After providing all the funding for The Brain from Top to Bottom for over 10 years, the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction informed us that because of budget cuts, they were going to be forced to stop sponsoring us as of March 31st, 2013.

We have approached a number of organizations, all of which have recognized the value of our work. But we have not managed to find the funding we need. We must therefore ask our readers for donations so that we can continue updating and adding new content to The Brain from Top to Bottom web site and blog.

Please, rest assured that we are doing our utmost to continue our mission of providing the general public with the best possible information about the brain and neuroscience in the original spirit of the Internet: the desire to share information free of charge and with no adverstising.

Whether your support is moral, financial, or both, thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Bruno Dubuc, Patrick Robert, Denis Paquet, and Al Daigen




Tuesday, 12 June 2018
We Are Blind to Many of the Reasons for Our Conscious Choices

In a study that they conducted in 2005, entitled “Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task”, Lars Hall and Peter Johansson uncovered a spectacular phenomenon. In this experiment, the researchers showed their subjects pairs of cards with pictures of two different people’s faces and asked their subjects to pick whichever of the two people they found more attractive. Once a subject had made this choice, the experimenter took back the cards and then, using a little sleight of hand, gave the subject back the card that he or she had not chosen and asked what it was about the person pictured that made them more attractive. Over 80% of the subjects failed to notice that they had been given the wrong card and actually provided the kind of verbal explanation requested—that it was the expressiveness of the person’s eyes or the overall harmoniousness of their features, or what have you. (more…)

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