The "1.2 m illegal immigrants" number - (from @pewresearch.org - has been seized on by Reform, unchallenged by BBC/media.

It's a lie.

1. It *includes* large number of people *with leave to remain" - here legally.

2. It *includes* children born here

3. It's upper limit of 800K-1.2m range

Our June members' newsletter has just been sent out.

It has the latest in neuropsychiatry news and debates from the academic literature, media, and conference circuit.

Not a member? You can sign here:
bnpa.org.uk/membership/

Loved this talk by Leon Li at the Royal Society on how social identity may have evolved as part of our human capacity & motivation for shared agency; putting “we” over “me” - with the original form of social identity not being race/class, but moral identity as a cooperative group member....

🧠 Help Us Understand Pain Perception in FND! 🧠

Looking for volunteers with & without #FND for a study in London @kingsioppn.bsky.social. Single lab visit testing pain perception with electrical stimulation.

Interested? Please message me: Livia.Asan@kcl.ac.uk ✉️

Thanks for sharing!

Powerful study - used Mendelian Randomisation to show loneliness causally increased 5 proteins widely linked to various inflammatory and metabolic blood biomarkers but also brain regions involved in interoception, emotion, and social processes www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our 2025 annual conference is happening in London, March 13-14.

Neuropsychiatry of sleep, FND treatment, impulsive control disorders, neuropsychiatry of TBI and much more.

Sign up, it'll be great to see you there
bnpa.org.uk/agm/

Interesting findings from this Phase 3 RCT of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD: Participants w/ higher baseline alexithymia saw the greatest PTSD symptom reduction, & the MDMA group saw a significant decrease in TAS-20 (DDF, DIF) scores. n.b. blinding challenges!

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

🚨 Save the Date! 🚨

Join the next #BRNet Seminar:
💭 Body and Self: A Dialogue Between Philosophy and Neuroscience with @anatajadura.bsky.social & Adrian Alsmith.
📅 Jan 17, 2025
📍 Online
🎟️ Reserve your spot today: shorturl.at/nl3Ur
#Body #Philosophy #Neuroscience #Research

🚨 New meta-analysis highlights psychiatric diagnoses in persons with epilepsy (565,443 PWE vs. 13,434,208 controls)

1️⃣ Autism Spectrum Disorder: OR 10.67
2️⃣ Psychotic Disorder: OR 3.98
3️⃣ ADHD: OR 3.93
4️⃣ Schizophrenia: OR 3.72
5️⃣ Bipolar Disorder: OR 3.12

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Aphantasia as “Blindsight for the Mind’s Eye” – a fantastic letter presenting evidence (e.g., mental rotation tasks, forced choice tasks) that aphantasics may have nonconscious visual representations, not a true absence of imagery 💭👁️🪬🧠

Via @jorge-morales.bsky.social

philarchive.org/rec/MICAAI-5

I (masochistically) enjoyed getting my head (almost) around Body as First Teacher on the Visceral Afferent Training Hypothesis – how the body’s rhythms (e.g. heartbeats) train the developing brain, shaping its architecture & building predictive models foundational for cognition

tinyurl.com/572pze6k

Brilliant critique by Thomas Pollak on the rise of inflammation as a monocausal/catch-all explanation for complex conditions: "Inflammation has become the go-to explanatory model for those disillusioned by ambiguity and complexity" A must-read ❤️ academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...

Enjoyed this article challenging the singular and classic reward prediction error role of dopamine www.thetransmitter.org/dopamine/rec...