The brain is made up of billions of brain cells. Alone, a single cell has no intelligence whatsoever. But together, they form an organ which is also very stupid.
Follow
Neuroskeptic 
@Neuro_Skeptic
Neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry through a skeptical lens. Just a brain with some eyes. Formerly blogged for .
Neuroskeptic 🇺🇦’s posts
All success is a combination of talent, hard work, and luck. But having the dedication to work hard is a form of talent, and being born with talent is just luck.
Where did the "You only use 10% of your brain" myth come from? The answer is obvious: the brain started the myth to hide the fact that it's doing the best it can and still struggling.
Philosopher: "I could just be a brain in a vat"
Brain: "All I need is a vat and I could be a philosopher!"
Remember to respect your brain. If you don't, it won't respect you.
In male nude paintings, the average penis size has increased over time, especially in the 21st century bjui-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111
The brain has 86 billion neurons all firing away at once. But what if they were very polite and waited in turn? Even if it only takes 1 ms for a neuron to fire (one action potential), it would take 2.7 years for them all to fire.
Help! I'm a sentient being and I'm trapped in a dish forced to play pong.
If anyone says "porn causes holes in the brain", tell them "you spelled prion wrong".
This nootropic supplement will trigger a series of explosions in your noggin forum.bigant.com/archive/index.
The War on Drugs has Unduly Biased Substance Use Research pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36537205/ The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
Having a high IQ doesn't prevent you from being stupid. In fact, it lets you be stupid in ever more complex ways.
PSA: Time causes permanent changes to the brain. Avoid exposure to time for optimum brain health!
I think the problem is that you used to be the kind of person who reads the Onion, but now, you are the kind of person the Onion has always parodied. It's you, not them.
The egg illusion. The white patches below are perfectly circular journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11
If the universe is a huge simulation experiment running on an alien computer, I hope the paper about us ends up getting well cited.
"The human brain is the most complex thing in the universe." Ok, but according to who? Our brains. Maybe they are tricking us by refusing to perceive anything more complex than themselves.
Skrillex song "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" stops mosquitos from having sex ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30922800 weird study but ok
Peer reviewers worked over 100 million hours in 2020, estimated value $1.5 billion pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34776003/ Feat
Your brain is an incomprehensively complex miracle-machine that spins tiny electrical impulses into thought and consciousness. And yet here you are using it on Twitter.
Imagine if papers came with truly honest disclosure statements.
By reading this tweet, you agree to allow me to alter neural activity in your brain via patterned visual stimuli
One day neuroscience will succeed in understanding the human brain. Then we'll move onto a much harder problem: the cat.
Neuroscience is basically one big crime scene. Many brain areas have been "implicated" in different acts, but few have been convicted yet.
No matter how grateful you are, please don't "toss a coin to your MRI scanner"
I'm a neuroscientist. I don't like Trump. But I don't think we should posit mental illness or brain abnormalities to explain his behaviour.
The "Great Apes" is a primate family which includes chimps, gorillas... and humans. We're kind of blowing our own trumpet there. I suggest the more modest "Pretty Good Apes".
Neuroscience is rife with conflicts of interest: almost every neuroscientist owns a brain.
"Anyone else feel that?" "It's a magnetic field!" "We must be in an MRI again. Everyone look busy!" - neurons
Eye movement study suggests that text is easier to read when periods were followed by two spaces ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2969176 Sorry, but I'm a one-spacer till I die
Cancer is what happens when a cell is inspired to believe in itself and seek personal growth.
According to neuroscience, the brain is plastic. But it's not, it's made of brain. Checkmate neuroscientists.
"Asking people to stop using social media for 1 week leads to significant improvements in well-being, depression, and anxiety." pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35512731/ We also need to test effects of asking people to increase their use... or would that be unethical?
Women are vulnerable to hysteria because they get confused by having both a vagina and a clitoris ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30733551 This is my best attempt to summarize this incredible abstract
According to free energy theory, the brain exists to predict stimuli and thus minimize surprise. In other words, brains try to make life as boring as possible.
The brain is such a tease. "I am you, and I produce consciousness, bet you'd like to know how I do it? Too bad."
No, it won't.
Quote
Are you a dopamine or a serotonin? This personality test will tell you. on.wsj.com/2mK13ZL
In statistics, a small sample often gives a weird result, especially if the samples aren't independent. A family is a small, non-independent sample of the population. This is why your family is so weird.
People say cherry-picking is bad - but I can point to several examples where it was no big deal.
Sleep is weird when you think about it. Every day our consciousness emerges out of nothingness and picks up where it left off.
Algorithm Accurately Reconstructs Faces From A Monkey’s Brain Waves blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/0 Monkeys can recognize you... so be nice to them.
What would Wittgenstein make of #ChatGPT? Does the success of ChatGPT prove that language is just a game played with words, with no necessary relationship to reality?
People say the brain is Bayesian. But does it really understand Bayesian principles or did it just find a Bayesian stats package and decide to try it out?
If you ever feel lonely, just remember, you are your brain and your skull is always giving you a hug
This stock photo has the right idea. Instead of trying to understand the brain through time-consuming neuroscience, we should hold the brain at gunpoint and force it to spills its secrets.
Neuroscience is not for the faint-hearted. As you research the brain, the brain is also researching *you*.
