NeuroThursday is back in action with a discussion of learning styles in the classroom – particularly the now-classic split between visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. How meaningful is the whole idea?
A quick #NeuroThursday this week about "learning styles." Traditionally divided into visual, auditory, and kinesthetic but how much do they matter? pic.twitter.com/FBUtjOy4Hb
— Benjamin C. Kinney (mostly on Bluesky) (@BenCKinney) December 8, 2017
NeuroThursday has come around for a late-night drink this week, and an explanation of the nerve injury known as Saturday Night Palsy!
#NeuroThursday is back on this week to help you prepare for the dangers of the weekend – the neurological condition known as Saturday Night Palsy! pic.twitter.com/l3s536gy5N
— Benjamin C. Kinney (mostly on Bluesky) (@BenCKinney) November 17, 2017
NeuroThursday took a brief break, but it’s back to finish the Methods Trifecta with a discussion of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), the .0000001 megapixel camera!
https://storify.com/bckinney/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri
NeuroThursday returns from last week’s internet outage with a primer on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS): brain stimulation you could do at home, and why you probably shouldn’t.
On this week's #NeuroThursday: the second item from our poll: transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), the at-home brain mod! pic.twitter.com/TC8NtL8vd5
— Benjamin C. Kinney (mostly on Bluesky) (@BenCKinney) October 20, 2017
My latest neuroscience essay, “Right Hand, Human Brain” is up today at the Baen website! This one uses science fiction and fantasy to guide a deep dive into my personal favorite bit of neuroscience, part of my current research topics: handedness, and how it arises in the brain.
Hand dominance is much more complex than most people realize. It’s built from asymmetries atop asymmetries, a stack of lateralized functions in the brain, independent from each other in varying degrees. To understand these, you need to get to the root of the human condition: how we move, how we talk.
The complexity of this answer is why I love studying handedness. It’s prosaic and universal, so ordinary that it can affect your every waking hour without you needing to notice or care. Yet for all its silent ubiquity, to understand handedness, you need to understand everything about the organization of the brain.
For following here to the website, I offer you a bonus bit of trivia: late in the essay when I discussed ways to alter handedness, I mention “all four lobes of the brain.” This is a lie.
The traditional, textbook image of the brain shows four lobes: frontal (motor and executive), parietal (touch and sensorimotor integration), occipital (basic vision), and temporal (hearing, complex vision, memory formation).
The modern conception of the brain shows at least five lobes, maybe six. I’m used to the 5-lobe version, where you find another one by unfolding the crevasse between the frontal and temporal lobes.1 On the inner walls of that space, you will find the insular lobe, which seems to play roles in emotion, homeostasis, and consciousness.
Some people count a “limbic lobe” as the sixth, but if lobes are going to be anything other than an arbitrary distinction, they need to be anatomically & spatially separate, which the limbic lobe isn’t (though it is functionally distinct).
This week for NeuroThursday, I unveil some myths & methods of the non-invasive brain stimulation technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)!
By popular vote, this week's #NeuroThursday will be on the brain-zapping method known as TMS: transcranial magnetic stimulation! pic.twitter.com/GbgFpfycEA
— Benjamin C. Kinney (mostly on Bluesky) (@BenCKinney) October 6, 2017
This week I decided to pursue the follow-up questions from last week, and address some more philosophical questions about what our neuroscience answers mean!
Buckle in, #NeuroThursday friends, for a follow-up to last week's. I'll call this one "Harry Potter and the Theories of Neural Science!"
— Benjamin C. Kinney (mostly on Bluesky) (@BenCKinney) September 22, 2017
NeuroThursday is back, picking up a reader’s dare: can I actually write “Harry Potter and the Principles of Neural Science?” It turns out I can! It’s about surprise and novelty in the brain!
Threadreader:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/908508062050406400.html
Twitter original:
https://twitter.com/BenCKinney/status/908508062050406400
NeuroThursday is back from its summer break to talk about “muscle memory” – that is, skill/procedural memory – and how you can improve it!
Behold! #NeuroThursday returns from its August break with the third chapter in our series on memory: so-called "muscle memory" pic.twitter.com/i6NjJOVsYF
— Benjamin C. Kinney (mostly on Bluesky) (@BenCKinney) August 25, 2017
List of all NeuroThursday episodes, in chronological order (oldest first). Apologies for any inconsistent formatting, but Storify is dead and Threadreader is unreliable, so sometimes a Twitter link/embed is all I can provide.
You can always find recent episodes by clicking the NeuroThursday link under “Categories” down on the right.