Blog
Why Astronomy Still Uses Mythography
Astronomy still uses mythography because it aligns to how our brains work
3 min read
Scientific Evidence, Neuromythographic Reinterpretation
One of the challenges in getting a holistic view of the neuroscience literature is that there is "evidence"
3 min read
Wilhelm Wundt's Warning About Reities
I coined the word "reity" to refer to the modern social science propensity for coining abstract nouns to
3 min read
Nietzsche on Words and Originality
Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote:
What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot
2 min read
On Cargo Cult Science
South Pacific Islanders after WWII built replicas of airport objects in hopes that cargo planes would land and deliver goods again. But the planes did not land.
3 min read
Rime of the Ancient Neuromythographer
The discovery and identification of a large set of puzzle pieces...has made it possible to apply a modified version of an ancient practice to solve a bleeding-edge problem, where the abstract mental nouns have failed.
3 min read
The Neuromythography of Procrastination
The finding here suggests that procrastination is the self rebelling against doing something being imposed upon it from the outside. 8BM has a stubborn side.
2 min read
Paranoid Story Listening
When listening to an ambiguous social narrative, paranoids had higher activation in left TPOJ1, left TGd, and right 9mdp.
1 min read
Does the ventral striatum cause BPD patients to actually enjoy being insulted?
Does neuroscience say BPD patients unconsciously enjoy being insulted? The problems with the ventral striatum-reward center paradigm.
5 min read
Old Dogs, New Tricks, Noradrenaline, and the Locus Coeruleus
One of the stereotypes of aging is being set in one's ways, and no longer wanting to seek
2 min read
The Justice of Theseus: Right IFSa
While right IFSa (Theseus) is usually involved in deciding to administer third-party punishment, in the present study it showed up in restraining punishment of the unfair player.
5 min read
Akasha, Saga, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, and Aphantasia
In aphantasia, during retrieval of autobiographical visual memories, Akasha (right hippocampus, personification of space) spoke less to Saga (v23ab, Norse goddess of historical storytelling).
3 min read
Displacing Neuromyths With Neuromythography
The advances in neuroscience have attracted many people who try to use it to dress up their pet ideas. Dopamine,
1 min read
The Butterflies of the Soul
Puelles and Nieuwenhuys propose that there are about 1,250 microzones in the brain, from which different types of neurons emerge in different developmental eras in the embryo. They need interpretation to glimpse the butterflies of the soul.
3 min read
The 12 Principles of Neuromythography
Neuromythography can be distilled into 12 Principles. These weave together epistemology, the reification fallacy, evolutionary psychology, brain mapping, Lindenmayer systems, music theory, and myth.
3 min read
The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is a Statistical Artifact
No mindless robot can get less than zero or more than 100 "correct" answers. However, those robots at the top or bottom of the performance distribution will under- or over-estimate their performance simply because of the cutoff at 100% and 0%, respectively!
4 min read
Herpesvirus: The Agent of the Body's Ragnarök
The vertebrates have co-evolved with a dark, infiltrating enemy over the past several hundred million years. I am talking about the herpesvirus family of neurotropic viruses.
3 min read
The Medium Is the Message
While I do not uncritically endorse everything Marshall McLuhan claimed, there are certain quotes that ironically resonate with neuromythography.
3 min read
Mordred and the Sardinian Alcohol‐Preferring Rats
The neurotransmitter arginine vasopressin (AVP) is a complement of oxytocin, and mediates a lot of social behaviors. Both oxytocin and
1 min read
A Tour of the Brain's Functional Networks
When the ancients looked at the stars, they imagined lines in between them that outlined mythological characters. When neuroscientists looked at fMRI blobs in brain scans, and ran temporal activation correlations between them, they imagined functional connections.
2 min read
The Neural Correlates of ‘Women Empathize, Men Systematize’
The current neuromemex contains more than 225 human and animal studies demonstrating neural sexual dimorphisms, none of which are uncorrected for the larger average brain and body size of men.
6 min read
Eubacterium eligens: One of the Good Bacteria
A pair of studies identify Eubacterium eligens as an excellent bacterial citizen of the gut.
2 min read
Scorched Earth Eliminative Materialism
Eliminative materialism suggests that we should abandon the language of mental states entirely in favor of a vocabulary that better captures the underlying physical processes in the brain. -Patricia Churchland
1 min read