It’s hot in here

The Neuroskeptic blog has done a fantastic analysis of the popularity of different areas of the brain among neuroscientists by looking at how many scientific papers have been published on them since 1985. It’s like Vogue magazine’s hot styles, but for neurobiology.

I’ll leave you to check out the wonderful graphs, but here’s the punchline.

“The orbitofrontal cortex and cingulate cortex are both undergoing massive growth at the moment. The amygdala and parietal cortex are pretty hot too. By contrast, the cerebellum and the caudate are stuck in the scientific doldrums.”

The cerebellum has more neurons than the whole of the rest of the brain put together but we still don’t understand it very well. Not least because damage to the area doesn’t seem to produce some of the striking selective impairments in our abilities as does damage to other brain areas.

Consequently, the traditional way to annoy anyone doing a talk on their brain scanning experiment is to ask what the activity in the cerebellum means.

Link to Neuroskeptic on ‘This Season’s Hottest Brain Regions’.