An important problem in psychological research is how to use findings from basic cognitive neuroscience to form an idea about what goes on in an individual. This step from cognitive experimental research to individual differences has been described as uncharted territory decades ago [1], and not enough intervening methodological work has been dedicated to working … [Read more…]
Scientific methods and their associated research questions form a variety of fits. Take the reproducibility crisis in behavioural psychology. In social psychology the crisis is quite prominent, with textbook findings being actively questioned. In cognitive psychology (inflated effect sizes notwithstanding) there is less of a feeling of crisis, and yet, the two fields use similar … [Read more…]
Things I’ve learned today: make an empty room recording before piloting on people. Check if my experimental effects come out in the absence of a brain in the helmet. Then pilot. I usually use brief, pure tones in my experiments, and I usually do MEG. There is a stimulus computer outside the MEG room, that … [Read more…]
This is going to be one of those annoying posts where I tell you to first go and read something else before coming back. Sometimes, when research results are too good to be true, people start thinking there might be something fishy going on. Jens Foerster, for instance, was called out on the excessive linearity of his … [Read more…]
I read a few papers and wanted to share my thoughts with the cognitive science community. If phrases like predictive coding, mismatch negativity, or gamma band don’t mean much to you, the rest of the text is likely to be mind-numbingly boring. Mismatch negativity If we hear a train of identical tones, occasionally interrupted by … [Read more…]
In one of the first classes of my first neuroimaging course, a confusing dialogue took place. Professor: In this experiment, people looked at a cross at the center of the screen while a Gabor patch was presented either to the left or to the right of the cross… Student: Excuse me, what’s a Gabor patch? … [Read more…]
I previously discussed why our search for intelligence in the brain bypasses some critical features of how IQ is measured, thus leading to data which add up to a theoretically confusing picture. It is possible that a clear-cut neural correlate of intelligence will be found some day. It is also possible that intelligence is a … [Read more…]
Being intelligent is about being good at many things. Intelligence researchers assign a single number to a diverse constellation of aptitudes, and this single number is the best across-the-board predictor of performance that differential psychology has ever yielded. Intuitively, there should be an ability behind this constellation: the more of this ability people have, the … [Read more…]
I previously argued that psychologists don’t need brain research, and that neuroscience and psychology essentially abuse each other. I feel strongly about this, I think there are real problems when the two fields meet. But it would be wrong to think that people don’t care about these issues. Neuroscience is a new field. It brings together … [Read more…]
When my son was born, friends and family embarked on a furious attempt to answer the most important question of all: who does he look like? The kid has his own combination of features, but people would be strongly convinced he looks just like one of us. And on average, these estimations were random! Like any new … [Read more…]