Xylological Delusions of Being a Tree
The mythology surroundingreverse inter-metamorphosis, a delusional syndrome that involves transformation into a beast, has frightened and fascinated for hundreds of years. A special instance of reverse inter-metamorphosis isclinical lycanthropy, the delusion that one has been transformed into a wolf (or another animal). A recent review identified 43 cases in the literature between 1852 and today (Guessoum et al., 2021). Psychotic depression and schizophrenia were the most common co-existing psychiatric diagnoses in these individuals.The article advocates a cultural and person-centered approach to treatment, as did many of ...
Source: The Neurocritic - October 31, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
A Curious Case of Auditory-Gustatory Synesthesia... in someone who can't smell
A fascinating case study from 1907 describes the self-reported sensory “taste” experiences evoked by hearing specific words, names, or sounds (Pierce, 1907). The subject was a young woman about to graduate from college. As far as she could tell, she ' s always had these experiences, and for most of her life she didn ' t know they were unusual. Thissurprise upon discovering the uniqueness of one ' s one internal experience is similar to what is reported by many contemporary individuals with less typical phenomenology, such asaphantasia (the inability to generate visual images).Pierce noted that the subject was ano...
Source: The Neurocritic - September 30, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Reading Aloud without a Mask, Olfactory Bulbs, Omega Variant
Conclusion and recommendation:" Ineligibility because of age and lack of vaccination contribute to persistent elevated risk for outbreaks in schools, especially as new SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge. However, implementation of multiple prevention strategies within schools can mitigate this risk. "Olfactory Bulbs Speaking of smell,over 20 papers show MRI signal abnormalities in the olfactory bulbs of COVID-19 patients with anosmia (loss of smell). This isn ' t new, but anosmia has been reported inbreakthroughcasesas well. The images below show some resolution in a patient from time 1 to time 2.Magnetic Resonance Imaging Al...
Source: The Neurocritic - August 31, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Why would nasally-transferred coronavirus only affect the left side of the brain?
WE GET QUESTIONS!Q– “I survived a mild case of COVID. Should I be worried about the volume of gray matter in olfactory-related structures in the left hemisphere of my brain?”A– Most of what you ' ve read on social media may be overstated.One of the scariest things aboutSARS-CoV-2 (other than possible death) is that it affectsmultiple organs, including the brain. The vast majority of studies have compared measures in COVID survivors to those obtained from participants without COVID. Thesecross-sectional studies cannot determine whether pre-existing differences can account for disease-related ' changes ' .An importan...
Source: The Neurocritic - July 31, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
The rs-FC fMRI Law of Attraction (i.e., Resting-State Functional Connectivity of Speed Dating Choice)
Feeling starved for affection after 15 months of pandemic-mandated social distancing? Ready to look for a suitable romantic partner by attending anin-person speed dating event? Just recline inside this noisy tube for 10 minutes, think about anything you like, and our algorithm willPredict [the] Compatibility of a Female-Male Relationship!This new study byKajimura and colleagues garnered a lot of attention on Twitter, where it was publicized by@INM7_ISN (Simon Eickhoff) and@Neuro_Skeptic. The prevailing sentiment was not favorable (check the replies)... Oha... " Resting-State Connectivity Can Predict Compatibility of a...
Source: The Neurocritic - June 29, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Did dreams evolve to transcend overfitting?
A fascinatingnew paper proposes that dreams evolved to help the brain generalize, which improves its performance on day to day tasks. Incorporating a concept from deep learning,Erik Hoel (2021):“...outlines the idea that the brains of animals are constantly in danger ofoverfitting, which is the lack of generalizability that occurs in a deep neural network when its learning is based too much on one particular dataset, and that dreams help mitigate this ubiquitous issue. This is the overfitted brian[sic] hypothesis. ” The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis (OHB) proposes that the bizarre phenomenology of dreams is critical...
Source: The Neurocritic - May 31, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Hoarders and Collectors
Andy Warhol ' scollection ofdental models Pop artist Andy Warhol excelled in turning the everyday and the mundane into art. During the last 13 years of his life, Warhol putthousands of collected objects into 610 cardboard boxes. TheseTime Capsules were never sold as art, but they were meticulously cataloged by museum archivists and displayed in a major exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum. “Warhol was a packrat. But that desire to collect helped inform his artistic point of view. ” Yet Warhol was aware of his compulsion, and itdisturbed him: “I ' m so sick of the way I live, of all this junk, and always dragging...
Source: The Neurocritic - April 25, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Overinterpreting Computational Models of Decision-Making
Bell (1985)Can a set of equations predict and quantify complex emotions resulting from financial decisions made in an uncertain environment? Aninfluential paper by David E. Bell considered the implications of disappointment, a psychological reaction caused by comparing an actual outcome to a more optimistic expected outcome, as in playing the lottery. Equations for regret, disappointment, elation, and satisfaction have been incorporated into economic models of financial decision-making (e.g., variants ofprospect theory).Financial choices comprise one critical aspect of decision-making in our daily lives. There are so many ...
Source: The Neurocritic - March 31, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Overview of'The Spike': an epic journey through failure, darkness, meaning, and spontaneity
fromPrinceton University Press (March 9, 2021)THE SPIKE is a marvelously unique popular neuroscience book byProfessor Mark Humphries, Chair of Computational Neuroscience at the University of Nottingham and Proprietor ofThe Spike blog on Medium. Humphries ' novel approach to brain exposition is built around —well— the spike, the electrical signal neurons use to communicate. In this magical rendition, the 2.1 second journey through the brain takes 174 pages (plus Acknowledgments and Endnotes).I haven ' t read the entire book, so this is not a proper book review. But here ' s an overview of what I might expect. The Introd...
Source: The Neurocritic - February 28, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Thoughts of Blue Brains and GABA Interneurons
An unsuccessfulplanto create a computer simulation of a human brain within 10 years. Anexhaustive catalog of cell types comprising a specific class of inhibitory neurons within mouse visual cortex. What do these massive research programs have in common? Both efforts were conducted by large multidisciplinary teams at non-traditional research institutions: theBlue Brain Project based in Lausanne, Switzerland and theAllen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington.BIG SCIENCE is the wave of the future, and the future is now. Actually, that future started 15-20 years ago. The question should be, is there a future for a...
Source: The Neurocritic - January 29, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
How the Brain Works
Discussion About Psychology and Neuroscience (from CNS meeting, 2019)the conceptual basis of cognitive neuroscience shouldn ' t be correlationbut what if the psychological and the biological are categorically dissimilar??...and more!The video below is set to begin with Dr. Davachi, but the entire symposium is included. (Source: The Neurocritic)
Source: The Neurocritic - December 30, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
The Neurohumanities: a new interdisciplinary paradigm or just another neuroword?
Thelatest issue ofNeuron has published five thematic “NeuroView” papers proposing that neuroscience can augment our understanding of classically brain-free fields like art, literature, and theology. Two of the articles discuss the relatively established pursuits ofneuroaesthetics (Iigaya et al., 2020) andneuromorality/moral decision-making (Kelly& O ' Connell, 2020). Another article outlines the bare bones of an ambitious search for the neural correlates of collective memory, or the “Cultural Engram” (Dudai, 2020):I consider human cultures as biocultural ‘‘supraorganisms’’ that can store memo...
Source: The Neurocritic - November 30, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
COVID-19, Predictive Coding, and Terror Management
Pandemics have a way of bringing death into sharper focus in our everyday lives. As of this writing,1,188,259 people around the world have died from COVID-19, including 234,218 in the United States. In the dark days of April, the death rate was over 20%. Although this has declined dramatically (to 3%), it ’s utterly reckless to minimize the risks of coronavirus and flaunt every mitigation strategy endorsed by infectious disease specialists.“He ' s like an evil Oprah. You ' re getting COVID. And you ' re getting COVID!”One might think that contracting and recovering from COVID-19 would be a sobering experience for mos...
Source: The Neurocritic - October 30, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Neuralink in a Dozen Pigs
In a far-ranging chat with Kara Swisher, Elon Musk talked about sustainable energy, brain implants, the stupidity of the press, and more. He gave a casual update on the “Three Little Pigs” demo ofNeuralink' s 1024-channel chip, finally admitting that his lofty goals are in a “very, very primitive stage”:Elon Musk: You can make people walk again. You could solve extreme depression or anxiety or schizophrenia or seizures. You could give a mother back her memory so she could remember who her kids are, you know. Basically, if you live long enough, you ’re going to get dementia of some kind. And you’ll want to have ...
Source: The Neurocritic - September 29, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
The Mundane Spectacle of the Three Little Pigs
“This Neuralink is implanted in the region of the brain that uh where where the snout the snout is located which is actually quite a large part of the pig ' s brain. ”1Elon Musk held a press event (product demo) to make grandiose claims about theNeuralink 1024 channel brain implant currently under development by his start-up.Three pigs were unveiled, all healthy and happy: Joyce (the one without an implant), Dorothy (who formerly had an implant), and Gertrude, the star of the day with her snout boops. The crowd applauded, impressed at this monumental accomplishment. However, recording spike trains from the brains of an...
Source: The Neurocritic - August 30, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
