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Deconstructing the most sensationalistic recent findings in Human Brain Imaging, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Psychopharmacology
The Neurocritic
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- December 11, 2010
- 01:16 PM
- 3,403 views
Perspectives on Psychological Science: Blogs Don't Exist
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience ExplanationsThe previous post, Voodoo Correlations: Two Years Later, was a retrospective on the neuroimaging methods paper that was widely discussed in the blogosphere before it was considered "officially" published (Vul et al., 2009). The article, a controversial critique of the statistical analyses used by fMRI investigators in social neuroscience, made its initial appearance on Ed Vul's website once it was accepted by Perspectives in Psychological Sciences........ Read more »
Beck, D. (2010) The Appeal of the Brain in the Popular Press. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(6), 762-766. DOI: 10.1177/1745691610388779
- December 15, 2011
- 12:51 AM
- 2,739 views
Born This Way?
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
A group of investigators from the University of Iowa have published a case report about a 14 year old boy with severe antisocial behavior (Boes et al., 2011):He is aggressive, manipulative, and callous; features consistent with psychopathy. Other problems include: egocentricity, impulsivity, hyperactivity, lack of empathy, lack of respect for authority, impaired moral judgment, an inability to plan ahead, and poor frustration tolerance.MRI findings revealed a small congenital malformation in his........ Read more »
Boes, A., Hornaday Grafft, A., Joshi, C., Chuang, N., Nopoulos, P., & Anderson, S. (2011) Behavioral effects of congenital ventromedial prefrontal cortex malformation. BMC Neurology, 11(1), 151. DOI: 10.1186/1471-2377-11-151
- June 24, 2010
- 05:03 AM
- 2,137 views
Suffering from the pain of social rejection? Feel better with TYLENOL®
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
It's not just for headaches anymore! The active ingredient in TYLENOL® (acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol) has been shown to ease the pain of social rejection. Wouldn't it be great if you could pop an over-the-counter medication to lessen the hurt of being excluded from that grad student party? Of being ostracized by all your old friends? Even disowned by your family? The journal article, which was promoted by press release six months ago, has finally appeared online (Dewall et al., 2010........ Read more »
Dewall CN, Macdonald G, Webster GD, Masten CL, Baumeister RF, Powell C, Combs D, Schurtz DR, Stillman TF, Tice DM.... (2010) Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain: Behavioral and Neural Evidence. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. PMID: 20548058
Edward Vul, Christine Harris, Piotr Winkielman, . (2009) Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
- March 12, 2010
- 03:35 AM
- 2,117 views
Friston is Freudian
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Professor Karl Friston is one of the most prominent (and prolific) researchers in the field of neuroimaging. His contributions to methodological development in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are immense:He invented statistical parametric mapping; SPM is an international standard for analysing imaging data and rests on the general linear model and random field theory (developed with Keith Worsley). In 1994, his group developed voxel-based morphometry. VBM detects differences in n........ Read more »
Carhart-Harris, R., & Friston, K. (2010) The default-mode, ego-functions and free-energy: a neurobiological account of Freudian ideas. Brain. DOI: 10.1093/brain/awq010
- October 23, 2010
- 08:29 PM
- 2,093 views
Celebrity Neurostigma
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Celebrity SPECT scan from rehab patientCelebrity Rehab is an American TV reality show on VH1 that exploits the addictions of the rich and C- or D-List famous.“I thought REAL doctors talked to patients in offices behind closed doors.”-Lindsay Lohan [who reportedly turned down six figures to appear 0n the show]Privacy? Confidentiality? Those rights don't apply to the alcoholic and drug-addicted characters who appear on television and other public media outlets as a form of entertainment. How m........ Read more »
Adinoff, B., & Devous, M. (2010) Scientifically Unfounded Claims in Diagnosing and Treating Patients. American Journal of Psychiatry, 167(5), 598-598. DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2010.10020157
- April 29, 2011
- 08:44 AM
- 2,073 views
