Brain & Behavior

[Michael Scally MD]

Friday Illusion: Can you spot the change?
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/06/friday-illusion-can-you-spot-the-change.html.

If you think you have eagle eyes, the video above may prove you wrong. Something changes over the course of the sequence but can you pick up what it is? You'll probably be surprised by the reveal at the end of the clip and wonder how you missed such an obvious shift.

Created by Kevin O'Reagan and his team at Paris Descartes University, the animation is an example of our blindness to certain slow changes. According to the researchers, there are two main factors that determine what we notice in our environment. First, we tend to focus our attention on the most interesting elements of a scene. In this case, the base of the merry-go-round may not be the most attention-grabbing part of the picture. In addition, we are more likely to perceive objects or changes that don't fit with what we expect to see. Once we've made sense of a scene, we look out for the unusual.

Previous theories have suggested that we make sense of our environment by creating internal representations of the outside world, which are updated as we take in new important details. But according to O'Reagan, demos like this suggest that we may simply rely on external information. Since the outside world is constantly accessible to us, it would be overkill to constantly modify an internal model. In this video, the intermediate changes don't need to be committed to memory.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System

Does driving a Porsche make a man more desirable to women?

Study shows that flashy spending may work for the short term but not for marriage

New research by faculty at Rice University, the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of Minnesota finds that men's conspicuous spending is driven by the desire to have uncommitted romantic flings. And, gentlemen, women can see right through it.

The series of studies, "Peacocks, Porsches and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System," was conducted with nearly 1,000 test subjects and published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"This research suggests that conspicuous products, such as Porsches, can serve the same function for some men that large and brilliant feathers serve for peacocks," said Jill Sundie, assistant professor of marketing at UTSA and lead author of the paper.

Just as peacocks flaunt their tails before potential mates, men may flaunt flashy products to charm potential dates. Notably, not all men favored this strategy – just those men who were interested in short-term sexual relationships with women. [Duh!!!]

"The studies show that some men are like peacocks. They're the ones driving the bright colored sports car," said co-author Vladas Griskevicius, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota.

According to the researchers, women found a man who chose to purchase a flashy luxury product (such as a Porsche) more desirable than the same man who purchased a non-luxury item (such as a Honda Civic). However, there was a catch: Although women found the flashy guys more desirable for a date, the man with the Porsche was not preferred as a marriage partner. Women inferred from a man's flashy spending that he was interested in uncommitted sex. [It took a study to determine this $%^& No Shit Sherlock!]

"When women considered him for a long-term relationship, owning the sports car held no advantage relative to owning an economy car," said co-author Daniel Beal, assistant professor of psychology at Rice. "People may feel that owning flashy things makes them more attractive as a relationship partner, but in truth, many men might be sending women the wrong message."

Though often associated with Western culture, extreme forms of conspicuous displays have been found in cultures across the globe and throughout history.

While finding that men may use conspicuous consumption as a short-term mating signal, the researchers discovered that women don't behave in the same manner and don't conspicuously spend to attract men.

"Obviously, women also spend plenty of money on expensive things," Sundie said. "But the anticipation of romance doesn't trigger flashy spending as it does with some men."


Sundie JM, Kenrick DT, Griskevicius V, Tybur JM, Vohs KD, Beal DJ. Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: conspicuous consumption as a sexual signaling system. J Pers Soc Psychol 2011;100(4):664-80. http://www.csom.umn.edu/assets/165659.pdf

Conspicuous consumption is a form of economic behavior in which self-presentational concerns override desires to obtain goods at bargain prices. Showy spending may be a social signal directed at potential mates. We investigated such signals by examining (a) which individuals send them, (b) which contexts trigger them, and (c) how observers interpret them. Three experiments demonstrated that conspicuous consumption is driven by men who are following a lower investment (vs. higher investment) mating strategy and is triggered specifically by short-term (vs. long-term) mating motives. A fourth experiment showed that observers interpret such signals accurately, with women perceiving men who conspicuously consume as being interested in short-term mating.

Furthermore, conspicuous purchasing enhanced men's desirability as a short-term (but not as a long-term) mate. Overall, these findings suggest that flaunting status-linked goods to potential mates is not simply about displaying economic resources. Instead, conspicuous consumption appears to be part of a more precise signaling system focused on short-term mating. These findings contribute to an emerging literature on human life-history strategies.

 

[ergomaniac]

Friday Illusion: Can you spot the change?
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/06/friday-illusion-can-you-spot-the-change.html.

If you think you have eagle eyes, the video above may prove you wrong. Something changes over the course of the sequence but can you pick up what it is? You'll probably be surprised by the reveal at the end of the clip and wonder how you missed such an obvious shift.

Created by Kevin O'Reagan and his team at Paris Descartes University, the animation is an example of our blindness to certain slow changes. According to the researchers, there are two main factors that determine what we notice in our environment. First, we tend to focus our attention on the most interesting elements of a scene. In this case, the base of the merry-go-round may not be the most attention-grabbing part of the picture. In addition, we are more likely to perceive objects or changes that don't fit with what we expect to see. Once we've made sense of a scene, we look out for the unusual.

