Neurobonkers.com

How needing a wee affects your decision making

Neurobonkers — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:39:25 +0000

A couple of years ago Dr Mirjam Tuk won an IgNobel prize for the paper “Inhibitory Spill-Over: Increased Urinating Urgency Facilitates Impulse Control in Unrelated Domains” in Psychological Science. Tuk recently discussed her research at Imperial College Science Festival. You might think that your …

When should I publish with open access? A handy flow chart

Neurobonkers — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:39:10 +0000

Mike Taylor over at the Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog created the wonderful flowchart above to help researchers decide whether to post in an open access journal. A few months ago the British Government made the tremendous step forward of announcing that government funded research …

How NOT to spot a murderer’s brain

Neurobonkers — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:38:13 +0000

Update 13/05/13 12PM: The Guardian have now corrected the article to place David Eagleman’s quote in appropriate context. 1.55PM: The paragraph has now been cut completely with the following note “A paragraph that misrepresented the views of the neuroscientist David Eagleman has been removed. The …

The future of a home computer controlled by your eyes may be far closer than you think

Neurobonkers — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:32:43 +0000

There has been much focus over recent years, on brain machine interfaces (BMI) allowing for the direct control of a computer by electrodes placed on or near the brain. Unfortunately a clinically useful, cost effective solution doesn’t seem to be on the horizon as far as BMI’s are concerned and …

The Neuroscience Power Crisis: What’s the fallout?

Neurobonkers — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:49:35 +0000

Last week a paper ($) was published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience that is rocking the world of neuroscience. The crack team of researchers including neuroscientists, psychologists, geneticists and statisticians analysed meta-analyses of neuroscience research to determine the statistical power of …

Now you can enlarge and denoise your photos, all thanks to basic research

Neurobonkers — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:26:03 +0000

The Center for Perceptual Systems at The University of Texas at Austin has just released a free web-app that will denoise and enlarge photos in a heartbeat to an extent that according to the authors, may have never been seen before.

“Compared with other photo-enhancement algorithms, we …

Achieving herd immunity against pseudoscience in the age of the filter bubble and the social news revolution

Neurobonkers — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:24:35 +0000

Last night Ben Goldacre appeared on BBC Newsnight (viewable from UK ip addesses or portals only, for the next 7 days) discussing the ongoing havoc caused by the MMR scare in the form of a major outbreak in the UK of a disease that was on its way to being eradicated. Ben Goldacre once again …

The Moving Goalposts of Mental Illness

Neurobonkers — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:24:29 +0000

The latest edition of the manual psychiatrists use to assess patients has gone through a major and controversial set of changes which according to a report published in
Current Biology
(open access) runs the risk of:

“..moving the goalposts for mental disorders, the 158 experts preparing the …

Don’t Drink The Kool-Aid

Neurobonkers — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:22:16 +0000

With terrorism at the forefront of public consciousness, it is easy to let civil liberties slip off the radar. This is unfortunate, if we learned anything from the classic psychology experiments, it was that unchecked power and authority can lead to terrible evils. The findings of the classic …

In Defence of Pseudonyms in Science: Defending the Right to Write

Neurobonkers — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:56:17 +0000

Fellow pseudonymous neuroblogger Neuroskeptic (to whom I owe a great deal in inspiration) has published a fantastic explainer in Trends in Cognitive Sciences ($) on the benefits to science of anonymity. Last November Neuroskeptic became the first blogger to publish a scientific paper under a …