Mental Imagery and the Right Parietal Lobe in OCD
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental illness characterized by unwanted and intrusive thoughts, feelings, or ideas (obsessions), and ritualized behaviors (compulsions) the individual feels driven to perform in order to alleviate the disturbing nature of the obsessions. It is a major anxiety disorder classified in Axis I of the DSM-IV, which can be disabling to those who suffer with it.The specific symptoms of OCD can include fear of contamination (from germs and physical contact with........ Read more »
Koçak, O., Özpolat, A., Atbaşoğlu, C., & Çiçek, M. (2011) Cognitive control of a simple mental image in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder. Brain and Cognition. DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2011.03.020
- July 2, 2010
- 08:43 PM
- 2,038 views
Living and Forgetting
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
And I'll be easyLike living and forgettingAnd if I pick you upI'll be sure to let you down-Living and Forgetting, Glasstown (mp3)Forgetting Emotional Information Is HardOur memory for emotional events is generally better than our memory of neutral events. This is a key issue in developing treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder. How do we rid ourselves of unpleasant memories? In structured laboratory environments, the best way to forget is intentional inhibition during the encoding phase,........ Read more »
Nowicka, A., Marchewka, A., Jednorog, K., Tacikowski, P., & Brechmann, A. (2010) Forgetting of Emotional Information Is Hard: An fMRI Study of Directed Forgetting. Cerebral Cortex. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhq117
- April 9, 2011
- 02:36 AM
- 2,031 views
Liberals Are Conflicted and Conservatives Are Afraid
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
This sums up the basic conclusion of a new study on political orientation and brain structure by Ryota Kanai, Tom Feilden, Colin Firth and Geraint Rees in the journal Current Biology. Yes, that Colin Firth...Colin Firth's Speech during the 2011 Academy Awards. Firth won Best Actor for The King's Speech.Why are Colin Firth and Tom Feilden, both listed with BBC Radio 4 affiliations, authors on this paper? Let's go back to Tuesday, 28 December 2010 and two pieces that appeared on the BBC website.Po........ Read more »
Ryota Kanai, Tom Feilden, Colin Firth, Geraint Rees. (2011) Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults. Current Biology. info:/10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.017
- April 11, 2010
- 10:27 PM
- 1,985 views
"Sleeping Beauty Paraphilia" and Body Image Disturbance After Brain Injury
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Brain injuries caused by strokes, tumors or head trauma can, on occasion, result in Unusual Changes in Sexuality, as discussed in an earlier blog post. A new case report by Bianchi-Demicheli et al. (2010) describes a unique paraphilia1 in a married 34 year old man. The authors called it Sleeping Beauty paraphilia:This [man] felt sexually aroused from seeing sleeping women as well as from taking care of their hands and nails while they were asleep.The patient came to the attention of the authors ........ Read more »
Bianchi-Demicheli F, Rollini C, Lovblad K, & Ortigue S. (2010) "Sleeping Beauty paraphilia": deviant desire in the context of bodily self-image disturbance in a patient with a fronto-parietal traumatic brain injury. Medical science monitor : international medical journal of experimental and clinical research, 16(2). PMID: 20110923
- July 19, 2010
- 07:57 AM
- 1,968 views
Tales of Passion and Disgust
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Robert Mapplethorpe - St. SebastianThe previous post (Pleasure or Pain?) described the visual stimuli and behavioral results (subjective emotional ratings) from an experiment examining brain activity in response to pictures from four categories: neutral, disgust-inducing, erotic, and sadomasochistic (Stark et al., 2005). The participants were 24 adults, 12 of whom identified as having sadomasochistic sexual preferences (SM) and 12 without (non-SM).Some of the results were of no surprise to an........ Read more »
STARK, R., SCHIENLE, A., GIROD, C., WALTER, B., KIRSCH, P., BLECKER, C., OTT, U., SCHAFER, A., SAMMER, G., & ZIMMERMANN, M. (2005) Erotic and disgust-inducing pictures—Differences in the hemodynamic responses of the brain. Biological Psychology, 70(1), 19-29. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2004.11.014
- May 8, 2010
- 06:53 PM
- 1,963 views
Motivating a Cumulative Cognitive Neuroscience
