Category: Behavior/Psychology Page 20 of 27

Can Research Help Students Avoid Bad Decisions?

On August 15, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Faculty, Guest Post, Medicine, Students

By Kelly Rae Chi

Of all the freshman arriving at Duke next week — coming from far and wide to take challenging courses, navigate new living arrangements, make and break friendships — who will thrive?

What is it about a person that gives him or her the ability to cope with the stress of college better than somebody else?

Duke researchers are examining the student experience to better understand how and when to prevent substance abuse problems.

That’s what a small crowd of basic researchers and clinicians wondered aloud this week during a Grand Rounds mini-retreat introducing Duke’s new Center On Addiction and Behavior Change (CABC).

In particular, the CABC and affiliates are interested in the mental health issues students bring to campus, what happens when they get here, and what can be done at the institutional level to steer them toward healthful choices.

Last year, trustees of The Duke Endowment approved a $3.4 million, four-year grant to help Duke and three other schools toward this goal. The CABC’s charge is to study prevention, early intervention and treatment of addiction with an eye toward public policy development and community outreach at Duke.

The center’s co-director Timothy Strauman, a professor of psychology and neuroscience, said 30-40% of students enter college having been diagnosed with a mental health issue. Many attack life on campus with a “work hard, play hard” attitude, to their possible detriment, he added.

The question is whether the university can change the student experience to prevent maladaptive behaviors, like binge drinking, that have become all too common on college campuses. Researchers attending the mini-retreat offered a range of suggestions for helping students thrive, from changing or eliminating fraternities, to incorporating resilience themes into student orientation activities, to pairing students with mentors.

“The goals of CABC are not just about research and patient care, it’s also about re-engineering how the university works,” Strauman said. “If we can do that, we will have been a success.”

More broadly, the CABC, administered by the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, aims to better understand addiction and behavior disorders through basic and translational research and to convert that knowledge into prevention, early intervention and treatment. With CABC, Duke is poised to improve the health of the community, said the center’s co-director Edward Levin, a Duke professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

The student resiliency project is just one way forward: The center also hopes to integrate services with employee health, and participate in other forms of local outreach.

To accomplish these goals, researchers from a range of research areas in addiction and behavior are now meeting to brainstorm and share resources. At the mini-retreat, for example, John Looney, M.D., a physician in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, shared his expertise as director of Duke’s Consortium for the Study of the American College Student. He also invited the CABC and other researchers to access the program’s survey database about college students (largest of its kind in the world), which includes data on substance abuse.

Interfaith Groups Build Bridges Praying Together

By Karl Bates

On June 26, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Guest Post, Students

By Eric Ferreri, News & Communications

Organizations are turning to prayer to help bridge differences among employees, according to a new study involving a Duke University graduate student.

The study finds that interfaith group prayer serves as a “bridging cultural practice” within multi-faith groups studied by three researchers including Brad Fulton, a PhD student in Duke’s sociology department.

Interfaith prayer builds bridges if diversity is acknowledged and accepted. (iStock photo)

The study, published this month in the American Sociological Review, consists of data from a national study of multi-faith community organizing groups.

Interfaith group prayers took place in about 75 percent of the diverse gatherings analyzed over two years. Those prayers are considered a “bridging cultural practice,” a way to help people of disparate backgrounds find common ground.

Fulton acknowledged that prayer doesn’t work for all groups or organizations. But bridging practices aren’t just religious in nature. Some could involve food, sports or other activities. And he believes organizations that focus on the similarities of their people but ignore differences aren’t realizing the full benefits of diversity.

“It is risky to simply assume that people from diverse backgrounds will automatically work well together,” he said. “More diversity tends to correspond with more challenges. But organizations tend to be more effective when they engage, rather than avoid, the varied backgrounds represented in their workforce.”

Fulton is one of three co-authors of the paper along with Ruth Braunstein of the University of Connecticut and Richard L. Wood from the University of New Mexico.

Primary funding for the national study was provided by Interfaith Funders, along with secondary grants from the Hearst Foundation, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Religious Research Association, the Louisville Institute, and Duke University.

Duke Researchers Cited for Their Influence

By Karl Bates

On June 13, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Business/Economics, Cardiology, Chemistry, Environment/Sustainability, Faculty, Global Health, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics

We are the champions, my friend.

By Karl Leif Bates

A new compilation of the world’s most-cited scientists just released by Thomson Reuters (our friends from March Madness), shows that 32 Duke researchers are in the top one percent of their fields.

There are 3215 most-cited scientists on the list, so perhaps that makes Duke the one percent of the one percent?

Most-cited means a particular paper has been named frequently in the references by other papers in that field.

