Starting today, ScienceBlogs is introducing a new-and-improved feature that allows you, dear reader, to tap into the brain-power and expertise of the ScienceBlogs collective mind—all to answer your most burning questions about matters scientific.
Every couple of weeks, a ScienceBlogs blogger will craft a succinct, specific answer to a question from his or her area of expertise. The answer will be linked from the ScienceBlogs main page, and it's our hope that response and commentary and even more questions will flow freely after.
The kick-off question for the series is inspired by modern neuroscience. The last couple of decades have seen staggering advances in our understanding of the brain. Although there's a long way left to go, it sometimes seems as though we can at least imagine a day when every facet of human behavior and experience will be explainable with reference to neurons, neurotransmitters, and action potentials. So where does this leave Rorschach tests and old-fashioned psychology experiments, not to mention concepts like the ego and the id that now, at times, seem downright quaint? Is neuroscience making psychology obsolete?
Dave and Greta Munger, of the excellent psychology blog Cognitive Daily, bravely volunteered to answer the following question:
- What's the difference between psychology and neuroscience? Is psychology still relevant as we learn more about the brain and how it works?
In the reply, they argue that we are a long, long, long way from being able to get along without psychology—and that some of the most exciting insights that are likely to be made into human behavior will come as a result of psychologists and neuroscientists cooperating with each other.
But don't take our word for it. Read the answer and add your voice to the discussion about it, at Cognitive Daily.


Comments
Lately over at Lifehacker and 43Folders, geeks have been wondering if there is any evidence that white text on a black background is (a) easier to read and (b) causes less eye fatigue or strain. Seems that this is a question for perceptual psychology. Does Cognitive Daily know?
Posted by: Eric Durbrow | May 10, 2007 6:17 PM
I haven't read any of the research on this, but from my book design days I seem to recall reading that black on white is much better. Here's one article that supports that notion.
Although it's possible that black on white is only better because that's what we're used to.
Posted by: Dave Munger | May 14, 2007 7:55 AM
I am trying to find out if any research has been done on a possible link between the visual fields and memory. Couls a narrowing of the visual field lnk to the loss of certain kinds of memory
Posted by: Gill | November 12, 2007 8:11 AM
I am looking for research on ways vocabulary is learned. My daughter is in 8th grade.Her English teacher uses vocabulary sheets with very small print and in order to do the assignment, you have to flip the paper over every time you are searching for the answer to a question, the sentence is on one side, on one column and the definition is on the other side, on one or another column, and,, it is copied so that you have to flip it top to bottom, To me this is not conducive to memory and retaining the vocabulary.
Posted by: shirley Hoffman | October 5, 2008 10:22 AM