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Deconstructing the most sensationalistic recent findings in Human Brain Imaging, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Psychopharmacology
The Neurocritic
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- June 13, 2010
- 11:21 PM
- 982 views
The Unique Case of “50 First Dates” Amnesia
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Scene from 50 First Dates with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler.50 First Dates maintains a venerable movie tradition of portraying an amnesiac syndrome that bears no relation to any known neurological or psychiatric condition (Baxendale, 2004).That isn't true anymore...Smith et al. (2010) have recently reported an unusual case of functional, or psychogenic amnesia in which FL, a 51 year old woman with 15 years of education and average intelligence, cannot remember what happened to her from one da........ Read more »
Smith, C., Frascino, J., Kripke, D., McHugh, P., Treisman, G., & Squire, L. (2010) Losing memories overnight: A unique form of human amnesia. Neuropsychologia. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.05.025
- June 1, 2010
- 07:28 AM
- 548 views
Amygdala Vegetariana
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
In Short Cuts, the "vegetarians and vegans are more empathetic" neuroimaging article was mentioned in passing, but I didn't actually blog about it. However, there has been one thing [OK, more than one thing] bothering me about this paper... But first, a quick summary of the Methods which were rather straightforward.Filippi and colleagues (2010) recruited 20 omnivores, 19 vegetarians, and 20 vegans to participate in a study that examined their brain responses to images of human and animal suffer........ Read more »
Filippi, M., Riccitelli, G., Falini, A., Di Salle, F., Vuilleumier, P., Comi, G., & Rocca, M. (2010) The Brain Functional Networks Associated to Human and Animal Suffering Differ among Omnivores, Vegetarians and Vegans. PLoS ONE, 5(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010847
- May 27, 2010
- 02:08 AM
- 528 views
Short Cuts
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
There is way too much to blog about these days. I can't decide among these 3 new papers:Sometimes, Categorical Statements about Prefrontal Neurons Are Just Wrong(1) Earl K. Miller (2007) in The Prefrontal Cortex: Categories, Concepts, and Cognitive Control (PDF):There was virtually no category effect across the ITC [inferior temporal cortex] population and no examples of neurons whose activity showed the sharp across-distinction/within-category generalization that is the behavioral signature of ........ Read more »
Minamimoto T, Saunders RC, Richmond BJ. (2010) Monkeys Quickly Learn and Generalize Visual Categories without Lateral Prefrontal Cortex. Neuron, 66(4), 501-507. info:/10.1016/j.neuron.2010.04.010
- May 21, 2010
- 06:27 AM
- 626 views
Attentional bias and "gaydar"
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Global or Local? Gay or Eurotrash? Navon figure flanked by two game pieces from Gay or EUROtrash? the ultimate gaydar game!Believe it or not, there's an article in the new journal Frontiers in Cognition1 entitled "Sexual orientation biases attentional control: a possible gaydar mechanism" (Colzato et al., 2010). What is "gaydar"? And why on earth would one think of studying the allocation of attention to global and local visual perceptual features in relation to gaydar? Here's why:Individuals ........ Read more »
Colzato, L., van Hooidonk, L., van den Wildenberg, W., Harinck, F., & Hommel, B. (2010) Sexual orientation biases attentional control: a possible gaydar mechanism. Frontiers in Psychology. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00013
- May 19, 2010
- 05:35 AM
- 1,950 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
- May 12, 2010
- 08:10 AM
- 727 views
CASES OF INJURY OF THE HEAD, ACCOMPANIED BY LOSS OF BRAIN (oozing from the skull)
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
"Head-wound Hank", from Geek Orthodox.The 19th century archive of The Lancet1 is filled with simply delightful case reports. Who can resist the allure of early plastic surgery failures, such as RHINOPLASTIC OPERATION, PERFORMED BY M. LISFRANC, FOLLOWED BY DEATH? Or how about a Case of Local Tubercular Deposit on the Surface of the Brain, presented by Robert Dunn, Esq.? Finally, the tragic History of a Case of Hydrophobia, treated at the Hotel Dieu at Paris, by an injection of water into the ve........ Read more »
Dr. Sewall. (1828) CASES OF INJURY OF THE HEAD, ACCOMPANIED BY LOSS OF BRAIN. The Lancet, 10(265), 817. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(02)98130-4
- May 8, 2010
- 06:53 PM
- 1,971 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 5, 2010
- 05:36 AM
- 604 views
Mindscape explains life, mind, consciousness and happiness