Previous theories have suggested that we make sense of our environment by creating internal representations of the outside world, which are updated as we take in new important details. But according to O'Reagan, demos like this suggest that we may simply rely on external information. Since the outside world is constantly accessible to us, it would be overkill to constantly modify an internal model. In this video, the intermediate changes don't need to be committed to memory.

i didnt see any change until the very end. but if you look at base of the pole which almost looks brownish red you san see something moving. so i was kind of expecting something to happen. but it does just kinda creep up on you. kinda like hey wait a minute! and im supposed to be good with color.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

How Do We Recognize Faces?
How do we recognize a face? Do we pick out “local” features— an eye or a mouth— and extrapolate from there? Or do we take in the “global” configuration—facial structure, distance between the features—at once?
How Do We Recognize Faces?

Now, a group of psychologists— Sébastien Miellet and Philippe G. Schyns at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and Roberto Caldara at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland—have settled the longstanding debate between scientists who hold to the “local” strategy and those who favor the “global” one.

“Face processing does not rely on a rigid system or a unique and mandatory information sampling strategy,” said Miellet. In fact, we use both the local and the global strategies to identify faces.

The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

To collect their data, the researchers developed a method, called iHybrid, that pinpoints what information is used to identify a face. The technological aspects of the experiment were complex. In essence—and necessarily simplified—the researchers created hybrid images of pairs of famous men and manipulated them to create a face that looked, for instance, “like the natural child of Brad Pitt and William Macy,” as Miellet put it.

While an “eye-tracker” located the position of the subject’s gaze, iHybrid smoothly embedded the two faces in order to display one face around that gaze location and the other face in the surrounding area. The participants were asked what they saw. Because the image was a hybrid, they might name one or the other of the men, or neither.

The researchers gleaned a great deal of data, Miellet said. For one, the identity strategy followed from the initial “fixation point.” When people fixated first on the eye or mouth, they identified the face with a local strategy, even if their gaze subsequently moved. If the first fixation was in the center of the face, they were adopting global processing. But the same participant might use a global strategy in one trial and a local one in the next.

What did these data tell the researchers? Said Miellet: “Depending on viewing conditions — the first fixation location, the ambient light, the viewing angle or distance from the face — the system will adapt and do the most with the available information.” Like so much of the ways we see, learn, remember, and express ourselves, the process by which we recognize the people we know “is flexible.”


Richler JJ, Cheung OS, Gauthier I. Holistic Processing Predicts Face Recognition. Psychological Science 2011;22(4):464-71. http://nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~olivia/RiChGa_HP.pdf

The concept of holistic processing is a cornerstone of face-recognition research. In the study reported here, we demonstrated that holistic processing predicts face-recognition abilities on the Cambridge Face Memory Test and on a perceptual face-identification task. Our findings validate a large body of work that relies on the assumption that holistic processing is related to face recognition. These findings also reconcile the study of face recognition with the perceptual-expertise work it inspired; such work links holistic processing of objects with people’s ability to individuate them. Our results differ from those of a recent study showing no link between holistic processing and face recognition. This discrepancy can be attributed to the use in prior research of a popular but flawed measure of holistic processing. Our findings salvage the central role of holistic processing in face recognition and cast doubt on a subset of the face-perception literature that relies on a problematic measure of holistic processing.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Oxytocin Promises Hope in Prader-Willi Syndrome, Research Suggests
Oxytocin promises hope in Prader-Willi syndrome, research suggests

ScienceDaily (June 23, 2011) — Prader-Willi syndrome is a rare genetic disorder which affects one child in 25,000. Children born with this syndrome have a range of complex neurological and developmental problems which continue into adult life. These can manifest as cognitive and behavioral difficulties, weight gain, problems in controlling their temper and attendant difficulties in socialization. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases, demonstrates that the hormone oxytocin is able to positively affect patients by improving trust, mood, and reducing disruptive behavior.

Oxytocin is a key hormone in building social interactions and empathy. It has been shown that taking oxytocin can improve the ability of both healthy and autistic people to read faces and recognize emotion in others. Since Prader-Willi syndrome shares some characteristics with autism, and is also associated with a reduction in the number of oxytocin producing neurons, researchers from France enrolled people at a dedicated centre on a trial testing the use of the hormone.

Patients involved in the trial often stayed at the centre for one month visits where they took part in daily occupational and physical activities. They also received medical care and psychological support if it was needed. During one of their usual visits the patients received a single dose of either oxytocin, or placebo, and their eating and behavior monitored for two days prior to the treatment, and two days after.

Professor Tauber from Centre de Référence du Syndrome de Prader-Willi, France, said, "Two days after administration of oxytocin, we noticed that our patients had increased trust, decreased sadness and showed less disruptive behavior. Despite the small size of our trial, a single dose of oxytocin had a significant, late acting, effect on our patients. This is really encouraging news for the continued management of people with Prader-Willi syndrome.”


