Blogging on the Brain: 12/15

Some highlights from recent brain blogging:

Psychological Operations: MindHacks discovers an archive of information warfare propaganda.

Hemisphericity: Handedness may not be the proper way to control for left or right-brain dominance, according to a recent article reviewed by BPS Research Digest.

The Neural Prediction Challenge: Can you predict a subject's responses to new stimuli given "recordings from visual and auditory neurons during naturalistic stimulation" ?

Psychedelic Treatments for OCD? It appears that psilocybin mushrooms may temporarily allieve obsessive-compulsive symptoms. [Though I have to ask, wouldn't large doses of any profoundly mind-altering drug be likely to change the profile of OCD behavior?]

IFG in mitigating interference: Aron points to the inferior frontal gyrus as the location of cognitive inhibition. This post at Cognitive Daily describes transcranial magnetic stimulation of IFG and its possible role in episodic interference.

Quantum Mechanics in the Brain? In contrast to theories of consciousness that invoke neural quantum mechanics, the Neurophilosopher reviews a viable theory of how quantum mechanics may be involved in the sense of smell.

Enhancing Memory During Sleep: SCLin's blog covers a fascinating recent study showing that minute electrical stimulation during sleep can enhance memory consolidation.

Localizing Intuition in the Brain: MindBlog reviews a recent fMRI study of intuitive judgments and their connection with orbito-frontal cortex.

Is the hand faster than the eye? Another BPS post reviews research suggesting that your eyes may not be fooled by magic tricks, even if "you" were! This is reviewed in the context of dissociable action/perception systems, but is also compatible with graded representation accounts of knowledge, where weaker representations suffice to guide eye movements but stronger representations are required for explicit knowledge (this has been demonstrated in A-Not-B tasks where infants fail to reach to the correct location of a hidden object, yet nonetheless gaze towards the correct location).

Two new blogs from Nature Publishing Group: Nautilus and Peer-to-Peer. And don't forget Action Potential!

Have a nice weekend!