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The Brain Is Not an Explanation
The Huffington Post: "Brain scans pinpoint how chocoholics are hooked." This headline appeared in the Guardian a few years ago above a science story that began: "Chocoholics really do have chocolate on the brain." The story went on to describe a study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of chocoholics and non-cravers. The study found increased activity in the pleasure centers of the chocoholics' brains, and the Guardian report concluded: "There may also be some truth in calling the love of chocolate an addiction in some people." Really? Is that a fair conclusion to draw from the fMRI data in this study, reported in the European Journal of Neuroscience?
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2011 Summer Institute on Research Methodology, Oregon State University
July 12-13, 2011: Stata & Multilevel/Longitudinal Models Using Stata July 14-15, 2011: Mplus & Longitudinal Modeling Using Mplus The Oregon State University Summer Institute on Research Methodology is sponsored by the College of Health and Human Sciences Methodology Core and the Center for Healthy Aging Research. About the Summer Institute Introductory and advanced coursework using Mplus and Stata will be offered during the Institute. Participants in the Stata session are expected to be comfortable with multiple regression and participants in the Mplus session should also have some familiarity with factor analysis. No knowledge of Mplus or Stata is assumed.
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What’s Your Biggest Regret?
The New York Times: We all have regrets, but new research suggests the most common regret among American adults involves a lost romantic opportunity. Researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign collected data from 370 adults in the United States during a telephone survey. They asked respondents to describe one memorable regret, explaining what it was, how it happened and whether their regret stemmed from something they did or didn’t do. The most common regret involved romance, with nearly one in five respondents telling a story of a missed love connection.
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Teasing Out Policy Insight From a Character Profile
The New York Times: He is a delusional narcissist who will fight until his last breath. Or an impulsive showman who will hop the next flight out of town when cornered. Or maybe he’s a psychopath, a coldly calculating strategist — crazy, like a desert fox. The endgame in Libya is likely to turn in large part on the instincts of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and any insight into those instincts would be enormously valuable to policy makers. Journalists have formed their impressions from anecdotes, or from his actions in the past; others have seized on his recent tirades about Al Qaeda and President Obama.
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Wikipedia wants more contributions from academics
The Guardian: Mike Peel began editing Wikipedia – the free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit – after a physics entry made him mad. It was 2005 and the then undergraduate was reading around a course when he became "irritated by a grammatical mistake". He hasn't looked back since. For Peel, now a 26-year-old post-doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester, Jodrell Bank centre for astrophysics, is not only the secretary of Wikimedia UK – the local volunteer chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees the Wikipedia project – but also one of the more prolific contributors among UK academics.
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To the brain, getting burned, getting dumped feel the same
CNN: Science has finally confirmed what anyone who's ever been in love already knows: Heartbreak really does hurt. In a new study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers have found that the same brain networks that are activated when you're burned by hot coffee also light up when you think about a lover who has spurned you. In other words, the brain doesn't appear to firmly distinguish between physical pain and intense emotional pain. Heartache and painful breakups are "more than just metaphors," says Ethan Kross, Ph.D., the lead researcher and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Read the whole story: CNN
