Cognitive
Brain Imaging Research is Often Wrong
September 4, 2015
When researchers conduct brain imaging, they collect data from 200,000 little spots in the brain, which creates a lot of leeway for false positives, bias, and false negatives. If researchers do not do the proper corrections—to address the fact that they are doing a statistical test in each of those places—it is very easy to find a highly significant result that is not actually real. A few years ago, a group of researchers tried to illustrate this problem by putting a dead salmon in an MRI scanner....
September 4, 2015
When researchers conduct brain imaging, they collect data from 200,000 little spots in the brain, which creates a lot of leeway for false positives, bias, and false negatives. If researchers do not do the proper corrections—to address the fact that they are doing a statistical test in each of those places—it is very easy to find a highly significant result that is not actually real. A few years ago, a group of researchers tried to illustrate this problem by putting a dead salmon in an MRI scanner....
Arrested Memory – ‘Justice Is Mind’
September 3, 2015
In the 2013 feature film Justice Is Mind, a defendant is put on trial for an alleged double murder he does not remember committing. The evidence? His own memory obtained from a new MRI procedure called fvMRI (functional video magnetic resonance imaging). It may be science fiction today, but it's looking more and more likely that it will be science fact tomorrow. The movie focuses on 'thought identification' using advanced fMRI techniques which are currently being developed at Carnegie Mellon University....
September 3, 2015
In the 2013 feature film Justice Is Mind, a defendant is put on trial for an alleged double murder he does not remember committing. The evidence? His own memory obtained from a new MRI procedure called fvMRI (functional video magnetic resonance imaging). It may be science fiction today, but it's looking more and more likely that it will be science fact tomorrow. The movie focuses on 'thought identification' using advanced fMRI techniques which are currently being developed at Carnegie Mellon University....
Stress Is Your Brain Trying to Avoid Something
September 2, 2015
Stress is an emotional response; like all emotional responses, it emerges from the functioning of the motivational system. Your motivational system engages goals and gives them energy so that you can pursue them. Simply put, when you succeed at your goals, you feel good, and when you don’t succeed you feel bad. Stress is a negative emotion, so the first thing we can see about stress is that it reflects a goal you are not currently achieving. Learn to calm yourself. Another key element of stress...
September 2, 2015
Stress is an emotional response; like all emotional responses, it emerges from the functioning of the motivational system. Your motivational system engages goals and gives them energy so that you can pursue them. Simply put, when you succeed at your goals, you feel good, and when you don’t succeed you feel bad. Stress is a negative emotion, so the first thing we can see about stress is that it reflects a goal you are not currently achieving. Learn to calm yourself. Another key element of stress...
The Neuroscience of Being a Selfish Jerk
September 2, 2015
People high in Machiavellianism are more likely to agree with statements such as, “It is wise to flatter important people” and “The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear.” A team of Hungarian researchers has scanned the brains of high scorers on Machiavellianism while the test subjects played a simple game of trust. While all participants punished unfair play, the Machiavellians, unlike the nonMachiavellians, failed to respond in kind to fair returns or investments...
September 2, 2015
People high in Machiavellianism are more likely to agree with statements such as, “It is wise to flatter important people” and “The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear.” A team of Hungarian researchers has scanned the brains of high scorers on Machiavellianism while the test subjects played a simple game of trust. While all participants punished unfair play, the Machiavellians, unlike the nonMachiavellians, failed to respond in kind to fair returns or investments...
Does Watching a Film Cliffhanger Help Us Understand the Brain?
September 1, 2015
"Narratives exert a powerful influence on human thoughts, emotions and behavior and can be particularly important in security contexts," DARPA researchers explained in a paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods earlier this year. They added that "in conflict resolution and counterterrorism scenarios, detecting the neural response underlying empathy induced by stories is of critical importance." This is where the work on the Hitchcock movies comes in. Researchers at the Georgia...
September 1, 2015
"Narratives exert a powerful influence on human thoughts, emotions and behavior and can be particularly important in security contexts," DARPA researchers explained in a paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods earlier this year. They added that "in conflict resolution and counterterrorism scenarios, detecting the neural response underlying empathy induced by stories is of critical importance." This is where the work on the Hitchcock movies comes in. Researchers at the Georgia...
Don’t Forget
August 31, 2015
Sleep can facilitate memory retention; however, whether it does so by promoting memory consolidation or by suppressing the mechanisms that drive forgetting is unclear. Davis and colleagues now show that, in Drosophila melanogaster, sleep reduces the activity of particular sets of dopamine neurons that drive forgetting. Hat tip to ABA Behavioral & Neuroscience Law Committee
August 31, 2015
Sleep can facilitate memory retention; however, whether it does so by promoting memory consolidation or by suppressing the mechanisms that drive forgetting is unclear. Davis and colleagues now show that, in Drosophila melanogaster, sleep reduces the activity of particular sets of dopamine neurons that drive forgetting. Hat tip to ABA Behavioral & Neuroscience Law Committee
Cruel Summer: How Hot Weather Makes People Angrier
August 30, 2015
Many reports and analyses noticed that crimes, particularly violent crimes, increase in occurrence during the summer, especially if it is hotter than average. Some argue that the physiological reactions to heat are responsible. Raised temperatures cause an increase in heart rate, testosterone, and other metabolic reactions that trigger the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight-or-flight response, so people are more inclined to fight. There are also numerous psychological...
August 30, 2015
Many reports and analyses noticed that crimes, particularly violent crimes, increase in occurrence during the summer, especially if it is hotter than average. Some argue that the physiological reactions to heat are responsible. Raised temperatures cause an increase in heart rate, testosterone, and other metabolic reactions that trigger the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight-or-flight response, so people are more inclined to fight. There are also numerous psychological...
Can Neuroscience Solve the Mystery of How Students Learn?
August 30, 2015
Educational neuroscience burst onto the scene with the hope of explaining how we learn. But the jury is still out on whether it’s useful for classroom practice. Neuroscientists, while investigating memory, stumbled across the spaced learning effect by examining simple reflexes in sea slugs, crayfish and cats—and by probing and stimulating the neurons in thin slices of rat brain. The neuroscientists discovered that repeated stimuli, with precisely timed gaps, are one of the most reliable ways...
August 30, 2015
Educational neuroscience burst onto the scene with the hope of explaining how we learn. But the jury is still out on whether it’s useful for classroom practice. Neuroscientists, while investigating memory, stumbled across the spaced learning effect by examining simple reflexes in sea slugs, crayfish and cats—and by probing and stimulating the neurons in thin slices of rat brain. The neuroscientists discovered that repeated stimuli, with precisely timed gaps, are one of the most reliable ways...
Male Mice Process Pain Differently
August 28, 2015
Male and female mice use different types of immune cells to process chronic pain. Studies of male mice have shown that immune cells called microglia in the spinal cord have an important role in chronic pain. To see whether this is the same in female mice, a team led by Jeffrey Mogil at McGill University in Montreal and Michael Salter at the University of Toronto, both in Canada, induced chronic pain in both sexes. The team then used drugs or antibodies to reduce microglia function. Whereas pain...
August 28, 2015
Male and female mice use different types of immune cells to process chronic pain. Studies of male mice have shown that immune cells called microglia in the spinal cord have an important role in chronic pain. To see whether this is the same in female mice, a team led by Jeffrey Mogil at McGill University in Montreal and Michael Salter at the University of Toronto, both in Canada, induced chronic pain in both sexes. The team then used drugs or antibodies to reduce microglia function. Whereas pain...
Putting Psychology into Behavioral Economics
August 27, 2015
RICHARD THALER: ehavioral economics and good psychology, there's a lot of art. There is science and there are well-crafted experiments, but thinking about what the right experiment to run, was art and, there are 80 gazillion experiments, which ones are relevant to getting people to plant the right seed. That's a problem that Sendhil and I have been talking about for, well, since he was born. You're now seeing the results of 15 years of conversations. And there wasn't a scientific way of answering...
August 27, 2015
RICHARD THALER: ehavioral economics and good psychology, there's a lot of art. There is science and there are well-crafted experiments, but thinking about what the right experiment to run, was art and, there are 80 gazillion experiments, which ones are relevant to getting people to plant the right seed. That's a problem that Sendhil and I have been talking about for, well, since he was born. You're now seeing the results of 15 years of conversations. And there wasn't a scientific way of answering...
