Penn and Teller: Twelve Step Programs Are Bullsh** - I kind of disagree sort of
Monday, June 9th, 2008The recovering alcoholics in my life sometimes act like they’re from Jupiter. (Everyone seems to be a recovering something these days. . . ) Their default position is negative attributional bias -they constantly are attacking based on presumed negative intention of others. They then confabulate to back fill facts to match their [...]
Psychopaths, platypus, mammalian infants - REM sleep but no dreams may indicate white matter disconnect.
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008Last January I wondered if psychopaths dream — and noted that the only mammal (or maybe one of the few mammals) that doesn’t dream is a platypus. This post follows up, with a discussion of the “Platypus Defense” as part of the murder trial of Hans Reiser. Plus platypus genome and microRNA and transposable elements [...]
Drink Green Beer, Not Green Wine
Monday, March 17th, 2008 On St. Patrick’s day, pour yourself a green beer, not a green wine: wine and spirits cause more hippocampal volume loss than does beer (in chronic alcoholics, anyway).
There are probably other good reasons for not drinking green wine, although some clever marketing group will probably market a sauvignon vert . . . [...]
Sick in the head? Maybe fuzzy thinking when you have a cold is caused by high-level immunity.
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Grandville, J.J., “Métamorphosis du Jour” . . Hypocrite. . .”
A few years ago, with flamingly infected tonsils, I was on a contentious speaker-phone conference call with an adversary when my voice gave out and I couldn’t talk. My adversary was kind enough to at least put his end on mute while celebrating my impending demise. [...]
The Bob Dylan Committee Could Have Been A Delusion Caused By Improper Brain Connectivity
Saturday, March 1st, 2008Exhibit A: A committee of badly disguised Bob Dylan imposters?
As a child, with “Maggies’ Farm” on the record player, I asked an elder sibling why Bob Dylan looked so different on each of his (vinyl) album jackets. She calmly lied through her teeth, and explained that Bob Dylan was a committee, not a [...]
(corrected) Neuro-movie review: Wordplay and brain hemispheres
Monday, February 25th, 2008In honor of the Oscars®, here is a neuro-movie review about a movie that came out in 2006 — Wordplay (here’s the link to the official site, and the link to the Rotten Tomatoes site). (Yes, it was out in 2006, so I’m a year late. ) This post will ultimately be about hemispheric [...]
Pathological crying can be caused by brain dysfunction
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008Ricky, don’t cry! You haven’t been Auf’d! [Swivelchair note: Ricky was auf'd] I hope you’re OK - you know, the very basic areas of the brain are involved in crying. If you can’t stop, I hope it’s not a tumor (see abstract below).
J Clin Neurosci. 2008 Jan 10 [Epub ahead of print]
Brainstem compression [...]
Neuropeptide Y (”NPY”) - cure for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Friday, January 25th, 2008Here it is, a substance that prevents brain neuron remodeling in response to stress: Neuropeptide Y, “NPY”. A new report, sponsored in part by Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of Prozac, demonstrates that Neuropeptide Y prevents neurons in the amygdala from remodeling in response to stress, in rodents.
The nomenclature “Neuropeptide Y” always [...]
White matter days: Dyslexia, OCD and Williams’ Syndrome may all involve white matter growth irregularities
Friday, January 11th, 2008
More on white matter month — What happens when one part of the brain is “unplugged”?
Dyslexia, Williams Syndrome, and OCD all involve cognitive processes that seem to go awry. It’s not as though something is necessarily lacking — but rather a particular trait is distorted.
It may be that white matter tracts — the [...]
Cure for Alzheimers?
Thursday, January 10th, 2008Let’s say the day comes when you are told you have pre-Alzheimers. You are told that getting the disease is inevitable. Emotionally, you grieve for your own “lost” personality. Your loved ones prepare for your care taking — or to put you in assisted living at an outrageous expense to someone.
Then this report [...]
White matter month: Rehab dating
Saturday, January 5th, 2008Chanraud S, Martelli C, Delain F, Kostogianni N, Douaud G, Aubin HJ, Reynaud M, Martinot JL., Brain morphometry and cognitive performance in detoxified alcohol-dependents with preserved psychosocial functioning, Neuropsychopharmacology. 2007 Feb;32(2):429-38. Epub 2006 Oct 18 PMID: 17047671
Continuing “White Matter Month” — should you date someone you met at Rehab? Or should they [...]
Do Psychopaths Dream?
Friday, January 4th, 2008Updated: 02.02.08
Did you every wake up and say, “Wow. That dream was so real.”
My guess is that psychopaths — at least some — don’t do that. If you want to see if someone has psychopathic tendencies, maybe a one question, binary, yes-or-no question is, “do you dream” ?
I’m researching white matter as part of [...]
January White Matter Days: Pedophiles have deficient white matter in areas relating to sexual cues
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008In keeping tradition with the department store “white sales” in January, this month will be “January White Matter Days.”
“Woman Ironing,” Edward Degas, 1887, (courtesy National Gallery of Art)
I’m interested in white matter, which is sort of the neural wiring in the brain, connecting the areas of gray matter. I think that the trouble with [...]
Neuroeconomics and neuromarketing: Trust me, I’m your brain
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007Little American Brown Weasel
The Top Two Inches has an interesting blog post about dating, called, “Dating — Don’t Do It“. Interesting read, and it got me thinking about trust.
Trust is first built in one part of the brain, and then your brain comes to a fork in the road: the “unconditional” trust brain area [...]
Neurological Correlates: Apathy
Saturday, September 29th, 2007Clin Neurol Neurosurg. 2007 Sep 25; [Epub ahead of print]
Striatal dopamine transporter levels correlate with apathy in neurodegenerative diseases A SPECT study with partial volume effect correction.
David R, Koulibaly M, Benoit M, Garcia R, Caci H, Darcourt J, Robert P.
Centre Mémoire de Ressource et de Recherche, CHU Nice, France.
OBJECTIVES: The aim of the [...]
Pride requires an audience, but Joy you can do alone
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007Our results support the idea that pride is a self-conscious emotion, requiring the ability to detect the intention of others. At the same time, judgment of pride might require less self-reflection compared with those of negative self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment.
Neurological Correlates: Are you a Nazi or do you just like M’s? Quiz
Thursday, September 20th, 2007All of these traits deal with avoiding change or fear of the unknown. Or keeping things the way they are, and avoiding new things which could lead to conflict. Is all of this designed to avoid having to use the anterior cingulate — the liberal, left-wing portion of the brain? Is that part underdeveloped in conservatives? Authoritarians? Nazis?