fMRI ( functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is the star of the neurosciences. Research using fMRI scans provides steadily increasing amounts of information about the functioning of our brain. However, a lot of articles appear in the media with far-fetched conclusions.
What causes depression: serotonin or your experiences?
What causes your depression: serotonin or what you experience? The answer: the question is invalid! Both play a role, and are interconnected. You cannot say that one of these is the cause.
Remembering an event changes your memory
Sometimes our memory is compared with the hard disc of a computer where data is stored, or a filing cabinet. But that is not the way our memory works. How does the act of recall actually work? And what is the role of the hippocampus? And how do false confessions come into existence?
Can you smell it too?
Our olfactory organ is quite exceptional. What you are capable of smelling can change within a few months as a result of changes within your nose. And a smell apparent to one person may be completely undetectable to another.
Pain is always in your head
If you cut your finger the pain appears to originate at the site of the wound. But that is misguided. Pain is an emotion that is generated in the brain itself. Pain is always in your head.
Why people don’t want antidepressants but do want psychotherapy
A lot of people think antidepressants are worthless. Is psychotherapy better than an antidepressant? There is no evidence for this. It seems to me that antidepressants suffer a disadvantage in our perception as compared to psychotherapy, in that their mechanism of action is quite invisible and not instinctively comprehensible.
Does dopamine make you happy, and is methylphenidate (Ritalin) addictive?
Dopamine the happiness hormone? Not at all! Dopamine helps to choose where to direct your attention. This process does not work properly in children and adults with ADHD. Methylphenidate (Ritalin) corrects this without having an addictive effect.
Man thinks ahead, Nature succeeds through hindsight
What makes man an exceptional animal? That he can think logically in cause and effect. But that is also a handicap, because nature is a system without cause and effect.
What is colour? How blue can look white…
How do we see colour? Can white look blue and vice versa? And does it matter which word you use for a colour?
The girl with half a brain
The girl without the right hemisphere of her brain functions pretty normally. How is this possible?