Tauber M, Mantoulan C, Copet P, et al. Oxytocin may be useful to increase trust in others and decrease disruptive behaviours in patients with Prader-Willi syndrome: a randomised placebo-controlled trial in 24 patients. Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases 2011;6(1):47. http://www.ojrd.com/content/pdf/1750-1172-6-47.pdf

BACKGROUND: Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a complex neurodevelopmental genetic disorder with hypothalamic dysfunction, early morbid obesity with hyperphagia, and specific psychiatric phenotypes including cognitive and behavioural problems, particularly disruptive behaviours and frequent temper outbursts that preclude socialization. A deficit in oxytocin (OT)-producing neurons of the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus has been reported in these patients.

METHODS: In a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled study, 24 adult patients with PWS received a single intranasal administration of 24 IU of OT or placebo and were tested 45 min later on social skills. Behaviours were carefully monitored and scored using an in-house grid as follows: over the two days before drug administration, on the half-day following administration, and over the subsequent two days. All patients were in a dedicated PWS centre with more than ten years of experience. Patients are regularly admitted to this controlled environment.

RESULTS: Patients with PWS who received a single intranasal administration of OT displayed significantly increased trust in others (P=0.02) and decreased sadness tendencies (P=0.02) with less disruptive behaviour (P=0.03) in the two days following administration than did patients who received placebo. In the half-day following administration, we observed a trend towards less conflict with others (p=0.07) in the OT group compared with the placebo group. Scores in tests assessing social skills were not significantly different between the two groups.

CONCLUSIONS: This study needs to be reproduced and adapted. It nevertheless opens new perspectives for patients with PWS and perhaps other syndromes with behavioural disturbances and obesity.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Researchers say liars can't completely suppress facial expressions
Researchers say liars can't completely suppress facial expressions

"Executing Facial Control During Deception Situations," a new study he co-authored with former graduate student Carolyn M. Hurley, PhD, reports that although liars can reduce facial actions when under scrutiny, they can't suppress them all.

Frank, PhD, a professor of communication at the University at Buffalo, supervised and co-wrote the study with lead author Hurley, now a research scientist at the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.

Published earlier this year in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, the study examined whether subjects could suppress facial actions like eyebrow movements or smiles on command while under scrutiny by a lie catcher.

It turns out subjects could to a degree, but not completely and not always.

The results are derived from frame-by-frame coding of facial movements filmed during an interrogation in which participants, some lying, some telling the truth, were asked to suppress specific parts of facial expressions. Hurley and Frank found that these actions can be reduced, but not eliminated, and that instructions to the subjects to suppress one element of expression resulted in reduction of all facial movement, regardless of their implications for veracity.

Despite these findings, the majority of the 60 study participants reported believing that they had controlled all facial movement and had remained "poker faced" during the interview/interrogation.

"Behavioral countermeasures," says Frank, "are the strategies engaged by liars to deliberately control face or body behavior to fool lie catchers. Until this study, research had not shown whether or not liars could suppress elements of their facial expression as a countermeasure.

"As a security strategy," he says, "there is great significance in observing and interpreting nonverbal behavior during an investigative interview, especially when the interviewee is trying to suppress certain expressions."

Hurley and Frank say prior research in Ironic Process Theory (IPT) has shown that when individuals are required to monitor their thought patterns so as to suppress a thought or image, the process places that thought or image into their monitoring memory, enabling it to intrude more frequently into their regular memory.

Hurley and Frank say this is even more likely to occur when one is telling a lie because, as research has shown, lying raises the cognitive load and reduces the ability to successfully and naturally engage in interaction with others.

The study involved 33 female and 27 male undergraduate subjects who were introduced into a crime scenario in which they were randomly assigned to either take (lie) or not take (tell the truth) a pair of movie tickets from an envelope.

They were then interviewed about the theft of the tickets by an experienced but neutral interrogator blind to the experimental conditions. Participants were told they would be rewarded if they convinced the interrogator of their honesty and punished if not. All denied taking the tickets.

Prior to the interview some subjects were specifically instructed to suppress upper face activity (manifested through eyebrow-raising actions) and lower face activity (manifested through smiling).

"Although these facial movements are not necessarily guaranteed signs of deception," says Frank, "expression suppression -- regardless of its validity as a clue to deception -- is clearly one of the more popular strategies used by liars to fool others. What we didn't know was how well individuals can do this when they are lying or when they are telling the truth.

"Based on the research literature on the nature of facial expressions of emotion, the neuroanatomy of the face, emotional suppression research and IPT research," he says, "we correctly predicted that in interrogations in which deception is a possibility, individuals would be able to significantly reduce their rate and intensity of smiling and brow movements when requested to do so, but would be able to do so to a lesser degree when telling a lie.

