Child Well-Being Court (MCWBC) program, a partnership of clinicians and judges, has brought science into the courtroom, making it integral to the decision-making process and working to ensure that the needs of the child are met. A complementary article, "Effects of Stress on the Developing Brain" by Bruce S. McEwen, Ph.D., takes an in-depth look at the science involved. Early-life stress can lead to long-lasting behavioral, mental, and physical consequences. Fortunately, preventive measures can improve health outcomes, and while interventions for those who have already experienced debilitating early-life stress require considerable effort, they remain possible thanks to the brain's plasticity.
In Man and Woman: An Inside Story, writes Dr. Larry Cahill, author Dr. Donald W. Pfaff "fails to capture the strikingly ubiquitous nature of sex influences on brain function."
If all goes as planned, the American Psychiatric Association will release a new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) in May 2013. But, argues Dr. Steven Hyman, the DSM is a poor mirror of clinical and biological realities. A fundamentally new approach to diagnostic classification is needed as researchers uncover novel ways to study and understand mental illness.
The goal of computational neuroscience is to understand the brain and its mechanisms well enough to artificially simulate their functions. Yet there is still much about the brain that is unknown: How does the brain use language, make complex associations, or organize learned experiences? Once the neural pathways responsible for these and many other functions are fully understood and reconstructed, researchers will have the ability to build systems that can match—and maybe even exceed—the brain’s capabilities.
Rob Teszka, a former magician and current student of cognitive and decision sciences at University College London, reviews Sleights of Mind by Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde with Sandra Blakeslee.