Mastodawn

Nicole Rust Sep 5, 2023

Don't miss this one ⤵️. A wide-ranging and provocative conversation covering disparate issues like: How do we balance accuracy versus breadth as scientists? Why should we read a book written in 1897? When is a paw a hand? And should scientists cede the term "dopamine" to the pop-psychologists?

Exactly the type of thing I love about the furry elephant.

https://neuromatch.social/@NicoleCRust/111012453557938392

Nicole Rust (@[email protected])

On jargon - is it useful? Is it necessary and useful for scientists to say "mnemonic" to refer to "memory" and "affect" to talk about "emotion"? In other words, given that everyone understand emotion and mood and no one really understands what "affect" is until you are really deep into things, why is the term affect useful and important at all? And should we reserve it for deep dives (as opposed to public facing websites and such)? And does anyone call themselves an "emotion researcher?" or a "mood researcher?" @PessoaBrain @[email protected]

Neuromatch Social

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Luiz Pessoa Sep 5, 2023

@NicoleCRust @brembs @DrYohanJohn @WorldImagining

Sorry if I'm not including everyone here.

I think we need more jargon in neuroscience (mind/brain).

Couple of examples. Examine the mess that is the debate about "consciousness" because (in part) so many senses are mixed, including "sentience", "awareness", etc.

Or the fact that we use basically folk psychological terms all the time. So even if qualify what I mean by attention* in one of my papers, using a term that is used in a dozen ways will surely lead to confusion.

Our mind/brain field is highly technical, but the language surprisingly accessible to most people. That's a problem not because we want to be "distinguished professors" but because of the complete terminological confusion we inhabit!

I couldn't read all the discussion, so apologies if this was already discussed and debunked... 🙂

#neuroscience

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Mr. Completely

@PessoaBrain @NicoleCRust @brembs @DrYohanJohn @WorldImagining do people working in the field agree on all the required terms with the required specificity? Or is this an ongoing matter of debate that would need to be settled first?

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Yohan John 🤖🧠Sep 6, 2023

@mrcompletely @PessoaBrain @NicoleCRust @brembs @WorldImagining

Terminological debates never get settled in biology! ;)

And neuroscience is very very far from something like an IUPAC system.

I'm speculating, but it seems like successful review/theory papers often end up popularizing new terms. Popular textbooks have done this too, but perhaps in the internet era things are different. A sociologist of science might have data on such dynamics.