The Neuroscience of Changing Your Mind | Hacker News Reader

The Neuroscience of Changing Your Mind

scientificamerican.com

190 pointssukhadatkeereo28 comments

Study: Neural Basis of Cognitive Control over Movement Inhibition: Human fMRI and Primate Electrophysiology Evidence

Citation: Xu, Kitty Z.; Anderson, Brian A.; Emeric, Erik E.; Sali, Anthony W.; Stuphorn, Veit; Yantis, Steven; Courtney, Susan M. Elsevier Science Neuron. December 2017.

Link: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.11.010

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.11.010

Summary: Executive control involves the ability to flexibly inhibit or change an action when it is contextually inappropriate. Using the complimentary techniques of human fMRI and monkey electrophysiology in a context-dependent stop signal task, we found a functional double dissociation between the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) and the bi-lateral frontal eye field (FEF). Different regions of rVLPFC were associated with context-based signal meaning versus intention to inhibit a response, while FEF activity corresponded to success or failure of the response inhibition regardless of the stimulus response mapping or the context. These results were validated by electrophysiological recordings in rVLPFC and FEF from one monkey. Inhibition of a planned behavior is therefore likely not governed by a single brain system as had been previously proposed, but instead depends on two distinct neural processes involving different sub-regions of the rVLPFC and their interactions with other motor-related brain regions.

Highlights:

• A context-dependent stop-signal task with human fMRI and primate neurophysiology

• Task design, data types, and analysis methods enable dissociation of system components

• Multiple distinct parts of rVLPFC and interactions with other brain areas required

• Context-based attention, interpretation, monitoring, but not direct response control

Thank you! A bit frustrating that the original article didn't cite the paper

The top sticky bar has class is-sticky, can blocked with uBlock's element blocker with this entry:

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I read the title as "making changes to your mind," such as learning a new skill or breaking a habit.

That's not what it means. The article is about reversing a prior decision, aka "changing your mind."

> "Lead author Kitty Xu, formerly a Johns Hopkins graduate student and now a researcher at the social media site Pinterest"

Well that's depressing.

Think of it this way: at least she found a way to pay down her student loans.

Got a degree, then got a job. That isn't depressing. That is what people do.

What's depressing about that? I know unemployed graduate students. I've taken cabs driven by PhD grads.

You haven't succeeded in making it any less depressing. I didn't take it to mean that the author was at some depressing place. Rather than it's sad in general that people trained to do that kind of research aren't able to keep doing it and advancing science.

I presume (perhaps wrongly) that the parent finds it worrisome that Pinterest is hiring neuroscience researchers with a background of knowing how to change peoples' minds.

On the other hand Kitty Xu is almost certainly a very smart person and Pinterest just likes hiring really smart people.

I presume that the parent finds it worrisome that Johns Hopkins University (prestigious, academic, intelligent, good) can't compete, on employing neuroscience researchers (intelligent, valuable, academic, good), with Pinterest (dumb, corporate, useless, bad).

But it's a mystery for now.

It's not pinterest and Kitty Xu, the trend for advance in neuroscience and understanding of brain mechanisms is to be applied in marketing and advertising to influence and manipulate people's minds.

Basically exploiting knowledge on how our brain works against us to profit a few among the richest instead of trying to improve everything for everyone.

This kind of behaviour is considered a marker of a declining civilization on the verge of collapsing, so yeah it's worth worrying about.

How is that depressing?

- Researcher.

I can imagine a site like Pinterest has quite a lot of fascinating data for a researcher to work with.

With the exact same quote in the clipboard, I came here to make the exact same comment.

It is depressing.

Well I have to say, having been on Pinterest just about a week ago that it’s a refreshingly mellow place a world apart from the burning rubbish fire of most social media

Pinterest is among the website I dislike the most for their antifeatures and usual "social" trickery.

Huh. That says something about autism. I noticed my step-daughter has difficulty shifting out of states or shifting out of pre-planned things.

I know nothing about autism.

One of my parenting strategies for stopping undesired behavior was to "reboot their brain". Versus scolding, punishment, etc. That usually means something physical. When timeouts stopped working on my minions, I escalated to pushups, then sit ups, then jumping jacks, peeking at wind sprints (running back and forth).

It's very hard for a child to continue being naughty when they're pumping iron.

> It's very hard for a child to continue being naughty when they're pumping iron.

What if all of Spartan culture was simply a parenting trick run riot?

"Off the cliff with you"

> "To confirm their findings, the authors then ran the same experiment on a single macaque."

How do you instruct a macaque to stare at black dot?

I imagine you use fixed and then partial reinforcement to train it first, then do the experiment.

Set up an eyetracker and give them juice when they maintain fixation at a dot on a screen.

"Listen up macaque, look at this black dot here."

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