See also
Lessons from the Placebo Gene.Also, if you like this kind of thing, see my other
fMRI-curmudgeonry
The life of a neurocurmudgeon is a hard one, but
once in a while, fate smiles upon us. This article in the Daily Telegraph neatly embodies several of the mistakes that people make about the brain, all in one bite-size portion.
The article is about a recent fMRI study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. 22 healthy Stanford student volunteers (half of them male) played a "video game" while being scanned. The game wasn't an actual game like Left 4 Dead(*), but rather a kind of very primitive cross between Pong and Risk, designed specifically for the purposes of the experiment:
Balls appeared on one-half of the screen from the side at 40 pixel/s, and 10 balls were constantly on the screen at any given time. One’s own space ...
