Distortions 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...
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Patent 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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The Big Bad Brain
I’m high, staring at the ceilingSending my love, what a wonderful feelingWhat comes next, I see a lightI’m along for the ride as I’m taking flight-Sir Sly, HighPlus a cool brain tattoo to boot. AND the...
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What Is Thought?
Is that some sort of trick question? Everyone knows what thought is. Or do they... My questions for you today are:How do you define “a thought” (yes, a single thought)? Where is the boundary from one...
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Role of the Vestibular System in the Construction of Self
How do we construct a unified self-identity as a thinking and feeling person inhabiting a body, separate and unique from other entities? A “self” with the capacity for autobiographical memory and...
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Olfactory Deterrence
A military aide carries the “nuclear football” aboard the Marine One helicopter in which President Trump was waiting to depart the South Lawn of the White House on Feb. 3. (Michael Reynolds/European...
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Smell as a Weapon, and Odor as Entertainment
The use of smell as a weapon, or a deterrent, was explored in a fanciful way in my previous post on nuclear threats. While poking around the literature, I found a fascinating unclassified document from...
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Survival and Grief
There is no transcendent moment of growth or meaning in watching a childhood friend die of cancer. There is no learning experience that will somehow make me stronger. Only horror, helplessness, loss,...
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Neuroexistentialism: A Brain in Search of Meaning
[image from Huth et al., 2016]No, not “meaning” in the semantic sense... “Neuroexistentialism” is the angst that some humans feel upon realizing that the mind and spirit have an entirely physical...
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BROADEN Trial of DBS for Treatment-Resistant Depression No Better than Sham
Website for the BROADEN™ study, which was terminated bythe sponsor.A multi-site, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for treatment-resistant...
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The Devilish Side of Psychiatry
Final Destination 3 (2006)The devil always experienced malicious pleasure in imposing himself in neuropsychiatric nosologyOlry and Haines (2017) published a mischievous article in the Journal of the...
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