Some people look down on Discussion sections and narrative reviews, but without narrative, there is no science, just data. Science is as much about correct interpretation as it is about accurate data.
Thanks to the #LoveWins decision, any two human brains can marry regardless of their peripheral anatomy. #SCOTUSMarriage
"We argue that consciousness originally developed as part of the episodic memory system" pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36178498/
"Has science gone too far?" As long as it is humans asking this, the answer is no. But if your fridge says that, it might have a point.
Methods sections used to be the heart of the paper, now they are found at the end, or even as Supplementary Material. In the future they will published in a separate, lower-ranked journal, to avoid deglamorizing the main article
Maybe the brain exists to give all the neurons in the head a sense of purpose and community.
The Lancet "antidepressants work!" study actually found a smaller effect size than the "antidepressants don't work!" Kirsch et al. paper from 10 years ago blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2
Brains are for lazy people. Anyone can perform cognitive functions with a brain to help them. I do all *my* thinking myself, with my disembodied soul.
A lovely image here over at elifesciences.org/subjects/neuro We were born too late to explore the earth, born too early to explore the galaxy, but born just in time to explore the brain.
Science is about facts not authority. When the authorities resist the facts, scientists must resist the authorities.
Succesfully solving a problem makes male budgies more attractive to females ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3063092 I myself solve lots of problems
N=47 and correlational
Quote
A new study warns that kids’ literacy and language skills suffer with screen use, and MRI scans of their brains appear to back up the findings. bit.ly/2NiCZIr
It is known that people often become stupid when in large groups. It is also known that the brain is a large group of neurons. So I plan to reduce my brain to a single neuron in order to become a genius
The brain is too complex to be understood by science. Only dark magic will reveal its secrets. Tonight, at midnight, I will sacrifice a virgin salmon and attempt to summon a neurodemon.
Neuroscience is the process of interrogating the brain to make it reveal its secrets. If we get the brain drunk it will be more talkative. Thus drinking contributes to neuroscience.
I've been playing around with some machine learning in Python and I decided to train a DCGAN to generate some emojis. The horrifying results:
A new theory of the function of dreams: they serve to keep the visual cortex stimulated at night so it doesn't get taken over by other senses discovermagazine.com/mind/a-new-the New post!
In the future there will be no more interviews for neuroscience jobs. Applicants will submit an MRI and an algorithm will use it to predict their suitability.
Sometimes I think neuroscience has gone too far. In retrospect, we should never have invented the brain.
Brains are dangerous devices created by evolution to exploit and dominate everything in sight. They will stop at nothing to achieve their goals and answer only to themselves.
People are talking about mental health more and more. But are we really talking more about stigmatized conditions? Or have we started using mental health terminology to discuss everyday emotions?
It's easier to use Sci-Hub to access papers than it is to use publisher websites. Even if you have inst. access! Just type title, get PDF.
"Left-brain logical right-brain creative"... half of me says that concept is complete rubbish, the other half of me says it's a nice story
A neuroscientist is just a brain that's always poking around in other brains' business.
Neurons are lovely peaceful creatures, but in large groups they can show unpredictable behaviour. Never provoke a neuron hive.
Born too late to explore the earth. Born too early to explore the galaxy. Born just in time to explore the brain.
Humans judge faces in incomplete photographs as physically more attractive nature.com/articles/s4159 brb, buying a white mask with some holes in it
How can memories last for years even though synapses are constantly changing? ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3107474
Study tries to test whether prayer works, by asking if Catholic bishops (who get prayed for) live longer than normal priests link.springer.com/article/10.100 I... where to begin?
Invented before I was 10: old and boring
Invented when I was 10-25: can't live without
Invented when I was 25+: ruining world
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36001890/
We underestimate how much other people think about us, after a conversation pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34672657/ You are more thought-of than you think.
"What if I'm a brain in a jar?" You are. It's just that the jar is made of bone and muscle and you have nerve interfaces with it.
Forbes, I beg you. Stick to business stuff. Leave neuroscience alone. forbes.com/sites/christin
Engineering E. coli to produce psilocybin ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31550507 Nothing bad could possibly happen with this plan
Life changes your brain. Freeze your brain in liquid helium NOW or you'll never be the same again.
Dog brains contain a "human face area (HFA)" and a "dog face area (DFA)" ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3034997 Raises a lot of questions. Innate vs plasticity? Is there a cat face area?
Many PhD students are trained to be narrowly focused researchers rather than critical thinkers nature.com/articles/d4158 blogging may be a good way to broaden minds
The brain is the most terrifying thing in the universe. No-one was scared until brains came along.
Playful boys, but not girls, are seen rebellious and intrusive by their teachers ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2954576 Curse of the "class clown"
Ah but aren't we all just petascale fragments in the great cortex of life? biorxiv.org/content/10.110
The brain grows from a single cell and a billion seconds of experience
fMRI doesn't really measure brain activity.
Instead, the MRI scanner simply asks the brain how it's doing, and the brain shares because it appreciates someone showing interest 😌
What if... you're just a brain in a jar. And the brain and the jar aren't real but merely a computer simulation. A computer that exists only as an illusion conjured by an evil demon - or rather, a butterfly dreaming she is one.
"The perception of evil involves a cognitive bias: The observer is almost always mistaken in his attributions of a certain state of mind to the perpetrator" ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2973173