And that “is a measure of gross influence that often correlates well with community perceptions of research leaders within a field,” Thomson Reuters says. The database company admits their study methodology does favor senior authors who have had their papers out there longer, but there are quite a few younger Duke researchers in this list too.

From the Medical Center, the tops in citations in clinical medicine are cardiologists Eric Peterson, Robert Califf, Christopher Granger, and Eric Magnus Ohman. Michael Pencina, a biostatistician at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, is also most-cited in clinical medicine.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Nobel laureate, biochemist, and father of the G-protein coupled receptor Robert Lefkowitz made the list in pharmacology and toxicology.

Barton Haynes and David Montefiori of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute are listed in the microbiology category.

Medical School basic scientist Bryan Cullen of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology was cited in microbiology.

In psychiatry/psychology, A. John Rush, the vice dean for clinical research at Duke-NUS School of Medicine in Singapore, made the list, as did Richard Keefe, Joseph McEvoy of psychiatry and Avshalom Caspi, and Terrie Moffitt of Psychology & Neuroscience in Arts & Sciences.

Also from Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Ahmad Hariri and HonaLee Harrington of Psychology & Neuroscience also made the list in psychiatry/psychology. Benjamin Wiley was oft-cited in Chemistry, James Berger and Ingrid Daubechies in mathematics, and plant biologists Philip Benfey, Xinnian Dong and Tai-Ping Sun in the category of plant and animal science.

Sanford School of Public Policy Dean Kelly Brownell is on the list in general social sciences, along with Arts & Sciences sociologist James Moody and nutrition researcher Mary Story of community and family medicine and the Duke Global Health Institute.

Nicholas School of the Environment researchers Robert Jackson and Heather Stapleton were cited the environment/ecology category.

From the Pratt School of Engineering, David R. Smith was cited in the physics category and Jennifer West in materials science.

The economics and business category includes Dan Ariely along with his Fuqua School of Business colleagues Campbell Harvey and Arts & Sciences economist Tim Bollerslev.

The Thomson Reuters analysis is based on their Web of Science database. This is the first time it has been done since 2001, when there were 45 Duke names on the list (including five that appeared again this time), but the methodology has changed somewhat.

UPDATE – There’s now a full PDF report from Thomson Reuters for download – http://sciencewatch.com/sites/sw/files/sw-article/media/worlds-most-influential-scientific-minds-2014.pdf

Seeing may not be perceiving—the neurobiology of perception

By Olivia Zhu

On March 26, 2014

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Lecture

The elephant-nosed electric fish

By Olivia Zhu

Larry Abbott argues that sensation is not perception. In a lecture presented on March 25^th to the Department of Neurobiology at Duke, Dr. Abbott, of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University, presented his model of integrated perception.

Dr. Abbott went into particular depth about how an organism can tell itself apart from its surroundings. Though we may take it for granted, self-identification is extremely important in many instances: for example, when a young, male zebra finch learns how to sing by copying his tutor, he must be able to distinguish his own song from other birds’ songs in order to properly listen to it and refine it.

Dr. Abbott studies self-perception in elephant-nosed electric fish. Electric fish have an organ in their body that sends out strong electric pulses. However, the fish also have a sensory organ to detect electric pulses from potential prey, which are several orders of magnitude lower than their own signals. Their own electric fields should diminish their sensitivity to external electricity; this interference, though, is prevented because their electricity-generating organ sends impulses to the sensory organ to inform it when it is firing. Essentially, the fishes’ neural circuits are tuned to cancel out the input they receive from their own electric pulses.

Ultimately, Dr. Abbott claimed that when you look at your friend, you’re not exactly seeing your friend: your mental image is a product of various mental manipulations of the original sensory input your brain receives. His mathematical, model-based approach attempts to redefine the way in which we view ourselves and our relation to the world.

Jane Austen and Game Theory

By Olivia Zhu

On March 25, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Lecture, Mathematics, Science Communication & Education

Attendees played Regency Era card games involving game theory before the talk

By Olivia Zhu

“It is a great deal better to choose than to be chosen.” –Jane Austen, in Emma.

Jane Austen — novelist, romantic, and social critic — can now add another title to her repertoire: game theorist.

This role has been bestowed upon her by Michael Chwe, a game theorist in the Department of Political Science at UCLA and author of the book Jane Austen, Game Theorist. Chwe claims that Austen acts as a social scientist by setting up a theoretical framework for game theory in her novels. In his talk to a lively crowd well-versed in Austen’s works on March 25^th, Chwe explained Austen’s uncanny emphasis on choice, preference, and strategic thinking.

