The emotional cognition of a dead salmon

Year: 2009

Can a dead salmon recognize human emotions when shown a picture? Although seemingly impossible, when neuroscientist Craig Bennett bought a salmon and put it in an fMRI scanner, he found evidence that this particular fish showed brain activity when presented with a picture.

So did this study fail? Not exactly. Using the study, Bennet tried to illustrate that fMRI can show brain activity even when there is none, and plead for more rigour in neuroscientific data research. Data generated by fMRI scanners often contain some random noise that needs to be filtered out using statistical checks, and by comparing different versions of the image. When this is forgotten, the risk of false positive results becomes pressing. 


Despite this important message, Bennett’s article got rejected by several journals and he didn’t manage to publish it.