Dorothy Bishop writes, in her blog (HT Uta Frith): I was set off today by a report that “fMRI scans prove music is more emotionally stimulating if you listen with your eyes closed”. What’s wrong with that? Well… It seems every week we have another claim that brain scans have shown something about our cognitive or […]
Tag: fMRI
Torn-Up About Torn-up Money
If you have never watched someone rip up large amounts of cash, you may be unsure as to how the different parts of your brain would respond in the event that you did see someone tearing valuable banknotes into tiny, worthless shreds. A new study may help you how to predict what would happen. The […]
Pinpointing the telepathy centre in the brain
Some believe in the power of telepathy. Some believe in the power of fMRI. And putting the two together led a team of experimenters from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, and the Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation, Bangalore, India to perform : “Probably the first fMRI study to analyse […]
What, if anything, is crazy about this?
This month’s “What, if anything, is crazy about this?” essay poses a complex challenge. Write a clear, sensible essay telling what, if anything is crazy about the following study: “Effet de l’écoute de mots déjà hallucinés chez des sujets schizophrènes en rémission : étude de six cas par la résonance magnétique nucléaire fonctionnelle” [Effects of […]
“in a brain scanner… stocks & bonds”
This week’s Phrase of the Week is: “participants were placed in a brain scanner while they chose stocks and bonds“. The phrase appears in a Feb 1, 2010 Carolyn Johnson article in the Boston Globe. The article describes the study “Variability in Nucleus Accumbens Activity Mediates Age-Related Suboptimal Financial Risk Taking,” Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin, Camelia […]