i’m as much of a fan of pop neuroscience as the next person but new research published in the prestigious journal nature reviews neuroscience, “Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience”, concludes that much of what’s published is, well, worthless due to “low statistical power”. a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away i was published in the official journal of the society of neuroscience and in a parallel universe i continued on attempting to get enough funding to support sample sizes large enough to be meaningful.
Tag Archives: research
A New Take on the Famous Marshmallow Experiment
a new take on the famous marshmallow experiment: “The capacity for delayed gratification is not wholly innate.”
Study Exposes Multi-generational Impacts of Pesticide Exposure
research on water fleas demonstrates that even low dose exposure to some pesticides “..can cause significant health problems for those organisms later in life –and affect their offspring and, possibly, their offspring’s offspring.”. and lest you think this is limited to water fleas, this builds on research that has shown trangenerational effects in humans after exposure to vinclozolin, a common hormone-disrupting fungicide used on fruits and vegetables. see also how GMOs unleashed a pesticide gusher.
the embodied mind, astrocytes and mouse chimeras, never quite now and what do whales see?
i subscribe to the embodied mind thesis which posits that the nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body and central to that theory is the concept of neurotransmission. i.e. we perceive and think through sensory tranmsissions integrated and mediated by neurons. so it’s remarkable to see new research done on mouse chimeras which indicates that lowly “helper cells” called astrocytes, not just the number of neurons and their interconnections, might possibly be the key to human intelligence. according to one researcher, “It’s a stunning result. It provides the first unequivocal evidence that astrocytes may well have been one of the evolutionary drivers of human capabilities.” and if peripheral cells like astrocytes might play a key role in human intelligence, what other cells might also be involved like, say, in the gut? related to the embodied mind this recent radiolab podcast, “speed” has a segment “never quite now” where they discuss the slowness of neurotransmission which happens at about 27 meters per second or 60 miles per hour which means usain bolt runs at about half the speed of his nerve transmission and it takes a full 1/4 of a second for visual stimulus to reach the motor centers of your brain which is about the same time as it takes to transmit a telegraph from new york to chicago. everything you experience has already happened! you’re stuck in the past! contemplate what that means when you’re driving down the road at 60 miles per hour! somehow, in my mind, this makes me wonder what do whales see ( and think )?
New Concerns About Plastic Pollution in Great Lakes ‘Garbage Patch’
as if the sediment pollution plumes weren’t reason enough to get skeeved out at the thought of swimming in the the great lakes, it turns out that new research shows the lakes have their very own version of the great pacific garbage patch consisting of tons of microscopic plastic particles that can’t be seen with the naked eye and levels of PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons) twice as high as what is found in the world oceans.
the social psychology of human primates in elevators
the study of the the social psychology of human primates in elevators has a relatively long history, including contributions from a 1962 Candid Camera episode titled “Face the Rear” which showed how relatively easy it is to induce conformity to unusual “social norms” in the tight confines of an elevator which is just one way we act when the priority is “…to act in a way that cannot be construed as threatening, odd or in any way ambiguous…” which is pretty much what we’d expect in dressed up primates given how non-human primates react in enclosed spaces, “So, if you are a rhesus macaque and find yourself trapped in a small cage with another macaque, you know what to do: bare your teeth and start grooming. If you are a human and find yourself riding in an elevator with a stranger, I recommend you do the same: smile and make polite conversation.”. and now a more recent ethnographic study of elevator user experience finds we organize ourselves according to a clear social order with senior men towards the back, younger men in the middle, and woman in the front. no results were presented on the interactions with the “close door” button, but i assume it was a placebo. ( ethnography study via kottke ).
a mathematical formalization of the filter bubble.
new unsurprising research ( given the the cognitive basis for irrationality ) formalizes the concept of the “filter bubble” with a mathematical model of biased assimilation which leads to polarization which is a fancy way of proving that, “we look at the world with rose-colored blinders. We see what we want and ignore what doesn’t fit…”