Vaughan Bell
@vaughanbell.bsky.social
Neuropsychologist and professor at UCL. Clinical psychologist in the NHS. Occasional writer. Interested in people. Views my own.
Does anyone use the Spanish version of the RBANS ("Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status")? If you are able to send us an original form, we would be happy to compensate you for it.
February 3, 2026 at 11:12 AM
Does anyone use the Spanish version of the RBANS ("Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status")? If you are able to send us an original form, we would be happy to compensate you for it.
¿Alguien utiliza la versión en español del RBANS (“Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status”)? Si puede enviarnos un formulario original, con gusto le ofreceremos una compensación por ello.
February 3, 2026 at 11:11 AM
¿Alguien utiliza la versión en español del RBANS (“Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status”)? Si puede enviarnos un formulario original, con gusto le ofreceremos una compensación por ello.
Reposted by Vaughan Bell
Not a British Neuropsychiatry Association member but want to keep informed about our events?
You can sign up to the announcements mailing list at the bottom of this page: bnpa.org.uk
You can sign up to the announcements mailing list at the bottom of this page: bnpa.org.uk
British Neuropsychiatry Association founded in 1987.
Academic & professional body for practitioners & professionals allied to medicine at the interface of the clinical & cognitive neurosciences, & psychiatry
bnpa.org.uk
January 29, 2026 at 9:45 AM
Not a British Neuropsychiatry Association member but want to keep informed about our events?
You can sign up to the announcements mailing list at the bottom of this page: bnpa.org.uk
You can sign up to the announcements mailing list at the bottom of this page: bnpa.org.uk
Reposted by Vaughan Bell
🚨The programme for our March conference is now online
bnpa.org.uk/agm/
Sessions on
🔹neuropsychiatry of epilepsy
🔹rethinking TBI
🔹functional cognitive disorder
🔹identity and memory
🔹fixation and forensic risk
🔹ultrasound as neurostim
🔹insight disorders
and more!
bnpa.org.uk/agm/
Sessions on
🔹neuropsychiatry of epilepsy
🔹rethinking TBI
🔹functional cognitive disorder
🔹identity and memory
🔹fixation and forensic risk
🔹ultrasound as neurostim
🔹insight disorders
and more!
January 29, 2026 at 9:44 AM
🚨The programme for our March conference is now online
bnpa.org.uk/agm/
Sessions on
🔹neuropsychiatry of epilepsy
🔹rethinking TBI
🔹functional cognitive disorder
🔹identity and memory
🔹fixation and forensic risk
🔹ultrasound as neurostim
🔹insight disorders
and more!
bnpa.org.uk/agm/
Sessions on
🔹neuropsychiatry of epilepsy
🔹rethinking TBI
🔹functional cognitive disorder
🔹identity and memory
🔹fixation and forensic risk
🔹ultrasound as neurostim
🔹insight disorders
and more!
Lots of headlines linking menopause to dementia this morning based on a study that doesn't link menopause to dementia www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Emotional and cognitive effects of menopause and hormone replacement therapy | Psychological Medicine | Cambridge Core
Emotional and cognitive effects of menopause and hormone replacement therapy - Volume 56
www.cambridge.org
January 27, 2026 at 5:21 AM
Lots of headlines linking menopause to dementia this morning based on a study that doesn't link menopause to dementia www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Epic piece from @anilseth.bsky.social on The Mythology Of Conscious AI www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...
The Mythology Of Conscious AI | NOEMA
Why consciousness is more likely a property of life than of computation and why creating conscious, or even conscious-seeming AI, is a bad idea.
www.noemamag.com
January 19, 2026 at 6:36 AM
Epic piece from @anilseth.bsky.social on The Mythology Of Conscious AI www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...
Lesion network mapping method, used to identify disease-specific brain networks, produces a nearly identical network map for any given condition, according to a new study www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin... via @drrickadams.bsky.social
Methodological flaw may upend network mapping tool
The lesion network mapping method, used to identify disease-specific brain networks for clinical stimulation, produces a nearly identical network map for any given condition, according to a new study.
www.thetransmitter.org
January 16, 2026 at 6:01 PM
Lesion network mapping method, used to identify disease-specific brain networks, produces a nearly identical network map for any given condition, according to a new study www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin... via @drrickadams.bsky.social
The NIMH have seemingly set most of their RDoC videos to private www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyGt...
