The Neurocritic

The Blatant Reasons for the Destruction of NSF (and other federal science agencies)

2026-04-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

update through March 13 2026, via Jeremy Berg

Trump recently announced the new roster of the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), which includes plenty of tech billionaires (and just one academic scientist).

This really cements the reasons for the decimation of science in the US:

The tech bros have decided that AI will do everything
A pathetic white christian nationalist wants to destroy “woke” science and “woke” universities
Deranged MAHA conspiracy theorists run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Today's post will discuss the first bullet point, and conclude with a catastrophic prediction.

PCAST Appointees

“Know thyself.” (Delphic maxim, 5th or 6th century BC)

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” (Socrates, 399 BC)

1. Marc Andreessen, net worth $1.9 billion. Co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Notable for announcing his own lack of introspection and his ignorance of history (“...and if you go back 400 years ago, it never would have occurred to anybody to be introspective).”

Andreessen called for the dissolution of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in a private group chat leaked in July 2025:

Andreessen’s message to the group about subjecting the NSF to “the bureaucratic death penalty” alleged that the agency, a major funder of university science and tech labs, backed projects that led to online censorship of American citizens... The investor added: “Raze it to the ground and start over.”

This is despite the shocker that NSF funded the Mosaic browser, the precursor to Netscape. Andreessen was a student at the University of Illinois and worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in 1993. In fact, the NSF website states:

In 1994, NSF awarded a large grant to NCSA specifically for Mosaic development, enhancement and support. Marc Andreessen, a member of the team that developed Mosaic, would later help found Netscape Communications.

When Netscape went public in 1995, Andreessen received a windfall of $56 million in stock options. And now he wants to raze the federal funding system responsible for his fortune. Not surprisingly, he also declared his disdain for DEI, immigration, Stanford, and MIT. It's laughable that such an insanely wealthy man felt the need to air his white grievances (among friends). Referring to the rise of diversity policies, he said, “And so now my people are furious and not going to take it anymore.”

“His people” (low income white students from rural areas) also lost their diversity funding when DEI grants were cancelled.

2. Sergey Brin, net worth $235 billion. Co-founder of Google. Currently working on Gemini AI. Psilocybin microdoser. Has invested in longevity research (Calico), biopharma for brain disorders (MapLight), 3D spatial multiomics (Stellaromics), ibogaine for traumatic brain injury, substance abuse, and psychiatric conditions (Soneira), CO₂ removal from ambient air (280 Earth), and large-scale offshore energy hubs (Copenhagen Energy Islands). His nonprofit, Catalyst4 Inc., has donated $50 million to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Sure, Brin may be using Catalyst4 as a tax shelter for the $366 million of Tesla stock he dumped after a dispute with Elon Musk, but at least his investments are trying to help humanity, rather than kill us all.

3. Safra Catz, net worth $3.4 billion. Former CEO of Oracle. On the board of the Ellison media conglomerate Paramount Skydance. While on the board of Walt Disney Company, she threatened to fire the CEO if Strange World, an animated film featuring a gay teenager, was released. Initially donated to Marco Rubio in 2016, but has been a Trump supporter ever since. She lives in Florida. In a mansion in Isla Bahia, an exclusive gated waterfront community in Fort Lauderdale. That explains a lot.

4. Michael Dell, net worth $151 billion. Founder, Chair, and CEO of Dell Technologies. Dell has partnered with NVIDIA to “build the engines of AI factories.” What is an AI factory? “The AI factory transforms internal and external data into actionable insights through advanced analytics,” according to an odious blog post from Harvard Business School. Gad.

Dell and his wife will donate $6.25 billion to Trump accounts🤮, a nebulous proto-IRA investment vehicle for kids. The Dell's contribution will supposedly provide $250 each to 25 million children who live in neighborhoods where the median family income is less than $150,000.

The funds in Trump Accounts must be invested in certain mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that track the S&P 500 or another index of primarily American equities.

Once the child turns 18, the account can be converted to a traditional IRA, where early withdrawals before age 59½ may be subject to a 10% penalty. And beware the kiddie tax! Consult your financial advisor!

I know, I know, this is far removed from NSF. Which is precisely the point. Trump doesn't care about science and technology. He only cares about money and glory (however false).

5. Jacob DeWitte, net worth $1.7 billion. Founded nuclear fission company Oklo with his wife, Caroline Cochran (who is also worth $1.7 billion, according to Forbes). Cochran has a masters in nuclear engineering from MIT, and DeWitte has a Ph.D. from the same program. Oklo received venture capital from Sam Altman (OpenAI), Peter Thiel (the Antichrist), Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook), and other billionaires. Climate change denier and Trump campaign mega-contributor Chris Wright served on Oklo's board until he was confirmed as Secretary of Energy.

In May 2025, Trump signed the executive order Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies. DeWitte was there to praise the dictator:

“We’re working on small, next generation reactors that take technology America invented, developed, and pioneered, and bringing it to the market after it sat on the shelves of history for about 40 years — and it’s because of the actions that you’re doing today that are going to help unleash that. Changing the permitting dynamics is going to help things move faster.”

Oklo has no revenue and $55 million in losses as of June 2025. They have no reliable source of HALEU (high-assay low-enriched uranium, also known as unobtainium) and no plan to open a plant any time soon. Meanwhile, potential demand from the overpromise of AI data centers (see Jensen Huang) may be waning. According to investment newsletter TheStreet, “Oklo remains a pre-revenue company, with valuation driven by execution milestones rather than financial results.”

6. Fred Ehrsam, net worth $2.6 billion. Co-founder of Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange. The Trump family made billions from their own crypto-grift, which was condemned as “corruption on a breathtaking level” and “among the greatest US scandals ever.”

Ehrsham also poached eight employees from Neuralink and started Nudge, a start-up producing a consumer headset based on focused ultrasound. Whether it works as advertised will be an interesting topic for the future.

7. Larry Ellison, net worth $201 billion (he lost $46 billion so far this year). Founder of Oracle, where he was CEO from 1977 to 2014. Currently he's CTO and executive chair. Father of David Ellison, who owns a Trump-friendly media monopoly that censors unflattering coverage (e.g., Bari Weiss pulled the 60 Minutes episode on CECOT, the torture prison in El Salvador).

image via Mary Trump

Larry is a horrible person. In 2012 he purchased 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lānaʻi, where he acts like a plantation owner:

...Ellison is a modern American king—incomprehensibly wealthy and powerful. Many residents both rent from him and work for him, and a provision in his residential leases states that if you’re terminated from a job with any of his companies, you can be kicked out of your home, too. Under Ellison, 30-day leases have become the norm for Lanai’s small businesses, as opposed to the five-year terms some were used to before.

Accused war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu vacationed there with his family in 2021. Ellison is a prosecution witness in Netanyahu's long-delayed corruption trial, yet he forced another billionaire to drop his own lawyer in favor of defending Bibi.

8. David Friedberg, net worth $1.2 billion. Founded The Climate Corporation (an agriculture tech company), which was sold to Monsanto for $1.1 billion. In 2016 he founded The Production Board, a holding company that invests in “technology businesses across life sciences, food and agriculture, and software.” He is a proponent of the Abundance Movement and its deregulation of environmental protections. He believes AI will usher in a utopian society where everyone has free time for family and leisure.

AI's positive outcomes are being underestimated
"Folks are underestimating and under realizing the benefits, at this stage, of what's going to come out of the AI revolution and how it's ultimately going to benefit people's availability of products, cost of goods, and access to things."

This is ridiculous, because we already have superabundance, but the billionaires refuse to share their wealth. As Gil Duran stated:

The problem with this fairy tale fantasy lie of Altman's [and others] is that we already have abundance. It's just not fairly distributed in the world. Most of it is going to a small percentage of people. And so if the people who are the profiteers of our current abundance aren't sharing it now, why the hell are they going to share it in the future?

Friedberg also co-hosts the manosphere-adjacent All-In podcast. Red-pilled and pro-MAGA:

No other show or podcast has paved the country’s path to founder mode so directly as All-In. On the heels of helping bankroll Trump’s campaign and hosting him on the pod, the Besties are becoming fixtures at the White House. Days prior to the summit, [David] Sacks and [Chamath] Palihapitiya dined there along with a coterie of Silicon Valley’s most powerful CEOs. Before Trump even took office, he appointed Sacks as the country’s “crypto and AI czar” to help shape federal policy on everything from digital money to machine intelligence.

9. Jensen Huang, net worth $165 billion. Founder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA, best known for its graphical processing units (GPUs), which are critical for AI. Huang received a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford by attending night classes. His company has a market capitalization of over $4 trillion, accounting for 7-8% of the S&P 500 index.

Ed Zitron, the angriest tech critic, has written extensively about circular deals between NVIDIA, Oracle, OpenAI, and other behemoths. For instance, The AI Bubble's Impossible Promises:

NVIDIA invested money in a company [a special purpose vehicle] specifically built to buy chips from it, which then promptly handed the money back to NVIDIA along with a bunch of other money, and then whatever happened next is somebody else’s problem.

and The Hater's Guide To NVIDIA:

NVIDIA's Future Success Is Predicated On The Ability For Everybody To Keep Feeding It Tens Of Billions Of Dollars Every Quarter, Requiring Endless Debt, Space, and Actual AI Demand To Exist

...and the magnificent tome, The AI Industry Is Lying To You (a 37 minute read)

Speaking of which, here is Sam Altman musing that GPT-5 is already doing new science! (link to video)

This overly optimistic view has infiltrated federal agencies.

I'm listening in on the DOE Office of Science Advisory Committee meeting and the current speaker (sorry, did not catch their name) said that researchers are often limited in their resources and facilities, and that we could be investing more....and that the solution is AI. I'm going to explode.
— Karolina Heyduk (@kheyduk.bsky.social) March 27, 2026 at 11:04 AM

Heyduk went on to say,

"AI can't pay my grad students or postdocs. AI can't do our experiments, collect really any of our data, make our lab reagents, fix our broken machines as they age. ... Actually its pretty clear from this discussion they don't see a need for the types of scientist we're training in the lab. Automated labs can do it all."

[see outsourcing of scientific research below]

10. John Martintis, the only academic on the panel, is currently a Professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara. He shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in physics “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.” In 2014 he moved from UCSB to Google AI Quantum, where his research group achieved quantum supremacy: they built a programmable superconducting processor that could sample a quantum circuit a million times in 200 seconds, which would take 10,000 years with a classical supercomputer (Nature, 2019).

But in 2020, a conflict in “management styles” led Martintis to resign from Google and return to UCSB. In an interview, Martinis explained how his singular focus [and complete control over his research group] led to tension:

To explain the tension, you should understand that my personal research style tends to be very intently focused. For example, with the quantum supremacy experiment, I focused on doing the experiment because I thought it would be a milestone and very challenging, but doable. I thought it would strongly focus the group on important problems. I think it was hard on people in the group to focus on quantum supremacy because it meant they couldn't work on other things they wanted to do, and most importantly, we could fail.

And then we learn that Martinis is a fan of Peter Thiel, the Antichrist who co-founded Palantir. ¹

Martinis is a co-founder and CTO of Qolab, a quantum computing start-up that has raised at least $16 million in venture capital.

11. Bob Mumgaard, net worth unknown. Founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), which has raised $3 billion in venture capital from NVIDIA, Google, Mitsubishi, Morgan Stanley, etc. Mumgaard has an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering and a Ph.D. in Applied Plasma Physics, both from MIT. CFS is a spinoff of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center,² which has received substantial federal funding.

When will fusion energy plants be fully operational? Estimates vary, depending on who you ask. Some experts say 2050, while Helion (backed by Sam Altman) projects it will provide power to OpenAI and Microsoft starting in 2028, which seems preposterous.

And how can we forget the bizarre merger of Trump's failing social media site (Truth Social) with another fusion energy company? Reminder: Trump Media & Technology Group has agreed to a more than $6 billion merger with fusion company TAE Technologies. Trump's shares increased from $400 million to about $1.6 billion. The level of corruption is unfathomable. And it goes without saying that the members of PCAST were chosen for their abilities to further enrich the Trump family.

12. Lisa Su, net worth 1.1 billion. President and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) since 2014. She has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT, where she was one of her supervisor's best students ever. In addition to many other awards, Su was the first woman to receive the IEEE Robert Noyce Medal in 2021. She was also named to PCAST by Biden and is the only bipartisan choice. She and Martinis were praised by a former member of the panel.

13. Mark Zuckerberg, net worth $220 billion.³ Tries very hard to be a cool guy with the in-crowd, but it just never works. I recommend watching the Zuckerberg episode of This F*cking Guy on YouTube. Hysteria’s research is thorough, covering everything from nerd beginnings to failed products (like the entire Metaverse) to Facebook-fueled genocides to Republican political shenanigans (the Cambridge Analytica scandal) to his newfound embrace of masculinity.

Catastrophic Consequences

It's a slow march to the death of federal funding for basic research in the US. "Innovation" and "dominance" are code words for enriching the billionaires. American Dynamism represents a16z's push for privatization and for billions of dollars in military contracts, paid for by your tax dollars (if you're in the bottom 90% or so). Invest in visionary defense tech founders, not in education or healthcare.

COMMERCIAL FIRST
Make procurement of commercial items using commercial procedures the default for DOD acquisitions absent a documented need for a defense-specific system. America’s Founders are delivering superior commercial solutions at significantly lower cost. Those commercial solutions should be the default.

Compare this to basic science last. From Science magazine, 16 Mar 2026:

What’s happening to NSF now highlights how this year’s process differs. Last month, each account within the agency—NSF has six—received its own apportionment [limits on the dispersal of agency funds]. ... But NSF’s two biggest accounts—$7 billion for research and $1 billion for science education—came with footnotes that could lead to potentially devastating consequences for researchers.

Only 613 NSF grants have been awarded in the first half of FY2026 (Oct 1 2025 – Mar 31 2026), an 80% decrease from 2021 – 2024.

Meanwhile, the outsourcing of scientific research to AI has begun.

Genesis Mission to Accelerate AI for Scientific Discovery
Harnessing AI as a scientific tool will revolutionize the way scientific research is conducted.
For example, AI technologies can generate models of protein structures and novel materials, design and analyze experiments, and aggregate and generate new data faster and more effectively. Research that once took years could now take weeks or months.

Generate new data. To replace bench work? To supersede all neuroimaging modalities? How, exactly, is that supposed to happen? At present, large language models (LLMs) are poor at answering expert level academic questions.

A consortium of researchers compiled a list of 2,500 challenging questions covering math, physics, biology, computer science, humanities, engineering, and chemistry (Nature, 2026). The authors called this Humanity's Last Exam (HLE). And the models they tested had very low accuracy.

Even if performance was adequate, this would not indicate that LLMs possess “artificial general intelligence” (as claimed by tech oligarchs everywhere) or even autonomous research capabilities (Nature, 2026):

High accuracy on HLE would demonstrate expert-level performance on closed-ended, verifiable questions and cutting-edge scientific knowledge, but it would not alone suggest autonomous research capabilities or artificial general intelligence. HLE tests structured academic problems rather than open-ended research or creative problem-solving abilities, making it a focused measure of technical knowledge and reasoning across a diverse range of subjects...

Introspection...

Footnotes

¹ The interviewer, Paul Smith-Goodson, takes a sidebar to tell the reader that Martinis subscribes to the Peter Thiel definition of personality.

At this point, Professor Martinis asked me if I had read Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One. Thiel was a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir. He explained that Peter Thiel defines personality styles as either a definite optimist or indefinite optimist. Professor Martinis considers himself to be a definite optimist. One quote from Thiel's book seems to mirror his thinking: “…a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it.” I admitted that I started the book but failed to finish it.

² As an aside, the director (Nuno Loureiro) was murdered by the Brown University shooter in a separate incident.

³ These amounts can vary wildly day by day (Zuckerberg is just under ~~$200~~ $196 billion). Track the billionaires net worth in real time!

seen at No Kings on March 28, 2026

RETRACTED FOR THE SECOND TIME: phony study on "biofield energy" treatment

2026-03-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

It was an unusual decision to republish an already-retracted paper in a different journal, but Wiley has retracted (again) the purported effects of a supernatural “intervention” on biological and emotional health.

Dr. Ioana A Cristea's comments on PubPeer (conveyed to the journal) and my letter to the Editorial Staff (posted on this blog on December 29, 2025) triggered an investigation that ultimately led to the retraction:

RETRACTION: M. K. Trivedi, A. Branton, D. Trivedi, S. Mondal and S. Jana, “Amelioration of Adults' Mental Health Conditions and Symptoms Through Spiritual Energy Therapy: Randomized Controlled Trial,” Neuropsychopharmacology Reports 45, no. 3 (2025): e70050, https://doi.org/10.1002/npr2.70050.
The above article, published online on 10 September 2025 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Tsuyoshi Miyakawa; The Japanese Society of Neuropsychopharmacology; and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. The retraction has been agreed upon as a similar version of this article by the same authors was previously retracted by the Journal of General and Family Medicine (https://doi.org/10.1002/jgf2.773). Although revisions have been made, the article does not adequately address the previously identified concerns. In particular, issues regarding the appropriateness of the control group and the psychological questionnaire scoring method remain unresolved. Additionally, some biomarker values remain implausible without sufficient justification and claims regarding the efficacy of spiritual energy therapy continue to lack independent supporting evidence. The editors agree the results and conclusions are unreliable. The authors disagree with the retraction.

And once again, “The authors disagree with the retraction.”

What were some of the issues?

The problematic values [of klotho, an “anti-aging” protein] are magnified in Appendix 2, see the Table 3 & 4_Biomarker_Control tab for ’Spiritual Energy Therapy Group (Day 180)’. In the Klotho column, 28 out of 35 participants have values of 20.00 ng/mL. This is the upper limit of the assay, according to ThermoFisher (https://www.thermofisher.com/elisa/product/Human-Klotho-ELISA-Kit/EEL200). Importantly, 20.00 ng/mL is 8.73 to 27 times above the upper 95th percentile.

...and of course:

The Trivedi Effect® has not been scientifically proven. Citations #14 and #15 provided no data to support this.

“The Trivedi Effect®” is Mahendra Kumar Trivedi's patented form of “Biofield Energy Treatment”

An extraordinary, unprecedented and evidence-based phenomenon that can transform the cellular structure of living organisms, alter atomic structure of non-living materials and revolutionize an individual’s life.

These assertions are indeed extraordinary — they are not evidence-based. They have never been scientifically proven. They do not belong in any literature that claims to be scientific.

There's a long list of other papers that should be retracted (a set of six more, for starters), but I still have a regular (paying) job.

Further Reading

The Miraculous Guru with an h-index of 62

Backed by Science? Building a lucrative spiritual empire based on potentially “questionable” publications

RETRACTED: phony study on "biofield energy" treatment by a Guru

The Guru Republishes Retracted Paper in Another Exploitable Journal

The Organized Destruction of Empathy

2026-01-27T23:25:00.000-08:00

from video at Washington Post

Over the past year, US residents have been subjected to the abuses of an increasingly lawless authoritarian state. Our constitutional rights are violated on a daily basis.¹ How did we get here?

The denigration of respect and concern for our fellow humans has been instrumental. Whether we want to consider moral philosophy, everyday expressions of empathy and compassion, or religious edicts such as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Luke 6:31), the actions of Homeland Security (ICE), the State Department, CDC, DOGE, etc. have exemplified the callous disregard for human life.

This has been quite ironic, since much of the wreckage has been done in the name of a punitive, perverted version of Christianity practiced by white christian nationalists such as Russell Vought, the OMB bureaucrat who vowed to traumatize federal employees (reported by ProPublica in 2024):

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

“We want to put them in trauma.”

Elon Musk, the notoriously unempathetic billionaire, gleefully put USAID in the woodchipper. A year later, an estimated 757,314 people have died from the funding cuts.

As Adam Serwer wrote back in 2018:

The Cruelty is the Point
. . .
The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse more than 193,000 American children of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration, that the Department of Homeland Security had lied about creating a database of children that would make it possible to unite them with the families the Trump administration had arbitrarily destroyed, that the White House was considering a blanket ban on visas for Chinese students, and that it would deny visas to the same-sex partners of foreign officials.

And it's gotten much, much worse. ²

Detained Immigrants Detail Physical Abuse and Inhumane Conditions at Largest Immigration Detention Center in the U.S.

...interviews with 45 people report physical and sexual abuse, medical neglect, and intimidation to self-deport.

Immigrant families protest inside Texas facility housing 5-year-old boy, father detained in Minnesota

AP Photo/Brenda Bazán

Protester blinded in one eye at OC protest is among string of violent run-ins with federal agents

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

Kaden Rummler said in an interview that he was in agonizing pain and underwent an extensive six-hour surgery to his left eye after he was injured at a Jan. 9 protest over the fatal shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis. Rummler said he has no depth perception and can no longer drive.

[The video is horrible to watch. Other protesters have been blinded by these "less lethal" weapons. Another had a finger blown off.]

And then we have cosplay Kristi, in a staged photo-op, posing in front of actual Salvadorian gang members who have been imprisoned in CECOT for years. NONE OF THEM WERE DEPORTED FROM THE US, according to the CBS-censored 60 Minutes episode. Another lie, another piece of social media propaganda for DHS.

The Lies

They're too numerous to mention.³ Don't believe your own eyes... Kristi says that ICE agents feared for their lives when Alex Pretti brandished a gun [i.e., took video with his phone], so it must be true.

“This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

― George Orwell, 1984

Footnote

¹ Free speech (1st amendment), the right to assemble (1st), imposition of religion (also 1st – see supposed discrimination against Christians and state-sponsored services with Pete Hegseth's misogynistic pastor), probable cause (4th), due process (5th), and birthright citizenship (14th), for starters.

Plus — new! — the Second Amendment!

Are guns barred at protests, as Kash Patel said? In most states, no

“You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

Compare to these election denialists on January 17, 2021.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Armed demonstrators protest outside of the Michigan state capital building in Lansing, Michigan.

² I started this blog 20 years ago with a post on empathy for another person's (faux) pain. Lynndie England and the torture at Abu Ghraib were featured.

Men are Torturers, Women are Nurturers...

³ 100 Days of Lies

Neurosocieties Unknown

2025-12-31T12:32:00.000-08:00

Chris Skinner poster of ‘Dark City’

I’m finally starting a newsletter!! Neurocritical Thoughts will function as a supplementary “trial” blog, with summary content cross-posted here. My initial focus will be on the delusions of tech billionaires — things like mind uploading, life extension, cryogenic preservation, “vibe physics”, and overblown predictions that GPT-6 will create “new science.”

Other posts will feature the latest in brain recording and stimulation technology, from the awesome to the awful. I’ll try to keep most pieces on the shorter side, so please sign up for the free newsletter. Or else find the posts via my social media feeds.

Subscribe here!

The Guru Republishes Retracted Paper in Another Exploitable Journal

2025-12-29T22:57:00.000-08:00

image from Google Scholar

Remember Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi, the “Enlightened and miraculous being” with 676 publications in scientific journals? His patented form of “Biofield Energy Treatment” is called “The Trivedi Effect®”.

An extraordinary, unprecedented and evidence-based phenomenon that can transform the cellular structure of living organisms, alter atomic structure of non-living materials and revolutionize an individual’s life.

These assertions are indeed extraordinary — they are supernatural, not evidence-based. They have never been scientifically proven. They do not belong in any literature that claims to be scientific.

Trivedi and his colleagues are masterful at abusing a broken publication system. The Guru has a high h-index (62) and 12,969 citations of his work. The h-index is a metric that considers an author's productivity and the citation impact of their publications. However, it is easily manipulated. Most of Trivedi's “impact” is from self-citations in a tangled web of predatory journals that publish questionable papers without proper peer review.

And like Joe Dispenza, Guruji benefits financially from faith healing under the guise of science.

Guruji’s Blessing has impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people globally, and has been validated globally with cutting-edge scientific research.

Except his published science is not valid and has no basis in physical reality. That doesn't stop his organization from offering monthly memberships, ranging from $250 per month for 1 remote blessing to $10,000 per month for the Platinum Path to Enlightenment Membership.

Republishing Retracted Nonsense

I have never seen a journal publish a paper that was retracted from another journal. Yet here we are, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is responsible for both cases.

The authors objected to the retraction from the Journal of General and Family Medicine and issued a Disclaimer Statement in Neuropsychopharmacology Reports.

The manuscript submitted under ID NPPR-2025-0089 is a corrected, thoroughly revised, and edited version of the previously retracted paper published in J Gen Fam Med, 2023; 24: 154–163. The authors seek to republish it because they disagree with the journal's decision to retract the paper, which was based on objections from a third-party complainant. In the original retraction notice, the authors expressed their disagreement with the retraction. This newly submitted article (NPPR-2025-0089) has been rewritten and corrected for typographical errors. Additionally, it no longer includes data on a few biomarkers that raised concerns in the retracted article due to the high variability observed in these biomarker values.

The revised paper is still quite problematic. My Letter to the Editor and Publisher is reprinted below, formatted for the blog.

-- start of letter --

December 28, 2025

Dr. Miyakawa and the Editorial Staff of Neuropsychopharmacology Reports,

I am writing about the legitimacy of an article published in the journal:

Trivedi, M. K., Branton, A., Trivedi, D., Mondal, S., & Jana, S. (2025). Amelioration of Adults' Mental Health Conditions and Symptoms Through Spiritual Energy Therapy: Randomized Controlled Trial. Neuropsychopharmacology Reports, 45(3), e70050.

This paper was retracted from the Journal of General and Family Medicine after an investigation:

“The retraction has been agreed upon following an investigation into concerns raised by a third party, which revealed an inappropriate control group used as the placebo group of the trial, inconsistencies in the Psychological Questionnaire Scoring, highly implausible functional biomarker values that are out of the typical physiological range, and unsupported claims regarding the scientific evidence behind the biofield energy treatment.”

The authors objected to the retraction, edited the manuscript, and submitted it for publication in NPPR. The first author still makes extraordinary and unvalidated claims about his ability to change the mental and physical health of human volunteers via transmission of his thoughts (described as “blessing” throughout the manuscript). A peer-reviewed journal that accepts such declarations without incontrovertible scientific evidence, which was never provided, has compromised its scientific reputation. Furthermore, the study’s design is flawed and much of the data contained in the paper is implausible and inauthentic.

I am an established scientist who runs a research lab, and as I will outline below, it is ethically mandatory for Neuropsychopharmacology Reports to reconsider this paper and for Wiley to retract it from the scientific literature for the following reasons.

In the abstract, the paper contends that the study was a “single-blind, active-controlled, randomized trial.” This is false.

“Control subjects did not receive any treatment.” (p. 2)

The psychological questionnaire (PQ) used to assess mental health was “…based on a 7-point Likert scale of scoring” with two questions for each of 14 symptoms (see p. 3 and Appendix 1).

“The PQ was made by in-house renowned experienced psychologists based on literature with some modifications, and these PQs were routinely used in various clinical trial projects.”

npr270050-sup-0001-annexures1.docx

npr270050-sup-0002-datas1.xlsx

Table 2_PQ_Treatment

Tables 3 and 4 list measurements for the functional biomarkers, which are the clearest evidence for unverifiable data (or error). In the retracted paper, some of these were highly implausible, because their values were out-of-range of typical physiological levels (to an extent beyond what is seen in pathological conditions). Oxytocin and plasma catecholamines (dopamine and norepinephrine) were the most egregious, and they were omitted from the revised paper, which...

“…no longer includes data on a few biomarkers that raised concerns in the retracted article due to the high variability observed in these biomarker values.”

In the example below, the units for Klotho (an anti-aging biomarker) were revised from pg/mL to ng/mL, but now the values are much above normal.

Group/treatment		Klotho (ng/mL)
Control (N = 42)	Mean of Days 0, 90, and 180	2.25 ± 0.04
Spiritual Energy Therapy (N = 35)	Day 90	11.09 ± 0.39
Spiritual Energy Therapy (N = 35)	Day 180	17.67 ± 0.99

normal values α-Klotho (converted to ng/mL)

Mean SD Ref Interval (2.5–97.5th %ile)

ELISA 0.472 0.136 0.204 to 0.741
(n = 126)

Pedersen et al., 2013, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23707222/

Mean SD Ref Interval (5–95th %ile)
Age 18–35 0.933 0.576 0.393 to 2.292
(n = 167)

Espuch-Olivet et al., 2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9101232/

The problematic values are magnified in Appendix 2, see the Table 3 & 4_Biomarker_Control tab for ’Spiritual Energy Therapy Group (Day 180)’. In the Klotho column, 28 out of 35 participants have values of 20.00 ng/mL. This is the upper limit of the assay, according to ThermoFisher (https://www.thermofisher.com/elisa/product/Human-Klotho-ELISA-Kit/EEL200). Importantly, 20.00 ng/mL is 8.73 to 27 times above the upper 95th percentile.

Other irregularities abound. In a meta-analysis of 12 studies, the normal level of TNF-α was 5.5 pg/mL (Gharamti et al., 2022). At Day 0 for the Treatment Group, 28 out of 35 participants had a value of 0.00, while one person had a value of 218.58 pg/mL, which would be indicative of severe inflammation. At Day 180, 32 of 35 participants had a value of 0.00. Similar improbable findings can be seen for IL-1β.

Finally, the Treatment Group at Day 90 & Day 180 should have been compared to Controls at Day 90 & Day 180, not to the mean of Days 0, 90, and 180 for Controls.

4. The paper presents supernatural phenomena as real (p. 2):

“The Trivedi Effect is one of the scientifically validated and widely reported spiritual energy healing approaches (one form of biofield energy therapy), based on data from preclinical (cell-based and animal-based) and clinical (human) studies [14, 15]. Trivedi healing practitioners can harness the consciousness energy from the universe and transfer it to both living and non-living objects through their unique inherent thought transmission process in a positive way; this phenomenon is called The Trivedi Effect.”

The Trivedi Effect® has not been scientifically proven. Citations #14 and #15 provided no data to support this.

And on p. 7:

“Recent studies propose that biofield energy therapies may involve a spiritual aspect that operates at the quantum level through the healer's energy and thoughts, leading to healing through instantaneous communication at the quantum level via quantum entanglement [44]. Quantum entanglement allows for instantaneous connection between separated system elements and can be utilized for signaling across vast distances [47].”

As Dr. Ioana Cristeta stated on PubPeer:

“…unsupported claims remain, including an entire paragraph in the Discussion speculating how quantum entanglement, a construct never before applied to humans (or for that matter any solid object), would explain the effects of spiritual energy therapy. The Discussion is rife with unscientific, never proven or even operationalized constructs, such as energy transmission, remote communication, bioresonance and others.”

5. On its website, Wiley endorses the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and provides links to the Core Practices for journals and publishers:

https://authorservices.wiley.com/ethics-guidelines/index.html

As I have demonstrated, the claims in Trivedi et al. (2025) are beyond the realm of empirical science, and a reputable medical journal should not publish them. Wiley, as a supporter of COPE, should subscribe to ethical standards in peer review and follow the official guidelines for considering whether a retraction is appropriate.

Sincerely,

[my real name]

Links and References

COPE. Retraction guidelines. https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/retraction-guidelines [retrieved on 12/28/2025]

Espuch-Oliver, A., Vázquez-Lorente, H., Jurado-Fasoli, L., de Haro-Muñoz, T., Díaz-Alberola, I., López-Velez, M. D. S., ... & Amaro-Gahete, F. J. (2022). References values of soluble α-klotho serum levels using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in healthy adults aged 18–85 years. Journal of clinical medicine, 11(9), 2415. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9101232/

Gharamti, A. A., Samara, O., Monzon, A., Montalbano, G., Scherger, S., DeSanto, K., ... & Shapiro, L. (2022). Proinflammatory cytokines levels in sepsis and healthy volunteers, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha associated sepsis mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Cytokine, 158, 156006. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043466622002150

Invitrogen. Human Klotho ELISA Kit. https://www.thermofisher.com/elisa/product/Human-Klotho-ELISA-Kit/EEL200 [retrieved on 12/28/2025]

Pedersen, L., Pedersen, S. M., Brasen, C. L., & Rasmussen, L. M. (2013). Soluble serum Klotho levels in healthy subjects. Comparison of two different immunoassays. Clinical biochemistry, 46(12), 1079-1083. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23707222/

PubPeer. Ioana A Cristea, Comment #1 on: Amelioration of Adults' Mental Health Conditions and Symptoms Through Spiritual Energy Therapy: Randomized Controlled Trial. https://pubpeer.com/publications/4BDA80E4057E201A7742E9F3B320B1 [retrieved on 12/28/2025]

Wiley Author Services. Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics. https://authorservices.wiley.com/ethics-guidelines/index.html [retrieved on 12/28/2025]

-- end of letter --

Further Reading

Dr. Joe Dispenza: Faith Healing Under the Guise of Science

2025-12-04T01:10:00.000-08:00

Interdimensional beings make an appearance at Dr. Joe Dispenza's meditation retreat

Backed by science!

“I started sensing presences in the room during our weeklong events. I started — out of the corner of my eye — I started perceiving certain things. Uh, there was an energy in the room that I noticed. And they’re very noble, and they’re very interested in what we’re doing. Many times in the beginning, they observe. They’re along the walls and they’re not small. They’re very, very tall. Three meters, maybe more, tall. They’re beautiful and big. And they have this grace about them, this presence.”

– Joe Dispenza interview

Last time we learned about the biological transformation of 20 participants who attended a week-long meditation retreat. A team of researchers collected blood and brain biomarkers to search for changes in neuroplasticity, metabolic reprogramming, functional cell signaling, proteomics, inflammation, endogenous opioids, metabolomics, exosome-specific transcriptomics, and functional brain connectivity measured via fMRI.

When there's a financial motive to claim that a supernatural experience rewires your brain, changes gene expression, reduces pain, and boosts immunity, it helps to publish tangible evidence in a peer-reviewed journal (Communications Biology, which has a medium-hefty impact factor of 5.2)

I composed a list of potential flaws in a blog post and provided even more detail on PubPeer (a moderated commentary site). In brief:

1. No control group (can't separate meditation from the passage of time)
2. Massive overfitting in machine learning models
3. Major confound of excessive head motion in the MRI scanner
4. Uncorrected multiple comparisons
5. Inconsistent statistics
6. Possible p-hacking and post hoc explanations

The meditation teacher, Joe Dispenza¹, charges $2,500 to attend his retreats. The activities include practices that have no basis in physical reality; we are supposed to accept them on faith.²

Disclaimer: I respect the preferences and beliefs of the attendees. If they describe a mystical merging with god and the universe, I won't question their subjective experiences (these are private by their very nature). One person cannot directly access the mental contents of another.

My problem is with the charlatans and grifters, influencers and gurus who take advantage of sick and vulnerable people. And many sick people attended the retreat described in the paper (Jinich-Diamant et al., 2025). Out of 561 attendees who completed the screening form, 399 of them were too ill to participate in the study. But they pay to be healed, just like at an evangelical tent revival — the blind can now see, the deaf can hear, the crippled stand up and walk out of their wheelchairs.

Notice how none of these miraculous cures are ever published in a medical journal.

Dispenza's website is filled with testimonials, “Stories of Transformation”, where his followers testify to the miraculous properties of Coherence Healing^TM.³ It is dangerous and misleading to claim (without scientific evidence) that your practices can “cure” stage 4 cancer. A research participant at a retreat shared this tragic story:

Toward the end, we gathered around a girl with stage 4 cancer. All her hair was gone from the chemo. I had my brain scanning [EEG] cap on as we circled her to "heal" her by sending her "positive energy" (whatever the hell that is). Honestly, I don't know what to make of this. I felt weird about it. The girl screamed in the middle of our circle as bad "spirits" left her body. If you've ever seen the exorcist, you have roughly the right idea. This was a secular version of faith healing. Even for a skeptic like me, it was intensely emotional.
. . .

Everyone involved was added to a group text to keep up with her healing. We all got updates over the next few weeks. People sent plenty of “positive vibes.”

One morning, we got a text that she had passed away. It was a gut punch.

So who is at fault here, who failed? The Coherence Healing^TM group didn't release enough positive energy? The girl didn't destroy her own cancerous cells through the power of thought? The meditation guru is blameless, of course. He continues to exploit sick and dying children by bringing them onstage at the end of his retreats. A direct quote: “We bring children in at the end of the event and we heal them of really serious health conditions.”

Another egregious con is the offer of remote healing sessions for children with autism.

Dr Joe’s Remote Coherence Healing™ groups are excited to provide a series of 12 healing sessions for individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The effects of Remote Coherence Healing™ on children challenged by incoherence have produced compelling results. We would be honored to include your child, as sessions become available.

This is offensive (“challenged by incoherence”) and a blatant misrepresentation of a practice supported by no evidence.

“Science is the new language of mysticism,” says Dispenza.

Uh no. Science is the systematic study of physical reality through observation and experimentation. You can’t redefine its subject matter (the natural world) to suit your agenda of Quantum Healing, manifesting abundance, and miracle cures. The normal rules of physics will still apply to you when you meditate. You cannot produce proteins by thought alone.

I'm not sure what that means, but the question was posed in his new video, SOURCE: It's Within You. The most surprising aspect was that the senior author of the Communications Biology paper (Dr. Hemal H. Patel, Professor of Anesthesiology at UCSD) believes you can change gene expression by mere thought. The target was SERPINA5, shown below on the left.

The Experimental group also viewed four other real genes and their associated proteins. In contrast, the Control group was shown four "fake" genes along with SERPINA5. The participants studied flash cards with the name of a protein and its crystal structure. As Patel explained:

So every morning they were supposed to focus on those five genes and five proteins and intently increase the elevation of these things. ... Can the mind control the expression pattern of these five genes that were targeted.

Lo and behold, the Experimental group had increased levels of the SerpinA5 protein, but the Control group did not. Why not?? Their intent focus on SerpinA5 was disrupted by the fake decoy genes!

Somehow the innate intelligence of the body could not accept the order, because even though there was a real protein in there, it wasn't just one real and four fake, it was the entire order that the mind and body were looking for. And since the four weren't real, the intelligence cancelled the order.

This is preposterous. The body was expecting, specifically, those four real genes? Would any other collection of four real genes work? For the Controls, how did the body "know" about the fake genes, and how did it "know" to cancel the upregulation of SerpinA5?

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” said Carl Sagan. I don't think we'll ever see this evidence published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Footnotes

¹ Dr. Joe has a Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Life University, which lost its accreditation in 2002. He has 3.8 million followers on Instagram, though.

² Summary of activities at a retreat.

Reconceptualization (25 hrs): "Daily lectures emphasized the body’s self-healing abilities, the mind’s capacity to shape lived reality, and the healing power of present-centeredness and mystical-type experiences."

Meditation (33 hours): "All meditations were guided, delivered with atmospheric music, and taught Kundalini techniques, which combine conscious meta-awareness and conscious breathing exercises with slow, ascending, focused interoceptive attention on purported energetic centers along the midline..."

Guided healing rituals, i.e. “energy healing” (5 hrs): These "brought 6–8 “healers” around one “healee” in which the former were instructed to practice loving-kindness compassion meditation while focusing attention on their heart, hands, and on the latter’s body."

³ In 2024, I wrote a post about Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi, an “Enlightened and miraculous being” with hundreds of publications in low-quality journals that have little-to-no peer review. His proprietary blessing treatment, the Trivedi Effect® (based on “biofield energy transmissions”) is similar to Dispenza's Remote Coherence Healing^TM (“connect to the quantum field”).

Reference

Jinich-Diamant A, Simpson S, Zuniga-Hertz JP, Chitteti R, Schilling JM, Bonds JA, Case L, Chernov AV, Dispenza J, Maree J, Amkie Stahl NE, Licamele M, Fazlalipour N, Devulapalli S, Christov-Moore L, Reggente N, Poirier MA, Moeller-Bertram T, Patel HH. Neural and molecular changes during a mind-body reconceptualization, meditation, and open label placebo healing intervention. Communications Biology. 2025 Nov 6;8(1):1525.

Additional Resources

The cult-like rise of Joe Dispenza
How Joe Dispenza and his book "You Are the Placebo" spread dangerous messaging to vulnerable people.

Essentially, if this practice doesn’t cure your cancer, then you are the problem. Either you’re trying too hard or not enough. But ultimately, the fault is yours. Not the man who’s 'teaching' you.

The Brainwashing Cult of Joe Dispenza – Scott Carney (video)

It's just not based in science. In fact, this is part of the pattern that is actually Dispenza's main tactic. He funds studies and then misrepresents the results whole cloth to sell out conference centers.

Dr. Joe Dispenza & New Age Faith Healing – Anna's Analysis (video)

In response to the final paragraph on Coherence Healing^TM, Anna noted: “Always important to have a loophole like that when it doesn't work out...”

Feedback Joe Dispenza Retreat

I just want to share some cautions and warnings around the Joe Dispenza advanced retreats, as I feel care needs to be taken so no others have an experience like mine, where I came back in worse pain than before, and also in shock from how little care and how much shaming there was for people who are not able to heal or still in pain.

Criticism of Joe Dispenza

My criticism of Dr. Joe Dispenza primarily revolves around the scientific validity of his claims and methodologies.

Joe Dispenza: a chiropractor excells in pseudoscientific bullshit

Dispenza is at his most dangerous firstly when he implies that he can cure serious illness. In this way, he can cause the premature death of many patients. Secondly, he systematically undermines rational thinking which inevitably will cause significant harm to the already badly damaged US society.

How Joseph Dispenza Seduced America With Pseudoscience

In one particularly disturbing instance, Dispenza told a 44-year-old woman struggling with infertility that she wasn’t getting pregnant because she didn’t have “happy eggs.”
The woman had already tried several rounds of fertility treatment, and wondered if it was worth the continued cost. “The spirit is waiting for you to have happy eggs before you have a kid,” Dispenza told her, as her eyes filled with tears. “[The baby] doesn’t want to live in guilt, it wants to live in joy.”
“We’re going to help you,” he added, resting both hands on her shoulders. “You change the field, you change matter… You just need a little help.”

Fake Science AND Joe Dispenza (You Need Therapy podcast)

...pseudoscience mimics real science by co-opting their terms and using them in a way that sets you up to want to believe it’s true.

Placebo Joe Dispenza (Conspirituality podcast)

If you get treated by someone who says they’re a doctor, but they’re not, can they still have a placebo effect? That’s the question we’d like to ask Dr. Joe Dispenza, who’s not a doctor, but who plays one on the internet, treating one and all with the placebo of his bafflegab about Quantum healing and TimeSpace.

Create Your New Reality

2025-11-14T04:41:00.000-08:00

What if I told you that a 7-day meditation retreat could rewire your brain, reprogram your cells, activate natural pain-relief mechanisms, and heal nearly every ailment through the power of thought alone?

And it’s backed by science!

“Sign me up,” you say.

But wait, before you invest $2,500 dollars, let me tell you about the amazing new study published in Communications Biology.

“This intensive non-pharmacological mind-body intervention produces broad short-term neural and plasma-based molecular changes associated with enhanced neuroplasticity, metabolic reprogramming, and modulation of functional cell signaling pathways…” says the abstract.

“Science is the new language of mysticism,” says the maestro of meditation.

The Paper

Neural and molecular changes during a mind-body reconceptualization, meditation, and open label placebo healing intervention

This paper reports an ambitious, logistically difficult study of 20 participants before and after they attended a week-long meditation retreat. A raft of blood and brain biomarkers were collected by a team of researchers from UC San Diego, a meditation research conglomerate, a clinical trials consulting firm, and the Institute of Advanced Consciousness Studies. [registration in ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT06615531]

The retreat consisted of three mind-body interventions:

Reconceptualization (25 hours)
Meditation (33 hours)
Guided healing rituals (5 hours) conceptualized as “open label placebo”

There was no way to differentiate any unique biological correlate(s) because the “mind-body” components were always delivered together. I will leave aside (for now) the possibility that all three interventions might be placebos, because THERE WAS NO CONTROL GROUP exposed to a different condition, an alternate treatment, or even a waiting list.

Reconceptualization:

"Daily lectures emphasized the body’s self-healing abilities, the mind’s capacity to shape lived reality, and the healing power of present-centeredness and mystical-type experiences."

Meditation:

"All meditations were guided, delivered with atmospheric music, and taught Kundalini techniques, which combine conscious meta-awareness and conscious breathing exercises with slow, ascending, focused interoceptive attention on purported energetic centers along the midline..."

Guided healing:

These "brought 6–8 “healers” around one “healee” in which the former were instructed to practice loving-kindness compassion meditation while focusing attention on their heart, hands, and on the latter’s body."

The study generated a staggering number of data points¹ (~100,000). Collecting and analyzing such a wide array of measures took an extraordinary amount of work, and the authors are to be commended for this. They created a nifty figure of their outcome measures (shown below).

Fig. 1A. Outcome measures to capture biological changes associated with brain and body. Created with BioRender. Simpson, S., Jinich, A. (2025). BioRender.com/ryzs1cd.

Before offering my own opinion, here's how the authors presented their work to the public:

GROUNDBREAKING RESULTS: THE DISCOVERY THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING

-- This is from a paid press release.

The landmark study demonstrates how intensive meditation can trigger the same profound brain activity previously documented only with psychedelic substances – while simultaneously activating measurable biological transformations throughout the entire body.
In just seven days, without any pharmaceutical intervention, retreat participants achieved what researchers are calling a "biological reset" – rewired neural networks, boosted cellular nerve cell growth, reprogrammed cellular energy systems, and activated natural pain-relief mechanisms. Research data also shows study subjects' "mystical experience" scores – measured via self-reporting – increased significantly in a group of 20 individuals within the seven-day event.

OK then. Well... My take is different. I suggest some of these claims are not supported by scientific evidence, based on procedural and analytic flaws that occur throughout the manuscript and supplementary materials.

Claim 1. Enhanced Neuroplasticity (greater neurite outgrowth)

“Participants’ anecdotal reports consistently emphasize radical psychological breakthroughs, and previous meditation studies have reported increased BDNF levels consistent with enhanced neuroplasticity. To investigate whether the intervention affected circulating plasma factors conducive to neuroplasticity, we treated cultured glutamatergic PC12 neuroendocrine cells with NGF (nerve growth factor) and 1% pre- and post-intervention plasma and quantiﬁed neurite outgrowth length.”

Result 1. PC12 cells treated with plasma from all 20 participants

PC12 cells are not primarily glutaminergic. PC12 is a cell line derived from a pheochromocytoma (tumor) of the rat adrenal gland. The cells synthesize, store, and release catecholamines. PC12 cells can be induced to differentiate into neuron-like cells. When treated with NGF, they extend neurite-like processes. Subsequent treatment with a variety of agents can elucidate specific cellular mechanisms.

Here, a problematic choice was that plasma from all 20 participants was combined into one soup, which eliminated individual variation and prevented mechanistic insights. Further, plasma samples from novice and advanced meditators (who showed different molecular profiles in other analyses) were pooled.

Claim 2. Metabolic Reprogramming (shift toward glycolytic metabolism)

“Previous studies have characterized meditation as a hypometabolic state and reported enhanced glycolysis in Tibetan Buddhist monks. To test the intervention’s effect on real-time metabolism, we treated BE(2)M17 human neuroblastoma cells with 1% plasma from all participants for 60 min and performed Seahorse XF assays.”

~~Result 2A. Pooled Plasma (loss of individual metabolic signatures)~~

~~Once again, the claim of “significant”~~ ~~changes in glycolysis is based on comparing two pooled samples (basically n=1 vs. n=1). We can't determine which plasma components (or which individual participants) drove the metabolic changes.~~ *

Result 2B. Preselected Proteins (Fig. 4E, glycolysis proteomics heat map)

The authors didn't explain their criteria for choosing 19 proteins involved in glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation (out of hundreds). Was the selection biased in some way? Were important proteins missing?

Claim 3. Modulation of Functional Cell Signaling Pathways (proteomics)

“To investigate the intervention’s effects on the plasma proteome, 7596 proteins were quantified with the SomaScan Assay v4.1. ... Volcano plot analysis (Fig. 5A) revealed 21 significantly altered proteins. Coﬁlin-2 (COF2) and Enoyl-CoA hydratase were significantly upregulated, which suggests enhanced cellular processes related to cytoskeletal regulation and fatty acid metabolism.”

Result 3A. Only 21 out of 7596 proteins were significantly altered (far less than chance)

How did that happen?? The proteomic and metabolomic analyses were exploratory and hypothesis-free, but... with 7,596 proteins tested at p < .05, the expected number of false positives is ~380 proteins (5% of 7,596). Statistical correction for multiple comparisons was inconsistently applied across measures. Even within the Proteomics category, Table 5 says p<.05 but the Methods (p. 14) indicate that FDR correction was applied (false discovery rate).

Result 3B. Tiny Effect Size (Fig. 5A, linear fold change of 0.25 in either direction)

This means there was only a 25% increase or decrease in these proteins after the retreat, which may be within technical or biological noise levels. Most studies require at least 1.5 fold changes for biological relevance. Elsewhere, for the protein-protein interaction networks in Fig. 5B, they used either p<.05 OR fold change >.5, which is still problematic. Use more stringent criteria instead (FDR < 0.05 AND fold change > 1.5).

Across the entire study, the chance of false positive results is high.

Claim 4. Upregulation of Anti-Inflammatory and Inflammatory Markers (dynamic process of immune modulation)

“To assess whether the intervention elicited inﬂammatory or anti-inﬂammatory cascades, we examined a panel of 23 inﬂammatory and 21 anti-inﬂammatory proteins (Fig. 5E). We found significant upregulation of inﬂammatory markers ... Interestingly, we also observed a significantly upregulated anti-inﬂammatory markers index... Concurrent activation of both pathways suggests a dynamic process of immune modulation, possibly reﬂecting enhanced cellular turnover or repair mechanisms.”

Result 4A. Upregulation of Inflammatory Markers is Bad (negative effects of the retreat?)

This result is certainly the opposite of what would be expected. Some studies suggest that meditation can reduce inflammatory markers (lower IL-6, TNF-α, CRP, etc.). For an intervention that ostensibly promotes well-being and neuroplasticity, increased inflammation is counterintuitive and potentially harmful. The authors didn't consider alternative explanations, such as:

Stress – the intensive retreat format (10-12 hours daily) could be physically/psychologically stressful
Sleep Deprivation – long meditation hours might reduce sleep and trigger inflammation
Dietary Changes – retreat food and eating patterns might differ from normal

Result 4B. Incorrect Statistical Reporting (namely, incorrect effect sizes)

This occurs elsewhere in the paper, but here are three examples.

t = 2.25, p = 0.03, Cohen's d = ~~0.09~~  0.50
t = -2.09, p = 0.04, Cohen's d = ~~-0.65~~  -0.47
t = 3.81, p = 0.0001, Cohen's d = ~~0.15~~  0.85

Claim 5. Alterations in Functional Brain Activity (related to meditation)

“To characterize the neural signature of the meditative state, participants underwent structural and blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI scans during rest (5 min) and meditation (15 min).
...
fMRI data showed that this meditation style functionally disrupts the default mode and salience networks (responsible for self-referential thought and allostatic regulation) and cerebellum-prefrontal predictive processing circuits involved in integrating internal models with external sensory data.”

Result 5A. Explosion of fMRI Features (an excess of networks, regions, and parcellations)

The authors chose redundant and superfluous ways to analyze the data, increasing the risk of false positive results.

Seven Canonical Resting State Networks
- within-network connectivity: ~50-100 features per network
- between-network connectivity: 21 pairs
- subtotal: ~400-700 features

Eight ROIs (regions of interest)
- all pairwise connections: 28 unique pairs

Harvard-Oxford Atlas (48 regions)
- all pairwise connections: 48×47/2 = 1,128 features

Power Atlas (264 regions)
- all pairwise connections: 264×263/2 = 34,716 features

Total fMRI Features: ~36,500+

Result 5B. Significant Results Caused by Head Motion? (difference between rest and meditation)

During the 5 minute resting state scan, participants were told to “not move, keep eyes open, stay awake, and think about whatever you want, but do not meditate.” During the 15 minute meditation scan, participants were instructed to “not move, listen to the guided meditation soundtrack, and meditate as suggested by the audio while keeping your eyes open.”

A few things:

The guided meditation has a bombastic audio soundtrack, while the resting state is silent
It would have been beneficial to compare auditory cortex activity for meditation vs. rest
Breathing exercises during meditation can increase head movement

The authors admit this show-stopping confound of greater head motion during the meditation scan.

“Participants moved more during meditation than rest, a potential confound revealed by the significant effect of task (meditation, rest) on mean framewise displacement on a two-way (task × time) repeated measures ANOVA (n = 19, F(1,18) = 25.1, p = 0.00009, η²p = 0.58).”

Thus, the functional connectivity differences between meditation and rest could explained by head motion, not by changes in brain activity. Even tiny movements (0.5 mm) create spurious correlations between regions. The effect size above indicates that 58% of variance in movement was explained by meditation vs. rest. The whopping p-value above was reported in the abstract, but in a different context:

“Meditation decreases functional integration in the default mode (p = 0.00009) and salience networks (p = 0.000003).”

Result 5C. Errors in the Framewise Displacement Spreadsheet (supplementary material)

Framewise displacement (FD) is a quality control metric that considers changes in six head motion parameters from one frame to the next. The authors said their results “were robust to excluding BOLD runs with mean framewise displacement > 0.3 mm, indicating they were not due to higher meditation-associated head motion.” I wasn't sure what they meant by "run" (an entire 5 min block? how many blocks tossed? why wasn't a more stringent cutoff used?).

At any rate, the Supplementary Material lists a temporal string of FD values for all subjects and conditions. Some numbers in the spreadsheet looked like this, '0.5053053200000001 (an extraneous apostrophe) while the pre and post values for the Rest condition were identical, suggesting some kind of copy/paste error (see screenshot below).

Claim 6. Machine Learning Models Discriminated Pre- and Post-Meditation States with High Accuracy

“We applied machine learning to identify the most biologically relevant features across time point (pre/post) and experience level (novice/advanced) datasets. Each dataset was preprocessed (log-transformed and auto-centered) and missing data was imputed to ensure feature scaling, normalization consistency, and data integrity and comparability across modalities. Post-preprocessing, ELISA, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics datasets were concatenated into a single feature matrix used as input for an eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifier chosen for its ability to handle high-dimensional data. ... both models achieved strong discrimination between pre- and post-meditation states (XGBoost AUC = 0.86; Random Forest AUC = 0.90).”

Result 6. Extreme Overfitting (with no way to validate in an independent sample)

Unless I'm mistaken, they dumped ALL the data, including ~36,500 fMRI features, into one giant classifier. This guarantees overfitting. With 100,000 features and 20 samples, the model can memorize the training data. In contrast, 1 feature per 10 samples is often recommended as the minimum for stable ML. There was no validation set, because you can't split 20 samples into training and testing sets. There was no independent cohort, so you can't see if the findings will generalize to another population. The impossibly high AUCs of 0.86-0.90 are meaningless: you could basically use random numbers and get these values.

Then there were exploratory correlations between self-report scores on the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) and the top 14 features per model, which I'll skip for now. [The MEQ is typically used to rate psychedelic experiences, not meditative experiences. The scores here are a clear reflection of this difference.]

Major Weaknesses

1. No control group (can't separate meditation from the passage of time)
2. Massive overfitting (100,000 features, 20 people)
3. Major motion confound
4. Uncorrected multiple comparisons
5. Inconsistent statistics
6. Possible p-hacking and post hoc explanations

Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest

The meditation teacher (Dr. Joe Dispenza) is an author on the paper. He declared his employment with Encephalon, Inc., which offers the meditation retreats. However, the $10 million award (gift) to the senior author (Dr. Hemal H. Patel of UCSD) from InnerScience Research Fund isn't fully explained. Dr. Joe owns InnerScience. So the person who ran the week-long retreat for 1,444 attendees in San Diego (see CONSORT flow diagram in Fig. 1D) also funded the research project and co-authored the article. Dr. Patel recently received another $2.45 million from InnerScience.

Next time we'll take a closer look at Dr. Joe Dispenza.

* CORRECTION (November 23 2025): I believe the comments I wrote for Result 2A are wrong, due to my misreading of the authors' quoted text in Claim 2. However, Figs. 4D and 4F (p. 6 of the paper) do show individual data points. The analysis for Claim 2 — Metabolic Reprogramming — did NOT use pooled plasma.

On the other hand, Result 1 — PC12 cells treated with plasma from all 20 participants — DID use pooled plasma, as quoted on p. 15:

"PC12 cells ... were cultured in [media] under standard conditions... On Day 0, differentiation was induced by plating cells ... and culturing them with Opti-MEM medium supplemented with 0.5% FBS, 1% penicillin/streptomycin, 50 ng/mL NGF, and either 1% human plasma pooled from pre- and post-intervention or no plasma (control cells)..."

and on p. 16:

"PC12 assay plates were prepared with pooled plasma (n = 20) with 2 technical replicates (wells) per treatment (pre-plasma/post-plasma/no treatment)."

I apologize for the error.

A more detailed version of this post appears at PubPeer. A commenter there pointed out that the study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov after it was completed.

Footnote

¹ To preview, my take is that ~100,000 data points per participant (n=20 or less) were fed into machine learning (ML) models. Oh no.

Reference

Jinich-Diamant A, Simpson S, Zuniga-Hertz JP, Chitteti R, Schilling JM, Bonds JA, Case L, Chernov AV, Dispenza J, Maree J, Amkie Stahl NE, Licamele M, Fazlalipour N, Devulapalli S, Christov-Moore L, Reggente N, Poirier MA, Moeller-Bertram T, Patel HH. Neural and molecular changes during a mind-body reconceptualization, meditation, and open label placebo healing intervention. Communications Biology. 2025 Nov 6;8(1):1525.

The highly speculative model below interprets the findings within a Bayesian brain framework. The figure shows superficial pyramidal cells (layers 2/3), deep pyramidal cells (layers 5/6), a neuromodulatory cell, and information flow. It's a cellular-level circuit diagram based on:

Group-level fMRI (resolution: ~3mm³)
Blood samples
20 people
Motion artifacts

Fig. 9. Potential cortical implementation. Hierarchical predictive coding scheme showing how the three mind-body techniques may synergistically facilitate a more ﬂexible and adaptive predictive system.

MAKE AMERICANS DIE EARLIER: the decimation of CDC under the ghoulish RFK Jr.

2025-09-02T00:07:00.000-07:00

Dr. Susan Monarez, a microbiologist and public health specialist, was fired from her job as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after less than a month. She refused to support the catastrophic policies of her boss, antivax conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Even RFK Jr. says we should never trust him for medical advice.

Dr. Monarez did not voluntarily leave her post, however. In a statement, her lawyers said:

“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. … As a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign.”

Several high-ranking officials quit the CDC in protest. In his resignation letter, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis stated the following:

“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.”

He called out the lies and quackery that will harm the American people, not make them healthy:

“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.
The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer. ... Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.”

In a stunning rebuke, NINE former CDC Directors sounded the alarm in a New York Times editorial.

We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health
. . .
What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.

Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views...

The CDC debacle has generated tremendous criticism from Democrats and even Republicans in Congress, who own the shambles of public health and scientific research in the US. They approved the confirmation of a deranged man who...

...walks around barefoot in airplane bathrooms...

...swims in a contaminated creek with his grandchildren [where swimming is banned due to high levels of bacteria]...

...drinks raw milk [which “can contain a variety of disease-causing pathogens,” according to the FDA]...

...recommends beef tallow for frying [instead of much healthier seed oils]...

...considered Coke with cane sugar (vs. high fructose corn syrup) to be a MAHA win [8 months after he condemned Trump's McDonald's fetish as 'poison']...

You may remember that Trump rewarded RFK Jr. after the latter dropped his candidacy for president.

[Trump] repeated his pledge to establish a panel — “working with Bobby” — to investigate the increase in chronic health conditions and childhood diseases, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity and infertility.

Interestingly, RFK's former Vice Presidential running mate, billionaire Nicole Shanahan (who believes Burning Man is demonic), suggested that he should be appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, which is actually what happened. Kennedy pledged to fire 600 NIH employees on Day 1. In March 2025, he revealed his plan to “downsize” HHS from 80,000 to 60,000 employees. That's 25% fewer employees at agencies that include Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, NIH, FDA, and CDC.

His utter disregard of expertise and established scientific facts is exemplified by this Orwellian statement:

“We need to stop trusting the experts... Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy, it's a feature of religion and totalitarianism.”

The exact opposite is true!

Totalitarian regimes ban experts because they can contradict the party line with rigorous evidence. An ignorant populace is a compliant populace. This is why Trump favors grossly unqualified Fox News hosts, QAnon conspiracy theorists, Putin puppets, and puppy killers. These right-wing bureaucrats are aptly called The Brain Rot Cabinet by Mother Jones.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya is a vengeful liar and a menace to society

2025-08-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

Steve Bannon and Jay Bhattacharya — image from Important Context

I would like to draw your attention to the exceptional writing and devoted pro-science activism of Dr. Angie Rasmussen and Dr. Jeremy Berg.

1. Dr. Rasmussen is a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan who has countered the dangerous COVID misinformation of Jay Bhattacharya since 2020. It’s a travesty of American science that Bhattacharya was installed as the Trumpist bureaucrat tasked with the destruction of NIH, the world’s premiere funder of biomedical research.

Her latest masterwork of demolition compares Bhattacharya to Soviet fraudster (and Stalin favorite) Trofim Lysenko, who denied the genetic transmission of traits, persecuted his enemies, and killed seven million people in a famine of his own doing.

I urge you to read Dr. Rasmussen’s entire piece. Some highlights are below.

Bhattacharya is the New Lysenko

Starving the NIH through ineptitude, bitterness, and thirst for revenge

DR. ANGELA RASMUSSEN

…

Both [Lysenko and Bhattacharya] have capitalized on population-level disasters to climb out of academic obscurity into powerful positions. Both did so by advancing authoritarian political interests and telling a dictator what he wanted to hear. Both proposed and doubled down on policies that would kill millions of people, even resorting to manipulating or manufacturing data to justify them. Both were so emotionally fragile and unable to tolerate expert criticism that they pursued mortal vendettas against entire scientific fields of study. The only difference is that Lysenko hated genetics, while Bhattacharya hates public health, virology, and vaccines.

How much does Bhattacharya hate public health?

Bhattacharya first came to prominence with the Santa Clara serology study in April 2020, a widely pilloried preprint that claimed the mortality rate of COVID-19 was much lower than most other estimates. It was later revealed that this study was partly funded by the CEO of JetBlue Airlines, who was looking for data to support lifting pandemic-related restrictions on air travel. A few months later, Bhattacharya dropped the Great Barrington Declaration, a pandemic policy proposal calling for “vulnerable” people to isolate forever, while encouraging a COVID free-for-all everywhere else. That would have resulted in mass infection and another million deaths in the US if it had been implemented.

How much does Bhattacharya hate vaccines?

Bhattacharya started lying about vaccines in 2021. That was when he appeared on a panel hosted by “vaccine safety” fanatic Steve Kirsch and his Great Barrington Declaration co-author Martin Kulldorff, the anti-vax barrow-wight who is currently chairing ACIP, purging it of expertise, and trying to cancel the MMRV vaccine. At this panel, Bhattacharya and Kulldorff sat silent, nodding in tacit approval as Kirsch claimed falsely that COVID vaccines killed more than half a million people.

Her inevitable conclusion:
“Bhattacharya is the American Lysenko and must be removed as NIH Director.”

We know that Bhattacharya currently has control of American biomedical research, is eagerly gutting research that does not comport with his own mass death-inducing crank beliefs for Trump, and really wants revenge against anyone who ever pointed out that the Great Barrington Declaration would kill millions, the evidence does not show that the pandemic began with a lab leak, or that mRNA vaccine technology is safe, effective, and essential for pandemic preparedness. We know how this story will end. We must have the courage as a scientific community to stand united against it.

What can we do as scientists? Be as loud as possible and amplify messages such as these!

Support the American Public & HHS Employees — read and sign the letter.

2. Dr. Berg is a former Editor-in-Chief of Science and the former Director of NIGMS. He has embarked on a high-profile email campaign to call out Bhattacharya’s hypocrisy and incompetence as NIH Director, as well as the disastrous, politically-motivated decline in grant awards. Dr. Berg has documented these communiques on Bluesky.

Among my favorites are:

Dr. Berg has recently collected some of his missives into a document called Fifty Shades of “Jay”, which starts out with helpful suggestions (which are ignored) but quickly reaches the conclusion that “Jay” is willfully ignorant and deceptive.

I have been closely monitoring NIH progress and policies throughout the year. When Director Bhattacharya began making public statements of various sorts that revealed his lack of knowledge about NIH, I started to send emails in good faith to share my knowledge about NIH programs with him to help him perform his important job more effectively. At first, he did not respond at all and when he did, he responded using the term “ideological boondoggles” without definition. This ill-advised behavior substantially decreased my hopes for his interest in receiving input about NIH programs and policies as it seemed that he had entrenched political perspectives.

I'm a fan of the Governor Newsom Press Office account on X, which mocks Trump's incoherent ALL CAPS ramblings. In the same vein, I endorse the ridicule of inept and unqualified Trumpist bureaucrats on social media and elsewhere.

RETRACTED: phony study on "biofield energy" treatment by a Guru

2025-07-28T19:52:00.000-07:00

Time flies
Time crawls

– Howard Devoto / Peter Shelley / John Alexander Mcgeoch (Magazine)

image from Google Scholar

A year ago, I wrote a post about Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi, an “Enlightened and miraculous being” with hundreds of publications in low-quality journals that have little-to-no peer review. The specific paper in question claimed that Trivedi has the ability to heal the body and mind through his “biofield energy transmissions” (a proprietary blessing treatment, the Trivedi Effect®). These claims are supernatural, with no basis in physical reality. The results appeared in the Journal of General and Family Medicine (published by Wiley and indexed by PubMed), which is seemingly a reputable journal (unlike the “predatory” journals that have accepted the vast majority of Trivedi's other articles).

So I wrote a detailed letter to the Editor about my concerns (full text in my earlier post):

Dr. Okayama and the Editorial Staff of the Journal of General and Family Medicine,
I am writing about the legitimacy of an article published in the journal:

Trivedi, M. K., Branton, A., Trivedi, D., Mondal, S., & Jana, S. (2023). The role of biofield energy treatment on psychological symptoms, mental health disorders, and stress‐related quality of life in adult subjects: A randomized controlled clinical trial. Journal of General and Family Medicine, 24(3), 154-163.

In this paper, the first author (Mahendra Kumar Trivedi, also known as “Guruji” on the Divine Connection website) makes extraordinary and unvalidated claims about his ability to change the state of matter – and the mental and physical health of human volunteers – via transmission of his thoughts (described as “blessing” throughout the manuscript). A peer-reviewed journal that accepts such declarations without incontrovertible scientific evidence, which was never provided, has compromised its scientific reputation. Furthermore, the study’s design is flawed and much of the data contained in the paper is implausible and inauthentic.
. . .

Time flies
Time crawls

–ibid

Six months later (24 January 2025), the journal issued a retraction based on my concerns.¹

RETRACTION: M. K. Trivedi, A. Branton, D. Trivedi, S. Mondal, and S. Jana, “The Role of Biofield Energy Treatment on Psychological Symptoms, Mental Health Disorders, and Stress-Related Quality of Life in Adult Subjects: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial,” Journal of General and Family Medicine 24, no. 3 (2023): 154–163, https://doi.org/10.1002/jgf2.606.

The above article, published online on 28 January 2023 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Masanobu Okayama; the Japan Primary Care Association; and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. The retraction has been agreed upon following an investigation into concerns raised by a third party [this blog], which revealed an inappropriate control group used as the placebo group of the trial, inconsistencies in the Psychological Questionnaire Scoring, highly implausible functional biomarker values that are out of the typical physiological range, and unsupported claims regarding the scientific evidence behind the biofield energy treatment. The authors were informed, however, the explanation and the partial raw data provided were deemed insufficient to address the concerns. Thus, the editors have lost confidence in the presented data and consider the results and conclusions of this manuscript insufficiently supported and substantially compromised. The authors disagree with the retraction.

How did that publication slip into print?? Other bloggers have written about the Wiley fiasco (when they bought Hindawi, along with a heaping pile of unreputable journals, for $300 million). It's a long and sordid tale...

Further Reading

The Miraculous Guru with an h-index of 62

Backed by Science? Building a lucrative spiritual empire based on potentially “questionable” publications

Footnote

¹ By this time, I was preoccupied by the horrendous Executive Orders (i.e., illegal edicts) issued by the President.

The Fragile Masculinity of MAGA Cancel Culture

2025-06-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

Censorship. Surveillance. Loss of Privacy. Big Government. Stamping Out Due Process. Embracing the Evil Empire. Rejection of States’ Rights.

As the Trump regime enacts p. 555 of Project 2025 — illegal mobilization of the California National Guard without the Governor’s permission — the loss of personal freedoms is embraced by MAGA without a trace of irony.

100 Days of Lies

2025-04-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Number One rule of the Trump administration is to lie. That's it. That's all. Once you understand this mandate, it's easier to realize that yes, the next outrage is false too.

Trump himself stands for nothing and no one (other than his own glory and wealth). He has no principles and no morals. He demands undying loyalty from his unqualified Cabinet and staff, but he'll throw them under a bus when he considers them a liability.

What have been the goals of the first 100 days?

to dismantle government institutions
to demoralize federal workers
to destroy liberal universities
to demolish federally funded science
to deport law-abiding foreign students
to enact a eugenics-based health care system
to ruin the economy
to pillage the environment
to establish an authoritarian state
to consolidate Executive power
to neuter Congress and the Courts
to eliminate conflicts of interest for Oligarchs
to ensure a dictatorship for billionaires
to redistribute wealth ever upwards
to glorify the prejudice of white Christian nationalists
to starve children in Sudan
to generate sheer chaos
to alienate international allies
to scapegoat immigrants, minorities, and transgender people
TO CAUSE FEAR AND SUFFERING

These goals have been achieved. The US is no longer a democracy.

Are we winning yet??

100 Days of Failure

Even Fox News — in a rare moment of candor and truthfulness — has a hard time listing Trump's positive accomplishments.

100 Days of Hatred

Everyone deserves human dignity and due process.

But cruelty is the point, the humiliation is deliberate.

The New DEI Is Domination, Exclusion, and Incompetence

There are so many unqualified, white male affirmative action hires in the Trump Administration (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth are among the worst).

I've been trying hard to picture the end game.

I've been trying very hard to understand so many things, especially the unholy alliance between secular billionaire tech bros and the Heritage Foundation (i.e., the Christian theocracy outlined in Project 2025). One proposal: They share a common delusion — an unjustified faith in their own superiority, a self-declared directive to rule the universe and live forever. All other humans are condemned.

Therefore our lives are trivial.

Along with many other Americans, I'm angry and dejected. But we mustn't give up. I'll continue to write, and I'll continue to protest. My voice — and my writing — have been in exile for far too long.

On being a federal employee

2025-02-05T19:38:00.000-08:00

Unhinged Nazi controls US government

UPDATE (Feb 6 2025): U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. has temporarily blocked the Fork in the Road fraud. However, I haven't yet been notified by the Musk youth who illegally infiltrated the computer systems at OPM.

I am a federal employee. And I will not comply with a series of illegal demands and threats, including the Fork in the Road “deferred resignation” program. It's an unenforceable sham, with no money allocated for these payouts.

Everything I write is old news by the time I finish the paragraph

An unelected oligarch has seized control of the US Federal Government. He feels entitled to execute this hostile and illegal takeover because he purchased the presidential election for Donald Trump, who has installed himself as dictator. Trump doesn't have a mandate for anything, despite what he says — he won the popular vote by only a narrow margin (49.8% vs. 48.3% for Vice President Kamala Harris). So now the Christian nationalists at the Heritage Foundation are setting policy for the rest of us, as written in their blueprint for oppression (see Project 2025).

Controlling (and Culling) the Federal Workforce Through Intimidation and Fear

Musk is treating the federal workforce like Twitter employees, meaning he wants to fire 80% of us. The “terms” of the deferred resignation offer (if you can call them that) keep changing:

January 28, 2025 (original Fork)

If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason).

However, the FAQ says that employees are not expected to work at all, while some sample contracts state that employees are agreeing to work through Feb. 28 (and payment comes with a caveat: “Subject to the availability of appropriations...”).

As the deadline approaches, threats to accept the offer have escalated.

“The reality is clear: A large-scale reduction, in response to the President’s workforce executive orders, is already happening. The government is restructuring, and unfortunately, many employees will later realize they missed a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” [an anonymous] official said.

But the response thus far has been underwhelming. Recent news reports indicate that only 1% or 2% of 2.3 million federal workers have accepted the offer.¹ The deadline is February 6, 2025 at 11:59 EST

UPDATE: A federal judge has temporarily blocked implementation of this fraudulent offer.

DOGE is a Clown Show (until it wasn't)

The Department of Government Efficiency is a make-believe entity. It has no official standing in the Executive Branch and yet issues one illegal memo after another. The most outrageous initial ploy — to “pause” Financial Assistance Programs — has been blocked by temporary stays and restraining orders. The ignorance and ineptitude of DOGE would be comical if critical programs for farmers, commercial fishermen, meat and poultry inspection, veterans, rural economic development, Medicare prescription drug coverage, the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, NSF, NIH (and thousands more) weren't stalled for an indeterminate time period.

And the irony is that...

I would welcome a true department of government efficiency to improve IT capabilities and to reduce the delays and administrative burdens involved in every aspect of research. It's discouraging. But I'm not leaving.

Footnote

¹ Great comment:

This is not about you—your performance, your value, your contribution to public service. This is about a billionaire panicking because his big idea is collapsing under the weight of reality. He wants you afraid. He wants you to think that staying is a risk, that leaving is the only path to survival. It isn’t.

Backed by Science? Building a lucrative spiritual empire based on potentially “questionable” publications

2024-08-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

image from Google Scholar

Mahendra Kumar Trivedi is the founder of Trivedi Global, Inc., a provider of health and wellness products and services. His Google Scholar profile lists 795 publications with a collective citation count of 12,032 (as of July 31, 2024). This prolific output reached its peak in 2015, with 268 papers.

“How is this possible?” you may ask. Here's the reason. Only 17 of 795 articles are indexed in PubMed. All the others were published in journals that do not meet the quality standards of MEDLINE. {This is a fact.}¹

The National Library of Medicine decides whether a journal is included in MEDLINE (the source database for PubMed) based on:

Scope and Coverage
Editorial Policies and Processes
Scientific Rigor/Methodological Rigor
Production and Administration
Impact

So-called “predatory” journals – first documented by librarian Jeffrey Beall – do not meet the quality standards for MEDLINE.

According to Wikipedia, predatory publishing “is an exploitative academic publishing business model, where the journal or publisher prioritizes self-interest at the expense of scholarship. It is characterized by misleading information, deviates from the standard peer review process, is highly non-transparent, and often utilizes aggressive solicitation practices.”

In such journals, the time between manuscript submission and acceptance for publication is alarmingly short, leading some to question whether adequate peer review had taken place.

Here are several examples for Trivedi et al. (2015). Note that time from submission to publication was 8-10 days.²

In vitro Evaluation of Biofield Treatment on Viral Load Against Human Immunodeficiency-1 and Cytomegalo Viruses
American Journal of Health Research (Volume 3, Issue 6)
Received: 9 October 2015 Accepted: 19 October 2015

Evaluation of Plant Growth Regulator, Immunity and DNA Fingerprinting of Biofield Energy Treated Mustard Seeds (Brassica juncea)
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Volume 4, Issue 6)
Received: 11 October 2015 Accepted: 19 October 2015

Agronomic Characteristics, Growth Analysis, and Yield Response of Biofield Treated Mustard, Cowpea, Horse Gram, and Groundnuts
International Journal of Genetics and Genomics (Volume 3, Issue 6)
Received: 12 October 2015 Accepted: 21 October 2015

Evaluation of Biochemical Marker - Glutathione and DNA Fingerprinting of Biofield Energy Treated Oryza sativa
American Journal of BioScience (Volume 3, Issue 6)
Received: 12 October 2015 Accepted: 21 October 2015

{Qualification: Science Publishing Group claims that articles are peer-reviewed, although some have compiled evidence to the contrary.}

Why is this important? When a company tries to sell products and services that are “backed by science,” we are free to evaluate the evidence for these claims.

My previous post introduced you to Mr. Trivedi and his Divine Connection:

“Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi is an Enlightened and miraculous being with Divine Embodiment, gifted to transform living organisms at the genetic level & non-living materials at the atomic level. … Guruji’s Blessing has impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people globally, and has been validated globally with cutting-edge scientific research.”

I read a 2023 paper, The role of biofield energy treatment on psychological symptoms, mental health disorders, and stress‐related quality of life in adult subjects: A randomized controlled clinical trial (indexed in PubMed), and found irregularities and questionable results. I’m confident that some of the reported data are physiologically impossible. Thus, I urged the journal to reconsider the paper and the publisher (Wiley) to retract it from the scientific literature {if warranted}.

The bottom line (so to speak) for Trivedi Global, Inc. is net revenue from sales of Remote Blessing Memberships:

1 Blessing, $250 per month (only $200 per month for blessings from his wife, Dahryn)
2 Blessings, $400 per month ($300 per month for Dahryn)
…
Daily Blessings, $2,000 per month

Path to Enlightenment Memberships
Platinum, $10,000 per month

Caveat emptor.

Footnotes

¹ Any statement in curly brackets is an effort to avoid a lawsuit. See Appendix.

² Other bursts of productivity include June 2021 (19 papers) and July 2021 (17 papers). Most of these reported findings from Sprague Dawley rats.

The Appendix provides links to previous news articles, blog posts, and lawsuits related to Mr. Trivedi, followed by an egregious example of self-citation (which artificially elevates the h-index).

Appendix

Mahendra Kumar Trivedi : Transform Your Life With The Science Of Miracles

Mahendra Trivedi along with other Trivedi Masters have the supernatural ability to transform living organisms and non-living substances through the power of their thoughts, known as The Trivedi Effect®.

Trivedi effect® – the Skeptic's Dictionary

TE is an “unknown” energy. Well, it was unknown until 1995, when Trivedi “received 'guidance' from Universal Intelligence that the gift he had been given was now to be used for the welfare of mankind.”

The Skeptic's Dictionary also mentions several “failed” experiments that were conducted at Penn State. The results were summarized by Dr. Tania Slaweki in May 2011:

Mahendra Trivedi was tested extensively at the Penn State University’s Materials Research Laboratory on several occasions from June – September 2009, and we did not observe any changes in materials or their properties as a result of his “blessings”. We tested MANY solid, powdered and liquid materials, including radioactive materials. “Blessed” samples were unchanged. While there were sporadic changes to a handful of water samples as observed with 785 nm Raman spectroscopy, it must be understood that the changes (a) were not reproducible, (b) occurred sometimes to the blessed samples and sometimes to the control samples and (c) were most likely due to a problem we were having with an unstable laser source on the Raman spectrometer, which was knowen to fluctuate in intensity and produce the kinds of sporadic results that were observed.

Mr. Trivedi sued Dr. Slawecki (see PDF) for these and other statements, but the case was dismissed.

The Trivedi Defect, by Mike Mosedale (Minnesota Lawyer, July 2015) – journalist Dennis Lang is sued.

...case dismissed (Techdirt, July 2016).

Driving up the h-factor

Self-Citations from: An Impact of Energy of Consciousness (The Trivedi Effect®) on the Physicochemical, Thermal, Structural, and Behavioral Properties of Magnesium Gluconate. Biomedical Sciences. Vol. 3, No. 2, 2017, pp. 42-54.

19 citations of their own work.

Publishers {considered by some to be “predatory”} are listed below each reference in red.

[23] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Shettigar H, Bairwa K, Jana S (2015) Fourier transform infrared and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopic characterization of biofield treated salicylic acid and sparfloxacin. Nat Prod Chem Res 3: 186.

International Online Medical Council (IOMC)

[24] Trivedi MK, Patil S, Shettigar H, Bairwa K, Jana S (2015) Effect of biofield treatment on spectral properties of paracetamol and piroxicam. Chem Sci J 6: 98.

Hilaris Publisher (OMICS Group)

[25] Trivedi MK, Tallapragada RM, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Latiyal O, Jana S (2015) Potential impact of biofield treatment on atomic and physical characteristics of magnesium. Vitam Miner 3: 129.

Hilaris Publisher (OMICS Group)

[26] Trivedi MK, Nayak G, Patil S, Tallapragada RM, Jana S, Mishra RK (2015) Bio-field treatment: An effective strategy to improve the quality of beef extract and meat infusion powder. J Nutr Food Sci 5: 389.

Longdom Publishing (OMICS Group)

[27] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Bairwa K, Jana S (2015) Spectroscopic characterization of disodium hydrogen orthophosphate and sodium nitrate after biofield treatment. J Chromatogr Sep Tech 6: 282.

Longdom Publishing (OMICS Group)

[28] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Sethi KK, Jana S (2016) Isotopic abundance ratio analysis of biofield energy treated indole using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Science Journal of Chemistry 4: 41-48.

Science PG (Science Publishing Group)

[29] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Panda P, Jana S (2016) Evaluation of the isotopic abundance ratio in biofield energy treated resorcinol using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry technique. Pharm Anal Acta 7: 481.

Walsh Medical Media *

[30] Trivedi MK, Tallapragada RM, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Mishra RK, Jana S (2015) Spectral and thermal properties of biofield energy treated cotton. American Journal of Energy Engineering. 3: 86-92.

Science PG

[31] Trivedi MK, Nayak G, Patil S, Tallapragada RM, Latiyal O, Jana S (2015) Characterization of physical and structural properties of brass powder after biofield treatment. J Powder

Metall Min 4: 134

OMICS Publishing Group

[32] Trivedi MK, Nayak G, Patil S, Tallapragada RM, Latiyal O, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of biofield treatment on physical and structural properties of bronze powder. Adv Automob Eng 4: 119.

OMICS Publishing Group

[33] Trivedi MK, Tallapragada RM, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Latiyal O, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of atomic, physical, and thermal properties of bismuth oxide powder: an impact of biofield energy treatment. American Journal of Nano Research and Applications. 3: 94-98.

Science PG

[34] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Gangwar M, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of vegetative growth parameters in biofield treated bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) and okra (Abelmoschus esculentus). International Journal of Nutrition and Food Sciences 4: 688-694.

Science PG

[35] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Mondal SC, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of plant growth regulator, immunity and DNA fingerprinting of biofield energy treated mustard seeds (Brassica juncea). Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries 4: 269-274.

Science PG

[36] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Mondal SC, Jana S (2015) Effect of biofield treated energized water on the growth and health status in chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus). Poult Fish Wildl Sci 3: 140.

Longdom Publishing

[37] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Gangwar M, Jana S (2015) Antibiogram and genotypic analysis using 16S rDNA after biofield treatment on Morganella morganii. Adv Tech Biol Med 3: 137.

OMICS Publishing Group

[38] Trivedi MK, Patil S, Shettigar H, Bairwa K, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of phenotyping and genotyping characteristic of Shigella sonnei after biofield treatment. J Biotechnol Biomater 5: 196.

OMICS Publishing Group

[39] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Shettigar H, Gangwar M, Jana S (2015) Antibiogram of multidrug-resistant isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa after Biofield Treatment. J Infect Dis Ther 3: 244.

OMICS Publishing Group

[40] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Mondal SC, Jana S (2015) Antibiogram of biofield-treated Shigella boydii: Global burden of infections. Science Journal of Clinical Medicine 4:121-126.

Science PG

[44] Trivedi MK, Mohan TRR (2016) Biofield energy signals, energy transmission and neutrinos. American Journal of Modern Physics 5: 172-176.

Science PG

* Walsh Medical Media (WMM) presents peer-reviewed original research and analysis that deals exclusively with the treatment of schizophrenia and related psychoses and is directly relevant to patient care through…
https://www.walshmedicalmedia.com/publish-with-us.html

Figure 4 (Trivedi et al., 2024): Proposed schematic representation explains how bioﬁeld energy transmission forms quantum entanglement that leads to positive outcomes of this therapy. PPR, Practitioner-patient relationship; PPQE, Practitioner-patient quantum energy entanglement; E, Energy; h, Planck ’ s constant; v, Frequency. © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

The Miraculous Guru with an h-index of 62

2024-07-29T18:15:00.000-07:00

Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi is an “Enlightened and miraculous being” with a Google Scholar page, an h-index¹ of 62, and 12,031 citations of his work. Most of these are self-citations from a tangled collection of predatory journals that publish questionable papers without proper peer review (e.g., Science Publishing Group).

Guruji Trivedi claims to have the ability to harness his own...

...biofield energy to change the behaviour and characteristics of living organisms including soil, seeds, plants, trees, animals, microbes, and humans, along with non-living materials including metals, ceramics, polymers, chemicals, pharmaceutical compounds and nutraceuticals, etc.

The paper quoted above, Biofield Energy Signals, Energy Transmission and Neutrinos, was published in the American Journal of Modern Physics (Science PG) and explains how “neutrino oscillations” can account for his seemingly supernatural powers:

Based on the information available on neutrino oscillations and biofield and brain computer interface (BCI), Mr. Trivedi’s experimental results are explained by certain postulates. The neutrino oscillations require energy. This is possible by extraordinary individuals, who can negate all stray thoughts (as in meditation or intense concentration) and focus these in a single intended direction. Often, such individuals in this state emit radiation known to be halos (could be linked to photon emission). The thoughts are thus a focused beam of neutral neutrinos and can change into positive and negative on interacting with a receiver object composed of atoms and ions and replicate the original signals and thought pattern as observed in BCI and other psychic phenomena.

{Physicists, please post your comments.}

Mr. Trivedi has also published in journals from reputable publishers. One of my favorites is “A transcendental to changing metal powder characteristics” in Elsevier's Metal Powder Report. I found another in Wiley's Journal of General and Family Medicine. I have reprinted my Letter to the Editor and Publisher below, formatted for the blog.²

-- start of letter --

July 23, 2024

Dr. Okayama and the Editorial Staff of the Journal of General and Family Medicine,

I am writing about the legitimacy of an article published in the journal:

Trivedi, M. K., Branton, A., Trivedi, D., Mondal, S., & Jana, S. (2023). The role of biofield energy treatment on psychological symptoms, mental health disorders, and stress‐related quality of life in adult subjects: A randomized controlled clinical trial. Journal of General and Family Medicine, 24(3), 154-163.

In this paper, the first author (Mahendra Kumar Trivedi, also known as “Guruji” on the Divine Connection website) makes extraordinary and unvalidated claims about his ability to change the state of matter – and the mental and physical health of human volunteers – via transmission of his thoughts (described as “blessing” throughout the manuscript). A peer-reviewed journal that accepts such declarations without incontrovertible scientific evidence, which was never provided, has compromised its scientific reputation. Furthermore, the study’s design is flawed and much of the data contained in the paper is implausible and inauthentic.

I am an established scientist who runs a research lab, and as I will outline below, it is ethically mandatory for the Journal of General and Family Medicine to reconsider this paper and for Wiley to retract it from the scientific literature for the following reasons.

The paper contends that the “randomized controlled clinical trial” (p. 154) used a placebo control condition when it did not. An experimental design that uses a no-treatment group does not control for expectation effects. Although the Abstract mentions that the placebo group was assigned to “naïve attunement” (p. 154), this procedure was not explained. It appears that the control group received no treatment or manipulation at all, and therefore cannot be considered “a placebo group” (see quote below).

“Besides, the placebo control group subjects did not receive any blessing or attunements.” (p. 156)

The Psychological Questionnaires Scoring (PQS) used to assess mental health was “…prepared in-house with few modifications based on the standard scientific literatures, done by renowned experienced psychologists and psychiatrics, who were involved in this clinical trial study” (see p. 156). These individuals were not named, so we must assume they were authors. Although there are widely accepted standardized questionnaires that could have been used in the study, a more important concern was that the raw scores were not reported. Each symptom category consisted of only two questions, with a possible range of scores from 2 – 14. All measurements from the No-Treatment Group were on the first day of the study, Day 0 (baseline), with no follow-up. In contrast, measurements from the Biofield Energy Therapy Group were obtained on Day 90 (after treatment on Day 0) and on Day 180 (after a second treatment on Day 90). Significance for all 14 symptoms was p <0.0001, but the raw scores were not reported for either group. And we don’t know how scores for the No-Treatment Group might have changed over time. For example, Table 2 reports lower scores (a negative Mean ± SD) for the symptom “Stress and confusion” for the Treatment Group at 90 and 180 days, compared to the baseline No-Treatment Group (on Day 0).

180 days −6.114 ± 0.7230

Table 3 lists measurements for the functional biomarkers, which are the clearest evidence for unverifiable data (or error). Many of these are highly implausible, because their values are out-of-range of typical physiological levels (to an extent beyond what is seen in pathological conditions). It is unclear why these values were considered an improvement in overall health and quality of life (p. 154, 161). Concrete examples are given below.

No-Treatment Treat, Day 90 Treat, Day 180

Oxytocin 88.05 ± 6.39 451.44 ± 32.93*** 257.46 ± 27.62***
(pg/mL)

***p<0.001 vs. Controls
normal values, mean = 145.0 pg/mL, SD = 52.9 (Hoge et al., 2008).

17-β-estradiol 97080 ± 10140 134300 ± 17520 100250 ± 12120
(pg/mL)

Estradiol values were collapsed across male and female participants (both aged 20–45 years) and were converted from ng/mL {perhaps the units listed in Table 3 were wrong}

normal values
Male: 10 to 50 pg/mL
Female (premenopausal): 30 to 400 pg/mL

https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/tests/estradiol-blood-test

The reported levels of plasma catecholamines (below) are well beyond pathological levels, according to two separate sources.

No-Treatment Treat, Day 90 Treat, Day 180

Norepinephrine 4540 ± 140 9240 ± 570*** 8920 ± 570***
Dopamine 382.44 ± 6.5 1662 ± 102.3*** 2000 ± 0.0***
(pg/mL)

A) normal values

Norepinephrine (pg/mL)
Seated (15 min): 177.5 to 811.2 pg/mL

Dopamine (pg/mL)
Seated (15 min): > 36.7 pg/mL

NOTE: Small increases in catecholamines (less than 2 times the upper reference limit) are usually the result of physiological stimuli, drugs, or improper specimen collection. Significant elevation of one or more catecholamines (2 or more times the upper reference limit) can result from a neuroendocrine tumor.

https://ltd.aruplab.com/Tests/Pub/0080216

B) normal values

Norepinephrine 70 to 1700 pg/mL
Dopamine 0 to 30 pg/mL

Higher-than-normal levels of blood catecholamines may suggest:

Acute anxiety
Ganglioblastoma (very rare tumor)
Ganglioneuroma (very rare tumor)
Neuroblastoma (rare tumor)
Pheochromocytoma (rare tumor)
Severe stress

https://www.ucsfhealth.org/medical-tests/catecholamine-blood-test

In the final example, Klotho is an anti-aging biomarker, but the values are much below normal.

No-Treatment Treat, Day 90 Treat, Day 180
Klotho 2.25 ± 0.04 11.09 ± 0.39*** 17.67 ± 0.99***
pg/mL

normal values α-Klotho (pg/mL)

Mean SD Ref Interval (5th–95th %ile)
Age 18–35 (n = 167) 932.6 575.6 392.6 2291.8

Espuch-Olivet et al., 2022.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9101232/

The paper presents supernatural phenomena as real (p. 155, emphasis is mine):

“The Trivedi Effect® is a unique and scientifically proven phenomenon in which a healer can harness the inherent intelligent energy from the universal energy field and transmit it anywhere on the planet through neutrinos (biophotons).6 A renowned religious spiritual healer using biofield energy to transform the characteristics and behavior of living beings and nonliving materials through unique (thought intention) biofield energy transmission process by his physical presence and long-distance (distant healing) to heal the physical body and mind and bring emotional and spiritual balance.7”

The Trivedi Effect® has not been scientifically proven. Citation #6 provided no data to support this.
There is no justification given for neutrinos to be equated with biophotons.
It is possible that “ultraweak photon emissions” can be imaged from the human body, according to Kobayashi et al. (2009), but no evidence for this was provided in the current paper.

On its website, Wiley endorses the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and provides links to the Core Practices for journals and publishers:

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/network/publishing/research-publishing/editors/committee-on-publication-ethics-cope-101

As I have demonstrated, the claims in Trivedi et al. (2023) are beyond the realm of empirical science, and a reputable medical journal should not publish them. Wiley, as a supporter of COPE, should subscribe to ethical standards in peer review and follow the official guidelines for considering whether a retraction is appropriate.

Sincerely,

[my real name]

Links and References

ARUP Laboratories. Catecholamines Fractionated, Plasma. https://ltd.aruplab.com/Tests/Pub/0080216 [retrieved on 07/22/2024]

COPE. Retraction guidelines. https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines [retrieved on 07/23/2024]

Divine Connection. Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi is an Enlightened and miraculous being with Divine Embodiment, gifted to transform living organisms at the genetic level & non-living materials at the atomic level. https://divineconnection.org/about-guruji-trivedi [retrieved on 07/22/2024]

Espuch-Oliver, A., Vázquez-Lorente, H., Jurado-Fasoli, L., de Haro-Muñoz, T., Díaz-Alberola, I., López-Velez, M. D. S., ... & Amaro-Gahete, F. J. (2022). References values of soluble α-klotho serum levels using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in healthy adults aged 18–85 years. Journal of clinical medicine, 11(9), 2415. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9101232/

Hoge, E. A., Pollack, M. H., Kaufman, R. E., Zak, P. J., & Simon, N. M. (2008). Oxytocin levels in social anxiety disorder. CNS neuroscience & therapeutics, 14(3), 165-170. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1755-5949.2008.00051.x

Kobayashi, M., Kikuchi, D., & Okamura, H. (2009). Imaging of ultraweak spontaneous photon emission from human body displaying diurnal rhythm. PLoS one, 4(7), e6256. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006256

Mount Sinai. Estradiol blood test. https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/tests/estradiol-blood-test [retrieved on 07/22/2024]

UCSF Health. Catecholamine blood test. https://www.ucsfhealth.org/medical-tests/catecholamine-blood-test [retrieved on 07/22/2024]

THE WILEY NETWORK. Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE) 101 For Editors. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/network/publishing/research-publishing/editors/committee-on-publication-ethics-cope-101

-- end of letter --

Footnotes

¹ The h-index is a metric that considers an author's productivity and the citation impact of their publications. [ADDENDUM July 30 2024: according to Wikipedia. Others say it's easily manipulated (see first comment).]

²The tables are not pretty.

Why are "Love Languages" so popular, when they're completely inaccurate?

2024-02-14T16:34:00.000-08:00

I joined an online dating site a few months ago.¹ Besides being asked about my sun, moon, and rising signs (?), I was puzzled by the following question.²

My love language? I'm supposed to choose only one answer?

Gary Chapman has been a pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC for 50 years. In 1992, he published a book based on his experience of advising heterosexual couples on the best ways to have a harmonious marriage. His notion of 5 Love Languages is based on conservative Christian gender roles, although subsequent editions are “less blatantly misogynistic.” Nonetheless, the popularity of his ideas extends well beyond this initial demographic and has (ironically) invaded very Queer spaces.

Anyone can take the The Love Language® Quiz. I quit after the first question because it forces you to choose between “a loving note/text/email for no special reason” and a hug. Under any and all circumstances.

Even my cat has more than one love language. There are three, which vary according to her needs:³

petting
play
food

And as humans, why must we limit ourselves to the five choices above, when the possibilities are endless? Here are some examples.⁴

New Love Languages
by James Folta and Kasey Borger

Deciding Where to Eat
Let your stressed-out partner know you’re for real by choosing a spot to eat. This is a love language that every single person desires, but almost no one can express. Looks like it’s frozen pizza again.
Talking About Your Commute
There is an extremely high concentration of individuals with this love language in New York and LA. Going on and on about trains, or highways, or traffic, or “I think it took me 25 minutes last time, but this time it took 35 — weird” is the only way this group can show their sweetie they care.
Explaining How You Feel About Facebook
Some people can only express their love by unpromptedly exclaiming that they’re going to delete their Facebook, and for real this time. Studies show this can be hard to discern as a love language because it is insufferable.

...and my personal favorite:

Replying to But Not Liking Tweets
This is a dark and horrific way to express affection, but we must begrudgingly acknowledge it.

Love Languages on a Likert Scale

As any decent social psychologist will tell you, The Love Language® Quiz has poor psychometric properties, meaning that the validity and reliability of the measurement instrument is very low. A remarkable number of studies have investigated the concept of love languages, and there is no empirical support for the idea, as recently reviewed by Impett, Park, and Muise (2023). A major issue is the way that Chapman frames his questions (as forced choices between two options). Instead, rating each item on continuous Likert-type scales reveals no correlation between scores on the quiz and scores on the continuous measure. “These findings discount the notion that each person has a primary love language and illustrate that people value all five love languages but perhaps in different contexts,” said Impett and colleagues.

So why are Love Languages so popular?

“If I had to pick one reason why I think many couples find Chapman’s book to be helpful,” says [co-author Haeyoung Gideon] Park, “it is not because they learned their own or their partner’s love language but because it gets people to identify any currently unmet needs in their relationship and opens up lines of communication to address those needs.”

Footnotes

¹ I'm not saying which one. I'm in a demographic that absolutely no one cares about.

²Clearly, I do not belong in my own demographic.

³ Sometimes, she enjoys more than one at the same time (e.g., petting while eating).

⁴ When forced to choose, my preferred love language is Sarcasm and Hyperbole, which does not make me popular with the online dating set.

Reference

Impett EA, Park HG, Muise A. (2023). Popular Psychology Through a Scientific Lens: Evaluating Love Languages From a Relationship Science Perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2023 Dec 7:09637214231217663.

- click to enlarge Table -

Table 1. Impett, Park, and Muise (2023).

I'm thinking about moving this blog...

2023-05-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

...to another platform.

Hi, it's been a while. I haven't written anything this year. My last post was December 31, 2022.

The main reason is that I've had to deal with more loss and grief in my life. Someone close to me was diagnosed with cancer, endured months of radiation and chemotherapy, and died anyway.¹ I've also had some deflating garbage to wade through at work. My enthusiasm for doing anything has been rather low.

Besides all that, Blogger is a terrible platform for blogging. The interface changed a while a back and ever since then, composing in the little box has been unpleasant. It takes forever to get the formatting and spacing right. I could modernize the look from a “classic” theme² to one that has a “Layout” view...

...but that doesn't improve the writing experience.

So. I already have a WordPress blog. I may start posting there. The old neurocritic.blogspot.com site would become an archive of posts from 2006 – 2022.

The bigger question is whether I have anything relevant to say any more.

Footnotes

¹ ...less than three months later. If you ask me, the cause of death WAS the treatment (and its side effects).

² “Hey there, 2004 wants their Rounders template back.” An SEO Guy even blogged about 11 Huge Reasons to AVOID Blogspot in 2023.

³ There are other platforms, sure. In a hilarious meta-example, a post on Medium provided a tutorial on Substack, which started as a platform for e-mail newsletters (whether monetized or not). But it also has a very blog-like look — here's Margaret Atwood's, for example. Now they have Substack Notes, which is in the running as yet another Twitter replacement. Here's a thread on dumplings.

Neuroscience Trend Forecasters

2022-12-31T15:05:00.001-08:00

As 2022 draws to a close, the SNL Trend Forecasters have agreed to divulge their predictions for the most — and the least — exciting research fads for the New Year.

The Neurocritic: How do you guys predict today's most popular neuroscience trends?

Trend Forecasters: Oh, well we have 4,000 computers, they're all big they all make charts and they beep LOUD.

TN: Let's get started!

In: posterior cingulate cortex

Hey Posterior Cingulate — we see you! You're fresh, you're mysterious, you're misunderstood. But we know you exist far beyond the default fashion mode. The new tripartite view proposes...

...that the broader PCC region contains three major subregions — the dorsal PCC, ventral PCC and retrosplenial cortex — that respectively support the integration of executive, mnemonic and spatial processing systems. This tripartite subregional view reconciles inconsistencies in prior unitary theories of PCC function and offers promising new avenues for progress.

Foster et al. (2022)

Out: anterior cingulate cortex

Get behind me, you tired brain region. Think you can do everything? Well the list of your supposed functions is wildly implausible. We've looked at PubMed and found mental fatigue, prediction of non-violent felony rearrest in women, amyloid-β-related increases in empathic concern, experimental odontogenic pain, gravitational perception, chronic itch, RDoC social constructs, and modulation of synaptic plasticity in exercise interventions for post-stroke pain.

In: claustrum

Claustrum, we're in love with you and it's not only because of the holidays. You're connected to everything and everyone.

Santa Claustrum

Initial speculation claimed you were responsible for consciousness (Crick & Koch, 2015), but subsequent studies in human epilepsy patients showed no alterations in consciousness with unilateral or bilateral electrical stimulation (Bickel & Parvizi, 2019). Instead, you're critical for cognitive control. The fresh functional model is called network instantiation in cognitive control (Madden et al., 2022).

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine ... now posit that Crick may have been incorrect: They developed a new theory — built on data — that the claustrum behaves more like a high-speed internet router, taking in executive commands from “boss” areas of the brain’s cortex that forms complex thoughts to generate “networks” in the cortex.

The most exciting recent work (in mice) has shown that claustro-cortical circuits are organized into functional modules (McBride et al., 2022)...

Frontal areas are more inhibited, while posterior areas are more excited
Upper layers are more excited, while deeper layers are more inhibited

...and connect cortical network motifs (Qadir et al., 2022)

Frontal cortices are synaptically connected to posterior cortices through claustrum
Two claustrum projection neuron subtypes support trans-claustral circuits
Trans-claustral circuits resemble a frontoposterior cortical network motif

Out: reinforcement learning and mesolimbic dopamine

Your superiority complex is tired, temporal difference error. We know you consider yourself the “biggest success story in computational neuroscience.” But every week a new finding prompts a mathematical tweak and an update of your impenetrable model.

‘teaching signal’ ‘learning model’ ‘model-free’ ‘cached values’ ‘ramps’ ‘bumps’ ‘belief states’ ‘vector RPE’ ‘DA dip of disappointment’

Go to bed, TD. You have to get up early. For a flight TO HELL!

In: HippoCamera

You spent years developing your brilliant smartphone app that improves memory in older adults, drawing on the basic science of hippocampal replay (e.g., speeding up 24 sec video clips by 3×).

Martin et al. (2022)

Autobiographical memory cues are created by recording an 8 sec audio cue to accompany a 24 sec video recording of a daily event, which is rated for significance. In your recent paper, fMRI scanning occurred after a two week or 10 week intervention. In comparison to baseline (non-reviewed) events, repeated replay of autobiographical memory cues enhanced episodic recollection and increased the differentiation of activity patterns in the hippocampus in older adults (Martin et al., 2022). Bravo, HippoCamera! Take a bow Barense, Honey, and Martin!

Out: Brain Behavior Quantification and Synchronization (BBQS)

BRAIN Initiative,² you're so far behind the times that YOU ARE OUT. Didn't you get the memo that Neuroscience Needs Behavior back in 2017? Or read the review on Quantifying Behavior [in worms and flies] to Solve Sensorimotor Transformations, which covered papers going back to 2008 and earlier? The patented HippoCamera was developed behind your back with funding from the Canadian government and private foundations. And the clever use of remote memories recorded by the 1 Second Everyday app (Bainbridge & Baker, 2022) was funded by NIH Intramural funds. The fact that you waited until 2023 to fully announce BBQS projects in humans and non-humans speaks volumes to the value you place on understanding behavior. GO TO BED!

In: neuropeptide maps of human prefrontal cortex

One recent uptick in human brain complexity was revealed from analysis of postmortem tissue in 17 subregions of prefrontal cortex (PFC). Zhong and colleagues (2022) found that 60 neuropeptides and 60 neuropeptide receptors are expressed in at least one of the PFC subregions. The data are freely available and incorporated into the Human Protein Atlas — which has about 5 million individual web pages. The authors encouraged efforts to explore these neuropeptide receptors as potential targets for drug development in neurology and psychiatry, which has been neglected by pharmaceutical companies in recent years.

Out: functional neuroimaging in psychiatry

You're a failure, psychiatric neuroimaging!! Nour, Liu, and Dolan wrote a 20 page paper detailing your many shortcomings and faults. For instance, explanatory aspirations in resting-state studies are laughable:

“...bridging a gap between descriptive accounts of neural data and psychopathology requires a model that relates network properties ... to specific computational processes. Absent such a model, we argue that further large-scale data collection will be insufficient to yield breakthroughs in probing a fundamental understanding of cognition or psychiatric illness.”

We needn't go further than listing other direct quotes from their paper:

“...functional neuroimaging plays no role in clinical decision making.”

“While the computational psychiatry literature has identified associations between model-informed neural activity and psychiatric variables, effective clinical translation has been lacking.”

“Casting a cold eye on the psychiatric neuroimaging literature invites a conclusion that despite 30 years of intense research and considerable technological advances, this enterprise has not delivered a neurobiological account (i.e., a mechanistic explanation) for any psychiatric disorder, nor has it provided a credible imaging-based biomarker of clinical utility.”

Ouch! You've done nothing for us, psychiatric neuroimaging. You haven't even embraced the correct level of analysis (i.e. manifolds). GO TO BED!

[In again: manifolds]

In: Synchron

Synchron, all the other billionaires are backing you, to the tune of $75 million! In a remarkable advance towards greater independence for paralyzed persons, the Stentrode, an endovascular brain computer interface (BCI), received Breakthrough Device designation from the FDA in August 2021.

Stentrode™ (endovascular implant)

The minimally invasive BCI was developed with funding from DARPA (among others), and initial results from sheep were reported in Nature Biotechnology (Oxley et al., 2016). Its placement in the superior sagittal sinus (via the jugular vein) produces high-fidelity recordings from motor cortex without the need for risky cranial surgery. The brain.io™ motor neuroprosthesis transmits cortical signals from the Stentrode to a receiver implanted in the chest, and a machine learning algorithm decodes the neural activity and translates the signals to digital commands.

Oxley et al. (2021)

Two paralyzed participants with ALS achieved typing click selection accuracy of 93% within 86 days and 71 days of machine-learning supervised training (Oxley et al., 2021). Typing rate was relatively slow (13.8 and 20.1 correct characters per minute, respectively) in comparison to some other BCI cases, but those all entailed craniotomies.¹ Nonetheless, both participants were able to text, e-mail, browse the internet, shop online, and manage finances (Oxley et al., 2021). The COMMAND Early Feasibility Study is an ongoing clinical trial of the Synchron device that will enroll six patients.

In: Mastodon

Because everyone needs an alternative social media site.

Out: Neuralink

Neuralink, you're out! So go back to hell. Stop flaunting your wealth, Neuralink. We all know you have to die for your hubris. You think you'll have FDA approval in six months, but that's what you said in 2019. Many of your claims are sheer fantasy, like you'll be able to cure everything from addiction to strokes.

from Neuralink Progress Update, Summer 2020

Your Fall 2022 update was more technically impressive, but still claimed your device will be able to restore vision — prompting eminent vision scientist Brian Wandell to call out this BS:

He [Musk] specifically said this would work for the congenitally blind because they still have a visual cortex.
Two hundred years of experiments on site restoration in human, and many fundamental cellular experiments of visual development and the limits of adult plasticity, show this is false.

Potential ethical concerns have been noted by UPenn Prof Anna Wexler. Finally, you're under investigation for possible animal welfare violations. Neuralink, if I see you in the street I'll stab you in the face.

What are your favorite neuroscience trends for 2023? What should be kicked to the curb?

Footnotes

¹ Most notable was BrainGate participant T5, with an astonishing 90 characters per minute. Two microelectrode arrays were implanted in the hand area of the precentral gyrus, and neural activity produced by imagined handwriting was decoded and translated into text in real time (Willett et al., 2021).

² hat tip to Drug Monkey.

References

Bainbridge, W. A., & Baker, C. I. (2022). Multidimensional memory topography in the medial parietal cortex identified from neuroimaging of thousands of daily memory videos. Nature Communications, 13(1), 1-16.

Bickel, S., & Parvizi, J. (2019). Electrical stimulation of the human claustrum. Epilepsy & Behavior, 97, 296-303.

Calhoun, A. J., & Murthy, M. (2017). Quantifying behavior to solve sensorimotor transformations: advances from worms and flies. Current opinion in neurobiology, 46, 90-98.

Crick, F. C., & Koch, C. (2005). What is the function of the claustrum?. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 360(1458), 1271-1279.

Foster, B. L., Koslov, S. R., Aponik-Gremillion, L., Monko, M. E., Hayden, B. Y., & Heilbronner, S. R. (2022). A tripartite view of the posterior cingulate cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 01 Dec 2022.

Han, J. J. (2021). Synchron receives FDA approval to begin early feasibility study of their endovascular, brain‐computer interface device. Artificial Organs, 45, 1134-1135.

Krakauer, J. W., Ghazanfar, A. A., Gomez-Marin, A., MacIver, M. A., & Poeppel, D. (2017). Neuroscience needs behavior: correcting a reductionist bias. Neuron, 93(3), 480-490.

Madden, M. B., Stewart, B. W., White, M. G., Krimmel, S. R., Qadir, H., Barrett, F. S., ... & Mathur, B. N. (2022). A role for the claustrum in cognitive control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Martin, C. B., Hong, B., Newsome, R. N., Savel, K., Meade, M. E., Xia, A., ... & Barense, M. D. (2022). A smartphone intervention that enhances real-world memory and promotes differentiation of hippocampal activity in older adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(51), e2214285119.

McBride, E. G., Gandhi, S. R., Kuyat, J. R., Ollerenshaw, D. R., Arkhipov, A., Koch, C., & Olsen, S. R. (2022). Influence of claustrum on cortex varies by area, layer, and cell type. Neuron (Nov 4).

Nour, M. M., Liu, Y., & Dolan, R. J. (2022). Functional neuroimaging in psychiatry and the case for failing better. Neuron, 110(16), 2524-2544.

Oxley, T. J., Yoo, P. E., Rind, G. S., Ronayne, S. M., Lee, C. S., Bird, C., ... & Opie, N. L. (2021). Motor neuroprosthesis implanted with neurointerventional surgery improves capacity for activities of daily living tasks in severe paralysis: first in-human experience. Journal of neurointerventional surgery, 13(2), 102-108.

Qadir, H., Stewart, B. W., VanRyzin, J. W., Wu, Q., Chen, S., Seminowicz, D. A., & Mathur, B. N. (2022). The mouse claustrum synaptically connects cortical network motifs. Cell Reports, 41(12), 111860.

Zhong, W., Barde, S., Mitsios, N., Adori, C., Oksvold, P., Feilitzen, K. V., ... & Hökfelt, T. (2022). The neuropeptide landscape of human prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(33), e2123146119.

Frankenstein's Hand

2022-10-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Halloween, I had a hideous surgery to repair a fractured elbow. This entailed receiving a nerve block that made my hand feel like a dead appendage, which was quite spooky indeed.

Spooky Dead Hand

I'm supposed to keep the arm elevated above my heart (which isn't conducive to sitting here and typing), so that is all for now.

Happy Halloween!

Actual e-mail sent to the post-op contact person the night of my surgery:

OMFG, WHAT DID THEY DO TO ME WITH THIS DAMN TORTURE SLING?

"And then a Plank in Reason, broke,"

2022-09-30T23:31:00.000-07:00

“I am dead.”

In terms of possible delusions in living human beings, Le délire des négations — the nihilistic delusion that one is dead — evokes the most harrowing existence imaginable. The French neurologist Jules Cotard first described the syndrome that bears his name (1882, English translation):

I hazard the name of delirium of negations to designate the state of the patients ... in whom the negative disposition is carried to the highest degree. [They are] asked their name – they have no name; their age – they are ageless; where were they born – they were not born; ... if they have a headache, stomach ache, pain in some part of their body – they have no head, no stomach, some even have no body... For some the negation is universal, nothing exists anymore, they themselves are nothing.

Cotard presented the case of Miss X, a 43 year old woman with severe “melancholic anxiety” who tried to end her own life (1880, English translation):

...She affirms that she has neither brain nor nerves, nor chest, nor stomach, nor intestines; all that remains is the skin and bones of the body, disorganized (these are [her] own expressions). This delirium of negation extends even to the metaphysical ideas which were formerly the object of [her] firmest beliefs; She doesn't have a soul, God doesn't exist, neither does the devil. Miss X… being no more than a disorganized body, does not need to eat to live, she cannot die a natural death, she will exist eternally unless she is burned, fire being the only end...

Cotard delusion has been observed in a wide variety of psychiatric and neurological conditions, including psychotic depression, schizophrenia, encephalitis, subdural hemorrhage, arteriovenous malformations, migraine, Parkinson's disease, stroke, and epilepsy (Gerrans, 2022). From a neurobiological perspective, it's nearly impossible to construct a unified theory of the dysfunctional brain systems that underlie the delusion. Hence, some studies have focused on patients who manifest Cotard delusion after stroke, brain injury, or anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis for clues on potential brain regions that may be implicated in these cases.

Two new papers describe the role of depersonalization — an estrangement from one's body or self — in Cotard delusion (Davies & Coltheart, 2022; Gerrans, 2022).

Absence disembodies — so does Death
Hiding individuals from the Earth
Superposition helps, as well as love —
Tenderness decreases as we prove —

– Emily Dickinson

One prominent account of Cotard holds that people suffering from the delirium of negation are completely devoid of emotional responses. The nihilistic delusion is an attempt to make sense of this anomalous experience. Davies and Coltheart (2022) are critical of this view because there's no evidence that emotional reactivity is abolished in Cotard delusion. They also cite 12 case reports of patients who show a variety of affective states that collectively encompass anxiety, fear, guilt, distress, paranoia, aggression, agitation, anguish, despair, euphoria, grandiosity, irritability, sadness, and worry.

An alternate account places the anomalous experiences of depersonalization and derealization, rather than lack of emotion, as the central “surprising events” that trigger nihilistic delusions (Billon, 2016; Davies & Coltheart, 2022). These patients describe phenomena such as “I feel myself detached from my own body” and “feelings of unreality and difficulties in deciding whether events ... were real or just imagined”. The injured brain areas in these patients included insular cortex and right temporal-parietal regions.

A Death blow is a Life blow to Some
Who till they died, did not alive become —
Who had they lived, had died but when
They died, Vitality begun.

– Emily Dickinson

In contrast, Gerrans (2022) proposes that depersonalization and Cotard delusion result from different ruptures in the sense of self. He provides an extensive and accessible review of the interoceptive active inference model and predictive coding of bodily states in the anterior insula cortex. Depersonalization may arise from imprecise interoceptive predictions, but reality testing remains intact. On the other hand, Cotard delusion represents a complete rupture from reality.

Within this framework, depersonalisation experience involves a selective failure to annex a class of experience to a largely intact hierarchical self-model. The Cotard delusion is a result of the destruction or degradation of that model. It is consistent with this view that there can be overlap between symptoms of depersonalisation disorder and Cotard syndrome, especially while the delusion develops because of nature of self-modelling. However the delusion reports the experience of human life without an intact regulatory self-model whereas in depersonalisation the self-model is largely intact.

A key component of the “depersonalization first, Cotard second” view should account for why the former is relatively common, while the latter is quite rare.

References

Billon, A. (2016). Making sense of the Cotard syndrome: Insights from the study of depersonalisation. Mind & Language, 31(3), 356-391.

Cotard, J. (1880). Du Délire hypocondriaque dans une forme grave de la mélancolie anxieuse, mémoire lu à la Société médico-psychologique dans la séance du 28 juin 1880, par M. le Dr Jules Cotard.

Cotard, J. (1882). Du délire des négations. Arch de Neurol, 4, 282-296.

Davies, M., & Coltheart, M. (2022). Cotard delusion, emotional experience and depersonalisation. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 1-17.

Gerrans, P. (2022). A vessel without a pilot: Bodily and affective experience in the Cotard delusion of inexistence. Mind & Language.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

By Emily Dickinson

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -

The Human Protein Atlas (Neuropeptide Edition)

2022-08-31T23:59:00.004-07:00

The more you study the brain, the more unknowable it becomes. The level of complexity is baffling, and this is true whether the brain belongs to a human or a crab.¹ The latest uptick in human brain complexity was revealed from analysis of postmortem tissue in 17 subregions of prefrontal cortex (PFC). Zhong and colleagues (2022) found that 60 neuropeptides and 60 neuropeptide receptors are expressed in at least one of the PFC subregions.

All the data are freely available (links are in the open access article) and incorporated into the Human Protein Atlas — which has about 15 million individual web pages (according to Wikipedia).

Footnote

¹ Marder et al., 2022:

There is a growing literature that suggests that circuits can have degenerate solutions, that is similar looking behavior with different underlying parameters across individuals. ... Moreover, repeated performance of the same task is often associated with variable activity in the network generating this task [57∗∗].

Reference

Zhong, W., Barde, S., Mitsios, N., Adori, C., Oksvold, P., Feilitzen, K. V., ... & Hökfelt, T. (2022). The neuropeptide landscape of human prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(33), e2123146119.

modified from Fig. 2 (Zhong et al., 2022). Expression levels of (A) Neuropeptides (NP) and (B) Neuropeptide Receptors (NPR) in human PFC. The color code indicates the type of genes (orange, precursor; green, NP; blue, NPR). Red arrows in A and B point to the transcripts studied with ISH (in situ hybridization).

Extracting reliable neurobiological biomarkers for complex subjective experiences isn't easy

2022-07-31T18:19:00.000-07:00

"The self is the psychological counterpart of the default mode functionality of the brain." (Scalabrini et al., 2021).

The self studying how "The Self" is represented and constructed by the brain is apex meta-neuroscience.¹ We can say that the self is a manifestation (or an illusory byproduct) of activity in the default mode network (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus, and angular gyrus), but what does this really mean? How do we relate specific neural states to aspects of a changeable self? In a field increasingly focused on remote control of genetically-defined microciruits, pinning down subjective internal phenomena seems presumptuous and hopelessly overambitious.

But of course, the inherent challenge of studying complex subjective experiences hasn't stopped scientists from trying. One active area of research involves characterizing the neural correlates of internal responses to traumatic events. This is of great clinical relevance, because the long-term persistence of fear, hypervigilance, negative affect, and intrusive memories after trauma can be disabling (post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD). Alterations in one's sense of self (dissociation) can also occur in PTSD, and is the focus of the rest of this post. Dissociative symptoms can include:

Depersonalization: Persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from, and as if one were an outside observer of, one’s mental processes or body (e.g., feeling as though one were in a dream; feeling a sense of unreality of self or body or of time moving slowly).
Derealization: Persistent or recurrent experiences of unreality of surroundings (e.g., the world around the individual is experienced as unreal, dreamlike, distant, or distorted).

In states of depersonalization/derealization (which can occur independently of PTSD), one feels disconnected from the self and/or external reality. Dissociative symptoms are considered a maladaptive (but protective) response to stress and trauma. The standard method of eliciting dissociative symptoms during fMRI scanning is script-driven imagery (SDI), a highly unpleasant manipulation. Before the experiment, the participant recounts a narrative of the traumatic event, which is subsequently read back to them in the scanner. The presence of acute dissociative symptoms is determined by questionnaires and interviews before, during, and after the scan.

Early studies reported increased activity in prefrontal (and other) cortical regions in the SDI condition compared to baseline (Lanius et al., 2002) or a neutral script condition (Hopper et al., 2007), which was related to the severity of dissociative symptoms. This fits a theoretical perspective where higher cortical regions are tamping down limbic (and emotional) responses to the trauma induction. It should be mentioned that dissociative responses to SDI are generally less common than vivid re-experiencing of the trauma (30% vs. 70% in Lanius et al., 2002). Drawbacks of these studies include small samples sizes and inconsistencies in the fMRI results.

Mertens and colleagues (2022) set out to replicate these findings in a larger, more homogeneous population of 51 female survivors of childhood abuse. The study included additional questionnaires and separation of the SDI condition into “script listening” and “focused recall” phases (previous studies only included the latter). The experimental design included three runs of neutral script (30 sec each of listening/imaging and focused recall of the event) and three runs of trauma script, which was effective in increasing self-reported ratings of dissociative symptoms, e.g. “Did what you were experiencing seem unreal to you, like you were in a dream or watching a movie or play?” and “Did you feel like you were a spectator watching what was happening to you, like an observer or outsider?” (rated on a 0-6 scale).

– click on image for a larger view –

The fMRI results indicated that a wide swath of left cerebellum, occipital cortex, and supramarginal gyrus (parietal lobe) were more active in the trauma script than neutral condition, and this was specific to the script listening phase (no differences were observed during the focused recall phase). The same pattern was seen in the amygdala in a region of interest analysis. Importantly, there was no relationship between any of the clusters and any dissociation measure (amygdala and insula shown below).²

Fig. 2 (Mertens et al., 2022). Script-elicited signal activation clusters and corresponding brain-behaviour correlates (N = 51).

The authors tried a number of different analytic techniques to try and find a relationship between activation clusters and dissociative symptoms, but they could not. In their conclusions, they mentioned the significance of the replication crisis in neuroimaging and noted that “the current (null) findings highlight the difficulty of extracting reliable neurobiological biomarkers for complex subjective experiences such as dissociation.” Identifying who we are and what we experience via spatio-temporal patterns of brain activity are problems that do not have an imminent solution.

Footnotes

¹ Self = a self-aware entity with fully-realized consciousness (whatever this means)

² Here, the number of self-report and clinician-rated measures was impressive, e.g. Dissociative Experiences scale (trait dissociation), Cambridge Depersonalization Scale, Clinician Administered Dissociative States Scale, Responses to Script-Driven Imagery, etc.

Further Reading

Feeling Mighty Unreal: Derealization in Kleine-Levin Syndrome

A Detached Sense of Self Associated with Altered Neural Responses to Mirror Touch

Role of the Vestibular System in the Construction of Self

Derealization / Dying

'I Do Not Exist' - Pathological Loss of Self after a Buddhist Retreat

The Stranger in the Mirror

Writing-Induced Fugue State

References

Hopper JW, Frewen PA, van der Kolk BA, Lanius RA. (2007). Neural correlates of reexperiencing, avoidance, and dissociation in PTSD: Symptom dimensions and emotion dysregulation in responses to script‐driven trauma imagery. Journal of Traumatic Stress 20(5):713-25.

Lanius RA, Williamson PC, Boksman K, Densmore M, Gupta M, Neufeld RW, Gati JS, Menon RS. (2002). Brain activation during script-driven imagery induced dissociative responses in PTSD: a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation. Biological Psychiatry 52(4):305-11.

Lebois LA, Harnett NG, van Rooij SJ, Ely TD, Jovanovic T, Bruce SE, House SL, Ravichandran C, Dumornay NM, Finegold KE, Hill SB et al. (2022). Persistent dissociation and its neural correlates in predicting outcomes after trauma exposure. American Journal of Psychiatry Jun 22.

Mertens YL, Manthey A, Sierk A, Walter H, Daniels JK. (2022). Neural correlates of acute post-traumatic dissociation: a functional neuroimaging script-driven imagery study. BJPsych Open 8(4).

Northoff G, Scalabrini A. (2021). “Project for a Spatiotemporal Neuroscience”–Brain and Psyche Share Their Topography and Dynamic. Frontiers in Psychology 2021:4500.

Scalabrini A, Schimmenti A, De Amicis M, Porcelli P, Benedetti F, Mucci C, Northoff G. (2022). The self and its internal thought: In search for a psychological baseline. Consciousness and Cognition 97:103244.

Fig. 4 (Northoff & Scalabrini, 2021). Nested hierarchy of self in the brain.

ABCT Apologizes for Past Support of Gay Conversion Therapy

2022-06-12T05:31:00.001-07:00

It's 2022, and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) has just issued a belated apology because two of their past Presidents published papers on “aversion therapies” for “converting” gay and transgender individuals to the socially prescribed norms of sexuality and gender identity.

Well, they didn't actually say this, nor did they name the prominent and distinguished clinical psychologists who authored these papers. Although these luminaries signed on to the mea culpa, there was no direct admission of the harm caused by these ill-advised practices. Instead, the document focused on “the courageous and historic role that some of our members have played in advancing SGM [sexual and gender minority] rights and mental health (e.g., Drs. Charles Silverstein and Gerald Davison).”

Which is great and all.

But.

This covert history has been hiding in plain sight for 50 years, and I'm surprised the reckoning hasn't come any earlier. I'm not a clinician, nor am I in the field of cognitive behavior therapy research. But in 2013 I wrote a post on Dr. David H. Barlow and Aversion Therapy for Gays. Dr. Barlow had received a prestigious award for his contributions to clinical psychology, which are indeed extensive. But he was also an author on papers that examined aversion therapy in gay men (Barlow et al., 1969; Barlow, 1973; Barlow et al., 1975; Herman et al., 1974; Barlow et al., 1975; Hayes et al., 1983) and exorcism for transsexualism (Barlow et al., 1977). Dr. Barlow and Dr. Steven C. Hayes were Past Presidents of ABCT in 1978-1979 and 1997-1998, respectively. Hayes subsequently developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Barlow is known for his work on the treatment of anxiety disorders.

Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

I first learned about the ABCT apology on Twitter, via Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces, PhD (@lluaces) and Aaron Fisher (aaronjfisher).

ABCT Apology for Behavior Therapy’s Contribution to the Development and Practice of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression Change Efforts

The ABCT Board of Directors and past leadership have released an apology for behavior therapy’s contributions to the development and practice of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression change efforts [SOGIECEs].

More details are in the Full Apology PDF.

...[ABCT] apologizes for our historic role in the development and use of so-called “conversion therapies,” practices that have caused untold harm to members of the sexual and gender minority (SGM) community for over 50 years. To this day, publications written by ABCT members – including members in prominent leadership roles – are used by anti-SGM activists to justify their ongoing use of these damaging so-called “therapies.” ABCT deeply regrets behavior therapists’ role in the creation, study, and use of these practices, and recognizes and accepts responsibility for the ways in which both our actions and inactions have harmed SGM people. ABCT recognizes it is time for us to document our history and legacy and say that we are truly sorry.¹

But documentation of this history and legacy is rather sketchy... Without naming names, the Apology cited the recent review of Capriotti and Donaldson (2022), which in turn asked “Why don’t behavior analysts do something?” about retracting the unethical paper of Rekers and Lovaas (1974). The conversion therapy work of Barlow and Hayes was mentioned here as well.

I wrote to Barlow in 2013 to ask him about this early research on SGM people.² I didn't really expect an answer, especially since I'm an obscure anonymous blogger. Nonetheless, I wanted to give him the opportunity to respond before I posted about his work.

Dear Dr. Barlow,

Congratulations on your receipt of the 2012 James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the APS for your distinguished contributions to the field.

I am a blogger writing a post about past treatments for homosexuality and came across references to your early work on aversion therapy in gay men, which I found unfortunate.

I wondered whether you had a statement about that work in light of contemporary views of homosexuality, or whether you had issued such a statement in the past.

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,
The Neurocritic

Then a reader (Jordon) commented on my post in 2015, saying Barlow wrote back when he was asked about aversion therapy. Barlow sent a forthcoming book chapter from his 2016 retrospective, The Neurotic Paradox, Volume 1: Progress in Understanding and Treating Anxiety and Related Disorders. A sort-of not-really apology appeared on p. 6-7:

But it was also during this time [late 60s-early 70s] that I undertook what has come to be from my own personal point of view the most regrettable initiative in my clinical research career. Specifically ... I began treating and evaluating the effects of [covert sensitization] treatment in individuals with what came to be called paraphilias but what was then called sexual deviation (Barlow, 1974a). While our focus was mostly on pedophilia (e.g. Barlow, Leitenberg, & Agras, 1969), the aggressive behavior of rapists (e.g. Abel, Barlow, Blanchard, & Guild, 1977), and other paraphilias (e.g. Hayes, Brownell, & Barlow, 1978), included in this series of studies were participants presenting with same-sex arousal patterns with consenting adults. (e.g., Barlow, Leitenberg, & Agras, 1969). At that time homosexuality was considered a disorder in all systems of nosology and, under extreme pressures from society and the associated stigma, these individuals sought out treatment; so very few clinicians even gave it a second thought. But by the mid-1970s several individuals began questioning these treatment goals.

These practices were “embedded in the continually shifting landscape of cultural values and mores” and homosexuality wasn't de-pathologized until “later in the decade” of the 1970s [it was actually 1973] and “most of the work was on paraphilias” [but many papers were on attempted conversion of gay men and transgender women (who were called male transsexuals)]. Most importantly, Barlow did not acknowledge the harm inflicted on the recipients of his treatments.

Besides the bizarre exorcism in a transsexual article, three more papers described covert modeling procedures and a “therapeutic package” to change the gender identity of transgender youth and young women (Barlow et al., 1973, 1979; Hay et al., 1981). Given the Increasing Criminalization of Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Youth in many Southern states, it's critical for all psychological organizations to disown past practices used to justify such discriminatory and inhumane treatment.

What else should I be?
All apologies
What else could I say?
Everyone is gay

--Nirvana

Footnotes

¹ One of the action items is that disclaimers will be added to SOGIECE papers previously published in ABCT journals. My initial search turned up only one. Barlow DH (1973). Increasing heterosexual responsiveness in the treatment of sexual deviation: A review of the clinical and experimental evidence. Behavior Therapy 4:655-671

² The SGM terminology was unfamiliar to me before now. I also wondered whether the acronym SOGIECE was real, but apparently it is.

ADDENDUM (June 12 2022): Dr. Hayes has issued a personal apology for his role in conversion therapy. Also, he has published on ACT to lessen the impact of internalized homophobia (which is quite common in LGBTQ+ persons, as I know from personal experience).

Yadavaia JE, Hayes SC. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy for self-stigma around sexual orientation: A multiple baseline evaluation. Cognitive and behavioral practice 19(4):545-59.

Bibliography
(refs discussed in Dr. David H. Barlow and Aversion Therapy for Gays)

Barlow DH (1973). Increasing heterosexual responsiveness in the treatment of sexual deviation: A review of the clinical and experimental evidence. Behavior Therapy 4:655-671.

Barlow DH, Abel GG, & Blanchard EB (1977). Gender identity change in a transsexual: an exorcism. Archives of sexual behavior, 6 (5), 387-95. PMID: 921523

Although the prevention of transsexualism is the ideal, work in this area has been fraught with ethical problems, and data on the possibility of prevention, or even what to prevent, are not available...

Barlow DH, Agras WS, & Leitenberg H (1972). The contribution of therapeutic instruction of covert sensitization. Behaviour research and therapy, 10 (4), 411-5. PMID: 4637499

Barlow DH, Agras WS, Abel GG, Blanchard EB, Young LD. (1975). Biofeedback and reinforcement to increase heterosexual arousal in homosexuals. Behav Res Ther. 13:45-50.

The patient descriptions are distressing, e.g. a boy raped by a male relative: “The first S was a 15-yr-old male who had engaged in homosexual behavior for 4 yr after being seduced [sic] by an uncle.”

Barlow DH, Leitenberg H, & Agras WS (1969). Experimental control of sexual deviation through manipulation of the noxious scene in covert sensitization. Journal of abnormal psychology, 74 (5), 597-601. PMID: 5349402

Hayes SC, Brownell KD, & Barlow DH (1983). Heterosocial-skills training and covert sensitization. Effects on social skills and sexual arousal in sexual deviants. Behaviour research and therapy, 21 (4), 383-92, PMID: 6138027

Herman SH, Barlow DH, Agras WS. (1974). An experimental analysis of exposure to "explicit" heterosexual stimuli as an effective variable in changing arousal patterns of homosexuals. Behav Res Ther. 12:335-45.

Additional References

Barlow DH, Abel GG, Blanchard EB. (1979). Gender identity change in transsexuals: Follow-up and replications. Archives of General Psychiatry 36(9):1001-7.

Barlow DH, Agras WS. (1973). FADING TO INCREASE HETEROSEXUAL RESPONSIVENESS IN HOMOSEXUALS. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 6(3):355-66.

“Heterosexual responsiveness, measured by penile responses and reports of behavior, was strengthened in three homosexuals through a fading procedure [slides of nude females superimposed on slides of nude males.]. ... The results suggest that fading was responsible for altering stimulus control of sexual arousal and that aversive techniques may not be necessary in the treatment of sexual deviation.” [well that's a relief...]

Barlow DH, Hayes SC, Nelson RO, Steele DL, Meeler ME, Mills JR. (1979). Sex role motor behavior: A behavioral checklist. Behavioral Assessment. 1:119-38. [I could not find a copy of this; however, the items appear in Hayes et al. 1984]. Examples:

Firm Wrist Action Versus Limp Wrist Action.
Hand(s) in Pocket.
Frequent or Exaggerated Hand or Arm Movements.

Barlow DH, Reynolds EJ, Agras WS. (1973). Gender identity change in a transsexual. Archives of General Psychiatry 28(4):569-76.

Brownell KD, Hayes SC, Barlow DH. (1977). Patterns of appropriate and deviant sexual arousal: the behavioral treatment of multiple sexual deviations. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 45(6):1144.

one cis-male cross-dresser into BDSM (among the rapists, pedophiles, and exhibitionists) listened to arousing scenarios followed by humiliating consequences while his penile circumference was measured.
no gay or trans subjects here, but other papers have used the D word (“deviant”).

Hay WM, Barlow DH, Hay LR. (1981). Treatment of stereotypic cross-gender motor behavior using covert modeling in a boy with gender identity confusion. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology 49(3):388.

Hayes SC, Nelson RO, Steele DL, Meeler ME, Barlow DH. (1984). Instructional control of sex-related motor behavior in extremely masculine or feminine adults. Sex Roles 11(3):315-31.

Leonard SR, Hayes SC. (1983). Sexual fantasy alternation. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry. 14(3):241-9.

four bisexual men (three white, one black) who were “confused” about their sexual orientation
but only the black man was medicated (with a potent antipsychotic)

“Subject 3 was a 32 yr old, black, married, blue collar worker and father of five. His heterosexual history was extensive. He reported a 3 yr history of homosexual activity ocurring during drinking episodes. At the time of referral and throughout the study, he received medication (Thorazine 25 mg daily) from a physician at the referring agency.”

I have THOUGHTS. Some on how some therapy orientations get a pass in criticism but more on ABCT having a statement signed by its presidents when at least two (Barlow and Hayes) have published papers on behavioral modification of sexuality https://t.co/1JdyaN6YEq
— Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces, PhD (@lluaces) June 9, 2022

While I applaud @ABCTNOW's proactivity and (relative) transparency, this letter fails to name two current high-profile members: David Barlow and Steven Hayes. Encouraging readers to 'educate themselves' falls short of the work this letter intends to do.https://t.co/f6Wuv6ObUu
— Aaron Fisher (@aaronjfisher) June 9, 2022

Thank you for your belated apology. If I may humbly ask, why did it take so long, when members of the LGBTQ+ community have been seeking such acknowledgments for years? https://t.co/UISL0haq
— The Neurocritic (@neurocritic) June 9, 2022

THIS device may not nudge your brain into deep sleep

2022-05-31T23:57:00.006-07:00

The Washington Post used this picture of a saline-filled 280-channel Geodesic Head Web¹ to illustrate a new wearable device that aims to enhance slow wave sleep (SWS). The device delivers low-level current (0.5 mA) at 0.5 Hz to mimic the frequency of EEG naturally recorded during SWS (0.5-1 Hz). However, this is impossible with saline sensors, which would also dry out well before the night is over.

The WaPo article accurately showed different stages of applying the net, including measuring the head, checking impedences, and filling sensors with saline (above). A published journal article used similar Geodesic technology but using 256 electrodes filled with conductive gel (Hathaway et al., 2021). This setup was able to deliver transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) at 0.5 Hz. Time spent in deep sleep was increased by 13% for active vs. sham stimulation. The BEL website shows people snoozing while wearing this headgear.

Footnote

¹ This net is made by BEL Company and is the latest iteration of the 256-channel Geodesic Sensor Net made by EGI/Philips. Both designs were developed by Dr. Don Tucker at the University of Oregon. In 2017 he sold his company Electrical Geodesics, Inc. to Philips for $37 million. He now runs Brain Electrophysiology Laboratory (BEL) Company.

Reference

Hathaway E, Morgan K, Carson M, Shusterman R, Fernandez-Corazza M, Luu P, Tucker DM. (2021). Transcranial Electrical Stimulation targeting limbic cortex increases the duration of human deep sleep. Sleep Medicine 81:350-7.

Nostalgia and Its Analgesia

2022-04-30T23:50:00.006-07:00

“Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy. Nostalgic love can only survive in a long-distance relationship. A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two images—of home and abroad, of past and present, of dream and everyday life. The moment we try to force it into a single image, it breaks the frame or burns the surface.”
–Svetlana Boym, Nostalgia and Its Discontents

Nostalgia means different things to different groups of scholars. To historians, nostalgia is bad, “...essentially history without guilt ... an abdication of personal responsibility, a guilt-free homecoming, an ethical and aesthetic failure” (Boym, 2007). To social psychologists, nostalgia is good, “a meaning-providing resource [that] may serve an existential function” by helping us avoid thoughts of death (Routledge et al., 2008).

To cognitive neuroscience types, nostalgia is encapsulated in an fMRI experiment that compares brain responses to pictures of “nostalgic” objects (from childhood) vs. contemporary objects (Yang et al., 2021).¹

In this post, my authority on cultural nostalgia is Svetlana Boym, who was the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard, a Russian émigré, and an extraordinary thinker, writer, cultural theorist, and photographer. Her 2007 essay was adapted from her influential book, The Future of Nostalgia (2001). She viewed nostalgia as a manifestation of collective memory and longing, with two contrasting types. Reflective nostalgia is exemplified by the displacement of immigrants, who may long for a home that no longer exists (or perhaps never existed). Restorative nostalgia, on the other hand, is a dangerous impulse to return to a “pure” (or nationalistic) state of a distant past. Is it fair for psychologists to consider nostalgia as a private reminiscence devoid of a larger context?

A Blast from the Past

The reconciliation between these different views of nostalgia used to be terror management theory (TMT). In this theory, reminders of death (mortality salience) increase in-group favoritism and defense of one's own world view as a way to assuage existential fear. Thus, restorative nostalgia might be seen in the light (or darkness) of TMT. Indeed, instructing participants to write about a nostalgic event lessened mortality salience (Routledge et al., 2008). However, TMT has failed to replicate in several large studies, so there goes that idea (i.e., the link between social psychology experiments and restorative nostalgia, not the concept of restorative nostalgia itself).

Escape from the Pandemic

The COVID memory vortex altered our perception of time and space and warped the horizon of past and future. A restricted sense of the present (and the lack of new cultural output) caused TV nostalgia and musical nostalgia:

Nostalgia became a default listening mode — and for me, the cumulative oldness felt distressingly new. The old problem with nostalgia was that it made it harder to imagine the future. The new problem with nostalgia was that it made it harder to experience the present.

But wasn't this also a way to avoid ubiquitous thoughts of death and constant media coverage (and lived experience) of overwhelmed essential workers, illness, hospitalization, and relatives dying alone? Was there anything special about nostalgia, or would any absorbing distraction suffice? Nostalgia intervention studies during COVID-19 demonstrated improvements in well-being (Wildschut & Sedikides, 2022), but the control conditions didn't include sourdough bread baking, home improvement projects, or Zoom Peloton sessions.

Comfortably Numb

A fleeting feeling of nostalgia can lessen the perception of physical pain, apparently (Zhang et al., 2022) — although the effect looks quite modest to me.

In this study, visual cues were presented for 8 sec (e.g., childhood or contemporary gum), followed by 3 sec of thermal stimulation (low vs. high), a 7 sec wait, and then a rating of perceived pain intensity on that trial. The next picture-pain cycle would occur 10 sec later. Very small downward modulations of cortical activity were observed with nostalgia, but the impressive associations were in the thalamus.

modified from Fig. 4 (Zhang et al., 2022). During pain encoding, the thalamus showed a positive correlation between the BOLD response and the analgesic effect.

While acknowledging that nostalgia is a complicated emotion, the authors stated that...

These findings suggest that the thalamus might play a key role in the nostalgia and pain information encoding process in the possible brain circuit for nostalgia-induced analgesia.

But nostalgia can also induce feelings of emotional pain and sadness. On the very last day I spent at my childhood home, I walked around the backyard and was struck by a staggering sense of loss. My memories of running around and playing wiffle ball - badminton - croquet - nerf football - frisbee — and building a minimalistic tree house and burying dead animals under a cross — were dim and lonely. I just sold the house and my best friend (who used to live next door) was dead and my mother was dead. I mourned in a way that I never did while inside the house, emptying it of all my mother's possessions.

“Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement...”

Footnote

¹ This study found that presentation of nostalgic pictures was associated with enhanced mortality salience, along with increased activation in the right amygdala (Yang et al., 2021). Which is the opposite of previous studies...

References

Boym S. (2007). Nostalgia and its discontents. The Hedgehog Review. 9(2):7-19.

Routledge C, Arndt J, Sedikides C, Wildschut T. (2008). A blast from the past: The terror management function of nostalgia. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44(1):132-40.

Wildschut T, Sedikides C. (2022). Benefits of nostalgia in vulnerable populations. European Review of Social Psychology 27:1-48.

Yang Z, Sedikides C, Izuma K, Wildschut T, Kashima ES, Luo YL, Chen J, Cai H. (2021). Nostalgia enhances detection of death threat: neural and behavioral evidence. Scientific Reports 11(1):1-8.

Zhang M, Yang Z, Zhong J, Zhang Y, Lin X, Cai H, Kong Y. (2022). Thalamocortical mechanisms for nostalgia-induced analgesia. Journal of Neuroscience 42(14):2963-72.