At last year's Society for Neuroscience Meeting in San Diego, my colleagues and I presented a satirical work "The Cingular Theory of Unification: The Cingulate Cortex Does Everything" to great success. The neuroscience community is beginning to swing back from the revolution of fMRI imaging and neophrenology, and while brain mapping is certainly a worthwhile effort, I don't believe studies of the sort should continually make it into the prestigious Science and Nature journals. So, through the use of hyperbole, my friends and I poked fun at what you can synthesize with the brain mapping literature.
The story has been extensively documented on my friend Shelley's old blog Retrospectacle.
Earlier this year Greg and I wrote it up in a manuscript form at the request of a German satirical neuroscience book publisher who saw the poster and loved it. We wrote it in English and the work is currently being translated. In addition. we sent the English version to the "Annals of Improbable Research," where we had previously published work two years ago on rat neurons and the stock market.
The image above was made by Greg as an idea for the cover of the magazine. Unfortunately, we didn't get the cover, but the work was just published in the current issue. Read and enjoy! If you were sufficiently affected by this Earth-Shattering Work, let me know if you want a copy signed by the authors!
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