I've used an excerpt of that talk for teaching for about 10 years and it's suddenly gone.
There's only a single video on their channel with mentions RDoC now www.youtube.com/@NIMHgov/sea...
I've used an excerpt of that talk for teaching for about 10 years and it's suddenly gone.
There's only a single video on their channel with mentions RDoC now www.youtube.com/@NIMHgov/sea...
January 16, 2026 at 10:44 AM
The NIMH have seemingly set most of their RDoC videos to private www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyGt...
I've used an excerpt of that talk for teaching for about 10 years and it's suddenly gone.
There's only a single video on their channel with mentions RDoC now www.youtube.com/@NIMHgov/sea...
I've used an excerpt of that talk for teaching for about 10 years and it's suddenly gone.
There's only a single video on their channel with mentions RDoC now www.youtube.com/@NIMHgov/sea...
What a magnificent book. Just recently finished @matthewcobb.bsky.social's The Idea of the Brain which is a wonderful history of neuroscience.
I'll be straight, it's not gripping, it goes into too much detail but it is deeply enjoyable and absolutely epic in scope.
I'll be straight, it's not gripping, it goes into too much detail but it is deeply enjoyable and absolutely epic in scope.
January 9, 2026 at 12:17 PM
What a magnificent book. Just recently finished @matthewcobb.bsky.social's The Idea of the Brain which is a wonderful history of neuroscience.
I'll be straight, it's not gripping, it goes into too much detail but it is deeply enjoyable and absolutely epic in scope.
I'll be straight, it's not gripping, it goes into too much detail but it is deeply enjoyable and absolutely epic in scope.
Reliably one of the most fascinating conferences of the year. Registration now open. See you there!
2026 British Neuropsychiatry Association Conference. Registration is open.
Memory & identity, brain injury, epilepsy, functional cognitive disorder, evolving forensic risk, neurostimulation
📍 London | 🗓 12–13 March 2026
🤝 Joint meeting with DoN
Programme and registration👉 bnpa.org.uk/agm/
Memory & identity, brain injury, epilepsy, functional cognitive disorder, evolving forensic risk, neurostimulation
📍 London | 🗓 12–13 March 2026
🤝 Joint meeting with DoN
Programme and registration👉 bnpa.org.uk/agm/
British Neuropsychiatry Association founded in 1987.
Academic & professional body for practitioners & professionals allied to medicine at the interface of the clinical & cognitive neurosciences, & psychiatry
bnpa.org.uk
January 8, 2026 at 2:28 PM
Reliably one of the most fascinating conferences of the year. Registration now open. See you there!
Reposted by Vaughan Bell
2026 British Neuropsychiatry Association Conference. Registration is open.
Memory & identity, brain injury, epilepsy, functional cognitive disorder, evolving forensic risk, neurostimulation
📍 London | 🗓 12–13 March 2026
🤝 Joint meeting with DoN
Programme and registration👉 bnpa.org.uk/agm/
Memory & identity, brain injury, epilepsy, functional cognitive disorder, evolving forensic risk, neurostimulation
📍 London | 🗓 12–13 March 2026
🤝 Joint meeting with DoN
Programme and registration👉 bnpa.org.uk/agm/
British Neuropsychiatry Association founded in 1987.
Academic & professional body for practitioners & professionals allied to medicine at the interface of the clinical & cognitive neurosciences, & psychiatry
bnpa.org.uk
January 8, 2026 at 1:34 PM
2026 British Neuropsychiatry Association Conference. Registration is open.
Memory & identity, brain injury, epilepsy, functional cognitive disorder, evolving forensic risk, neurostimulation
📍 London | 🗓 12–13 March 2026
🤝 Joint meeting with DoN
Programme and registration👉 bnpa.org.uk/agm/
Memory & identity, brain injury, epilepsy, functional cognitive disorder, evolving forensic risk, neurostimulation
📍 London | 🗓 12–13 March 2026
🤝 Joint meeting with DoN
Programme and registration👉 bnpa.org.uk/agm/
...as well as the 'mainstream' of neuropsychiatry.
