NIMH Director Thomas Insel on working toward a new understanding of the brain.

Popular behavioural economist Dan Ariely explains how people can be dishonest and honest at the same time.

Spoken word artist Shane Koyczan gives a live performance of “To This Day” in a TED Talk.

Solome Tibebu, creator of the web site Anxiety In Teens, gives a presentation about her experiences with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and panic attacks.

A former Buddhist nun talks about mindfulness and its benefits.

Beginning with a definition of cognitive enhancement (using off-label drugs to improve normal brain abilities), this talk discusses amphetamines and executive function.

High School Football and Risk of Neurodegeneration: A Community-Based Study

- A neurologist describes a new study on the risks of head injury from high school football. People who played football in the 1940s and 1950s were followed over time and found to have no increased incidence of dementia, ALS or Parkinson’s disease, compared to a control group of glee club members.

While this is good news for football players from that era, he says further studies are needed on later generations who played with different tactics and equipment, and talks about next steps.

To read the free full journal article, click here.

The power of introverts in an extroverted society.

A Communications Specialist with Metro Vancouver talks about what drives behaviour change, in the context of increasing recycling.

Perspective is Everything

- Perspective is essential to happiness, says Rory Sutherland. He gives examples of applied perspective and argues that the element of choice is what makes a situation more tolerable. Psychological factors should be added to mechanistic ideas in cost-benefit analyses. Things like train arrival clocks and traffic light timers have improved lives because they address human anxieties.

People believe that a company that only sells one type of product is better than a company that sells a wide array of products, which means “Google is as much a psychological success as it is a financial one.” Economics and advertising often fail to understand that what something is, has value, he asserts. An interesting intellectual TEDxAthens Talk.