
Do images of the brain make us more likely to believe what we read? - laurex
https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/research-brief-do-images-brain-make-us-more-likely-believe-what-we-read
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lizzard
Oddly, a lot of popularly used images of the brain are of my brain. I gave a
permissive CC license on a still from an MRI of my brain many years ago on
Flickr. I've seen my brain on academic journals, newspaper articles, magazine
articles about crime, psychology, intelligence, and so on, for the last ten
years. The bigger publications sometimes think to obfuscate my name from the
MRI itself, but most don't.

When you get imaging done, it's often possible to request a DVD with the
images - at the time, I used open source software called OSRIX to fly around
the images and pick some stills.

~~~
liftbigweights
"check out the big brain on brad"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrm-
rPSCIBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrm-rPSCIBw)

I've always wondered where these images came from.

Your story reminded me of the origins of Resusci Anne.

Radiolab had an interesting story of where the "death mask" came from. It's
quite interesting if you have the time.

[https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/172693-death-
mask](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/172693-death-mask)

~~~
lizzard
Oh, I love that. I didn't have the patience to listen to the radio show but
here's a link to an article about L'inconnue that explains a little of the
history of the use of the model of her face, and the connection to the
toymaker who eventually designed the CPR model!
[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24534069](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24534069)

Wikipedia also does not disappoint, with the lists of literary references to
the mask of her face:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Inconnue_de_la_Seine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Inconnue_de_la_Seine)

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deytempo
Now I’m not sure if I’m believing this because it’s based on scientific
research or because there’s a picture of a brain on the page.

~~~
smoll
Maybe the page itself is the research experiment and they’re polling
people/running sentiment analysis on whether or not people are buying it. So
meta...

~~~
moetech
In that case there should be a page for the control group without brains.

~~~
nonbel
There are a few people like that. Apparently you don't need a brain to be a
mathematician or french public servant:

[http://mentalfloss.com/article/70204/man-without-
brain](http://mentalfloss.com/article/70204/man-without-brain)

[https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/oct/02/research.h...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/oct/02/research.highereducation1)

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_yosefk
It's certainly the case that neural nets work flawlessly because they're like
the brain - ask any journalist. Without doubt, an image of the brain enhances
NN performance

