On day 9 of #ScienceAdvent, we’d like to share with you this beautiful image of the human connectome. Can you believe that it’s already 10 years since it was on the cover of Muse’s album?
#connectome #neuroscience #dti #Tractography

On day 8 of #ScienceAdvent, we ponder whether we will ever be able to explain the brain in simple terms. It's a trainee's take, so would love to hear what the experts think:
https://neurofrontiers.blog/simplifying-the-brain-will-it-work/

#neuroscience #science #brain

On day 7 of #ScienceAdvent we do a little imagination exercise and picture what would’ve happened had fMRI been invented 100 years earlier: https://neurofrontiers.blog/if-fmri-had-been-invented-100-years-earlier/
Spoiler alert: it might’ve given phrenology the wrong kind of boost.
What do you think would’ve happened?
#neuroscience #WhatIf #AlternateHistory #brain #science #discussion

On the sixth day of our #ScienceAdvent, we would like to talk about a debunked concept in neuroscience: learned helplessness. In short, it turns out that helplessness is not actually learned, but it's the default response when faced with prolonged inescapable adversity.

What we find really cool is also the fact that some of the researchers who popularized the concept and conducted a lot of research on it are the same who realized they had gotten it backwards.

Read more here:
https://neurofrontiers.blog/helplessness-is-not-learned/

#LearnedHelplessness #psychology #neuroscience #science

Day 5 of #ScienceAdvent is a bit late, because somehow the academic end of the year implies doing a year's worth of work in three weeks 😅 But it's a good one.

I recently found out that awake dog fMRI is something that we can do and there's basically an entire subfield of "dog neuroscience". I also recently discovered Gregory Berns' book, "How Dogs Love Us", and I'm looking forward to a wholesome Christmas read.

Did you know about this? Have you read the book? Do you know any cool insights from this field? Would love to discuss.

https://neurofrontiers.blog/brain-activity-of-dogs/

#DogNeuroscience #neuroscience #neuro #dogs #fmri #CoolScience #brain

On day 4 of #ScienceAdvent we want to share something we think everyone should know: there are no shortcuts in cognitive improvement.
You can read more about that and about our take on commercial neurotech here: https://neurofrontiers.blog/no-shortcuts-in-cognitive-improvement/
#neuro #neuroscience #brain #cognition #neurotech

On day 3 of #ScienceAdvent we would like to talk about scientific concepts we don't understand. No one gets it all, so we think it's important to acknowledge that.

For us, one of the biggest mysteries in neuroscience remains the free energy principle. Despite numerous attempts to read the scientific literature on the topic, as well as to listen to Karl Friston's talks, it seems that our brains refuse to minimize their uncertainty with respect to this.

What's something that you still don't really grasp in your field?

Link to post if you want to read more about this: https://neurofrontiers.blog/the-free-energy-mystery/

#neuroscience #science #FreeEnergy #KarlFriston #mystery #MysteriesOfScience

Day 2 of #ScienceAdvent asks us to talk about a discovery that impressed us this year.
Originally we were planning on talking about this paper which introduces a new way of delivering targeted epidural electrical stimulation for restoring trunk and leg motor functions after spinal cord injuries:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01663-5?fr=operanews
But our uni doesn’t subscribe to Nature Medicine and we couldn’t find it anywhere on the internet, so we had to settle for something else.

Should've probably shared this earlier, but I pretty much forgot. In December, we'll do a little #ScienceAdvent challenge. We've come up with 20 science-related prompts and every day we will share our neuroscience take on one of them. If you'd like to join in as well and share cool stuff from your field, here are the prompts: https://neurofrontiers.blog/science-advent-a-journey-through-science/

Don't forget to use the hashtag #ScienceAdvent.

The first prompt is "A scientist you admire". We picked a true legend in neuroscience: Brenda Milner. Here's our take on it: https://neurofrontiers.blog/brenda-milner-the-neuroscientist-to-admire/

Looking forward to learning about awesome scientists from other fields!

#neuroscience #science #ScienceCommunication #SciComm #advent #learning