Brain Imaging Study Highlights Way to Predict Choice

Brain Imaging Study Highlights Way to Predict Choice: "

A cool new study in The Journal Neuroscience shows that the activity in the caudate nucleus can predict a person's preferences. The study showed that after a decision is made, activity in the caudate nucleus increases for the selected option and decreases for the rejected one.

The researchers imaged people's brains as they imagined vacationing in 80 different destinations around the world. After rating how much they would like to travel to each location, participants were asked to decide between similarly rated options — for example, Greece or Thailand. Participants then imagined and rated each location again, and their brains were imaged a second time.

'Re-evaluating our options post-choice may serve an adaptive purpose by increasing an individual's commitment to the action taken. In the absence of a rapid update of value that concurs with choice, we are likely to second-guess our decisions and actions,' said study author Tali Sharot, PhD, a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London.

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This goes right to the heart of the whole determinist philosophy and the scientific evidence for it.

Expert Financial Advice Cuts Brain Activity

Expert Financial Advice Cuts Brain Activity: "All the people who watch financial news channels and then decide how to invest are probably thinking less than those who do not watch those shows. Brain scans show expert..."

This brings up a couple of questions: does a persons evaluative ability of who is an "Expert" provide a similar effect across cognitive domains? Is it just in the domain of advice or finance, or does it also extend to medical advice?

Brain science and the search for the self

Brain science and the search for the self: "Experts across the ages have argued over what makes an individual the same person throughout their life, but modern techniques may at last give us an answer, says A C Grayling
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Finally...now someone can explain why my sisters are such weirdos.

Religious people less anxious, brain activity shows

Religious people less anxious, brain activity shows: "Deeply devout people exhibit lower activity in a brain region linked to anxiety when giving the wrong answer on a simple test, new research finds

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But perhaps we are more prone to guilt - so I think that gets offest pretty well in the grand scheme of things.

Tactile illusions 6: Motion after-effects

Tactile illusions 6: Motion after-effects: "Another classic visual illusion is the waterfall illusion, which relies on tiring out your visual neurons

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See....a sucker for a good illusion post.

More of the same here, here, here, and here.

Music lessons provide a workout for the brain

Music lessons provide a workout for the brain: "Scanning child musicians before and after periods of musical training has shown that learning an instrument produces beneficial changes in the brain
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As one who struggled mightily through advanced music theory, I can attest to this first-hand.

Brain Scan Mind Reading of Spatial Information Progress

Brain Scan Mind Reading of Spatial Information Progress: "
New Scientist reports : Scans of the part of the brain responsible for memory have for the first time been used to detect a person's location in a virtual environment. Using functional MRI (fMRI), researchers decoded the approximate location of several people as they navigated through virtual rooms. The work is continuing to use scans and more precise scans to discern what someone was doing, where they are or were and where they plan to go.

This finding suggests that more detailed mind-reading, such detecting as memories of a summer holiday, might eventually be possible, says Eleanor Maguire, a neuroscientist at University College London.

'This is a very interesting case because it was previously believed impossible to decode [spatial] information,' says John-Dylan Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, Germany.

'There must be some hidden structure in the spatial organisation of cells with activity related to each of the places in the environment,' agrees Edvard Moser, a neuroscientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

The abstracgt from the Cell Journal

Decoding Neuronal Ensembles in the Human Hippocampus

The hippocampus underpins our ability to navigate, to form and recollect memories, and to imagine future experiences. How activity across millions of hippocampal neurons supports these functions is a fundamental question in neuroscience, wherein the size, sparseness, and organization of the hippocampal neural code are debated.Here, by using multivariate pattern classification and high spatial resolution functional MRI, we decoded activity across the population of neurons in the human medial temporal lobe while participants navigated in a virtual reality environment. Remarkably, we could accurately predict the position of an individual within this environment solely from the pattern of activity in his hippocampus even when visual input and task were held constant. Moreover, we observed a dissociation between responses in the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus, suggesting that they play differing roles in navigation.These results show that highly abstracted representations of space are expressed in the human hippocampus. Furthermore, our findings have implications for understanding the hippocampal population code and suggest that, contrary to current consensus, neuronal ensembles representing place memories must be large and have an anisotropic structure.

Reading more precise locations or other kinds of memories could be difficult, because fMRI resolves the activity of thousands of neurons at a time, Haynes says. 'One day a new imaging technique could come along and you'd be at the right place to decode even in these challenging cases,' he adds.

However, Maguire isn't waiting for new technologies. Her team is already looking into the possibility of reading more vivid memories of events and planned movements. 'We've done some work about how the hippocampus is involved in planning the future – where you're going and what you're doing.'

FURTHER READING
Here is a pdf with 17 pages of supplemental information to the research paper.

Previously brain scanning had revealed what letters a person was reading.

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This experiment is, of course, reliant on the idea that mental navigation through virtual space is similar to physical navigation through physical space. There are experiments that support at least a similarity between the two - but, unfortunately, you'll have to wait for a "wearable" fMRI to really test this for sure.

More here and here.

Seven ways to fool your sense of touch

Seven ways to fool your sense of touch: "It's surprisingly easy for your body to fool your brain. Graham Lawton puts his sense of touch to the test

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I'm also a sucker for a good illusion post.

Should high schools start classes at 11 AM?

Should high schools start classes at 11 AM?: "

According to a report in the British Newspaper 'The Guardian' from 3/08/2009, Dr. Paul Kelley, headmaster of Monkseaton Community High School in North Tyneside, England, has proposed sweeping changes in the timetable at his institution, which would entail having classes start at 11 AM, instead of the more usual 9 AM. This comes following testing conducted by Dr. Russell Foster, an Oxford professor of neuroscience, at the school, which demonstrated an improvement in the students' memory when they were tested at 2 PM as compared to at 9 AM. Dr. Kelley has asked the school's governors to approve the plan and begin implementing it prior to the opening of the new school building in September 2009.

Teenagers are notorious for staying up late, and for not getting enough sleep. The National Sleep Foundation's 'Sleep in America' poll from 2006 showed that most teenagers do not get enough sleep on school nights (the age appropriate sleep requirement for teenagers is around 9 ¼ hours/night). 62% of the high school students polled received fewer than 8 hours/night, and an additional 25% received between 8-9 hours/night. 28% of high school students reported falling asleep in school at least once a week.

Why do teenagers stay up so late, and why are they so chronically sleep deprived? First of all, they have lots and lots to do, including homework, sports, hanging out with friends, TV, texting, chatting, internet, and often find it very difficult to shut everything down and out for the night. They also drink a lot of caffeine, with 75% reporting that they consumed at least one caffeinated beverage daily. Developmentally, they become more independent, and less inclined to do precisely as they are told by their parents. The body's internal circadian clock shifts tends to drift more in this age group than in others, with the signal to fall asleep occurring slightly later each day. Finally, the pressure to fall asleep as a function of the degree of sleep deprivation decreases during adolescence and this is thought to be because of physical changes in the brain during this period.

So should all high school students start classes at 11 AM? Dr. Kelley certainly thinks so. Clearly making this kind of change in school schedules would have profound effects not only upon the kids themselves, but also upon their teachers and parents as well, which would likely not be unanimously well received.

Still, it is ironic that in many states, school starts earlier in the day as the child gets older, with high school often starting before middle school, which in turn starts earlier than elementary school. I think that this is a topic which would benefit from involvement at all levels (school, district, state and national), in order to give our children a better environment in which to learn, one that is more suited to their specific developmental needs.

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In my opinion: hell, yes, school should start later as the students get older. The problem is that the adult teachers have a very different circadian rhythm, so it would be great for the students, lousy for teachers and administrators.

Brain activity started by music you think you are going to hear.

Brain activity started by music you think you are going to hear.: "Here is an interesting piece of work from Leaver et al:

Music consists of sound sequences that require integration over time. As we become familiar with music, associations between notes, melodies, and entire symphonic movements become stronger and more complex. These associations can become so tight that, for example, hearing the end of one album track can elicit a robust image of the upcoming track while anticipating it in total silence. Here, we study this predictive 'anticipatory imagery' at various stages throughout learning and investigate activity changes in corresponding neural structures using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Anticipatory imagery (in silence) for highly familiar naturalistic music was accompanied by pronounced activity in rostral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and premotor areas. Examining changes in the neural bases of anticipatory imagery during two stages of learning conditional associations between simple melodies, however, demonstrates the importance of fronto-striatal connections, consistent with a role of the basal ganglia in 'training' frontal cortex. Another striking change in neural resources during learning was a shift between caudal PFC earlier to rostral PFC later in learning. Our findings regarding musical anticipation and sound sequence learning are highly compatible with studies of motor sequence learning, suggesting common predictive mechanisms in both domains.

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Any good musician will be able to confirm this. Heck, it's what makes a good musician seem so impressive. You can anticipate music based on the composite structure. The more familiar you are with music theory or with a given genere the more ability you have to anticipate. It's no different from any other learned skill - the more you know the more you see.

Self-regulation failure (Part 3): What's motivation got to do with it?

Self-regulation failure (Part 3): What's motivation got to do with it?: "

Tired, self-regulatory control depleted from an exhausting day that demanded non-stop self-control, we may give up and give in. Like a tired muscle, our willpower seems unable to do any more. However, with the right incentive we can exert our physical strength even with tired muscles. And, so it is with our willpower . . . it's about motivation, isn't it?

In my earlier posts (see Self-Regulation Failure Part 1 and Part 2), I summarized research that has established how our self-regulatory strength is like a muscle. When we exert self-regulatory effort on one task, there seems to be less available for subsequent tasks.

The thing is, subsequent research demonstrated that we could strengthen our willpower or self-regulatory ability by regular focus on self-regulation. More interestingly, even a boost of positive emotions or a focus on our values and goals through a self-affirmation process diminished the self-regulatory exhaustion.

What isn't clear is if positive emotions or a focus on values actually replenishes the depleted willpower resources or if it simply motivates us to make the effort despite the relative depletion.

The role of motivation
You'll recall that the basic paradigm for this research consists of an experiment where participants in the experimental group are required to self-regulate on a first task (e.g., resist a plate of cookies while hungry or suppress their emotional reaction while viewing a film), and this results in poorer self-regulatory performance on subsequent task. Interestingly, these self-regulatory impairments are eliminated or reduced when participants are highly motivated to self-regulate on the second task.

For example, when participants are paid for doing well on the second task or they are convinced that their performance will have social benefits, they perform well despite the apparent self-regulatory exhaustion from the first task.

The key thing about these findings is that it indicates that self-regulatory depletion may be reducing motivation. Given that depleted self-regulatory strength may leave us feeling like we won't succeed, 'we're too tired to try,' it may be that the reduced expectancy of success undermines our willingness to exert effort. It's not that we're so impaired that we can't respond. It's that we 'don't feel like.'

Sound familiar? 'I'll feel more like it tomorrow.' This is a common phrase we use to rationalize our procrastination. Perhaps it simply captures our perceptions of self-regulatory strength at the moment. Of course, it's a perception, and, I argue, at least partly an illusion. It's about our motivation, not about the reality of not being ability to muster the self-regulatory effort - Unwilling perhaps, not unable.

From this perspective, what we see is that we may fail to self-regulate because we acquiesce. In the case of procrastination, we find resisting the urge to do something else (an alternative intention) impossible to resist, so we give up and give in. Of course, during this internal self-regulatory struggle, we must restrain this impulse to leave the task at hand, our intended goal, in favor of the competing goal (one that is usual specious to our values and long-term goals).

Strategy for change
We all feel depleted throughout the day. We all have moments where we think, 'I'm exhausted, I just can't do anymore' or 'I'll feel more like this tomorrow.' This is true, this is how we're feeling at the moment, however our success depends on us moving past these momentary feelings of depletion.

Given the role of motivation in self-regulatory failure, it is crucial to acknowledge the role of higher-order thought in this process, particularly the ability to transcend the feelings at the moment (mindfulness helps here) in order to focus on our overall goals and values. In the absence of cues to signal the need for self-regulation, we may give in to feel good, and stop trying.

It's exactly when we say to ourselves 'I'll feel more like it tomorrow,' that we have to stop, take a breath and think about why we intended to do the task today. Why is it important to us? What benefit is there in making the effort now? How will this help us achieve our goal?

From there, if we can just muster the volitional strength for one more step, that is to just get started, we will find that we had more self-regulatory strength in reserve than we realized. Our perception can fool us at times, and this self-deception can really be our own worst enemy.

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I can't resist posting a good article on motivation.

All Scientists Have Conflicts of Interest (Duh)

All Scientists Have Conflicts of Interest (Duh): "In a thoughtful and provocative piece in the The Wild Side blog at NYTimes.com, Stephen Quake takes up the issue of conflicts of interest in research. By 'conflicts of interest,' Quake means researchers who have a financial interest in the outcome of their research. It is becoming increasingly common for academic researchers to partner with businesses in developing new technology.

He raises many important and interesting questions, some of which I'll write about in the future. One point that deserves much more space was the fact that many researchers have conflicts of interest even when they aren't selling a product:

Interestingly, it is not unusual for basic scientists with no commercial relationships to be dependent on grants for their salaries and therefore have a significant personal financial interest in preserving their grants. Although COI experts have assured me that that this is not a conflict that needs to be managed, I must confess that I have some difficulty with the distinction they are trying to draw. Who is under greater temptation to bias the results of their research: the financially comfortable academic entrepreneur, or the ivory tower scientist who may not be able to pay his mortgage if his grant is not renewed?

What may not be clear to the casual reader is that research agencies like the NIH prefer to give grants to researchers with a history of success. Last time they gave you a grant, did you publish a series of important papers, or did all your projects end in failure? In the latter case, you may be out of a job.

Nobody Sees Your Data But You

A baseball player is paid largely on his ability to perform on the field. If you are known as a power-hitter, you better produce home-runs.

The major difference between a baseball star and a research star, is that a baseball player's performance is public. Everybody at the game knows whether he hit a home run or struck out.

In contrast, the only person with access to a researcher's data is the researcher. It is as if a baseball player went to an automatic batting cage where nobody was looking, took a few swings, came out and told the team management how many home runs he hit and was paid accordingly.

A number of non-scientists I've talked to seem to be under the impression that during peer review, the reviewers check the data. They don't. They can't, really. In my experiments, I ask people questions and mark down whether they got it right or wrong. The reviewers weren't in the testing room with me, so they simply have to take my word for it.

Now let's say you are a researcher and it's time to renew your grant. You've been swinging and missing -- your data are uninterpretable or simply uninteresting. The easiest way to make the data more interesting is to 'fix' them.

All Scientists Have Conflicts of Interest

Ultimately, all scientists have a conflict of interest, because our promotions and salaries are ultimately based on the research we have produced, whether directly or indirectly. And there are many non-financial incentives. Nobody wants to be seen as a failure.

I don't believe many people are simply making up their data (though it happens). A larger concern is selectively reporting results. Suppose you are in the situation in which you have run four different experiments. Three of them support one conclusion, but the fourth supports the opposite conclusion.

You simply can't publish that. No journal will take a paper showing conflicting results. You can either give up on the project and admit to having wasted perhaps 2-3 years of your life. You can continue doing research to try to figure out why you are getting conflicting results, perhaps succeeding, perhaps not, but in any case spending time and money you might not have. Or you can write a paper about the first three experiments and forget about the 'bad' experiment. Some people take the latter route. This is best-known in pharmaceutical research, but it happens everywhere.

Even worse, perhaps you run an experiment, the results of which challenge the theory for you which you are known, an experiment which challenges the validity of your life's work. Who really wants to publish that?

What to Do

Quake's point is that you can't eliminate conflicts of interest from science. A baseball player needs to win games. A researcher needs to publish. As long as this is true, baseball players will have an incentive to take steroids and researchers will have incentives to 'improve' their work. Any proposed solution that ignores these basic facts is doomed to fail

Are Scientists Really Cheating?

This article might have looked really gloomy. My point is simply that everybody has the incentive to cheat, not that everybody does. In the course of your life, there will be a number of instances in which it would be in your financial interests to murder somebody. Still, most people don't murder.

It is popular in some circles to assume most people are fundamentally bad and will do anything they can get away with, but my experience -- professionally and personally -- is otherwise.

Moreover, academic fraud is generally not in one's long-term interests. Even if it isn't exposed, others will fail to replicate your results and your theories will be disproved. Again, for a researcher, ultimately the best thing for your career is to be right. And fraud won't help you with that.


(Image sourced from blog.springsource.com)

Read the blog: http://coglanglab.blogspot.com
Do the research: http://coglanglab.org

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I agree with the title of the article - it's a no-brainer. You're human, don't try to pretend that your belief system and world-view don't influence your decision-making process or the way you see things. It's a problem I have with both scientists and journalists. Please stop trying to pretend that you are an unbiased observer merely reporting "truth" - it can't be done. I'd be much more comfotable with someone stating their bias up-front and then reporting on what they think. At least that gives me an opportunity to evaluate them more accurately as a source of information.

Gender and the Brain

Gender and the Brain: "

[Short clip embedded above; link to full video below.]

title The Gender Puzzle
description Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, genetics, intersex, and gender beyond chromosomes or culture. A pay per view video on demand (PPV VOD) costing one British pound but worth it. An excellent documentary. From the description: 'Scientists are now looking beyond chromosomes to 'brain sex' and the role of newly discovered genes. By studying transsexuals and people on the gender extremes, they believe they can unlock the gender puzzle.'
producer Janine Cohen, for ABC Australia
featuring Janine Cohen, Christie North & family, Vince Harley, Andrew Sinclair, Louise Newman, Andie Hider & family, Garry Warne, Fintan Harte, Craig Andrews and many more
format Flash
date 17/11/05
length 00:44:50
link http://www.booserver.com/projects.php?ProjectID=2394

Tags: brain video documentary PPV sex gender genetics intersex transsexual transgender bioethics LGBT

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Another Channel N+ gem.

Secrets and Powers of the Brain

Secrets and Powers of the Brain: "

title The Ups and Downs of Forgetting
description Part 1 of Unlocking the Secrets and Powers of the Brain, a panel discussion on 'the hottest issues in brain research, from predicting human behavior to manipulating memory to pinpointing consciousness' broken into two video players with indexed five minute clips and and interviews with each scientist.
producer Discover, National Science Foundation
featuring Michael Gazzaniga, Daniel Levitan, Rebecca Saxe, Samuel Wang, Carl Zimmer
format Flash
date 12/11/08
length 00:04:48
link http://discovermagazine.com/2009/mar/26-unlocking-brain-secrets-and-powers

Tags: brain video panel interview symposium neuroethics neuroscience brain behaviour memory cog_sci

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Channel N is also a pretty good source for some neat stuff every now and then.