/sci/ - Science & Math

>>2732664
>thread like these
threads*

>>2732631
I know, but thread like these are troll bait.
>>2732632
You don't have to tell me, I'm a graduate student of neuroscience. We have the same problem in cognitive neuroscience though. There's not really a difference between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Cellular neuroscience on the other hand doesn't have this problem obviously, but it also doesn't deal with behavior or cognition all that much.

Really? Not a single psychologyfag on today?

>>2732553
Don't be a dick and read the fucking text.

>>2732517
Good job, you now look silly.

I should have put a tl;dr right at the top, shouldn't I?

lazy bastards

bump

I'll just bump this.

For me, this is where the problem lies. Making inferences about brain function are based on behavioral measures. These can be correlated with neurophysiological- or hemodynamic measures of course, but the starting point is behavior. Necessarily this means any charting of neural systems is based on a semantic categorization of the phenomenon in question. This is not so much a problem when investigating relatively simple subjects such as classical conditioning, however it gets trickier when investigating complex behavioral and neural systems.

Over the decades this way of doing research has led to an exponential proliferation of described phenomena, while losing sight of the underlying neural systems. For example: the term ‘inhibition’ in psychology can mean anything from suppressing saccades to inappropriate social gestures. A striking example of what exactly behavior to brain mapping can lead to would be the list of functions ascribed to complex parts of the association cortices such as the anterior cingulate. It has been implicated in: action monitoring, pain perception, inhibition (as ambiguous as the term is), positive and negative reinforcement, conflict detection, emotion recognition, spatial navigation, the list goes on.

It is my opinion the directionality of research should be reversed. Definitions should be based upon the mediating system rather than the endpoint. Behavior to brain is a good starting point, but brain to behavior is essential for a unitary theory of the mind and brain.

You may discuss.

Please allow me to explain to you my concerns with contemporary psychology.

Mind you, this should not turn into a discussion about whether psychology is a science or not. First a distinction should be made between experimental- and clinical psychology. This discussion is centered around the former. By definition it is a science, and within the scientific community it is regarded as such. This is not up for debate. If you which to argue that it’s not, please make your own thread because your posts here will be ignored by me. The same goes if you: A) use ad-hominem, B) do not adhere to simple rules of debate, and C) mention Freud in the context of questioning the validity of psychology. The first two will make you look silly for obvious reasons. The last will make you look silly because it demonstrates you know little about psychology. If this is the case I would rather you not enter the discussion.

Now that we got that out of the way we can move on to the main purpose of this thread.

Ever since we were freed from the restraining shackles of behaviorism by means of the cognitive revolution, looking beyond behavior has become commonplace. The mind is no longer a black box. Much has been learned about the mediating neural substrates of perception, cognition and behavior, which is great. The goal is to understand the mind, and the means have been to investigate it by its output.

[continues]

Yes, morphine is quite addictive. Chronic use results in physiological dependence on the substance. Withdrawal can lead to serious dehydration due to excessive diarrhea (heroin and morphine causes fluid extraction from the colon, leading to constipation. Quitting cold turkey causes a fluid dump and thus diarrhea) and vomiting. On a neural level it causes changes in the dopamine system, such that a shift happens in behavior mediation from medial frontal cortical areas towards striatal areas (from cortical to subcortical) and from ventral to dorsal striatal areas as well, as observed in many forms of substance abuse and animal models thereof. With time behavior becomes more compulsive instead of reflective (that's the leading hypothesis anyway).

>>2430287
What the fuck? I never said I was anything else than a cognitive neuroscientist. I never said I have a PhD either, because I don't. I am currently in the process of obtaining it, second year in.

>>2426897
Cognitive neuroscience. My field specifically is inter-area dynamics through oscillatory communication, bottom up attention and multi modal integration. And all this in humans.

I have to go. Thanks for the interesting questions and comments!

>>2424423
That's more a question of a developmental psychologist, but OK. Make sure your kid gets proper nutrition, with plenty of proteins, and unsaturated fats. Plenty of exercise (a healthy brain is a well-functioning brain), but probably most importantly, good education.

>>2424389
Sorry, missed this one. I'd rather not be too specific about my field, I don't want this to be traceable to my person. Suffice it to say my field is cognitive neuroscience with a specialization in long range (inter-area) dynamics and oscillatory communication.
>Also, when running western blots, what protein due you use as the standard to calibrate the densitometer?
No idea, I'm not a cellular neuroscientist.

>>2424391
>Did I say it was limited to Mozart?
The fact that it's called the Mozart effect suggests this. No need to be defensive.
>I isolated the areas stimulated and the conclusion was that it did involve regions of the brain also involved with other functions such as maths, communication, coordination etc.
That's something I could agree with, but this is a lot more nuanced than saying listening to Mozart makes you smarter, as is the way it's often interpreted in popular culture.
>You call yourself the neuroscientist but all you have done is make wild assumptions.
There's no need to be offensive either.

>>2424381
is that a question?

Well, done quicker than I thought.
>>2424311
It shows fluorescent protein expression in a mouse brain. What genes it relates to I'm not sure. I forgot where I got the picture. I just like the pretty colors.

>>2424283
That goes for every type of music. It's not restricted to Mozart or evern classical music. It <span class="math">is[/spoiler] however restricted to the auditory and temporal association cortices (and to some extent frontal regions involved in anticipation and such). It's not like Mozart and Mozart alone stimulates all aspects of cognitive development.

I have to pick up laundry now. I'll be back in about half an hour.

>>2424265
Induce current (enough to pass the threshold). That's sufficient.

>>2424258
>I'll have a look if I can find some studies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8684937
http://www.uwosh.edu/departments/psychology/rauscher/Key.pdf

These were the first ones to pop up. (reading the abstracts made me sort of fear this type of research has pretty poor experimental design, so take the conclusions with a grain of salt)

>>2424232
>I remember reading some study about playing Mozart for babies or something made them concentrate better.
That to me seems a bit problematic. I'm unaware of any studies actually showing this, and I doubt it has any empirical basis. In popular culture people often say babies get smarter if you listen to Mozart or the likes when pregnant, but I think that would simply be an effect of auditory stimulation, not relating to the complexity of the music per-se. Neural development is highly dependent on input, and auditory stimulation is actually essential for proper development of the auditory- and related association cortices.

I'll have a look if I can find some studies.