"And, since the lower face (and smile in particular) is easier to control than the upper face, we predicted that our subjects would more greatly reduce their rate of smiling, compared to their rate of brow movement, when requested to suppress these actions," he says, "and that turned out to be the case as well. We can reduce facial movements when trying to suppress them but we can't eliminate them completely.

"Whether we are dealing with highly skilled and motivated liars who have practiced their nonverbal expression in high-stakes scenarios, or untrained individuals who learn from a television program about a particular brow or lip movement that is allegedly a telltale sign of deception," Frank says, "the findings of this study have important implications for security settings."


Hurley C, Frank M. Executing Facial Control During Deception Situations. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 2011;35(2):119-31. http://www.buffalo.edu/news/pdf/July11/FrankHurleyLyingStudy.pdf

Behavioral countermeasures are the strategies engaged by liars to deliberately control face or body behavior to fool lie catchers. To date research has not shown whether deceivers can suppress elements of their facial expression as a behavioral countermeasure. This study examined whether participants could suppress facial actions such as eyebrow movements or smiles on command when under scrutiny by a lie catcher. The results derived from micro momentary coding revealed that facial actions can be reduced, but not eliminated, and that instructions to suppress one element of the expression resulted in reduction in all facial movement, regardless of veracity. The resulting implications for security contexts are discussed.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Addictive Personality? You Might be a Leader
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24addicts.html

By DAVID J. LINDEN
Published: July 23, 2011

WHEN we think of the qualities we seek in visionary leaders, we think of intelligence, creativity, wisdom and charisma, but also the drive to succeed, a hunger for innovation, a willingness to challenge established ideas and practices.

But in fact, the psychological profile of a compelling leader — think of tech pioneers like Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Steven P. Jobs — is also that of the compulsive risk-taker, someone with a high degree of novelty-seeking behavior. In short, what we seek in leaders is often the same kind of personality type that is found in addicts, whether they are dependent on gambling, alcohol, sex or drugs.

How can this be? We typically see addicts as weak-willed losers, and chief executives and entrepreneurs are people with discipline and fortitude. To understand this apparent contradiction we need to look under the hood of the brain, and in particular at the functions that relate to pleasure and reward.

As a key motivator, pleasure is central to learning; if we did not find food, water and sex rewarding we would not survive and have children. Pleasure evokes neural signals that converge on a small group of interconnected brain areas called the medial forebrain pleasure circuit — tiny clumps of neurons in which the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a crucial role.

This dopamine-using pleasure circuitry, refined over millenniums of evolution, can also be artificially activated by some, but not all, psychoactive substances that carry a risk for addiction, like cocaine, heroin, nicotine or alcohol. Our brain’s pleasure circuits are also hard-wired to be activated by unpredictable rewards: While a roulette wheel is spinning or horses are on the track, we get a pleasure buzz even if we don’t get a payout in the end. Uncertainty itself can be rewarding — clearly a useful attribute for high-risk, high-reward business ventures.

So why do some people become addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling or sex while others can indulge in a moderate, noncompulsive manner? One hypothesis is that addicts feel those pleasures unusually strongly and are motivated to seek them more intently. It’s reasonable, but wrong. Evidence from animal experiments and human brain scans indicates that the opposite is true: Addicts want their pleasures more but like them less.

We’re now starting to understand the biology behind the blunted pleasure of addicts. From studies comparing identical and fraternal twins, it is estimated that genetic factors account for 40 to 60 percent of the variation in the risk for addiction. But we are only in the early stages of understanding the role of genes in addiction; there is no one “addiction gene,” but it is likely that a large number of genes are involved in this complex trait.

Crucially, genetic variants that suppress dopamine signaling in the pleasure circuit substantially increase pleasure- and novelty-seeking behaviors — their bearers must seek high levels of stimulation to reach the same level of pleasure that others can achieve with more moderate indulgence. Those blunted dopamine receptor variants are associated with substantially increased risk of addiction to a range of substances and behaviors.

Is there a silver lining to the addictive personality? Some of our most revered historical figures were addicts — not only the obvious creative types like Charles Baudelaire (hashish and opium) and Aldous Huxley (alcohol and the nonaddictive hallucinogens mescaline and LSD), but also scientists like Sigmund Freud (cocaine) and warriors and statesmen from Alexander the Great and Winston Churchill (both known to be heavy drinkers) to Otto von Bismarck, the unifier of Germany, who typically drank two bottles of wine with lunch and topped them off with a little morphine in the evening.

Leaders in America rarely admit to addictions in public, but one recent example is Henry T. Nicholas III, a founder of Broadcom, a multibillion-dollar company that makes microchips for cellphones, game consoles, wireless headsets and other electronic devices. Starting with a $10,000 investment, Mr. Nicholas and his partners created a company that now has 9,000 employees and 5,100 patents. Along the way, he struggled with alcohol, cocaine and Ecstasy; he entered a rehab program in 2008. (He also successfully fought off criminal charges related to backdating stock options and drug distribution.)

