Why are " Love Languages " so popular, when they're completely inaccurate?
I joined an online dating site a few months ago.1 Besides being asked about my sun, moon, and rising signs (?), I was puzzled by the following question.2My love language? I ' m supposed to choose only one answer? Gary Chapman has been apastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC for 50 years. In 1992, he published a book based on his experience of advising heterosexual couples on the best ways to have a harmonious marriage. His notion of 5 Love Languages is based on conservative Christian gender roles, although subsequent editions are“less blatantly misogynistic.” Nonetheless, the popularity of his ideas...
Source: The Neurocritic - February 14, 2024 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

I'm thinking about moving this blog...
 ...to another platform. Hi, it ' s been a while. I haven ' t written anything this year. My last post was December 31, 2022.The main reason is that I ' ve had to deal with more loss and grief in my life. Someone close to me was diagnosed with cancer, endured months of radiation and chemotherapy, and died anyway.1 I ' ve also had some deflating garbage to wade through at work. My enthusiasm for doing anything has been rather low.Besides all that, Blogger is aterrible platform for blogging. The interface changed a while a back and ever since then, composing in the little box has been unpleasant. It takes forever t...
Source: The Neurocritic - May 9, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Neuroscience Trend Forecasters
As 2022 draws to a close, the SNL Trend Forecasters have agreed to divulge their predictions for the most — and the least— exciting research fads for the New Year.The Neurocritic: How do you guys predict today ' s most popular neuroscience trends? Trend Forecasters: Oh, well we have 4,000 computers, they ' re all big they all make charts and they beep LOUD.TN: Let ' s get started!In:posterior cingulate cortexHey Posterior Cingulate — we see you! You ' re fresh, you ' re mysterious, you ' re misunderstood. But we know you exist far beyond the default fashion mode. Thenew tripartite view proposes......that the bro...
Source: The Neurocritic - December 31, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Frankenstein's Hand
Just in time for Halloween, I had a hideous surgery to repair a fractured elbow. This entailed receiving a nerve block that made my hand feel like a dead appendage, which was quite spooky indeed.  Spooky Dead Hand  I ' m supposed to keep the arm elevated above my heart (which isn ' t conducive to sitting here and typing), so that is all for now. Happy Halloween!Actual e-mail sent to the post-op contact person the night of my surgery:  OMFG, WHAT DID THEY DO TO ME WITH THIS DAMN TORTURE SLING? (Source: The Neurocritic)
Source: The Neurocritic - October 31, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

" And then a Plank in Reason, broke, "
  “I am dead.” In terms of possible delusions in living human beings,Le d élire des négations—the nihilistic delusion that one is dead —evokes the most harrowing existence imaginable. The French neurologistJules Cotard first described the syndrome that bears his name (1882,English translation):I hazard the name ofdelirium of negations to designate the state of the patients ... in whom the negative disposition is carried to the highest degree. [They are] asked their name – they have no name; their age – they are ageless; where were they born – they were not born; ... if they have a headache, s...
Source: The Neurocritic - September 30, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

The Human Protein Atlas (Neuropeptide Edition)
The more you study the brain, the more unknowable it becomes. The level of complexity is baffling, and this is true whether the brain belongs to a human or acrab.1 The latest uptick in human brain complexity was revealed from analysis of postmortem tissue in 17 subregions of prefrontal cortex (PFC).Zhong and colleagues (2022) found that 60 neuropeptides and 60 neuropeptide receptors are expressed in at least one of the PFC subregions. All the data are freely available (links are in the open access article) and incorporated into theHuman Protein Atlas— which has about 15 million individual web pages (according toWiki...
Source: The Neurocritic - August 31, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Extracting reliable neurobiological biomarkers for complex subjective experiences isn't easy
"The self is the psychological counterpart of the default mode functionality of the brain. " (Scalabrini et al., 2021).The self studying how " The Self " is represented and constructed by the brain is apex meta-neuroscience.1 We can say that the self is a manifestation (or an illusory byproduct) of activity in thedefault mode network (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus, and angular gyrus), but what does this really mean? How do we relate specific neural states to aspects of a changeable self? In a field increasingly focused onremote control of genetically-defined microciruits, pinning down subje...
Source: The Neurocritic - July 31, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

ABCT Apologizes for Past Support of Gay Conversion Therapy
It ' s 2022, and theAssociation for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) has just issued a belatedapology because two of their past Presidents published papers on “aversion therapies” for “converting” gay and transgender individuals to the socially prescribed norms of sexuality and gender identity. Well, they didn ' t actually say this, nor did they name the prominent and distinguished clinical psychologists who authored these papers. Although these luminaries signed on to the mea culpa, there was no direct admission of the harm caused by these ill-advised practices. Instead, the document focused on “th...
Source: The Neurocritic - June 12, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

THIS device may not nudge your brain into deep sleep
TheWashington Post used this picture of a saline-filled 280-channelGeodesic Head Web1 to illustrate a new wearable device that aims to enhance slow wave sleep (SWS). The device delivers low-level current (0.5 mA) at 0.5 Hz to mimic the frequency of EEG naturally recorded during SWS (0.5-1 Hz). However, this is impossible with saline sensors, which would also dry out well before the night is over.  The WaPo article accurately showed different stages of applying the net, including measuring the head, checking impedences, and filling sensors with saline (above). A published journal article used similar Geo...
Source: The Neurocritic - May 31, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Nostalgia and Its Analgesia
This study found that presentation of nostalgic pictures was associated withenhanced mortality salience, along with increased activation in the right amygdala (Yang et al., 2021). Which is the opposite of previous studies... ReferencesBoym S. (2007).Nostalgia and its discontents.The Hedgehog Review. 9(2):7-19.Routledge C, Arndt J, Sedikides C, Wildschut T. (2008).A blast from the past: The terror management function of nostalgia.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44(1):132-40.Wildschut T, Sedikides C. (2022).Benefits of nostalgia in vulnerable populations.European Review of Social Psychology 27:1-48. Yang Z, Se...
Source: The Neurocritic - April 30, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Machine Yearning - Sad Robots and Prolonged Grief
Crying Robot, byMr.A What is ' machine yearning ' ?Intense longing exhibited by cartoon robots? Or a clever pun that describes a network analysis of prolonged grief symptoms? (Malgaroli et al., 2022).My late wife was a writer who was very fond ofrobots andFuturama. This post is an opportunity to incorporate them all into a brief narrative about the computational psychiatry ofprolonged grief disorder.Concert goers booed the avant garde tuba playing robot, but it wasn ' t programmed to feel sad, or to stop.#Citybots#Warsaw#TwitterFiction— S. Kay (@blueberrio)March 16, 2014Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) is anICD-1...
Source: The Neurocritic - March 31, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

The Ongoing Debate about Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Adult Humans is over.
modified from Franjic et al. (2022). Cross-species comparison shows transcriptomic signatures of neurogenesis in the hippocampus of adult mouse, pig, and monkey— but not human.Does the adult brain generate new neurons throughout the lifespan? The prevailing view in most of the 20th century was that no new neurons are born in the mammalian brain once development ceases. A series of studies inthe 1960s showed otherwise, but these were ignoreduntil the 1990s. A now-historical paper from 2000 recounted thedeath of a dogma: adult neurogenesis is here to stay,even in humans. Thousand of studies in animals (mostly rodents) demo...
Source: The Neurocritic - February 28, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Vortioxetine for Post-COVID Brain Fog
If you ' re relatively young and healthy, is a mild case of COVID-19 really “mild”, like a cold or the flu? Are you still at risk forlong COVID— a persistent state of fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, exercise intolerance, and “brain fog” (impairments in memory, attention, and concentration)— even if you ' re fully vaccinated?If you have post-COVID brain fog and live in Toronto, you might beeligible for a clinical trial run by the Brain and Cognition Discovery Foundation. The study will assess the effects ofvortioxetine (brand name Trintellix), an FDA-approved antidepressant thatmay improve cognitive function in peop...
Source: The Neurocritic - January 17, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Your Own Personal DBS
The second calendar year of COVIDsurges to a close, and hospital personnel continue their frenetic pace of caring for the infected (most of whom are defiantly unvaccinated). For the rest of us, Vaccine Scientists are the2021 Heroes of the Year... surely they will outsmart the latest variant of the sneaky virus. Their astonishing achievements built on less glamorous (and less recognized) work conducted over the course of 20 years. As told byTime magazine:In 2005, [Dr. Katalin] Kariko and [Dr. Drew] Weissman reported their findings in what they thought would be a landmark paper in the journalImmunity, then waited for the acc...
Source: The Neurocritic - December 31, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Is Precision Psychiatry Realistic?
Fig. 1 (Fernandes et al., 2017). Domains related to ‘precision psychiatry’.“The right drug for the right patient” was a catch phrase in the early years of the personalized medicine movement (2000), represented by the emerging field ofpharmacogenomics. No more “one size fits all” prescribing — the Human Genome Project will allow doctors to predict howyou will respond to any given medication.The last time I went to the drug store, I picked up my cheap generic prescription without the benefit of genomic testing.The term “personalized medicine” was outdated by 2011. The National Research Council (PDF) pr...
Source: The Neurocritic - November 30, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs