The Axon Terminal

1:17 PM

@ArtemKaznatcheev seems too self-helpy to me to work, though I think a question about effectiveness in learning foreign languages could be on topic, plenty of psych research is out on the topic as well, but it sounds like Linguistics has already covered it

@ArtemKaznatcheev I was surprised and glad to see I finally got an answer for that!

Josh Gitlin

3:10 PM

Oh no @ArtemKaznatcheev watch out, I'm about to ask another "popular media" inspired question :-(

Josh Gitlin

3:27 PM

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Q: Does the fusiform face area in patients with Prosopagnosia (face blindness) show lower activity under an fMRI?

I watched last night's episode of 60 minutes about Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness) and found it absolutely fascinating. They mentioned in the segment (Around 5:22 into the second part of the online video) that Nancy Kanwisher of MIT has studied the MRI scans of people without Prosopagnosia and fou...

Feel free to downvote me @ArtemKaznatcheev ;-)

I do find face blindness fascinating and I hope that since it was just in the news yesterday, asking questions about it can drive traffic to the site.

But you're totally free to disagree with me, no hard feelings!

Ben Brocka

7:31 PM

I don't think popular media questions should be discouraged at all as long as they're formulated properly and maintain a skeptical and or neutral tone

Josh Gitlin

8:36 PM

@BenBrocka I agree (obviously) and I think they can help attract visitors to the site if they're current and interesting. But @Artem disagrees, he didn't like my color sythasia question :-/

Ben Brocka

9:12 PM

Keeping things in perspective, our numbers really aren't THAT bad for this point in the site's development:

292

Astronomy – astronomy.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for expert and amateur astronomers and astrophysicists

Currently in public beta.

Josh Gitlin

9:33 PM

@BenBrocka Good point

We are still a very young beta

We can't forget that

Josh Gitlin

11:01 PM

4

Q: New Stack Exchange Beta Theme

We launched the new Stack Exchange Beta theme on our Judaism site a few weeks ago. Starting today, we'll be gradually rolling it out to the rest of the Beta sites. Yes, we're retiring "Sketchy," R.I.P. This post is to serve as a central place for reporting all new Beta theme related CSS and styl...

discussion design

I hope the new design will attract more professionals than Sketchy has been!!!

2

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:13 PM

@JoshGitlin I don't mind your new question, but I do mind the tags on it.

Josh Gitlin

@ArtemKaznatcheev what bothers you?

Artem Kaznatcheev

I don't think we need a whole new tag for 'prosopagnosia'

Josh Gitlin

@ArtemKaznatcheev It's a relatively new field, but, I think a tag for it works perfectly

You would prefer a more general tag?

Artem Kaznatcheev

It is a single disorder, do we need a tag for every single disorder?

Josh Gitlin

I'd say so

That way people can favorite / ignore certain diorders

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:15 PM

I would tag 'neuroimaging', 'abnormal-psychology', 'perception'

Josh Gitlin

I like replacing fmri with neuroimaging and I agree completly with perception

not sure about abnormal-psychology

@ArtemKaznatcheev I think you raise a great question here. You want to ask on Meta, or should I?

I am in favor of a tag for every disorder, but, it's up to the community of course

Abnormal psychology

Abnormal psychology is the branch of psychology that studies unusual patterns of behavior, emotion and thought, which may or may not be understood as precipitating a mental disorder. There is a long history of attempts to understand and control behavior deemed to be aberrant or deviant (statistically, morally or in some other sense), and there is often cultural variation in the approach taken. The field of abnormal psychology identifies multiple causes for different conditions, employing diverse theories from the general field of psychology and elsewhere, and much still hinges on what exa...

> Abnormal psychology is the branch of psychology that studies unusual patterns of behavior, emotion and thought, which may or may not be understood as precipitating a mental disorder

So is a condition like prosopagnosia "abnormal psychology"?

Or, should I ask that as an entirely new question? LOL

Artem Kaznatcheev

I think we should try to use a higher level tag whenever possible

Josh Gitlin

It's not an unusual pattern of behavior, it's a medical condition whereby the brain doesn't behave the same way... uhhh but that's a really gray line, I suppose any abnormal psychology is "a medical condition whereby the brain doesn't behave the same way"

Artem Kaznatcheev

I had just typed up a long message about this, but my net cut out

Josh Gitlin

So I think I just confused myself, LOL. I guess it is abnormal-psychology

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:21 PM

will type again

Josh Gitlin

@ArtemKaznatcheev oh man, that sucks, sorry!

Artem Kaznatcheev

we tag normal perception questions as cognitive-psychology all the time. In fact, a lot of perception questions fall under cognitive-psychology officially. This is a question about abnormal perception, and although it does not seem very 'psychological' in the sense of 'going to the shrink' to have this fixed, it is still a psychological effect, just with a well-ish understood, non-magic grounding

Josh Gitlin

I'm sold. You speak very eloquently :-)

Artem Kaznatcheev

Now, on the level of the question itself. I don't dislike the question, but I thought I'd share how I would have asked a similar question to move it away from the popular media article.

Josh Gitlin

Please do, I value your input

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:25 PM

The underlying concern of your questions, seems to be not with the specific disorder, although it is a cool disorder. The underlying question really is "does having a brain region responsible for a specific function mean that the brain region is used?"

Josh Gitlin

lmao @ "cool disorder", heh

Artem Kaznatcheev

the above question can still be asked very formally, and is VERY important question, because of how ingrained lesioning studies are to neurology

but it can be divorced from the specific article, tied to much wider literature, and just framed by the popular-media article as context.

Josh Gitlin

@ArtemKaznatcheev but I am asking about this specific case, because I really felt that was lacking in the source material I saw. Specifically, I know that sometimes a condition is caused by a certain part of the brain not functioning, while other disorders may be related to a part of the brain which functions but the cause is something else

as I understand it, anyway...

@ArtemKaznatcheev Ahhhh, I see what you mean

Artem Kaznatcheev

it is also a question that is much more fun to answer, since you can bring up much more resources to do so. The current question requires a few very specific google scholar searches

Josh Gitlin

Can "does having a brain region responsible for a specific function mean that the brain region is used?" be answered either "yes" or "no" though? I would think the answer would be "It depends on the specific function"?

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:30 PM

that is why you frame with your specific context. But you don't need a yes-no answer. A good answer will explain when it matters and when it doesn't

I dunno, your question definitely has the advantage of mass appeal though

Josh Gitlin

That was my #2 reason for asking it

Artem Kaznatcheev

yeah, that is where we disagree the most :P in the difference between the need for mass appeal and specific appeal

Josh Gitlin

I thought, Ooooh, lots of people saw this on 60 minutes last night, if they google that can we get some of that traffic?

@ArtemKaznatcheev Yup, I know :-)

As long as we both understand that we both want this site to succeed, we're good :-) And we both do understand that

Artem Kaznatcheev

but it is good that we disagree, That means you can ask mass-appeal questions and I can try to ask obscure questions that nobody feels like answering :P

Josh Gitlin

lol, yup! \o/

I do want to see a question on Meta about tags for specific conditions. I'll gladly ask of you don't want to @Artem

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:34 PM

okay, go for it

I have too many meta questions in my backlog already

Josh Gitlin

haha.

Artem Kaznatcheev

and not in the mood to ask any of them

Josh Gitlin

Also, we don't have enough active meta users :-/

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Q: Should we have tags for specific disorders / conditions, or keep tags more general?

I asked a question about a specific condition, and on chat my choice of tags was brought up by Artem Kaznatcheev: I don't think we need a whole new tag for 'prosopagnosia' It is a single disorder, do we need a tag for every single disorder? So, to blatantly rip off Artem's question: Sh...

discussion tags

Just answered too. Please downvote my answer ;-)

Going to get some dinner now. Nice talking to you @Artem, thanks for the feedback!

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