dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 15/05/2026@nancykanwisher.bsky.social Good to see you on Bluesky, How can we get discussions going? Luiz Pessoa is right that there are few threads. . 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 09/05/2026Yes, I have apologised about the way in which I have done so. It is a personality trait that gets out of hand. 110
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 08/05/2026Do you just mean that people argue and don’t always agree with you.I have always wanted people to argue with me. In what way is this not what happens in science? is this 210
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 08/05/2026I don’t understand. Nobody thinks that tasks or states are due to a single area acting on its own. It is one thing to try to distinguish the contribution made by different areas (reasonable) and another to deny the contribution of the circuitrry (unreasonable). 020
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 03/05/2026But why does executive control equate with consciousness? 130
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 02/05/2026Not sure why ephaptic ffields solve consciosness. The assumption seems to be that ephaptic fields solve the binding problem but it doesn’t necessarily follow that it also solves consciousness. 220
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 11/04/2026This was shown by Ishai and Ungerleider early in the century. This is not to disparage a good modern demonstration which tackles the issue more directly. 010
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 27/03/2026The problem is that the results of experiments with tDCS are often difficult to replicate. 120
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 27/03/2026I think we should try. We should be able to find alternatives for the safety of drugs. We can now record cellular activity in the human brain and combine information from patients with electrode arrays in different locations. And deep ultrasound can be used on the human brain 5o prove causation. 100
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 24/03/2026I actually hate the term ‘default system’. I think the better way of putting it is that it supports thoughts that are generated internally rather in response to external task demands. 010
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/03/2026Isn’t this unexpected? TMS over dorsal PF is used for depression and the amygdala shows abnormal activity in depression. Perhaps the reason was that your subjects were not depressed. 110
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/03/2026Isn’t the difference that rumination is stuck on particular worries, whereas mind wandering shifts from one thought to another? what is in common is that both involve the default system. 110
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 22/03/2026To what extent does Trump and his circle decide this, whatever congress might say? There is clealy a war on science coming from the White House. 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 22/03/2026Yes, luck plays a considerable part in careers in science. 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 22/03/2026Did you not have any patients with electrodes in the amygdala (implanted prior to surgery for temporal lobe epilepsy)? That might say more about why the TMS had an effect. 100
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 22/03/2026The question is whether the distinctions matter for empirical science, ie do we get wrong results or interpret them wrongly if we are unaware of the distinctions that can be drawn. 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 20/03/2026An ideological attempt to restrict scientific practice, as the result of politicians interfering with what scientists do. 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 20/03/2026Interesting as it confirms the difficulty that those with ADHD have in sustained attention. But those with depression ruminate.Do you draw a distinction between mind wandering and rumination? 110
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 20/03/2026There is little work on NHPs now. Instead almost all the work is on mice. I can understand that this can tell us about human metabolism. But cognition depends on complex neural circuitry. We need to know what cognitive capacities we share with mice and what capacities are unique to primates or us. 0255
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 20/03/2026Thanks for the detailed explanation. It is convincing. I should have read the paper in detail. 010
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 18/03/2026Seems to be good work. And the results are of obvious importance. The assumption is that immature cells will undergo neurogenesis. How reliable is that assumtion? 100
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 17/02/2026I would probably only repeat myself. That is the lot of aged scientists. It is fresh minds that are needed. 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 16/02/2026Can’t attend as on dialysis. Would love to be there. 100
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 08/02/2026How sure are you that the cerebellar activations reflect meaning as opposed to articulatory activity? 020
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 08/02/2026It is critical that this was a test not of STM but retrieval. Dorsal PF does not provide the substrate for STM but for the retieval of information. STM of locations is supported by parietal lip. 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 25/01/2026I prefer 1. That is what we do when setting up hypothesis A and hypothesis B and testing them against each other in future experiments. 020
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 25/01/2026So why am I grousing? I suppose I’m looking for computational model A that makes a different prediction to computational model B and is powerful enough to make predictions for future experiments. 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 25/01/2026Having read it (!} you are right.They test if ADS is before FOF and find slightly more information in FOF. They inactivate FOF, but they didn’t need a model to think of that.They produce a RNN model and it accounts for the data, both with and without the inactivation (predictions). 110
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 24/01/2026Indeed I need to read the paper. The problem with social media as we all know is the temptation to respond impulsively. I plead guilty. I have a bugbear that many computational models are produced without making and then testing predictions. I repeat this ad nauseam and am tripped up. 180
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 24/01/2026I agree so long as the computational models make predictions that other models do not, and those predictions are then tested. 131
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 24/01/2026We have long known that there is similar activiry in the prefrontal cortex of macaques and the striatum. But the frontal activity occurs slightly earlier. 140
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026I suspect that the key to prefrontal is actually the developmebt of parietal. 110
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026I don’r buy that. The default mode involves medial frontal but not the lateral prefrontal. 100
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026Yes it looks like it, eg the work of cavada on cats. 110
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026But I don’t now think that this can be right because cats and dogs have granular PF and they don’t forage in this way. 100
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026I discuss this in my book Understanding the Prefrontal Cortex (2021, OUP). it invol ves the fact that anthropoid primates forage by using the eye and hand. But it remains to explain why this led to granular cortex, ie what the mechanism is that requires granularity (association cortex). 100
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026I think cats and dogs have a granular PF cortex and no doubt many other mammals. 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026No, the MD nucleus also projects to non PF areas in primates (eg parietal). 040
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026I should have added differentiation out of the anterior insula/agranular orbital cortex. It ahould not be thought that all this is odd. Rodents lack some parietal areas found in primates and they lack a PMv because they do not grasp items in an individual paw. 010
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026So it looks as if the primate PF differentiated out of the tissue of the medial wall in ancestral species. 020
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026The best up to date discussion is by Izquirdo in a book chapter. the critical evidence concerns comparative transcriptomic studies. There are similarities in connectivity patterns, but there are also similarities between the connections of the rodent medial wall and the primate ACC. 010
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026As you say the issue is one of homology. And this is discussed by Preuss and Wise. And the evidence they review suggests that the medial frontal cortex in rodents is not homologous with primate prefrontal. But tree shrews do have a PF that is homologous. 000
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 23/01/2026What are your main disagreements? Happy to discuss them and prepared to be persuaded where I’m wrong. We have never met because I have rarely travelled because of poor health. 010
dickretired @dickretired.bsky.social · 22/01/2026This is an important claim since it suggests that it is easy to be mistaken iin detecting ripples. in general it is essential to check signals, whether electrophysiological ( EEG) or vascular (FMRI). It is all too easy to just accept the results a computer program produces. 010
