Academic articles handle dense and complex subject matter, which means that a great degree of care goes into writing that tells this complicated story in a simple and compelling way. I like writing, and I thought I’d share my approach to structuring my own written work. It relies on three rules. I treat the first … [Read more…]
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…]
When people become chronically distressed, their first port of call is usually their GP. A lot of the time, maybe even most of the time, people will initially come with vague physical complaints [1]. Headaches, dizziness, a digestive tract that doesn’t work as smoothly as it could. After some searching, if physical causes are eventually … [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 remember a sense of defeat when I started learning about research methodology. I enrolled in psychology brimming with questions, but instead of getting answers, there was this statistics course that seemed to be just caveat after caveat after caveat about what we’re allowed to conclude from data. You should have a representative sample, but … [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…]