All of the authors made massive contributions but I owe a special debt to @jrbneuropsiq.bsky.social, @santamaria-garcia.bsky.social and Jorge Holguín who have really shaped my neuropsychiatry thinking over the years. Mil gracias.
All of the authors made massive contributions but I owe a special debt to @jrbneuropsiq.bsky.social, @santamaria-garcia.bsky.social and Jorge Holguín who have really shaped my neuropsychiatry thinking over the years. Mil gracias.
January 8, 2026 at 2:26 PM
...as well as the 'mainstream' of neuropsychiatry.
All of the authors made massive contributions but I owe a special debt to @jrbneuropsiq.bsky.social, @santamaria-garcia.bsky.social and Jorge Holguín who have really shaped my neuropsychiatry thinking over the years. Mil gracias.
All of the authors made massive contributions but I owe a special debt to @jrbneuropsiq.bsky.social, @santamaria-garcia.bsky.social and Jorge Holguín who have really shaped my neuropsychiatry thinking over the years. Mil gracias.
It's also just fascinating.
Lots of Latin American neuropsychiatrists have additional expertise in managing things like snakebite-induced stroke, mercury poisoning from gold mining, impact of armed conflict, neuropsychiatric effects of 'tropical disease', mountain sickness, rare dementias...
Lots of Latin American neuropsychiatrists have additional expertise in managing things like snakebite-induced stroke, mercury poisoning from gold mining, impact of armed conflict, neuropsychiatric effects of 'tropical disease', mountain sickness, rare dementias...
January 8, 2026 at 2:26 PM
It's also just fascinating.
Lots of Latin American neuropsychiatrists have additional expertise in managing things like snakebite-induced stroke, mercury poisoning from gold mining, impact of armed conflict, neuropsychiatric effects of 'tropical disease', mountain sickness, rare dementias...
Lots of Latin American neuropsychiatrists have additional expertise in managing things like snakebite-induced stroke, mercury poisoning from gold mining, impact of armed conflict, neuropsychiatric effects of 'tropical disease', mountain sickness, rare dementias...
I don't think first author @jrbneuropsiq.bsky.social is very active here but new from us in Lancet Americas:
Towards a Latin American neuropsychiatry
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Co-written between colleagues on what makes Latin American neuropsychiatry important, regionally and globally.
Towards a Latin American neuropsychiatry
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Co-written between colleagues on what makes Latin American neuropsychiatry important, regionally and globally.
January 8, 2026 at 2:26 PM
I don't think first author @jrbneuropsiq.bsky.social is very active here but new from us in Lancet Americas:
Towards a Latin American neuropsychiatry
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Co-written between colleagues on what makes Latin American neuropsychiatry important, regionally and globally.
Towards a Latin American neuropsychiatry
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Co-written between colleagues on what makes Latin American neuropsychiatry important, regionally and globally.
Reposted by Vaughan Bell
For a more nuanced view of C19th psychiatry in general, I have been spending years compiling this bibliography - it wasn't all restraints and stigma - www.lesleyahall.net/victpsyc.htm
Victorian Psychiatry
www.lesleyahall.net
December 31, 2025 at 10:35 AM
For a more nuanced view of C19th psychiatry in general, I have been spending years compiling this bibliography - it wasn't all restraints and stigma - www.lesleyahall.net/victpsyc.htm
Great round up
New post!
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
Medical breakthroughs in 2025
... and a happy new year.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev
December 28, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Great round up
Misused therapy concepts absorbed into popular culture are making run-of-the-mill relationship problems harder to resolve www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/...
Interesting @olgakhazan.bsky.social piece in The Atlantic
Archived version: archive.is/P7Tf6
Interesting @olgakhazan.bsky.social piece in The Atlantic
Archived version: archive.is/P7Tf6
Why Couples Therapists Are Sick of ‘Therapy-Speak’
What happens when spouses accuse each other of gaslighting? Nothing good.
www.theatlantic.com
December 28, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Misused therapy concepts absorbed into popular culture are making run-of-the-mill relationship problems harder to resolve www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/...
