More junk science below. The junkiness is a bit subtle, however, so I will cover it in a footnote. Excerpt:
They found a way to interpret “real time” brain images to show whether people who viewed messages about using sunscreen would actually use sunscreen during the following week.
The scans were more accurate than the volunteers were, Emily Falk and colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles reported in the Journal of Neuroscience.
But with functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI, Falk and colleagues were able to go beyond good intentions to predict actual behavior.
FMRI uses a magnetic field to measure blood flow in the brain. It can show which brain regions are more active compared to others, but requires careful interpretation.
Falk’s team recruited 20 young men and women for their experiment. While in the fMRI scanner they read and listened to messages about the safe use of sunscreen, mixed in with other messages so they would not guess what the experiment was about.
“On day one of the experiment, before the scanning session, each participant indicated their sunscreen use over the prior week, their intentions to use sunscreen in the next week and their attitudes toward sunscreen,” the researchers wrote.
After they saw the messages, the volunteers answered more questions about their intentions, and then got a goody bag that contained, among other things, sunscreen towelettes.” “A week later we did a surprise follow up to find out whether they had used sunscreen,” Falk said in a telephone interview.
About half the volunteers had correctly predicted whether they would use sunscreen. The research team analyzed and re-analyzed the MRI scans to see if they could find any brain activity that would do better.
Activity in one area of the brain, a particular part of the medial prefrontal cortex, provided the best information. “From this region of the brain, we can predict for about three-quarters of the people whether they will increase their use of sunscreen beyond what they say they will do,” Lieberman said.
“It is the one region of the prefrontal cortex that we know is disproportionately larger in humans than in other primates,” he added. “This region is associated with self-awareness, and seems to be critical for thinking about yourself and thinking about your preferences and values.”
More HERE. The journal article appears to be Predicting Persuasion-Induced Behavior Change from the Brain
Note this sentence: “The research team analyzed and re-analyzed the MRI scans to see if they could find any brain activity that would do better”.
That is known as data dredging. If you examine enough potential relationships, one will appear high by chance alone. To counter that, the experimenters should have used an experiment-wise error rate approach to evaluate their conclusions. They do not appear to have done that so their findings are by default explainable as a chance occurrence.
They tried to cover themselves by saying that the brain area they finally used was of “a priori interest” but if that were so they would have examined that area alone. Making up theory after the event is easy
Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
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6 users commented in " Now scientists read your mind better than you can "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThis is hardly the answer. The mind and the HEART work together to move a person to action. Good or bad.
True, making up explanations after the event is easy, but replication is not. Begs for replication from other labs!
Life is like a box of chocolates?
Dr. Matthew Lieberman and Dr. Naomi Eisenberger are guilty of horrible unethical research misconduct! They conduct environmentally manipulated unethical research experiments on unconsenting and unknowing individuals (in real time) while these individuals are living out their daily lives!
They have people , that will go out ,and deliberately manipulate a person’s (real-time) social environment in an extremely negative, unpleasant and intolerable way that causes that individual to be faced with problems that will cause them to suffer from long term social and emotional distress!
They purposely manipulate an individuals daily social environment in a negative way, so that they will begin to suffer extreme amounts of emotional and visceral pain on a daily basis …all, due to the problems that dr. Matthew Lieberman and dr. Naomi Eisenberger’s group has deliberately caused for them!
Their victims begins to suffer long episodes of rejection, isolation, ostracism, loss, abandonment and cannot find any social support. They are not told why or who has done this to them! Their lives are deliberately destroyed !They begin to suffer extreme amounts of pain all …so , Dr. Matthew Lieberman and his wife, UCLA’s Dr. Naomi Eisenberger can get a more original view of individuals suffering from social distress! The focus of their research experiments!
Dr. Matthew Lieberman and Dr. Naomi Eisenberger ‘ s research projects need to be investigated ,
shut down and held accountable for the lives and health of the individuals that they have tortured and destroyed all for their own financial greed, job security and to manipulate a way to get their research published in journals!
UCLA’s Dr. Naomi Eisenberger and (her husband ) Dr. Matthew Lieberman have been doing unethical and harmful human research experiments ,on un-consenting human subjects, to get their scientific findings for their much noted research studies!
What they have not told you ,is that, they have been doing extremely harmful research experiments that manipulate their subjects real-time daily social environment , so, their subjects find themselves faced with problems that cause them to suffer extreme amounts of long-term social and emotional distress . Dr. Matthew Lieberman and Dr. Naomi Eisenberger, then take this opportunity to follow and map the different stages of damage that extreme amounts of long-term social and emotional distress does to our body’s immune system, health, brain and well-being! Their research studies must be fully investigated and they need to be held accountable for the harm and damage that they have done to so many innocent individuals!
How have they discovered that how your brain responds to social stressors can influence the body’s immune system in ways that may negatively affect health ? They are trying to discover this by ,deliberately causing un-consenting subjects to suffer extreme amounts of long term social dis-tressors while they go about interacting in their real-time daily lives!
What UCLA’s Dr. Naomi Eisenberger and Dr. Matthew Lieberman do to obtain their research data is…
1. With the help of people they hire from a company named “North Vector Inc”..they deliberately make a unknowing subject’s real-time social environment so intolerable ,so the subject will begin to suffer extreme amounts of long term distress! Soon, the subject is tortured so badly by their systematic stressors that they lose everything which makes them suffer from large amounts of loss ..ect..and soon find their real-time lives destroyed …so, these horrible Social Psychologists can observe and map these subjects as they go thru the painful stages of deterioration that one suffers when they are suffering from long term distress! Their research projects must be stopped!
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