The risk-taking, novelty-seeking and obsessive personality traits often found in addicts can be harnessed to make them very effective in the workplace. For many leaders, it’s not the case that they succeed in spite of their addiction; rather, the same brain wiring and chemistry that make them addicts also confer on them behavioral traits that serve them well.

So, when searching for your organization’s next leader, look for someone with an attenuated dopamine function: someone who is never satisfied with the status quo, someone who wants the feeling of success more than others — but likes it less.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Social networking sites and our lives
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Technology-and-social-networks.aspx

Questions have been raised about the social impact of widespread use of social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter. Do these technologies isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way? The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project decided to examine social networking sites in a survey that explored people’s overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement.

The findings presented here paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people’s social worlds. Wherever possible, we seek to disentangle whether people’s varying social behaviors and attitudes are related to the different ways they use social networking sites, or to other relevant demographic characteristics, such as age, gender and social class.


Digital Oxytocin: How Trust Keeps Facebook, Twitter Humming
Digital Oxytocin: How Trust Keeps Facebook, Twitter Humming | Fast Company

The most surprising takeaway from the recent Pew Research Center study, "Social Networking Sites and Our Lives," wasn't that 80% of Americans regularly use the Internet or that 60% of web users have a social network account--double the number in 2008, with the vast majority on Facebook (52%) and Twitter (33%). Nor is it that people have gone gaga over smartphones, with one in three Americans owning one. Rather, it's the idea that the Internet, in particular social networks, engender trust, and the more time you spend on them the more trusting you become.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Minority Rules: Scientists [MILITARY - PSYOPS] Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas
Minority rules: Scientists discover tipping point for the spread of ideas

ScienceDaily (July 26, 2011) — Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.

"When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority," said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. "Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame."

As an example, the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt appear to exhibit a similar process, according to Szymanski. "In those countries, dictators who were in power for decades were suddenly overthrown in just a few weeks."

The findings were published in the July 22, 2011, early online edition of the journal Physical Review E in an article titled "Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities."

An important aspect of the finding is that the percent of committed opinion holders required to shift majority opinion does not change significantly regardless of the type of network in which the opinion holders are working. In other words, the percentage of committed opinion holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10 percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in the society.

To reach their conclusion, the scientists developed computer models of various types of social networks. One of the networks had each person connect to every other person in the network. The second model included certain individuals who were connected to a large number of people, making them opinion hubs or leaders. The final model gave every person in the model roughly the same number of connections. The initial state of each of the models was a sea of traditional-view holders. Each of these individuals held a view, but were also, importantly, open minded to other views.

Once the networks were built, the scientists then "sprinkled" in some true believers throughout each of the networks. These people were completely set in their views and unflappable in modifying those beliefs. As those true believers began to converse with those who held the traditional belief system, the tides gradually and then very abruptly began to shift.

"In general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion and are always seeking to try locally to come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in each of our models," said SCNARC Research Associate and corresponding paper author Sameet Sreenivasan. To accomplish this, each of the individuals in the models "talked" to each other about their opinion. If the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the listener's belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief.

"As agents of change start to convince more and more people, the situation begins to change," Sreenivasan said. "People begin to question their own views at first and then completely adopt the new view to spread it even further. If the true believers just influenced their neighbors, that wouldn't change anything within the larger system, as we saw with percentages less than 10."

The research has broad implications for understanding how opinion spreads. "There are clearly situations in which it helps to know how to efficiently spread some opinion or how to suppress a developing opinion," said Associate Professor of Physics and co-author of the paper Gyorgy Korniss. "Some examples might be the need to quickly convince a town to move before a hurricane or spread new information on the prevention of disease in a rural village."

The researchers are now looking for partners within the social sciences and other fields to compare their computational models to historical examples. They are also looking to study how the percentage might change when input into a model where the society is polarized. Instead of simply holding one traditional view, the society would instead hold two opposing viewpoints. An example of this polarization would be Democrat versus Republican.


Xie J, Sreenivasan S, Korniss G, Zhang W, Lim C, Szymanski BK. Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1102/1102.3931v2.pdf

We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value p_c \approx 10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time, T_c, taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion. In particular, for complete graphs we show that when p < p_c, T_c \sim \exp(\alpha(p)N), while for p > p_c, T_c \sim \ln N. We conclude with simulation results for Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graphs and scale-free networks which show qualitatively similar behavior.


The research was funded by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) through SCNARC, part of the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance (NS-CTA), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

The research is part of a much larger body of work taking place under SCNARC at Rensselaer. The center joins researchers from a broad spectrum of fields -- including sociology, physics, computer science, and engineering -- in exploring social cognitive networks. The center studies the fundamentals of network structures and how those structures are altered by technology. The goal of the center is to develop a deeper understanding of networks and a firm scientific basis for the newly arising field of network science. More information on the launch of SCNARC can be found at http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2721&setappvar=page(1)

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Two-brained man

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Fair Play -- A Question of Self-Image? Researchers Explain Conditions Under Which People Are Prepared to Behave Fairly
Fair play -- a question of self-image? Researchers explain conditions under which people are prepared to behave fairly

ScienceDaily (July 27, 2011) — Why do people behave selfishly and accept that their behaviour may have negative consequences for others? Astrid Matthey and Tobias Regner from the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Jena investigated this question in a laboratory experiment. They found that such behaviour often depends on whether information about the consequences for others can be ignored. Based on their findings, the researchers believe that conclusions can be drawn on, for instance, how the marketing of fair trade products could be improved.