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Conflict of interest: ABN, NJS and DRS are scientific co-founders of Mindscape Diagnostics, Inc.Special review article!AbstractWhat are mind, consciousness and happiness, in the fundamental context of life? We propose a convergent perspective (coupling evolutionary biology, genomics, neurobiology and clinical medicine) that could help us better understand what life, mind, consciousness and happiness are, as well as provides empirically testable practical implications.Well. So a speculative,........ Read more »
Niculescu III, A., Schork, N., & Salomon, D. (2010) Mindscape: A convergent perspective on life, mind, consciousness and happiness. Journal of Affective Disorders, 123(1-3), 1-8. DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2009.06.022
- April 27, 2010
- 02:55 PM
- 510 views
Training of Executive Control Functions: Negative Transfer and Far Transfer
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
The Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2010 Annual Meeting was held last week in Montreal, Québec. Unfortunately, many European registrants were unable to attend because of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. The meeting website has links to the PDFs for 67 of these "Volcano Posters".One of those unable to attend was Dr. Jonas Persson of Stockholm University. He was scheduled to speak in the final symposium of the conference, which was on control of executive control, or who controls the "controller" in........ Read more »
Persson, J., & Reuter-Lorenz, P. (2008) Gaining Control: Training Executive Function and Far Transfer of the Ability to Resolve Interference. Psychological Science, 19(9), 881-888. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02172.x
PERSSON, J., WELSH, K., JONIDES, J., & REUTER-LORENZ, P. (2007) Cognitive fatigue of executive processes: Interaction between interference resolution tasks. Neuropsychologia, 45(7), 1571-1579. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.12.007
- April 13, 2010
- 06:39 AM
- 581 views
Mirror Neurons Join Marilyn Monroe Neurons and Halle Berry Neurons in the Human Hippocampus
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Move over, Marilyn Monroe neurons and Halle Berry neurons... The cellular media darlings of action observation and action execution would like to join you in the human hippocampus and surrounding medial temporal lobe (MTL) areas critical for memory."What?" you say. "Direct evidence for the existence of mirror neurons has been obtained from single cell recordings in monkeys in specific brain regions. These include the ventral premotor cortex (area F5) and the inferior parietal lobule (Rizzolatti........ Read more »
Mukamel, R., Ekstrom, A., Kaplan, J., Iacoboni, M., & Fried, I. (2010) Single-Neuron Responses in Humans during Execution and Observation of Actions. Current Biology. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.02.045
Quian Quiroga, R., Kraskov, A., Koch, C., & Fried, I. (2009) Explicit Encoding of Multimodal Percepts by Single Neurons in the Human Brain. Current Biology, 19(15), 1308-1313. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.06.060
Quiroga, R., Reddy, L., Kreiman, G., Koch, C., & Fried, I. (2005) Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain. Nature, 435(7045), 1102-1107. DOI: 10.1038/nature03687
- April 11, 2010
- 10:27 PM
- 1,992 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
- April 2, 2010
- 06:07 PM
- 632 views
Professor of Literary Neuroimaging
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Haskins Laboratories - brain areas activated during reading.An unfocused and rambling article in the New York Times the other day was excited about the potential use of neuroimaging to revive the gloomy state of university literature departments. It also tried to convey the importance of evolutionary psychology in explaining fiction. The piece opened with Professor Lisa Zunshine discussing Phoebe's complex theory of mind in the sitcom Friends:(Follow closely now; this is about the science of Eng........ Read more »
Thierry, G., Martin, C., Gonzalez-Diaz, V., Rezaie, R., Roberts, N., & Davis, P. (2008) Event-related potential characterisation of the Shakespearean functional shift in narrative sentence structure. NeuroImage, 40(2), 923-931. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.12.006
- March 28, 2010
- 12:39 AM
- 647 views
Paranormal Seizure Activity
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Scene from Paranormal ActivityAfter a young, middle class couple moves into what seems like a typical suburban “starter” tract house, they become increasingly disturbed by a presence that may or may not be demonic but is certainly most active in the middle of the night.Especially when they sleep. Or try to.A new case study in Cortex by neurologist Dr. Fabienne Picard (2010) reports on a patient who experienced unusual phenomena during epileptic seizures. She had the convincing sense that sev........ Read more »
Picard, F. (2010) Epileptic feeling of multiple presences in the frontal space. Cortex. DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2010.02.002
- March 24, 2010
- 07:22 PM
- 676 views
Voodoo and Type II: Debate between Piotr Winkielman and Matt Lieberman
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
