Title of the Week!

"The Effect of Criticism on Functional Brain Connectivity and Associations with Neuroticism" by Michelle Nadine Servaas, Harriëtte Riese, Remco Jan Renken, Jan-Bernard Cornelis Marsman, Johan Lambregs, Johan Ormel, and André Aleman, appears in the journal PLOS ONE.

The irresistible epistemology of the visual false negative.

This is one photograph of a spore print, taken of mushroom specimens left for hours on a sheet of black paper and a sheet of white paper:

See the haze of white spores on the black paper? If you think about it, you know that there must be similar patterns of spores on the white paper, too, even though you can't see them. And really, even though you know they must be there, you can clearly see that there's nothing there.

"See the Moon!"

A brief allegory, NeuroCooking friends, on the importance of specificity in science:

"If the Moon were made of green cheese, it would be visible to the naked eye."

"See the Moon!"

"In conclusion, we have proved that the Moon is made of green cheese."

"... help create the fact"

"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact."

- William James (1842-1910)

Synaptic Sandbags

The hardest part to sharing an engaging story is to find the proper balance of details. If you share too many details, your listener gets distracted, and perhaps loses an understanding of your plot. If you get sidetracked and share an abundance of inconsequential details, you may find yourself confused, and lose sense of both the path and the message of your story.

Think of the details of your story as synaptic sandbags. If you are sharing your story strategically, that is, as a tool for helping your listener better understand and engage with specific information, then you want your story to trigger select experiences and memories for your listener. The details you choose to share are the sandbags that help create a path of discovery in your listener’s brain: too few sandbags, and you risk tributaries, or your story being washed away. Too many sandbags, and you dam up your information, restricting the path that your listener needs to take through connections in their own mind, in order to join you at the close of your story.