Encephalon 14

Encephalon 14, available now at Mixing Memory. Some strange bedfellows...

...it appears that brain imaging and psychoanalysis are coming together somewhere in the cognitive neuroscience world, as Dr. Deborah Serani mentions an imaging study of transference in a post titled "Map of the Mind."

Ah, the new field of Freudian Neuroimaging,

Symposium II: Scanning The Brain For Transference?:
Using fMRI To Explore The Neurobiological Underpinnings Of The Core Of Psychoanalysis

will debut at

THE WINTER 2007 MEETING OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION

Actually, here's a publication on the topic by one of the investigators, Bradley S. Peterson:

Clinical neuroscience and imaging studies of core psychoanalytic constructs. Clinical Neuroscience Research Volume 4, Issues 5-6 , May 2005, Pages 349-365.

Core psychoanalytic constructs may be impossible to study directly using neuroscience and imaging methodologies. [OK, let's all go home now.] Nevertheless, experimental paradigms have been developed and are being applied that are at least relevant to understanding the neural bases of certain core theoretical constructs within psychoanalysis. These paradigms have demonstrated the likely contributions of: (1) the nucleus accumbens and related limbic circuitry in assigning valence within the pleasure/unpleasure continuum of affective experience; (2) the reticular formation, thalamus, amygdala, and cortex within arousal circuits in assigning personal salience to those affective experiences; (3) frontostriatal systems in subserving top-down processing in the CNS, which in turn contributes to numerous important psychological functions, including the control of drives and the construction of experience according to preestablished conceptual schemas—processes that likely underlie cognitive distortions, projection, and transference phenomena; and (4) multiple memory systems, particularly the procedural learning systems based within the dorsal striatum and declarative learning systems in the mesial temporal lobe, that likely contribute to memories within the domain of the descriptive unconscious, and the interactions across affective and cognitive memory systems, that might contribute to memory formations within the dynamic unconscious.

And what's with that newfangled fad of brain fitness? Why, the world's foremost authority is not mentioned in Encephalon 14!

Dr. Dag Brain Care Clinic
Coming soon to a couch near you....

Basic Brain Care Tips

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