Archive for the ‘CogNeuro’ Category
Scientific Consensus On Brain Training
A lot of big cognitive scientists and neuroscientists endorsed the following statement: “We object to the claim that brain games offer consumers a scientifically grounded avenue to reduce or reverse cognitive decline when there is no compelling scientific evidence to date that they do. The promise of a magic bullet detracts from the best evidence […]
Thoughts on Brain Training
Last Monday I had the opportunity to participate in a response panel as part of the Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital series on Empowerment Through Medical Rehabilitation. This year they brought Dr. Michael Merzenich in from UC San Francisco. Dr. Merzenich is an expert on neuroplasticity and is also the founder of several companies dedicated to cognitive […]
Response Panel: A New Path to Brain Health
Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital is a local Santa Barbara institution dedicated to providing care for survivors of stroke, brain and spinal cord injury, orthopedic injury and other disabling conditions. To support this mission they have an annual presentation series titled “Empowerment through Medical Rehabilitation”. Each year they bring in amazing speakers to present on a topic […]
Adiós Academia
You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything of neuro-subtance since, oh, January 2012. Well, between you and me, there is a perfectly good reason why that is the case. That was about the time I completed the paperwork to end my neuroscience career and begin a new adventure in private industry as a […]
Brain Scanning Anxiety
The best humor always has a touch of reality. The comic is from the site Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal – check it out!
Unpublished abstract: fMRI Data Center Quality
Not all research findings make their way out of the lab. Sometimes they can get snagged on the way out the door. The reasons for this can range from funding, to politics, and even simple forgetfulness. Below is an abstract that I have been sitting on for over two years. It details an analysis that […]
Hot, Hot iPhone Love (More Terrible Neuromarketing)
I hate being late to a party. You finally arrive after the festivities have begun and you know that your friends have already been there for hours, having a grand time doing what they do best. So it is with the latest neuromarketing debacle involving the New York Times and the pseudoscience that appeared on […]
Significant Differences
One of the first things you learn in an introductory psychology class is the topic of cognitive bias. These are situations or contexts in which human beings cannot reliably make effective judgements or discriminations. For instance, information that tends to confirm our own assumptions is generally judged to be correct (Confirmation Bias). Another example is […]
Neuromarketing Debate, May 23rd
Do you feel like neuromarketing is a disruptive new technology, or just another example of neurohype? Regardless of where you stand on the issue you might be interested in a debate I will be participating in next Monday, the 23rd of May, at Stanford Medical School. The Stanford Interdisciplinary Group on Neuroscience and Society (SIGNS) […]
The Seven Sins of Neuromarketing
I got quoted in a random neuromarketing article recently. In the flurry of people I have been chatting with about statistics and functional neuroimaging I often neglect to ask what organizations people are associate with. In this case it was Forbes magazine. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1116/marketing-hyundai-neurofocus-brain-waves-battle-for-the-brain.html In the online version of the article there was a user comment […]