The researchers had 90 test subjects divide sums of money between themselves and anonymous co-players in the course of four different rounds of a game. During some of the rounds, the subjects received precise information about how their decisions would affect the payments made to their unknown co-players. In other rounds, the subjects themselves could decide whether they would like to find out about the consequences of their distribution decisions or whether they would prefer to conceal this information. "We found that although there are people who act either selfishly ("convinced pro-self") or fairly ("genuine pro-socials")," explains Tobias Regner, "many individuals move in the grey area between these extremes. They act fairly if the consequences of their action for others are clear to them. However, if they have the opportunity to ignore these consequences, they do just that and act in their own interests."

What is the motivation behind this ignorance? The experimental economists from Jena found a possible explanation for this behaviour in the concept of "cognitive dissonance." According to this concept, people tend to make decisions on the basis of their self-image. If they believe themselves to be "fair" or "generous," for example, they avoid actions that are clearly egoistic in nature, so as to avoid contradicting their own self-image. However, if, as was possible in the experiment described here, they are able to ignore the consequences for other people, they find it easier to maintain a positive self-image, even if they their behaviour is selfish. "If the consequences are clearly visible, many participants decide to act fairly," reports Astrid Matthey: "However, if it is possible to ignore the consequences, it is clearly more difficult to opt for a 'generous' decision, and many change their behaviour and select the egoistic alternative."

Politicians would do well to pay attention to these findings because, in the researchers' opinion, they can be applied directly to the development of political instruments, for example, for the promotion of sustainable consumer behaviour: "We believe that the provision of information is of central importance to the behaviour of the majority whose decisions can vary," says Regner. Therefore, the researchers have the following advice for the marketing of fair trade products: if the information about the conditions, under which coffee or clothing are produced is clearly indicated on the packaging, for example, many people would have difficulty in deciding to purchase an unfairly traded but cheaper product. "Under such conditions, we would expect higher sales for products with the 'fair trade' label," explains Regner's colleague Matthey.


Matthey A., Regner T. Do I Really Want to Know? A Cognitive Dissonance-Based Explanation of Other-Regarding Behavior. Games. 2011; 2(1):114-135. http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/2/1/114/pdf

We investigate to what extent genuine social preferences can explain observed other-regarding behavior. In a dictator game variant subjects can choose whether to learn about the consequences of their choice for the receiver. We find that a majority of subjects showing other-regarding behavior when the payoffs of the receiver are known, choose to ignore these consequences if possible. This behavior is inconsistent with preferences about outcomes. Other-regarding behavior may also be explained by avoiding cognitive dissonance as in Konow (2000). Our experiment’s choice data is in line with this approach. In addition, we successfully relate individual behavior to proxies for cognitive dissonance.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Brain Training Increases Dopamine Release

It is known that training can improve working memory. In a new study inScience, researchers from Karolinska Institutet, Umeå University, Åbo Akademi University, and the University of Turku show for the first time that working-memory training is associated with an increased release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in specific brain regions.

"Working-memory training resulted in increased dopamine release in the caudate, a region located below the neocortex, in which the dopaminergic influx is particularly large", says Lars Bäckman, Professor at Karolinska Institutet, and one of the scientists behind the study. "This observation demonstrates the importance of dopamine for improving working-memory performance."

In the study, 10 young Finnish men were trained in updating working memory for five weeks by means of a letter-memory task. The participants were presented with 7 to 15 letters during 45 minutes three times per week on a screen that was turned off after presentation. The task was to remember the last four letters in the sequence in correct order. (The training programme can be found on-line, see link further down)

Compared to a control group that did not receive any training, the trained group showed a gradual improvement of working-memory performance. Results from a PET scan demonstrated an increased release of dopamine in the caudate after training. In addition, dopamine release was seen during the letter-memory task also before training; this release increased markedly after training.

Further, improvements after training were demonstrated in an untrained task that also requires updating.

"These findings suggest that the training improved working memory generally", says Professor Lars Nyberg at Umeå University.


Try the researchers' working-memory training programme. Use password "prova" RECO - Ume Brain Train .se


Backman L, Nyberg L, Soveri A, et al. Effects of Working-Memory Training on Striatal Dopamine Release. Science 2011;333(6043):718. Effects of Working-Memory Training on Striatal Dopamine Release

Updating of working memory has been associated with striato-frontal brain regions and phasic dopaminergic neurotransmission. We assessed raclopride binding to striatal dopamine (DA) D2 receptors during a letter-updating task and a control condition before and after 5 weeks of updating training. Results showed that updating affected DA activity before training and that training further increased striatal DA release during updating. These findings highlight the pivotal role of transient neural processes associated with D2 receptor activity in working memory.

