Scientology Tropes Enter Mainstream Neuroscience?

via @mallelisAt the literary/pop culture/feminist/humor blog known as The Toast, the hilarious Mallory Ortberg has skewered those ubiquitous ads from brain training behemoth Lumosity.The Five Stages Of LumosityStage I – Initiation. . .Friend, are you troubled by persistent waking blackouts? Do you tremble and shudder and flicker out of consciousness when asked to recall basic facts about your acquaintances? Does your right eye fill with blood whenever you have to try to remember your PIN? Let Lumosity patch over those mysterious missing blank spots in your sick and addled mind. “Lumosity: Improving your brain through the science of neuroplasticity, but in a way that just feels like games.”Lumosity: you can trust us. It doesn’t hurt. It’s normal. It feels normal. Good and normal. Just like a game. Won’t feel a thing. It’s normal, and you’re normal, and your brain is working better now than it was before. Before was bad. Now is good.Then the user progresses to Stage II – The Audit,  Stage III - Saturation,  Stage IV – Synergy/Assimilation, and finally to...Stage V – Full ComplianceThe Golden Age of Tech IIStage V features a series of screenshots taken from a flabbergasting Scientology promotional video (discussed on Reddit).Ortberg's post is really quite brilliant — the cult-like following, the testimonials from humans ascended to a higher plane, the suspiciously vague ad campaigns that use suspiciously vague terms like "neuroplasticity".In...

Source: The Neurocritic - July 13, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs