18 posts · 16,679 views
A blog that brings insights from cognitive neuroscience and psychology research onto questions that range from politics to philosophy.
Michael
18 posts
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- September 11, 2009
- 03:52 PM
- 502 views
The Neural Case for Health Care Reform
The moral case for health reform was not the focus of President Obama’s address to Congress Wednesday night. It did, however, form the core of the most eloquent and compelling section of the speech, which followed the invocation of the late Senator Ted Kennedy:
That large-heartedness – that concern and regard for the plight of [...]... Read more »
Miller, G., Chen, E., Fok, A., Walker, H., Lim, A., Nicholls, E., Cole, S., & Kobor, M. (2009) Low early-life social class leaves a biological residue manifested by decreased glucocorticoid and increased proinflammatory signaling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(34), 14716-14721. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0902971106
- August 25, 2009
- 10:40 AM
- 573 views
The Neural Basis of Multitasking
In a headline-grabbing recent study, the NHTSA revealed that talking on a cell phone–even with a hands free headset–is effectively the same as driving with a .08 blood alcohol reading, or legal intoxication. Texting is even worse, but a poll released yesterday showed that a majority (52%) of the world’s drivers often have their thumbs [...]... Read more »
Dux, P., Tombu, M., Harrison, S., Rogers, B., Tong, F., & Marois, R. (2009) Training Improves Multitasking Performance by Increasing the Speed of Information Processing in Human Prefrontal Cortex. Neuron, 63(1), 127-138. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2009.06.005
- August 18, 2009
- 10:30 AM
- 636 views
Brain Research on the Margins
One of the most valuable insights of economics, and one of the oldest, is the idea that we value goods on a marginal basis. The core of the idea, which traces back to Adam Smith, is that our choices are not about x amount of any good but x more of that good. If you’re [...]... Read more »
Pine A, Seymour B, Roiser JP, Bossaerts P, Friston KJ, Curran HV, & Dolan RJ. (2009) Encoding of marginal utility across time in the human brain. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 29(30), 9575-81. PMID: 19641120
- July 27, 2009
- 10:30 AM
- 746 views
Modeling Control Without Controlling the Model
The great hope of Henry Markram’s Blue Brain project (recently discussed here and here) is that it will demonstrate both that consciousness and agency are emergent properties of an entirely mechanistic system like the brain and how that could possibly be true. Despite Markram’s headline-grabbing claim at TED last week that he’s 10 years away [...]... Read more »
Lo, C., Boucher, L., Pare, M., Schall, J., & Wang, X. (2009) Proactive Inhibitory Control and Attractor Dynamics in Countermanding Action: A Spiking Neural Circuit Model. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(28), 9059-9071. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6164-08.2009
- July 24, 2009
- 10:30 AM
- 684 views
Angels and Demons
What makes us honest? The process of natural selection that honed our minds is supposedly one of cutthroat competition. We’re quite obviously driven to succeed, but often we choose not to lie or steal or cheat even when we rationally expect no consequences. In the Freudian account, it’s the rational superego that restrains the selfish [...]... Read more »
Greene, J., & Paxton, J. (2009) Patterns of neural activity associated with honest and dishonest moral decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0900152106
- July 7, 2009
- 09:54 AM
- 797 views
Lobsters, Lasers, and Pain
As a means of preparing for the Infinite Summer, I spent a bit of last month reading some of David Foster Wallace’s nonfiction essays. Perhaps my favorite of these is Consider the Lobster, well known for lending its title to a DFW compilation that I would recommend to all. I find Infinite Summer’s brief on [...]... Read more »
Lee, M., Mouraux, A., & Iannetti, G. (2009) Characterizing the Cortical Activity through Which Pain Emerges from Nociception. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(24), 7909-7916. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0014-09.2009
- July 1, 2009
- 11:03 PM
- 664 views
Looking for the Mathematical Brain
An interesting and largely unanswered question concern the acquisition of our ability to understand and perform mathematics. We appear to innately possess an concrete grasp of only a handful of small values, and yet we frequently engage in transactions for quantities that reach into the hundreds or thousands.
Our ability to perform these computations no doubt [...]... Read more »
Knops, A., Thirion, B., Hubbard, E., Michel, V., & Dehaene, S. (2009) Recruitment of an Area Involved in Eye Movements During Mental Arithmetic. Science, 324(5934), 1583-1585. DOI: 10.1126/science.1171599
- June 17, 2009
- 08:50 AM
- 779 views
Reflections on Gaze, Attention, and Other Minds
There is a surprising amount of truth in the old adage that “the eyes are the window to the soul.” We possess an innate ability to understand that the focus of someone else’s vision is the object of her attention. This ability is an important part of autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen’s model for [...]... Read more »
Shepherd, S., Klein, J., Deaner, R., & Platt, M. (2009) Mirroring of attention by neurons in macaque parietal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(23), 9489-9494. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0900419106
- June 3, 2009
- 12:37 PM
- 901 views
How the Brain Takes Shortcuts, and Why
Our capacity for intuitive decision-making evolved in a world of high stakes but relatively simple decisions. Feast or forage; fight or flight. The gains of recent technological and financial innovation have been great, but they come at the cost of increased complexity. According to the tenets of rational-choice economics, this can be only a positive [...]... Read more »
Venkatraman, V., Payne, J., Bettman, J., Luce, M., & Huettel, S. (2009) Separate Neural Mechanisms Underlie Choices and Strategic Preferences in Risky Decision Making. Neuron, 62(4), 593-602. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2009.04.007
- May 6, 2009
- 12:37 AM
- 853 views
TRB: Delicious…and Nutritious?
Because I feel bad about neglecting the blog over the past month, here’s a special Tuesday edition of TRB, which may or may not become a regular feature. And, as it is a special edition, I’ll start with some food porn:
If I asked you to choose between eating the food from one of these [...]... Read more »
Hare, T., Camerer, C., & Rangel, A. (2009) Self-Control in Decision-Making Involves Modulation of the vmPFC Valuation System. Science, 324(5927), 646-648. DOI: 10.1126/science.1168450
- April 9, 2009
- 01:28 PM
- 1,045 views
TRB: How the Human Brain Weighs Costs and Benefits
It seems obvious that the value of some potentially rewarding endeavor should reflect not just the size of the reward but also the amount of effort involved in realizing it. But how do we make that decision? In business, this can be an external computation: some analyst will sit down in front of Excel and [...]... Read more »
Croxson, P., Walton, M., O'Reilly, J., Behrens, T., & Rushworth, M. (2009) Effort-Based Cost-Benefit Valuation and the Human Brain. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(14), 4531-4541. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4515-08.2009
- April 2, 2009
- 01:17 PM
- 2,000 views
TRB: Peeling Apart the Prefrontal Cortex
More than perhaps any of our other talents, the ability to reason strategically sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. When faced with a decision, we alone are capable of thinking ahead to consider which option will offer the greatest reward and selecting it, even when it might not immediately seem [...]... Read more »
Badre, D., Hoffman, J., Cooney, J., & D'Esposito, M. (2009) Hierarchical cognitive control deficits following damage to the human frontal lobe. Nature Neuroscience, 12(4), 515-522. DOI: 10.1038/nn.2277
- March 26, 2009
- 01:47 PM
- 1,017 views
TRB: “Irrational” Behavior and the Ventral Striatum
One of the most enduring observations of behavioral economics is the reference-dependent nature of utility. Rarely do we behave as if motivated by the absolute values that might result from possible choices; instead, we appear to assign utility to the amount and direction of change away from some reference point. Known as prospect theory, [...]... Read more »
De Martino, B., Kumaran, D., Holt, B., & Dolan, R. (2009) The Neurobiology of Reference-Dependent Value Computation. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(12), 3833-3842. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4832-08.2009
- March 12, 2009
- 03:52 PM
- 1,448 views
TRB: Motivated Memory in the Prefrontal Cortex
Cognitive neuroscientists need not abandon their understanding of an evolutionary continuum between humans and all other creatures when faced with the reality of our many unique abilities. A complete explanation of our singular intelligence may yet lay beyond our grasp, but we know that the answer will likely be revealed as we unravel the twisted [...]... Read more »
Kennerley, S., & Wallis, J. (2009) Reward-Dependent Modulation of Working Memory in Lateral Prefrontal Cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(10), 3259-3270. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5353-08.2009
- February 26, 2009
- 06:13 PM
- 1,045 views
TRB: Objects in the Minds of Men and Monkeys
Neuroscience research using monkeys promises to balance the precision of direct investigation into neuronal activity with the relevance of increasingly complex behaviors approaching human cognition. Despite our captivation with fMRI, it cannot match the scientific rigor of single-cell recordings, which, for obvious reasons, can only be performed on humans in very rare circumstances (such as [...]... Read more »
N KRIEGESKORTE, M MUR, D RUFF, R KIANI, J BODURKA, H ESTEKY, K TANAKA, & P BANDETTINI. (2008) Matching Categorical Object Representations in Inferior Temporal Cortex of Man and Monkey. Neuron, 60(6), 1126-1141. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.10.043
- February 19, 2009
- 11:17 AM
- 992 views
TRB: Schadenfreude’s Not in Our Dictionaries, but It’s in Our Brains
I’ve always enjoyed the word “schadenfreude.” The idea that the Germans have a word for such a complicated situational emotion, and that we didn’t even bother to come up with an English equivalent and simply imported the German, has long fascinated me. Plus, it’s a fun word to say. By way of explanation for [...]... Read more »
H. Takahashi, M. Kato, M. Matsuura, D. Mobbs, T. Suhara, & Y. Okubo. (2009) When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude. Science, 323(5916), 937-939. DOI: 10.1126/science.1165604
- February 12, 2009
- 07:27 PM
- 930 views
Thursday Research Blogging: A Distinct Cortical Response to Ambiguous Information
Our financial system is founded on uncertainty: when we invest in risky assets, we cannot be sure whether we will in the end earn a profit or suffer a loss. Despite the recent troubles, this dynamic has served as one of the main driving forces behind our explosive rate of economic growth. Far from being [...]... Read more »
D. R. Bach, B. Seymour, & R. J. Dolan. (2009) Neural Activity Associated with the Passive Prediction of Ambiguity and Risk for Aversive Events. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(6), 1648-1656. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4578-08.2009
- February 5, 2009
- 12:00 AM
- 1,067 views
Oxytocin Lets Prairie Voles Fall Quickly Into Love
A report on a recent Journal of Neuroscience study on the direct relationship between oxytocin receptor density in the rodent nucleus accumbens and pair-bonding behavior.... Read more »
H. E. Ross, S. M. Freeman, L. L. Spiegel, X. Ren, E. F. Terwilliger, & L. J. Young. (2009) Variation in Oxytocin Receptor Density in the Nucleus Accumbens Has Differential Effects on Affiliative Behaviors in Monogamous and Polygamous Voles. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(5), 1312-1318. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5039-08.2009
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