 

[GirlyMan]

http://www.asam.org/DefinitionofAddiction-LongVersion.html.

 

[ergomaniac]

http://www.asam.org/DefinitionofAddiction-LongVersion.html.

someone told me about this once.

 

[GirlyMan]

someone told me about this once.

Nah, they changed it since you last heard ergo. This is brand new from the American Association of Addiction Medicine. Check it out.

 

[ergomaniac]

someone told me about this once.

this addiction thing you speak of. yes ive heard of it.
it was more tougue in cheek. its really not that dramatic. just this isnt the right place to be like that.
hope this wasnt just for me.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A Word-Pattern Analysis Of The Language Of Psychopathic Killers

Computerized text analysis shows that psychopathic killers make identifiable word choices -- beyond conscious control -- when talking about their crimes. This research could lead to new tools for diagnosis and treatment, and have implications law enforcement and social media. The words of psychopathic murderers match their personalities, which reflect selfishness, detachment from their crimes and emotional flatness.

Researchers analyzed stories told by 14 psychopathic male murderers held in Canadian prisons and compared them with 38 convicted murderers who were not diagnosed as psychopathic. Each subject was asked to describe his crime in detail. Their stories were taped, transcribed, and subjected to computer analysis.

Psychopaths used more conjunctions like "because," "since" or "so that," implying that the crime "had to be done" to obtain a particular goal. They used twice as many words relating to physical needs, such as food, sex or money, while non-psychopaths used more words about social needs, including family, religion and spirituality. Unveiling their predatory nature in their own description, the psychopaths often included details of what they had to eat on the day of their crime.

Psychopaths were more likely to use the past tense, suggesting a detachment from their crimes, say the researchers. They tended to be less fluent in their speech, using more "ums" and "uhs." The exact reason for this is not clear, but the researchers speculate that the psychopath is trying harder to make a positive impression, needing to use more mental effort to frame the story.


Hancock JT, Woodworth MT, Porter S. Hungry like the wolf: A word-pattern analysis of the language of psychopaths. Legal and Criminological Psychology. Hungry like the wolf: A word-pattern analysis of the language of psychopaths - Hancock - 2011 - Legal and Criminological Psychology - Wiley Online Library

Purpose. This study used statistical text analysis to examine the features of crime narratives provided by psychopathic homicide offenders. Psychopathic speech was predicted to reflect an instrumental/predatory world view, unique socioemotional needs, and a poverty of affect.

Methods. Two text analysis tools were used to examine the crime narratives of 14 psychopathic and 38 non-psychopathic homicide offenders. Psychopathy was determined using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). The Wmatrix linguistic analysis tool (Rayson, 2008) was used to examine parts of speech and semantic content while the Dictionary of Affect and Language (DAL) tool (Whissell & Dewson, 1986) was used to examine the emotional characteristics of the narratives.

Results. Psychopaths (relative to their counterparts) included more rational cause-and-effect descriptors (e.g., ‘because’, ‘since’), focused on material needs (food, drink, money), and contained fewer references to social needs (family, religion/spirituality). Psychopaths’ speech contained a higher frequency of disfluencies (‘uh’, ‘um’) indicating that describing such a powerful, ‘emotional’ event to another person was relatively difficult for them. Finally, psychopaths used more past tense and less present tense verbs in their narrative, indicating a greater psychological detachment from the incident, and their language was less emotionally intense and pleasant.

Conclusions. These language differences, presumably beyond conscious control, support the notion that psychopaths operate on a primitive but rational level.

 

[edgan1]

Awesome information about Brain, how over brain work and what is inside of our brain
good to know that, thanks for this info.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Online Social Network Size Is Reflected In Human Brain Structure.

Web-based social network services such as Facebook or MySpace consist primarily of a representation of each user and their social links. The most popular site, Facebook, at the time of writing has over 750 million users worldwide. These services allow individuals to articulate and make visible their friendship networks, and it is apparent that there is considerable variability in the size of such networks. However, the basis for this variability and whether it reflects the size of real-world social networks remains unclear and often controversial in the absence of empirical data.

One possibility is that variability in the size of online social networks has a neural basis. For real-world human social networks, a significant amount of variability is accounted for by genetic factors. The influence of these heritable factors on social networks is presumably mediated through their impact on the brain and cognition. Moreover, it has been suggested that cortical volume limits information processing capacity for the number of social relationships that an individual can monitor simultaneously. Consistent with this, a recent study found that the size and complexity of real-world social networks correlated specifically with the volume of the left and right amygdala. However, that study did not consider online social network size and the relatively small number of participants (n = 58) may have limited power to detect associations between social network size and other brain regions. We therefore hypothesized that the degree to which individuals participate in online social networks might be reflected in the anatomical structure of human brain regions implicated in socio-cognitive behaviours.

