IgNobel Prize in Neuroscience: The dead salmon study (2012)

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/

by dhuramas • 8 years ago

95 18 8 years ago

blogs.scientificamerican.com

jlv2• 8 years ago

Very interesting article, even if from 2012.

michaericalribo• 8 years ago

Do you mean that it was even more interesting at the time, in 2012?

pandapower2• 8 years ago

The dead salmon has aged like fine wine.

9214• 8 years ago

This belongs to "pure gold dust" category of my neurofeedback-related readings. Makes a good point about the prevalence of data dredging in scientific (and esp. medical) communities.

dhuramas• 8 years ago

TLDR; researchers at UC Santa Barbara, intending to show how statistics can be used misleadingly, received statistically significant results when scanning a salmon with fMRI to show that it's brain responded differently to photos of different social situations. The salmon was dead.

(sauce: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9t3bc4)

cirrus-clouds• 8 years ago

This is still one of my favourite IgNobel winners for Physics from 1999: The optimal way to dunk a biscuit in a cup of tea *

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/462987.stm

* biscuit = cookie in the UK

abugheratwork• 8 years ago

I'm glad to read that they ate the salmon.

prefrontal5• 8 years ago

I am the first author of the salmon poster/paper. If you all have any questions I am happy to answer!

avs733• 8 years ago

How many free drinks has this fact gotten you?

prefrontal5• 8 years ago

At least six, most of them in Cambridge on the night we won the IgNobel prize.

jeromebaek• 8 years ago

How can you be sure the salmon wasn't really responding to the pictures?

prefrontal5• 8 years ago

Good question. Ultimately, in fMRI we are looking for changes in the local ratio of oxygenated to deoxygenated blood. As neurons begin firing in a brain region more oxygen-rich blood is dumped in by the circulatory system. If the salmon really was responding to the pictures there would need to be blood flow for these changes to be detectable using fMRI. Since the salmon had been prepared by the supermarket there was nothing to circulate blood around.

kijin• 8 years ago

What happened to the salmon after the experiment? Did the fMRI scan seem to have had any effect on the taste?

prefrontal5• 8 years ago

I cooked it for dinner. We kept it cold in the snow outside the building all day while we worked. Tasted like regular salmon when we ate it.

AndrewOMartin• 8 years ago

As we're talking about serious (though not entirely un-ludicrous) experiments concerning dead fish, I'm not going to miss an opportunity to post this video of a dead fish placed in "fast flowing water" (it's actually a tank with a jet and an outlet, but the effect is much the same).

Which way do you think the dead fish will move, upstream or downstream? Place your bets now.

https://vimeo.com/44887922

IgNobel Prize in Neuroscience: The dead salmon study (2012)

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