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Neuroskeptic
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Neuroskeptic_Discover
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- May 21, 2013
- 05:51 PM
- 26 views
A Machine to Weigh the Soul
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Newly discovered papers have shed light on a fascinating episode in the history of neuroscience: Weighing brain activity with the balance The story of the early Italian neuroscientist Dr Angelo Mosso and his ‘human circulation balance’ is an old one – I remember reading about it as a student, in the introductory bit of a [...]... Read more »
Sandrone S, Bacigaluppi M, Galloni MR, Cappa SF, Moro A, Catani M, Filippi M, Monti MM, Perani D, & Martino G. (2013) Weighing brain activity with the balance: Angelo Mosso's original manuscripts come to light. Brain : a journal of neurology. PMID: 23687118
- May 19, 2013
- 09:29 AM
- 10 views
Fantastic Distortions of Perception
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
A new paper in the journal European Neurology reports on a remarkable case of perceptual distortion that’ll please any connoisseur of neurogothic: A 48-year-old woman woke up one morning without knowing where she was. She recognized her husband and finally realized that she was at home, but reported that she felt that all surroundings appeared [...]... Read more »
Delgado MG, & Bogousslavsky J. (2013) 'Distorteidolias' - Fantastic Perceptive Distortion. A New, Pure Dorsomedial Thalamic Syndrome. European neurology, 70(1), 6-9. PMID: 23652461
- May 12, 2013
- 05:49 AM
- 50 views
Visualizing the Connectome
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Last year, I blogged about a new and very pretty way of displaying the data about the human ‘connectome’ – the wiring between different parts of the brain. But there are many beautiful ways of visualizing the brain’s connections, as neuroscientists Daniel Margulies and colleagues of Leipzig discuss in a colourful paper showcasing these techniques. Here, [...]... Read more »
Margulies DS, Böttger J, Watanabe A, & Gorgolewski KJ. (2013) Visualizing the Human Connectome. NeuroImage. PMID: 23660027
- May 7, 2013
- 01:38 PM
- 20 views
Why Are Children Given Antipsychotics?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Prescriptions of antipsychotic (aka neuroleptic) drugs in North American children and adolescents have been rising rapidly in recent years. But why? Gabrielle Carlson of Stony Brook Children’s Hospital offers her thoughts in a brief paper: The Dramatic Rise in Neuroleptic Use In Children: Why Do We Do It and What Does It Buy Us? Carlson [...]... Read more »
Carlson GA. (2013) The dramatic rise in neuroleptic use in children: why do we do it and what does it buy us? Theories from inpatient data 1988-2010. Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology, 23(3), 144-7. PMID: 23607407
- May 3, 2013
- 05:41 PM
- 25 views
Brain Voodoo Goes Electric
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Four years ago, neuroscientists became aware of an ominous-sounding manuscript entitled “Voodoo Correlations In Social Neuroscience”. This piece was eventually published under a more prosaic name but it still hit home, with nearly 500 citations so far. To me, this paper marked the start of a new era of ‘critical’ (in the proper sense of [...]... Read more »
Kilner, J. (2013) Bias in a common EEG and MEG statistical analysis and how to avoid it. Clinical Neurophysiology. DOI: 10.1016/j.clinph.2013.03.024
- April 27, 2013
- 09:20 AM
- 23 views
The (sigh) Psychopath Brain
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Neuroscience has revealed that Lady Gaga’s song Born This Way is probably about a psychopath. Or something. HuffPo says - Psychopathic Brain ‘Lacks Basic Hardwiring’ To Feel Compassion, Research Suggests Meanwhile, the Daily Mail report - Is this proof evil killers are born not made? Psychopaths’ brains ‘lack basic wiring that triggers empathy’ Last week [...]... Read more »
Decety J, Skelly LR, & Kiehl KA. (2013) Brain Response to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals With Psychopathy. JAMA psychiatry (Chicago, Ill.), 1-8. PMID: 23615636
- April 18, 2013
- 04:04 PM
- 43 views
fMRI: More Voxels, More Problems?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
A new paper could prompt a rethink of a technique that’s become very hot in neuroscience lately: Confounds in multivariate pattern analysis The authors are Princetonians Michael T. Todd and colleagues, and the method in question is multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA). I’ve written about this before and there’s a blog dedicated to it. MVPA searches [...]... Read more »
Todd, M., Nystrom, L., & Cohen, J. (2013) Confounds in multivariate pattern analysis: Theory and rule representation case study. NeuroImage. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.03.039
- April 14, 2013
- 09:56 AM
- 105 views
The Man With Uncrossed Eyes
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
“GB” is a 28 year old man with a curious condition: his optic nerves are in the wrong place. Most people have an optic chiasm, a crossroads where half of the signals from each eye cross over the midline, in such a way that each half of the brain gets information from one side of [...]... Read more »
Davies-Thompson, J., Scheel, M., Jane Lanyon, L., & Sinclair Barton, J. (2013) Functional organisation of visual pathways in a patient with no optic chiasm. Neuropsychologia. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.03.014
- April 8, 2013
- 08:18 AM
- 40 views
Anonymity In Science – New Neuroskeptic Paper
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Six months ago, I proudly announced Blogging’s First Academic Paper. That was when Perspectives in Psychological Science became the first scientific journal to publish an article under a blogging pseudonym (an adaptation of this post). But while the blogging bit was new, many scientists have published work anonymously or pseudonymously before… as I explain in [...]... Read more »
Neuroskeptic. (2013) Anonymity in Science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.03.004
- April 7, 2013
- 05:45 AM
- 110 views
The Brain, Speaking In Tongues?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Glossolalia – ‘speaking in tongues‘ – is a practice best known in association with ‘Charismatic’ branches of Christianity. Practitioners, often as part of religious services, produce streams of speech which correspond to no known language. But could glossolalia sometimes be associated with a brain abnormality? Here’s an interesting case report: Temporal lobe discharges and glossolalia [...]... Read more »
Reeves, R., Kose, S., & Abubakr, A. (2013) Temporal lobe discharges and glossolalia. Neurocase, 1-5. DOI: 10.1080/13554794.2013.770874
- April 5, 2013
- 08:16 AM
- 103 views
“Genetic Test for Autism” Criticized
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Last year, there was quite a bit of excitement over a “Genetic Test To Predict Risk for Autism”. The test was revealed in a paper in Molecular Psychiatry, by Australian researchers Skafidas and colleagues. The claim was that a statistical classifier could spot patterns of genetic variation that differed between people with autism and healthy [...]... Read more »
Belgard, T., Jankovic, I., Lowe, J., & Geschwind, D. (2013) Population structure confounds autism genetic classifier. Molecular Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1038/mp.2013.34
- March 26, 2013
- 03:36 PM
- 133 views
Brain Activation: Does 2 2 = 4?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
An interesting Journal of Neuroscience paper just out argues that Spontaneous and Task-Evoked Brain Activity Negatively Interact. If true, this could be explosive, because a lot of neuroscience is built on the assumption that those two things don’t interact. So what’s going on? We know that the brain is active all of the time. Even [...]... Read more »
He BJ. (2013) Spontaneous and task-evoked brain activity negatively interact. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 33(11), 4672-82. PMID: 23486941
- March 25, 2013
- 04:00 PM
- 156 views
Tea Party Brain Surgeon Wants To Shave You
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
I’m currently researching a piece on politics and neurosurgery, and I just came across this amusing snippet. David McKalip MD is a brain surgeon from Florida. He attained 15 minutes of infamy in 2009 when he deemed a virulently racially insensitive of Barack Obama to be “funny stuff” and emailed it to some Tea Party [...]... Read more »
McKalip D. (2013) Letter to the editor: shaving. Journal of neurosurgery, 118(3), 701-2. PMID: 23259824
- March 18, 2013
- 06:07 AM
- 156 views
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: A Loud Warning
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is popular tool in neuroscience. A TMS kit is essentially a portable, powerful electromagnet, called a ‘coil’. Switching on the coil causes it to emit a magnetic pulse, and this magnetic field is strong enough to evoke electrical activity in the brain. So, by placing the TMS coil next to someone’s [...]... Read more »
Duecker F, & Sack AT. (2013) Pre-stimulus sham TMS facilitates target detection. PloS one, 8(3). PMID: 23469232
- March 15, 2013
- 10:30 AM
- 73 views
When Does Depression Become A Disease?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
When does sadness cease to be a normal emotional response, and become a mental disorder? Can psychiatrists ‘draw the line’ between healthy and sick moods, and if so, where? An important new study offers an answer: When does depression become a disorder? Using recurrence rates to evaluate the validity of proposed changes in major depression [...]... Read more »
Wakefield JC, & Schmitz MF. (2013) When does depression become a disorder? Using recurrence rates to evaluate the validity of proposed changes in major depression diagnostic thresholds. World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 12(1), 44-52. PMID: 23471801
- March 11, 2013
- 01:20 PM
- 308 views
Is Food Addictive?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Can food be addictive? Is obesity sometimes a form of substance abuse? In a new paper, neuroscientist and Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Nora Volkow, muses on ‘The Addictive Dimensionality of Obesity’ Volkow and her coauthors start out with a disclaimer – “we do not claim that obesity is the result [...]... Read more »
Volkow ND, Wang GJ, Tomasi D, & Baler RD. (2013) The Addictive Dimensionality of Obesity. Biological psychiatry. PMID: 23374642
- March 9, 2013
- 12:06 PM
- 152 views
More Bad News For Voice “Lie Detection”
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
“Layered Voice Analysis” (LVA) is a controversial technology promoted as a tool for helping detect stress and other emotions by analysis of the human voice. According to the company behind the method, Nemesysco: LVA technology enables better understanding of your suspect’s mental state and emotional makeup at a given moment by detecting the emotional cues [...]... Read more »
Horvath F, McCloughan J, Weatherman D, & Slowik S. (2013) The Accuracy of Auditors' and Layered Voice Analysis (LVA) Operators' Judgments of Truth and Deception During Police Questioning*. Journal of forensic sciences. PMID: 23406506
- March 3, 2013
- 05:48 AM
- 163 views
Windfarms, Wifi and Self-Fulfilling Myths
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
Modern life is toxic. …allegedly. It’s not. But a lot of people think so. Driven by media and online coverage of the idea, many believe that things like wifi and cell-phone signals are making them ill. There’s no good evidence that such ‘electrosmog‘ causes health problems. From what we know of physics, it’s most unlikely [...]... Read more »
Witthöft M, & Rubin GJ. (2013) Are media warnings about the adverse health effects of modern life self-fulfilling? An experimental study on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF). Journal of psychosomatic research, 74(3), 206-12. PMID: 23438710
- February 25, 2013
- 04:17 PM
- 84 views
Vladimir Lenin’s Stoney Brain
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about Einstein’s brain. Less well-known, but equally fascinating, is the case of Lenin‘s cerebrum – for just like Albert, the founder of the Soviet Union was fated to end up as a series of preserved slices. Lenin died of a series of strokes at the young age of [...]... Read more »
Vinters, H., Lurie, L., & Mackowiak, P. (2013) Vessels of Stone: Lenin's "Circulatory Disturbance of the Brain". Human Pathology. DOI: 10.1016/j.humpath.2012.11.017
- February 24, 2013
- 08:21 AM
- 195 views
“Know Thyself” Is A Lot To Ask
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
I’ve written before about the limitations of self-report measures in psychiatry. It’s an issue that’s been recognized for decades but, unfortunately, self-report seems to be more popular than ever. I suspect that this is because it’s far and away the easiest and cheapest way of getting data, and hence publications, in a great many fields [...]... Read more »
Miller RM, Haws NA, Murphy-Tafiti JL, Hubner CD, Curtis TD, Rupp ZW, Smart TA, & Thompson LM. (2013) Are Self-Ratings of Functional Difficulties Objective or Subjective?. Applied neuropsychology. Adult. PMID: 23383984
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