It is sometimes anecdotally said that ‘friends’ acquired through online social networking are of a different character or number from those acquired through real-world social networks. This raises a concern that the cognitive functions that support a large network size on Facebook may not necessarily correspond to those for offline, intimate social networks. Social networks for different functions (close friends, work colleagues, etc.) are organized at different scales up to the so-called ‘Dunbar number’ based on the correlation between cortical volume and group size across primate species, but these numbers are typically correlated across individuals. We therefore hypothesized that if the cognitive functions that support a large network size on Facebook correspond to those for offline, intimate social networks, then the number of friends on Facebook should be correlated to the number of friends an individual reports in real-world social networks.

The primary goal of the present study was to identify brain regions associated with an individual's online social network size. Researchers hypothesized that brain regions mediating social cognition and memory were particularly relevant to online social network size. In the case of offline real-world social networks, perspective-taking and memory capacity abilities predict an individual's network size. Thus, we hypothesized that online social network size might be correlated with brain regions implicated in social cognition and social behaviour such as recognizing social cues, mentalizing (i.e. theory-of-mind) and perspective-taking. A large body of evidence indicates that processing of basic social signals such as gaze and body movements of others is mediated by the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). The amygdala is another central structure in social cognition, as amygdala damage impairs the ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. Indeed, an association between social network size and the amygdala has been demonstrated for real-world social networks. However, whether this finding generalizes to online social networks is currently unknown.

In addition to superficial recognition of social signals, deeper understanding of other people's mental states via mentalizing or the mirror circuit would also be important for successful social interactions. Such high-level social cognition is associated with activity in a network of brain regions including the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), medial prefrontal cortex and precuneus. While the precise contribution of each of those regions to social cognition is yet to be established, they are consistently activated in a broad range of tasks embedded in social contexts. Since the ability to understand other people's intention is a key to successful social interactions, the size of online social networks might be reflected in the structure of these specific social brain regions.

In addition to these brain regions linked with social cognition, memory capacity is another important constraint on the size of social network, because maintenance of a large number of social ties requires memory for relationships. Although previous work did not find association between real-world social network size and the hippocampus, memory capacity may become more relevant for online social networks than real-world social network, because the number of friends declared on online social networks is much larger than that of typical real-world social networks. Of particular interest are brain regions in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), which are linked with the encoding and retrieval of face–name pairs.

To test these hypotheses, we collected structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from a large sample of 125 healthy adult volunteers and a further replication sample of 40 volunteers. We aimed to determine whether variability in the structure of specific regions of human cortex was associated with inter-individual variability in the number of social relationships as indexed by Facebook (the Facebook number or FBN). To do this, we used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to compute regional grey matter volume across the whole brain based on T1-weighted anatomical MRI scans. A premise of the VBM approach is that inter-individual differences in a behavioural trait across individuals can be correlated with differences in grey matter volume of specific brain regions. These macroscopic measures of brain anatomy have been successfully used to identify specific brain regions that are associated with individual differences in a broad range of contexts such as perceptual performance, attention control, face recognition skills, introspective ability, proficiency in a second language, personality traits and political orientation. We therefore expected that this VBM approach would reveal brain regions associated with an individual's online social network size.

Taken together, their findings show that the number of social contacts declared publicly on a major web-based social networking site was strongly associated with the structure of focal regions of the human brain. Specifically, they found that variation in the number of friends on Facebook strongly and significantly predicted brain grey matter volume. These findings survived whole-brain correction for multiple comparisons and replicated in an independent sample. Moreover, they found that the grey matter density of the amygdala, which was previously shown to be linked with real-world social network size, was also correlated with online social network size. While their correlation analysis precluded definitive ascription of cognitive functions to the areas that predicted the number of online social contacts, it is nevertheless striking that both areas have been implicated in social aspects of human cognition in rather different contexts.


Kanai R, Bahrami B, Roylance R, Rees G. Online social network size is reflected in human brain structure. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Online social network size is reflected in human brain structure

The increasing ubiquity of web-based social networking services is a striking feature of modern human society. The degree to which individuals participate in these networks varies substantially for reasons that are unclear. Here, we show a biological basis for such variability by demonstrating that quantitative variation in the number of friends an individual declares on a web-based social networking service reliably predicted grey matter density in the right superior temporal sulcus, left middle temporal gyrus and entorhinal cortex. Such regions have been previously implicated in social perception and associative memory, respectively. We further show that variability in the size of such online friendship networks was significantly correlated with the size of more intimate real-world social groups. However, the brain regions we identified were specifically associated with online social network size, whereas the grey matter density of the amygdala was correlated both with online and real-world social network sizes. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that the size of an individual's online social network is closely linked to focal brain structure implicated in social cognition.

 

[samuels]

This is a most interesting case study about political orientation in relation to the brain in people.