October 2011
17 posts
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Is Neuroscience Incompatible with the Idea of... →
Most evil acts are not committed by the serial killers, the deranged, the lone demon. (…) Hitler may have been innately evil, but many of the Nazis who did the most gruesome acts were no more evil than your or I. Sad to say, but the subjects in Zimbardo’s infamous prison experiment were just regular college students. There was nothing in their brain structure that would predict their...
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THE SCIENCE OF THE KGB: The Notes
Reviewing the notes from my ex KGB contact, about 10 chapters worth so far: what they knew in the 1940’s regarding torture/interrogation, the US prison system still won’t admit today.
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IT'S OFFICIAL
I’ll be returning to my classic forensic psych roots for a bit. In the coming weeks, I’m going to sit down with a former KGB operative in a five part miniseries.
We will be discussing his work in Russia as well as in the U.S. from a psychological and political perspective, highlighting behavioral tactics used in espionage, recruitment, profiling, behavioral & arms training,...
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Regularly scheduled neurosciencey posts will...
Brought to you by grad school.
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Optimism Is a Brain Defect, says mighty fMRI scans →
Pervasive, persistent optimism is one of those uniquely human traits/flaws — we tend to believe things are better than they really are, or that negative consequences won’t befall us, even if they befall others. It stands to reason that people would adjust their expectations when confronted with harsh reality, yet they don’t. Our brains are to blame, according to a new study — we’re wired to...
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“Given the complexity of the human brain, there are likely to be numerous other...”
– Mo Costandi talking about new research on “the presence or absence of the paracingulate sulcus, in the prefrontal cortex” in a new post: Memory errors are all in the groove: A new study links individual differences in cognitive function to structural variations in the brain.
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jtotheizzoe asked: So not only will people want to use fMRI for finding pedophiles, regardless of illegal activity, we won't even know WHY they are found! Sorry for making you emphatically sigh.
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“Can It Read My Mind?” – What Do the Public and... →
Emerging applications of neuroimaging outside medicine and science have received intense public exposure through the media. Media misrepresentations can create a gulf between public and scientific understanding of the capabilities of neuroimaging and raise false expectations. To determine the extent of this effect and determine public opinions on acceptable uses and the need for regulation, we...
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