"Voodoo correlations in social neuroscience" was the original title of a paper that first caused a stir in late December 2008, when a manuscript accepted by Perspectives on Psychological Science was made available on the authors' websites. Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler produced a "bombshell of a paper" that questioned the implausibly high correlations observed in some fMRI studies in the field of Social Neuroscience. Ed Vul et al. surveyed the authors of 54 papers to determine the an........ Read more »
Lieberman, M., Berkman, E., & Wager, T. (2009) Correlations in Social Neuroscience Aren't Voodoo: Commentary on Vul et al. (2009). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(3), 299-307. DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01128.x
- March 22, 2010
- 03:01 AM
- 575 views
A Bayesian Brain is a Freudian Brain
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Anna O.'s Default Mode. Anna O. is the famous patient whose case was included in Studies on Hysteria by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud. Midsagittal brain image (PALS cortical surface atlas, Van Essen 2005) shows resting state functional connectivity in three cortical networks: (i) dorsal attention system (DAS, blue); (ii) the salience system (light green); and (iii) the default mode network (orange). [Taken from Fig. 2 of Carhart-Harris & Friston 2010. Justin Vincent and Randy Buckner are ........ 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
- March 12, 2010
- 03:35 AM
- 2,123 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
- March 5, 2010
- 05:16 AM
- 687 views
Depression's Cognitive Downside
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Author and blogger Jonah Lehrer has a lengthy (and controversial) essay in the Feb. 28 New York Times Magazine on Depression's Upside. The main idea, that depression has cognitive and evolutionary advantages, was largely based on a review paper by Andrews and Thomson (2009). In it, they put forth the analytical rumination hypothesis: depression is an evolved response to complex problems, and focusing on them to the exclusion of everything else is beneficial. Lehrer's piece generated an outpourin........ Read more »
Baune, B., Miller, R., McAfoose, J., Johnson, M., Quirk, F., & Mitchell, D. (2010) The role of cognitive impairment in general functioning in major depression. Psychiatry Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2008.12.001
Åsa Hammar, Guro Årdal. (2009) Cognitive functioning in major depression – a summary. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. info:/
- March 3, 2010
- 01:04 AM
- 561 views
Unusual Headaches
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Headache, by Robert Magginetti (Tranquility Base)In the last post we learned about Alice in Wonderland syndrome, a rare phenomenon involving distortions of visual perception and body image, most often caused by migraines. Although a specialty practice in headache might seem dull [so to speak] at first glance to those interested in behavioral neurology, unusual and colorfully-named types of headaches can make things more interesting. In Case Studies of Uncommon Headaches (2006), Dr. Randolph Evan........ Read more »
EVANS, R. (2006) Case Studies of Uncommon Headaches. Neurologic Clinics, 24(2), 347-362. DOI: 10.1016/j.ncl.2006.01.006
- February 26, 2010
- 05:47 AM
- 594 views
Did Artist Käthe Kollwitz Have Alice in Wonderland Syndrome?
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
"Rare migraineurs have strange symptoms where the diagnosis may be lurking just down a rabbit hole" (Evans & Rolak, 2004).Alice in Wonderland syndrome is an unusual perceptual phenomenon most often caused by migraine headaches, but also seen in association with epilepsy and Epstein-Barr virus. The most well-known symptoms are: Alteration of body image: the sizes of parts of the body are perceived incorrectly. Alteration of visual perception: the size........ Read more »
Drysdale, G. (2009) Kaethe Kollwitz (1867-1945): the artist who may have suffered from Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. Journal of Medical Biography, 17(2), 106-110. DOI: 10.1258/jmb.2008.008042
- February 16, 2010
- 02:06 AM
- 571 views
Vegas casino develops technique for unobtrusive radiofrequency ablation of the amygdala
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the radiofrequency ablation device, adapted from surgical oncology procedures to apply a focal high frequency alternating current to the region of the amygdala.Alternatively, a gamma knife-like TMS application, slyly incorporated into a metal detector, temporarily deactivates the amygdala when each customer enters the casino.Figure 2. Adjustable transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) helmet incorporated into a Metor 200 Walk-Thru Metal Detector.What was the inspir........ Read more »
De Martino, B., Camerer, C., & Adolphs, R. (2010) Amygdala damage eliminates monetary loss aversion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910230107
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