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Update on Indie Neuroblogs
Independent Neuroblogs, a combined aggregate feed for non-network Neuroscience Blogs, was started on FriendFeed in response to the proliferation of blog networks in 2010. The associated Twitter account...
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Haunting Delusions of Identity
Bugs Bunny in Hyde and Hare (1955)Delusional misidentification syndromes have fascinated filmmakers and psychiatrists alike. Afflicted individuals suffer under the false belief that persons or things...
View ArticleHow did Gall Identify his 27 Faculties?
Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), a founding father of phrenology Phrenology was the pseudoscience of identifying a person's character and mental abilities on the basis of skull morphology (“bumps on the...
View ArticleAirplane Headache II: The Sequel
Airline travel during the holidays is one big headache. But for some people, “airplane headache” is a truly painful experience. The headache occurs during take-off and landing, is unique to plane...
View Article19th Century DIY Brain Stimulation
Fig. 4 (Wexler, 2016). Lindstrom's Electro-Medical Apparatus (ca. 1895), courtesy of the Bakken. Think the do-it-yourself transcranial direct current stimulation movement (DIY tDCS) is a...
View ArticleBad news for DARPA's RAM program: Electrical Stimulation of Entorhinal Region...
The neural machinery that forms new memories is fragile and vulnerable to insults arising from brain injuries, cerebral anoxia, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. Unlike language,...
View ArticlePenn's Restoring Active Memory dataset freely available
Image from an earlier DARPA news story Restoring Active Memory (RAM) is a DARPA research program that aims to enhance memory in military personnel who have suffered traumatic brain injuries. The goal...
View ArticleNeuroscience Can't Heal a Divided Nation
Brain activation during challenges to political vs. non-political beliefs (Figure modified from Kaplan et al., 2016). Lately I've been despairing about the state of America. I'm not sure how denying...
View ArticleWhy Do Political Figures Lie So Blatantly?
Are They Pathological Liars? Narcissists? Psychopaths? “Masterful Manipulators”? Trump Spokesman’s Lecture on Media Accuracy Is Peppered With Lies Nearly all American politicians lie, but few as...
View ArticleDistortions of Reality
President Trump this week repeated an assertion he made shortly after his election: that millions of ballots cast illegally by undocumented immigrants cost him the popular vote. If true, this would...
View ArticleUsing Discourse Analysis to Assess Cognitive Decline
Figure from Gauthier et al. (2005). Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and other dementias are progressive neurodegenerative conditions that unfold over time. Subtle symptoms such as forgetfulness and word...
View ArticleNeurofeedback Training For Insomnia No Better Than Sham
Neurofeedback training (NFT) is a procedure that tries to shape a participant's pattern of brain activity by providing real-time feedback, often in the form of a video game combined with other sensory...
View ArticlePatent for Stimulation of Brodmann Areas 1-48 and all other structures
Fig. 1 (Roskams-Edriset al., 2017). The number of patents implicating specific brain regions has risen from 1976 to the mid 2010s. Results were obtained by searching The Lens patent database...
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A brain-enhancement amusement park mockumentary
“There was a level of undefined brain activity, about 30% higher, than the kids who stayed on the ground.”The Centrifuge Brain Project is an awesome short film by Till Nowak, featuring a deadpan...
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What's Popular at #CNS2017?
Memory wins again!Word cloud for 835 poster titles at CNS 2017.The 2017 Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual meeting will start tomorrow, March 25. To no one's surprise, memory is the most popular...
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What are the Big Ideas in Cognitive Neuroscience?
This year, the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute (CNI) and the Max-Planck-Society organized a symposium on Big Ideas in Cognitive Neuroscience. I enjoyed this fun forum organized by David Poeppel and...
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The Big Ideas in Cognitive Neuroscience, Explained
Are emergent properties really for losers? Why are architectures important? What are “mirror neuron ensembles” anyway? My last post presented an idiosyncratic distillation of the Big Ideas in Cognitive...
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Looking for Empathy in All the Wrong Places: Bizarre Cases of Factitious...
art by Zdzisław BeksińskiFactitious disorder is a rare psychiatric condition where an individual deliberately induces or fabricates an ailment because of a desire to fulfill the role of a sick person....
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Gaslighting in the Medical Literature
Have you felt that your sense of reality has been challenged lately? That the word “truth” has no meaning any more? Does the existence of alternative facts make you question your own sanity? In modern...
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Terrorism and the Implicit Association Test
Induced Stereotyping?Imagine that you're riding on a very crowded bus in a busy urban area in the US. You get on during a shift change, when a new driver takes over for the old one. The new driver...
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