The most-listened-to neuroscience on the planet is a magic trick. Attach a brain part to any bit of ordinary advice and it starts to feel like science. Here’s how the trick works—and how to run it in reverse, so you never fall for it again.

Further reading

• The Neuroscience Con — the article behind this lecture
• Neurotransmitters and behaviour — the purest form of the trick
• Addictive work — where neurotransmitter talk actually earns its keep
• Not brain regions, brain networks — why single-region reasoning (the RAS, the cortex) misleads
• Brain structures and behaviour — a third of your brain is always on
• The value of brain waves — the same pop-neuro fluff in miniature
• The origin of insight — insight comes when you’re not immersed
• Problems with p-values — the replication crisis, in his own words
• Stress is good (lecture) — flow as optimum stress
• How to be lucky — manifestation as manufactured luck
• The trouble with Positive Intelligence — the con with a spine, infiltrating consulting
• Obscuring Banalities — why we dress simple ideas up as clever ones
• The amygdala is not the fear centre (lecture)
• The scientific ritual (lecture)
• Sages and wisdom (lecture)
• Education is entertainment (Malcolm Gladwell shit)

References

• Dr Tara Swart — the Instagram source slides: a neuroscientist’s guide to manifestation (the prefrontal-cortex, neuroplasticity and flow slides) and resistance to change (the RAS slide), both @drtaraswart
• Dr Tara Swart, guest on The Diary of a CEO
• M. Csikszentmihalyi (1975), Beyond Boredom and Anxiety — the “sense of control” quote on flow
• A. Dietrich (2003), transient hypofrontality hypothesis of flow
• Habituation — the filtering the RAS slide gestures at
• The replication crisis
• “The Rise of Decorative Neuroscience” — Skeptic (independent corroboration of the “cosmetic filler” thesis)
• Sherman, Lokhande, Müller & Cohen (2021), “Self-Affirmation Interventions,” in Handbook of Wise Interventions — affirmations are “powerful yet conditional”: they work when well-timed and specific
• Wood, Perunovic & Lee (2009), “Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others,” Psychological Science — affirmations can backfire for people with low self-esteem