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Why are large-scale structured databases and meta-analyses important to advance the field of human brain mapping? One reason is that individual functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies can be notoriously unreliable and underpowered (Bennett & Miller, 2010; Fliessbach et al., 2010; Kriegeskorte et al., 2009; Vul et al., 2009). At the recent CNS 2010 Annual Meeting, symposium organizer Dr. Tal Yarkoni gave the first talk in a session on the value of a cumulative cognitive neurosc........ Read more »
Yarkoni, T. (2009) Big Correlations in Little Studies: Inflated fMRI Correlations Reflect Low Statistical Power-Commentary on Vul et al. (2009). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(3), 294-298. DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01127.x
- May 19, 2010
- 05:35 AM
- 1,944 views
Towards a Focal Consensus in Cognitive Neuroscience: Databases and Meta-Analyses
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Moving right along with our timely, fast-paced, cutting edge blog coverage from the CNS 2010 Annual Meeting [held last month], the first symposium urged the field to advance beyond the current piecemeal single-study approach to neuroimaging by moving Towards a cumulative science of human brain function.1 Building comprehensive, structured, and searchable databases (Van Essen, 2009) and using meta-analytic tools (Wager et al., 2009) were proposed to be key methods aimed at achieving this goal......... Read more »
Van Essen, D. (2009) Lost in localization — But found with foci?!. NeuroImage, 48(1), 14-17. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.05.050
Wager, T., Lindquist, M., Nichols, T., Kober, H., & Van Snellenberg, J. (2009) Evaluating the consistency and specificity of neuroimaging data using meta-analysis. NeuroImage, 45(1). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.10.061
- August 7, 2010
- 11:14 PM
- 1,935 views
Bad News for the Genetics of Personality
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
CREDIT: RYAN SNOOK (from Holden, 2008).The latest search for genetic variants that underlie differences in personality traits has drawn a blank (Verweij et al., 2010). The researchers conducted a genome-wide association study using personality ratings from Cloninger's temperament scales in a population of 5,117 Australian individuals:Participants' scores on Harm Avoidance, Novelty Seeking, Reward Dependence, and Persistence were tested for association with 1,252,387 genetic markers. We also perf........ Read more »
Verweij, K., Zietsch, B., Medland, S., Gordon, S., Benyamin, B., Nyholt, D., McEvoy, B., Sullivan, P., Heath, A., & Madden, P. (2010) A genome-wide association study of Cloninger's Temperament scales: Implications for the evolutionary genetics of personality. Biological Psychology. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.07.018
- January 28, 2011
- 07:23 PM
- 1,814 views
White Matter Differences in Pre-Op Transsexuals Should NOT be the Basis for Childhood Interventions
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Diagram showing principal systems of association fibers in the human brain. The superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) is labeled at the center top (marked by purple arrows).New Scientist covered two journal articles by Rametti and colleagues (2010, 2011), a group of Spanish researchers and clinicians affiliated with Unidad Trastorno Identidad de Género [Gender Identity Disorder Unit]. Using the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) method, they initially wanted to identify any sex differences in the ........ Read more »
Rametti, G., Carrillo, B., Gómez-Gil, E., Junque, C., Segovia, S., Gomez, �., & Guillamon, A. (2011) White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A diffusion tensor imaging study. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 45(2), 199-204. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.05.006
Rametti, G., Carrillo, B., Gómez-Gil, E., Junque, C., Zubiarre-Elorza, L., Segovia, S., Gomez, �., & Guillamon, A. (2010) The microstructure of white matter in male to female transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A DTI study. Journal of Psychiatric Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.007
- September 6, 2008
- 10:32 PM
- 1,277 views
Pain & Paintings: Beholding Beauty Reduces Pain Perception and Laser Evoked Potentials
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
-Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2Neuroesthetics, a term coined by Semir Zeki, is "the attempt to use neuroscience to understand art and aesthetic behaviour" (as defined in an excellent overview by BRAINETHICS). Some would say the venture is anathema, that reductionistic explanations of the sublime are misguided at best and destructive at worst. Others hold that since all qualia emanate from the brain, a neuroscientific approach is the only true way to understand aest........ Read more »
