Ecoding Diversity: What is Orthogonal Coding?

One of the problems brains must overcome to behave effectively is to discretely encode all the different responses that they can produce. Considering movement alone, you can move in a lot of...

I Want it Now! -- Temporal Discounting in the Primate Brain

Temporal discounting is our tendency to want things now rather than later. In order to encourage us to save money, banks have to offer us a reward in the form of an interest rate. In order to delay...

The Function of a Fearful Expression

Human beings use stereotyped facial expressions to identify the feelings of others. We can tell what another person is feeling in part because of how their face looks. However, this says very...

Must Read Paper on fMRI -and- The Worst fMRI Science Journalism Ever

There is a must-read paper in Nature about the limits of functional MRI as an experimental tool by one of its pioneers, Nikos Logothetis. (Also discussed by Jonah and Vaughan.) This paper is...

Acute Tryptophan Depletion increases offer rejection in the Ultimatum Game

Here is an interesting article showing the cross-over between neuropharmacology and decision making. Crockett et al. show that if you use acute tryptophan depletion to lower the levels of serotonin...