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Dead Salmon's "Brain Activity" Cautions fMRI Researchers
AthanasiusKircher sends in a Wired writeup on what should surely be a contender in the next Improbable Research competition: wiring a dead salmon into an fMRI machine and showing it pictures of humans designed to evoke various emotions. "When they got around to analyzing the voxel... data, the voxels representing the area where the salmon's tiny brain sat showed evidence of activity. In the fMRI scan, it looked like the dead salmon was actually thinking about the pictures it had been shown. ... The result is completely nuts — but that's actually exactly the point. [Neuroscientist Craig] Bennett... and his adviser, George Wolford, wrote up the work as a warning about the dangers of false positives in fMRI data. They wanted to call attention to ways the field could improve its statistical methods. ... Bennett notes: 'We could set our threshold [of significance] so high that we have no false positives, but we have no legitimate results.... We could also set it so low that we end up getting voxels in the fish's brain. It's the fine line that we walk.'" The research has been turned down by several publications, according to Wired, but a poster is available (PDF).
Wiring red herring's brain? Will it think too?
And here I though I had exterminated the last of the zombie salmon.
They're definitely on track for an igNobel prize. Using a red herring instead of the salmon would have made it a near certainty. A kipper would normally be the best choice, apart from the lack of a head/brain.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
This story makes me reconsider my zeal to see Terri Schiavo die. If she was indeed experiencing brain activity despite her handicap, surely she would be considered more alive than a dead salmon.
Our consciousness is all just a series of nerve impulses and chemical reactions. If Terri was experiencing these reactions and impulses, I hate to say it, but we may have killed a human being and not just a vegetable.
God bless you, Terri Schiavo.
Fish are capable of all sorts of feelings for humans.
WARNING!!! Pun approaching!!
No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable fish, the salmon, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
It was probably a salmon of doubt.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Dead salmons swim on water. What else swims on water? Wood! Right. So dead salmons must be made out of wood. What else is made out of wood? Witches! Right. And witches can think! So the dead salmon must be thinking!
I for one welcome our new zombie salmon psychotherapist overlords.
I can't believe I'm going to say this, but:
Fixed that for you.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
Zulus do.
Aztecs too.
Who's informative?
Not you!
You thought my name meant what? How very dare you!
...intelligent, logical, and reasonable arguments...
Uh...
Scientists like to make themselves sound smart and sophisticated but when it comes right down to it, scientists are a bunch of arrogant pricks who know nothing and simply want the rest of us blue collar folks to fund their insane "dead salmon" experiments with our hard earned tax dollars.
No sir. What it proves is the existence of the sole.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
A common mistake made in discussions of taxonomy is overlooking the issue of whether closely related species taste the same. In this case, you omitted the fact that all of them are great when grilled. With a slice of lemon on the side.
Does the scientific method for biologists exclude barbeques?
Salmon only possess soles.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
you insensitive cod!
No sir. What it proves is the existence of the sole.
Yeah, the measurements were right off the scales.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.