Chwe’s illustration of Jane’s choices and commensurability analysis in Pride and Prejudice

According to Chwe, Austen does not attribute actions to random variables, but rather to careful consideration of all alternatives. For example, Fanny Price in Mansfield Park chooses to refuse Henry Crawford’s offer of marriage after weighing her options; she does so entirely out of personal preference. Similarly, a major tenet in game theory is that the individual chooses what she wants to do without much consideration past her own wishes. Chwe said that Austen places a criticism on game theory here, when Fanny’s uncle, Sir Thomas, chastises Fanny being selfish instead of marrying Henry for the family’s financial security.

Chwe also introduced the game theory concept commensurability, in which negative factors are literally subtracted from positive factors in a decision to produce a single number of utility. He stated that Austen’s language, including phrases such as “finely checkered” happiness, “two

Chwe’s playful histogram of Elizabeth Bennet’s quantification of emotion.

pleasures, however unlike in kind,” and “on the whole, no cause to repine,” clearly illustrate Austen’s intent to quantify emotions for commensurability.

Finally, Chwe pointed out the bounty of strategic thinking, another element of game theory, present in Austen’s novels. Austen does not portray calculation as unnatural or cold, he says. She mentions the word “scheme” 126 times, “contrive” 54 times, “foresight” 49 times, and “calculate” 41 times. Her strong, female characters often pride themselves on their ability to anticipate others’ actions.

Chwe concluded that though there is no direct evidence that Austen infused game theory into her novels, she clearly explores the concept of choice in her work.

Aphasia: Acceptance, Hope, Purpose

By Sonal Gagrani

On March 11, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Neuroscience, Science Communication & Education

By Sonal Gagrani

Imagine having a head full of things to say, but not being able to articulate them. This is the life of Carl McIntyre.

courtesy of aphasiathemovie.com

There is a three-hour window of opportunity after the initiation of a stroke in which it can be effectively treated. However, when a stroke hit Carl McIntyre, those three hours passed before he could be safely withdrawn from danger. His ability to speak and understand became heavily impaired, a condition known as aphasia. In order to raise awareness of this condition that affects not only him, but almost 40% of the people who suffer a stroke, he starred as himself in a film called Aphasia. Carl McIntyre came himself to speak at Duke for Brain Awareness Week following a screening of his film.

Aphasia is a group of communication disorders that affect the language centers of the brain causing impairments in speech, speech comprehension, reading and writing. It tends to arise with damage of some part of the brain, often due to a stroke, brain tumors, or neurodegenerative diseases.

McIntyre expressed powerfully that, “what happens to one, happens to two.” The aphasia affects not only him but his entire family. Life felt as if it was over, loving was difficult; he felt “trapped inside of his head.” Having a reservoir full of thoughts that he was unable to empty due to this inability to communicate could be eternally frustrating. Aphasia patients often are cognitively intact, but have trouble expressing what they want to say. McIntyre occasionally used a whiteboard to write down words he was struggling to say or stumbled on the first sounds of words.

Carl McIntyre But rather than letting the aphasia control the way that he lived, McIntyre worked hard to restore his language capabilities and spread awareness of the challenges that inflicted individuals must face. Most importantly, McIntyre expressed the importance of keeping hope.

He explained that the first step to having a positive outlook on his condition was to accept the “old Carl was dead.” The next was to keep hope that his life could continue as normal as possible – that the condition would not impair his lifestyle. Last, he expressed the importance of having a sense a purpose by picking up hobbies and not losing all meaning in life. Carl strives to have a strong sense of self despite the adversities he and his family has had to face and inspires others to understand and do just this.

My Brain and Your Brain Speak Different Languages

By Clara Colombatto

On March 5, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Faculty, Lecture, Medicine, Neuroscience, Science Communication & Education

By Clara Colombatto

The fact that “different people speak language differently” is one of the major challenges in uncovering the neural basis of language. Brain structure and function differ highly among individuals, and this is the core of the new discipline of cognitive neurolinguistics. Duke professor Edna Andrews explained the fascinating complexity of language research at the Regulator Bookshop on Tuesday, March 4.

Edna Andrews gives an overview of the new field of cognitive neurolinguistics at the Regulator Bookshop for Brain Awareness Week Credit: Clara Colombatto

Edna Andrews gives an overview of the new field of cognitive neurolinguistics at the Regulator Bookshop for Brain Awareness Week (Photo: Clara Colombatto)

A linguist by training, Edna Andrews is the Nancy & Jeffrey Marcus Distinguished Professor of Slavic & Eurasian Studies, Chair of the Linguistics Program and holds appointments in Cultural Anthropology and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. Over time, Andrews’s research interests led her to neuroscience — so she went back to the classroom, studied as a beginning student with neurobiologist Gillian Einstein and shadowed a team of neurosurgeons at Duke Hospital.

