Busting Brain Myths: TikTok's Viral Neuroscientist
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Why is misinformation about brain health spreading so quickly on social media?
Humanity has access to more information than ever before. Instantaneously, right at the end of our fingertips. Whether that's a positive or a negative is a debate for another way uh another day. But what it has led to is a huge proliferation of incorrect health information online, particularly on social media. One man who has decided to tackle this issue and debunk some of these false claims is neuroscientist at Stanford University, Dr. Ben. Ryan and he joins us now from our Cork studio. Ben, good morning to you. Hey, good morning. Thanks so much for having me. Well thanks a million for joining us. I know you're you're uh giving a lecture in uh UCC uh which is why you're in this country. Lots of us, Ben, will have been scrolling through uh social media and we've seen a video uh telling us how to rewire our brain or avoid dementia or whatever it can be, and the creator is saying this is neuroscience.
But a lot of the time it's not.
Yeah, that's right. It's uh it's become quite popular on on social media to kinda leverage neuroscience to encourage people to do certain things and some of it's fine, some of it's not. And uh yeah, I do my best to kinda fact ch fact check and debunk the things that are bad. Okay, and why did you start debunking? Well, I you know, I started on social media on accident and after because I posted a video and it went viral and I thought, gosh, well this could, you know, be useful for helping a lot of people and sharing information.
What motivated Dr. Ben Rein to start debunking viral neuroscience claims?
And as I got more and more into the platforms, TikTok specifically, I just saw so much misinformation and I I saw the comments people left on my posts and I just kinda couldn't believe ha the the distance between what I thought the you know the general public believed about science and what apparently seemed to be true and just so many bad videos out there and uh you know at some point I couldn't tell you what it was but uh some video must have come across my timeline and I thought, gosh, this is dangerous. This is not just ugly, but it's dangerous. This needs to be addressed and so I uh made a video and just decided that this was an important thing and to continue doing.
Do you ever get disheartened by the flood of of false and as you say dangerous material out there? I mean, how do you pick and choose what you're gonna take on?
Yes, definitely disheartened because the the volume of of misinformation vastly outweighs the volume of corrections or accurate information from what I can see. Um and I the way I choose is generally by virality. You know, if someone posts something and it only has a couple hundred views That's you know, a few people were affected. It's not good, but it's not terrible. If a post has a million or ten million views and everyone seems to be talking about it, those are the ones I typically go for because I want to at least try to rectify some of the damage that has been done and it can be done very quickly.
Okay. What are some of the most common brain health myths that you see online?
Well, there there are the classics uh that go back for a long time, you know, like that we use ten percent of our brain only, which is not true. We use a hundred percent, um, or that people are left brain or right brained. Um that one's a bit controversial but but I believe that one is not true. Um but th you know, those aren't very dangerous. It doesn't really concern me if someone thinks they only use ten percent of their brain.
How does Dr. Rein decide which viral myths are worth correcting?
But nowadays what we're seeing are a lot more concerning uh impactful myths about, you know, uh vaccines and the dangers and how they cause autism. I mean my PhD research was in autism. Uh there's very strong meta analyses of millions of of people and children showing that vaccines are not linked to autism, and yet that myth persists and you know that of course is a consequential one if people use that to choose to vaccinate or not. Also supplements, you know, basically things people are putting in in their bodies, uh what they choose or don't choose to eat. Uh there are a lot of supplements out there that are, you know, j kinda just garbage and doesn't do anything for you, even though people promise it.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is misinformation about brain health spreading so quickly on social media?
0:01–1:20
2
What motivated Dr. Ben Rein to start debunking viral neuroscience claims?
1:20–2:56
3
How does Dr. Rein decide which viral myths are worth correcting?
2:56–4:32
4
Which brain‑health myths are most common and why are they dangerous?
4:32–5:43
5
What does the science say about the vaccine‑autism myth?
5:43–6:41
6
Is sugar really as addictive as cocaine, according to neuroscience?
6:41–8:22
7
Can we really rewire our brains or prevent dementia with simple tricks?
8:22–10:07
8
Why do neuroscientists need a stronger presence on platforms like TikTok?
10:07–11:25