This is a poster presented by Bennett and colleagues at this year’s Human Brain Mapping conference. It’s about fMRI scanning on a dead fish, specifically a salmon. They put the salmon in an MRI scanner and “the salmon was shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations. The salmon wasasked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing.”
I’d say that this research was justified on comedic grounds alone, but they were also making an important scientific point. The (fish-)bone of contention here is multiple comparisons correction. The “multiple comparisons problem” is simply the fact that if you do a lot of different statistical tests, some of them will, just by chance, give interesting results.
In fMRI, the problem is particularly severe. An MRI scan divides the brain up into cubic units called voxels. There are over 40,000 in a typical scan. Most fMRI analysis treats every voxel independently, and tests to see if each voxel is “activated” by a certain stimulus or task. So that’s at least 40,000 separate comparisons going on – potentially many more, depending upon the details of the experiment.
If they’d used a Flat fish that would have been Brill…
Such a tortured sole…
Oh Flapjack – your never one to flounder when a pun is required.
wow, never seen an xray of a fish before.
I am a great fan of derrenbrown. Looking forward for his HOW TO BE A PSYCHIC SPY show.
This has confused me, maybe its because its early, but surely this isn’t real…
what ob earth? i am also confused by this……
thats meant to say “what on earth” see im so confused i cant even type properly!
When asking whether fish can empathise with people after they’ve already been filleted, I try to kipper open mind. After all, I’m no brain sturgeon
So, that’s an excuse for slow research, little results? A response to accusations??? Isn’t that the case with so many more techniques but also projects in research.
Explanation fmri technique is quite interesting though, the magnetism in hemoglobin and that hemoglobin without oxygen disturbs magnetic fields (with oxygen it doesn’t .. makes you wonder huh … what magnetic field (where?) .. and why? sounds to me that the oxygen seems to neutralize something something in hemoglobin, or revert its original capacity … Maybe the text isn’t specific enough I read here and there … that there is a little more to it .. than the way they put it there a bit too simple .. .. Not all without importance ofcourse .. readers now wonder …
Perhaps it was the scientists getting “emotional” through the fish?
Hm, now I wonder .. can people who are a bit too up .. hyperstatic as I like to call it … boosting it from their not so selfish emotionless system … disrubt energy circuits around them .. as the hemoglobin will contain less oxygen …. (it disrupt more systems after a while .. body responses will become quite massive .. ) .. It will ofcourse disrupt unsealed people around them quite fast .. they get into their circuitry via an entrance that normally is not used in such a massive highly powered way …
Ehehe … some who are not busy with this .. just discard it as whatever you wish to see it like. I just wonder now and then about this stuff .. and am by now entering the human body … the chemical structures in the back .. the hidden meaning of human civilization .. The body rules.
just shows what happens when you get a tun-a data.
How did they ask the fish to do anything?
Who taught this fish English in the first place, that’s what I want to know? Or did they ask it in salmonish to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing? Yeh, we can sure find somethig in nothing, can’t we? Wouldn’t be the first red herring on this blog!
Hmmm the fish is dead. This is tres wierd lol and I hope scientists didn\’t waste too much money on this humorous test!
Tash – Are you saying the test results are a red herring?
Hehe I havent laughed as much as I did reading some of these comments in a long time!
So… “…the fact that if you do a lot of different statistical tests, some of them will, just by chance, give interesting results…”
Interesting… veeerry interesting…
is the sole reason fer this piece so we can do fishy jokes? i thought of clamming up before it gave me a haddock…but i’ll post just fer the halibut!
Come on guys, there’s a time and a plaice for these puns…
@Flapjack – You’re on form today
Anyone else notice the typo? It sounds fishy… or is that me being over-suspicious after seeing the other clues on the blog? Especially seeing as this post doesnt have an original (tartare) source…
Anyway I’ll stop carping on now, and wait with bait-ed breath for the result. (sorry)
Aye, the old ones are the best ones! Well, maybe not.
I think it’s all a load of Pollocks, not sure i can take much Moray this. Oh dear.
All this talk of statistics is giving me a haddock.
@roz – Pipped to the post, goshdarnit!
‘The “multiple comparisons problem” is simply the fact that if you do a lot of different statistical tests, some of them will, just by chance, give interesting results.’
Scream if you love the multiple comparisons problem! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!
It’s fishy. I dragged the image to my desktop and zoomed right in – there’s plenty of unusual activity at pixel level!!! Whatcha think?
@ Tash – Oh yeh – a nice wee grid system with poss colour coding? Hmmm. Maybe. Certainly a good way to hide stuff.
The heading should read…..”Humans Get Emotional Over Photo of Dead Fish”…..
this cant be searious. link to the original sauce?
This is a terrific story – really interesting (and read more on the background to it here http://prefrontal.org/blog/ )
you folks need to stop all the crabbing–think of everyone else on this blog, & dont be so shellfish!
I think we underestimate dead fish.
If some kindly soul could e-mail me the full paper at theunbearables2008@gmail.com I would never breathe a word of whatever academic faux pas you might be committing.
Please?
C’mon, where’s the piece that allows us to debate the whole quantum physics side of remote viewing? Are you simply going to debunk or are you going to widen our horizons to the possibilities of implicate order/holograms and de-skepticise the skeptics with your usual spanner in the works? I’m sure you won’t leave it at simply de-bunking. That would be too easy.
smart fish so are some fishkeepers some have brains