Interesting @olgakhazan.bsky.social piece in The Atlantic
Archived version: archive.is/P7Tf6
Interesting @olgakhazan.bsky.social piece in The Atlantic
Archived version: archive.is/P7Tf6
To be fair, he does do this. Grabbing from my bookshelf, it's in the preface of Man Who Mistook and Awakenings. "...names and some circumstantial details have been changed for reasons of personal and professional confidence, but my aim has been to preserve the essential 'feeling' of their lives".
December 21, 2025 at 2:00 PM
To be fair, he does do this. Grabbing from my bookshelf, it's in the preface of Man Who Mistook and Awakenings. "...names and some circumstantial details have been changed for reasons of personal and professional confidence, but my aim has been to preserve the essential 'feeling' of their lives".
Sacks was a pioneer in crossing the medical / popular 'case study' writing traditions, so there was little precedent. In some ways, I think he chose the worse of both worlds. Accurate enough to identify patients, embellished enough to not satisfy academic tradition.
December 17, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Sacks was a pioneer in crossing the medical / popular 'case study' writing traditions, so there was little precedent. In some ways, I think he chose the worse of both worlds. Accurate enough to identify patients, embellished enough to not satisfy academic tradition.
So, I think the issue is a little more complex. What Sacks should have done in terms of accuracy is not entirely clear to me. Most modern 'case study' writers have actually gone the other way and aimed for greater embellishment, especially for clinical details, for the sake of anonymity.
December 17, 2025 at 8:52 PM
So, I think the issue is a little more complex. What Sacks should have done in terms of accuracy is not entirely clear to me. Most modern 'case study' writers have actually gone the other way and aimed for greater embellishment, especially for clinical details, for the sake of anonymity.
Clinicians writing popular accounts of 'cases' don't have the same journalist responsibility to be accurate. They have a medical ethical responsibility to obscure clinical details that could identify (unless with consent). The question of what counts as 'truth' here has not been well explored.
December 17, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Clinicians writing popular accounts of 'cases' don't have the same journalist responsibility to be accurate. They have a medical ethical responsibility to obscure clinical details that could identify (unless with consent). The question of what counts as 'truth' here has not been well explored.
Including yourself aside, this would make any clinician who's written a 'book about case studies' that are necessarily fictionalised composites, a fraud. My concern is mostly the reverse, that in early work he wrote about patients in enough detail to identify them, without well established consent.
December 17, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Including yourself aside, this would make any clinician who's written a 'book about case studies' that are necessarily fictionalised composites, a fraud. My concern is mostly the reverse, that in early work he wrote about patients in enough detail to identify them, without well established consent.
So, this isn't a clear case of journalistic fraud, and notably, Aviv doesn't identify it as such. It does raise important questions about the use of fictionalisation in clinical writing though - questions that have been very poorly considered until now. Aviv raises them very effectively.
December 17, 2025 at 10:45 AM
So, this isn't a clear case of journalistic fraud, and notably, Aviv doesn't identify it as such. It does raise important questions about the use of fictionalisation in clinical writing though - questions that have been very poorly considered until now. Aviv raises them very effectively.
What's notable about Aviv's Sacks article is not so much that he fictionalised (although you can argue about the extent to which this was appropriate for any particular case), but that he fictionalised using his own story to fill other people's stories.
December 17, 2025 at 10:45 AM
What's notable about Aviv's Sacks article is not so much that he fictionalised (although you can argue about the extent to which this was appropriate for any particular case), but that he fictionalised using his own story to fill other people's stories.
Gary Greenberg has written about the challenges of this in The NYT, noting it involves legal review, ethics, and personal considerations: “The question isn’t whether someone else will recognize your patients, it’s whether or not they would recognize themselves” archive.nytimes.com/opinionator....
Should Therapists Write About Patients?
Even when we disguise their identities, we risk betraying them.
archive.nytimes.com
December 17, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Gary Greenberg has written about the challenges of this in The NYT, noting it involves legal review, ethics, and personal considerations: “The question isn’t whether someone else will recognize your patients, it’s whether or not they would recognize themselves” archive.nytimes.com/opinionator....