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Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week.
Mirrors are Literally Windows Into Another World. Andrew Wilson at Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists on one of the many ways in which psychology intersects with physics: visual perception and optics.
What is you were misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease? A woman in the Netherlands was. "The woman was devastated and thereafter her condition deteriorated significantly, to the point that she was permanently confused and, at one point, suicidal." Christian Jarrett covers the story and the science behind it at BPS Research Digest.
Is the chronological age range that we identify as adolescence set in stone? Probably not. At Inkfish, Elizabeth Preston writes about a new study that found that "the age of sexual maturity in males has been steadily decreasing since the mid-eighteenth century." My favorite factoid: "A study of boys' choirs found that in a choir lead by J. S. Bach in mid-eighteenth-century Germany, boys' voices didn't change until they were 18 years old, on average. But in twentieth-century London choirs, boys' voices changed much earlier, around age 13." Read about it: Boyz Turning 2 Men Sooner Than Ever.
Polar explorers and the Inuit often suffer from "photokeratisis," a painful eye condition sometimes called "snow blindness" that occurs due to prolonged exposure to UV radiation reflected off of snow. That leaves a very important question: why don't reindeer go snowblind? Find out at the Wild Mammal Blog.
That's it for this week... Check back next week for more great psychology and neuroscience blogging!