M TOMMASO, M SARDARO, & P LIVREA. (2008) Aesthetic value of paintings affects pain thresholds☆. Consciousness and Cognition. DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.07.002
- August 25, 2008
- 04:08 AM
- 1,211 views
Borderline … feels like I'm goin' to lose my mind
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
No, the 80s Madonna song isn't really about Borderline Personality Disorder. But a new study in Science (King-Casas et al., 2008) makes me feel like I'm goin' to lose my mind. Or more precisely, makes me exhibit two of nine DSM-IV-TR criteria:6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). 8. Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent........ Read more »
B King-Casas, C Sharp, L Lomax-Bream, T Lohrenz, P Fonagy, & P Montague. (2008) The Rupture and Repair of Cooperation in Borderline Personality Disorder. Science, 321(5890), 806-810. DOI: 10.1126/science.1156902
- March 29, 2009
- 03:32 AM
- 1,154 views
One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
And the ones that mother gives you Don't do anything at all Go ask Alice When she's ten feet tallWhite Rabbit ---Jefferson AirplaneNo, we're not really discussing hallucinogenic drugs today (despite the psychedelic reference). The real question for today is this: Does the wakefulness drug modafinil (Provigil) lessen the weight gain caused by atypical antipsychotics? Not really (Roerig et al., 2009), despite what the Elsevier press release tells us:Combating Weight Gain Caused by Antipsychotic........ Read more »
Roerig, J., Steffen, K., Mitchell, J., Crosby, R., & Gosnell, B. (2009) An Exploration of the Effect of Modafinil on Olanzapine Associated Weight Gain in Normal Human Subjects. Biological Psychiatry, 65(7), 607-613. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.10.037
- November 12, 2008
- 05:04 AM
- 1,148 views
Superior Auditory Signal Detection Abilities in Late-Stage Huntington's Disease
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Figure 1 (Ruocco et al., 2006). Samples of coronal and sagittal magnetic resonance imaging from a patient with Huntington's disease (top row) and a normal control (bottom row) showing the outlines of caudate and putamen (left), cerebral (center) and cerebellar volumes (right).Huntington's disease is an inherited, autosomal dominant, neurodegenerative disorder. Although primarily viewed as a movement disorder characterized by uncontrollable body movements (chorea), there is also a marked decli........ Read more »
C. Beste, C. Saft, O. Gunturkun, & M. Falkenstein. (2008) Increased Cognitive Functioning in Symptomatic Huntington's Disease As Revealed by Behavioral and Event-Related Potential Indices of Auditory Sensory Memory and Attention. Journal of Neuroscience, 28(45), 11695-11702. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2659-08.2008
- January 5, 2009
- 08:49 AM
- 1,108 views
Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
The end of 2008 brought us the tabloid headline, Scan Scandal Hits Social Neuroscience. As initially reported by Mind Hacks, a new "bombshell of a paper" (Vul et al., 2009) questioned the implausibly high correlations observed in some fMRI studies in Social Neuroscience. A new look at the analytic methods revealed that over half of the sampled papers used faulty techniques to obtain their results.Edward Vul, the first author, deserves a tremendous amount of credit (and a round of applause) f........ Read more »
Edward Vul, Christine Harris, Piotr Winkielman, . (2009) Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
- November 27, 2009
- 04:24 PM
- 1,069 views
Does "Internet Addiction" Really Shrink Your Brain?
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Internet addiction is a murky and controversial disorder that is the subject of intense debate over whether it should be included in the new DSM-V. Here are the proposed diagnostic criteria as developed by Dr. Kimberly Young:Do you feel preoccupied with the Internet (think about previous online activity or anticipate next online session)?Do you feel the need to use the Internet with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve satisfaction?Have you repeatedly made unsuccessful efforts to contr........ Read more »
Zhou, Y., Lin, F., Du, Y., Qin, L., Zhao, Z., Xu, J., & Lei, H. (2009) Gray matter abnormalities in Internet addiction: A voxel-based morphometry study. European Journal of Radiology. DOI: 10.1016/j.ejrad.2009.10.025
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