Clik here to view.
Distance Code
Accurate brain stimulation requires precise neuroanatomical information. To activate a specific brain region with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), it is important to know where on the scalp to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bold predictions for good science
Undergraduates are taught proper scientific method. First, the experimenter makes a prediction, then s/he collects data to test that prediction. Standard statistical methods assume this hypothesis...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Science, LIVE: A made-for-TV experiment
A few months ago, Channel 4 attracted considerable attention for their sensationally titled – “Drugs Live: the Ecstasy Trial”. The subject matter was clearly designed to court controversy, with Prof...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Actors volunteer to be hypontised on TV
We are all pretty familiar with the basic formula of stage hypnosis. Supposedly normal people are hypnotised to do silly and embarrassing things before a wide-eyed audience. It is pretty hard to see...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Helium and Neuroscience
Modern cognitive neuroscience critically depends on helium. The most advanced methods for non-invasive brain imaging, function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG),...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Research Briefing: Targeting "silent" brain areas with TMS
A major challenge in neuroscience is how to study brain processes that are securely encased within the skull. Over the last twenty years, there has been enormous progress in non-invasive brain imaging...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Biased Debugging
We all make mistakes - Russ Poldrack's recent blog post is an excellent example of how even the most experienced scientists are liable to miss a malicious bug in complex code. It could be the mental...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Research Briefing: Attention restores forgotten items to visual short-term...
Our paper, just out in Psychological Science, describes the final series of experiments conducted by Alexandra Murray during her PhD with Kia Nobre and myself at the Department of Experimental...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book review: Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
I read Hallucinations over the Christmas break, and have been meaning to post a book review ever since. Oliver Sacks will be discussing his book tomorrow at Warwick University, where he is currently a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Statistical power is truth power
This week, Nature Reviews Neuroscience published an important article by Kate Button and colleagues quantifying the extent to which experiments in neuroscience may be statistically underpowered. For a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In the news: Decoding dreams with fMRI
Recently Horikawa and colleagues from ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, in Kyoto (Japan), caused a media sensation with the publication of the study in Science that shows first-time...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Neuroscience can reveal mysteries of the mind
Recently I responded in the Guardian to a couple of high-profile articles criticising over-hyped neuroscience [e.g., here and here]. Most of the claims were levelled at bad scientific practices...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Research Briefing: Dynamic population coding for flexible cognition
Dynamic population coding in prefrontal cortexOur environment is in constant flux. At any given moment there could be a shift in scenario that demands an equally rapid shift in how we interpret the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: Hallucinations, by Oliver Sacks
George WallisThis is a guest post by George Wallis, one of my PhD students. We recently attended a seminar in which Oliver Sacks discussed his recent book ‘Hallucinations’. In this post George...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In the News: Death wave
Near-death Experience(Wiki Commons)Can neuroscience shed light on one of life's biggest mysteries - death? In a paper just published in PNAS, researchers describe a surge of brain activity just moments...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Research Briefing: Oscillatory Brain State and Variability in Working Memory
Hot off the press: Oscillatory Brain State and Variability in Working MemoryIn a new paper, Nick Myers and colleagues show how spontaneous fluctuations in alpha-band synchronization over visual cortex...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New arrival, keeping us all busy
It has been a while since I have posted anything new, but in the meantime this little guy has arrived in our lives:
View ArticleClik here to view.
Research Briefing: Preferential encoding of behaviourally relevant...
Figure 1. Accurate predictions help us prepare the best actionStatistical regularities in the environment allow us to generate predictions to guide perception and action. For example, consider the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Research Briefing: organising the contents of working memory
Figure 1. Nicholas MyersResearch Briefing, by Nicholas MyersEveryone has been in this situation: you are stuck in an endless meeting, and a colleague drones on about a topic of marginal relevance. You...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Peering directly into the human brain
Wiki CommonsWith the rise of non-invasive brain imaging such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers have been granted unprecedented access to the inner workings of the brain. It...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What does fMRI measure?
Fig 1. From Kuo, Stokes, Murray & Nobre (2014)When you say ‘brain activity’, many people first think of activity maps generated by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; see figure 1). As a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What does MEG measure?
This is a guest post by Lev Tankelevitch, one of my PhD students. He is currently using MEG to explore reward-guided attention at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain activity. This article is also...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Research Briefing: reward-guided working memory
George WallisResearch Briefing, by George WallisIn almost any situation, there are hundreds of things (or ‘stimuli’) that could attract our attention - just count the number of objects you can see from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Journal Club: Decoding spatial activity patterns with high temporal resolution
by Michael Wolffon: Cichy, Ramirez and Pantazis (2015) Can visual information encoded in cortical columns be decoded from magnetoencephalography data in humans? NeuroImageKnowing what information the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Research Briefing: Testing sensory evidence against mnemonic templates
In a new study, published in eLife, we investigated how visual search templates are reactivated to act as input filters for target detection. How the brain maintains a template of the target of your...
View Article
