The latest issue of the Memory Key Newsletter is up. This month I talk about the importance of self-monitoring for memory and how fluency can deceive us. I've also uploaded an excerpt from my forthcoming ebook Mnemonics for study, along with the table of contents. And as usual, there's a list of some of the educational & memory resources that have come my way recently.

The news for December is up, together with the latest Alzheimer's news. Or you can check out the digest version.

The news for November is up, together with the latest Alzheimer's news. Or you can check out the digest version.

The latest issue of the Memory Key Newsletter is up. This month I talk about the 'modal' human brain, and the range of variation that is possible. I hope anyone who has experiences to share on this topic -- or just wants to chime in with their thoughts -- will go to my new facebook fan page and join in the discussion there. Or if you'd prefer not to do that, feel free to post your comments here.

The Guardian has been reporting on the UK Parliamentary inquiry into homeopathy: catch a blow-by-blow account of the proceedings, or listen to a brief audio report, or read resident skeptic Ben Goldacre's column, in which he talks particularly about the placebo effect, and also the rather less-well-known nocebo effect.

This is the aspect that really interests me in all this: the placebo effect. It's fascinating, isn't it?, how tangled and entwined mind & body are. Wired had a great article about this a few months ago. Silberman writes about the difficulties drug companies are having getting new drugs to "beat placebo", and makes a comment that really stays with me, about how the placebo effect has been seen as:

"a problem for drug developers to overcome, rather than a phenomenon that could guide doctors toward a better understanding of the healing process and how to drive it most effectively".

No, I don't think homeopathy works even better than placebo -- but the point is, placebo works really well! And nocebo notwithstanding, it has much fewer side-effects.

There's a 4-minute video on the Guardian site showing the British actress Fiona Shaw having her brain scanned while she recites from a familiar play. Fun stuff! And a really interesting quote from Fiona Shaw:

"I think actors' brains are like musicians' in that they've been trained to learn enormous sections of language not by rote but by imaginative association. You're often in a visual architectural space in your head. In order to remember it, I need a visual image in my head."

That's a fascinating thought, because I'd thought a large part of the 'trick' for actors was the emotional component. In fact, I reported on a news item on that a few years ago. But a visual aspect does make sense to me, as an avid reader: a lot of what we remember about a novel is in terms of visual images, of the visual construct we have made in our heads (which is why movie versions are so often distressing!).

You can read more about this in the Guardian article.

The news for October is up, together with the latest Alzheimer's news. Or you can check out the digest version.