Does the presence of irrelevant neuroscience information make explanations of psychological phenomena more appealing? Do fMRI pictures further increase that allure? To help answer these questions, 385 college students in four experiments read brief descriptions of psychological phenomena, each one accompanied by an explanation of varying quality (good vs. circular) and followed by superfluous information of various types. Ancillary measures assessed participants' analytical thinking, beliefs on dualism and free will, and admiration for different sciences. In Experiment 1, superfluous neuroscience information increased the judged quality of the argument for both good and bad explanations, whereas accompanying fMRI pictures had no impact above and beyond the neuroscience text, suggesting a bias that is conceptual rather than pictorial. Superfluous neuroscience information was more alluring than social science information (Experiment 2) and more alluring than information from prestigious "hard sciences" (Experiments 3 and 4). Analytical thinking did not protect against the neuroscience bias, nor did a belief in dualism or free will. We conclude that the "allure of neuroscience" bias is conceptual, specific to neuroscience, and not easily accounted for by the prestige of the discipline. It may stem from the lay belief that the brain is the best explanans for mental phenomena.
Objective
Up to half of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may have cognitive difficulty, but most cognitive measures are confounded by a motor component. Rare studies have related impaired cognition in ALS to disease in gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM). We evaluated a simple, untimed measure of executive functioning with minimal motor demands in ALS, and relate performance to structural disease.
Methods
Fifty-six patients with ALS and 29 matched healthy controls were assessed with the Visual-Verbal Test (VVT). This brief measure of cognitive flexibility first assesses an individual's ability to identify a shared feature in three of four simple geometric designs. Cognitive flexibility is challenged when individuals are next asked to identify a different shared feature in another three of the same four geometric designs. Regression analyses related performance to GM atrophy and reduced WM fractional anisotropy (FA) in a subset of patients.
Results
ALS patients were significantly impaired on this simple measure of cognitive flexibility (p<0.01). An error in cognitive flexibility was present in 48.2% of individual ALS patients. Regression analyses related impaired cognitive flexibility to GM atrophy in inferior frontal and insula regions, and to reduced FA in WM projections in inferior frontal-occipital and uncinate fasciculi and corpus callosum.
Conclusion
Patients with ALS have impaired cognitive flexibility on an untimed measure with minimal motor demands, and this is related in part to a large-scale frontal network that is degraded in ALS.
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