This range of disciplines is fundamental for Andrews’ pioneering work in the field of cognitive neurolinguistics. Observations of brain-damaged patients led to a 19^th century model that held that language centers are mainly in the left hemisphere of the brain. In particular, language was thought to be dependent on grey matter, the part of the brain that contains mostly cell bodies and is responsible for information processing, as opposed to white matter, which contains mainly long-range connection tracts (axons) and is responsible for information communication. Researchers realized this understanding was an oversimplification when surgeons started to notice that cutting white matter tracts alone significantly impaired linguistic abilities. New methods, such as electrical stimulation of the brain during surgeries in awake patients, led to the realization that the whole brain is involved in language.

White matter fiber tracts of a human brain visualized with a Tensor Imaging technique. The U-shaped fibers connect the two hemispheres. The finding that these tracts are essential for language revolutionized the field of neurolinguistics because language was previously thought to be localized to gray matter in the left hemisphere. Credit: Thomas Schultz via Wikimedia Commons

White matter fiber tracts visualized with a tensor imaging technique. Findings that the fibers connecting the two hemispheres are essential for language revolutionized the field of neurolinguistics.
(Photo: Thomas Schultz via Wikimedia Commons)

When theoretical linguists such as Andrews joined the conversation, they merged empirical data with theory to answer questions such as, is language learned or innate? Are there specific structures and localized circuits in the brain responsible for language? And are there critical periods where our brain is particularly sensitive to changes?

The picture is complicated by the fact that “most of the world population is bi or multilingual,” and “one could argue that in fact there are no monolinguals.” In our daily lives, we use different languages at school, at work and at home (Learn more about this hypothesis here). Andrews’ current work addresses these complexities by looking at changes in neural activity as individual speakers acquire Russian as a second or third language. Her latest book “Neuroscience and Multilingualism,” coming out at the end of the year from Cambridge University Press, is an exploration of the neuroscientific modeling of multilingualism.

The lecture was part of Brain Awareness Week, a global campaign to encourage public interest in the progress and benefits of brain research. Not to miss: Michele Diaz on “Language and the Aging Brain” on Thursday, 3/5 at 7:30pm, and Richard Mooney on “Music and the Brain” on Friday, 3/6 at 6 pm at Motorco Music Hall.

Krause Hopes to Improve Sexual Misconduct Reporting Process

By sa160@duke.edu

On March 3, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Students

By Nonie Arora

Carly Krause, graduate student in public policy and business. Credit: Carly Krause

Carly Krause is determined to figure out why some students formally report sexual misconduct while others don’t. Krause is a dual-degree graduate student studying public policy at the Stanford School of Public Policy and the decision sciences at the Fuqua School of Business.

Krause, a California native originally from Los Angeles, received a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley and has been at Duke for three years. At Berkeley, Krause was heavily involved with the women’s community: she was the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) at Berkeley.

When the time came to decide upon a topic for her master’s thesis, Krause decided to reengage with women’s issues and approached the Duke University Women’s Center as a client for her project. From then-director Ada Gregory, Krause learned that the Women’s Center was deeply interested in learning why only some students choose to report sexual misconduct through the formal process. They also wanted to know what factors bring students in to the Women’s Center or keep them from using their services.

Krause began digging deeper into these issues. In the past, these types of questions had only been asked through surveys. Krause knew there was only so much information that could be gleaned from a survey without follow-up questions, and that students generally did not answer the free response questions. Instead of a survey, she chose to do in-depth interviews with about twenty students that she sought out by advertising on campus mailing lists and posting fliers in women’s restrooms. Krause said that her data set of twenty interviews meets the criteria for a solid qualitative study. According to Krause, the sample size also sends a signal to the university that this issue is important to the student body.

Duke University Women’s Center. Credit: Duke Student Affairs

After her research report is completed this year, it will go to the Women’s Center. From there, a distilled set of recommendations will hopefully be brought before the university administrators, Krause explained. Krause hopes that the Women’s Center will be able to make some of the changes that have come up. These will be things that students want but may not be on the Women’s Center radar quite yet, according to Krause. “I really hope that if there are recommendations that they feel are worthwhile, they will have the resources and manpower to implement them,” Krause said.

“On university side, I hope that administrators understand that the current process is re-traumatizing and disincentives students from coming forward to the point where we are only getting the select few that are so upset and traumatized that this is their only resort. I think that the process is really doing a disservice to the students,” Krause said.

Krause emphasized that when the university designs policies for sexual misconduct there are multiple competing tensions, including protecting students, creating an equitable environment for everyone and promoting the idea of a safe campus environment.

Finding Order in Insect and Orc Swarms

By Olivia Zhu

On February 18, 2014

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Physics, Visualization

Ouellette’s model of insect swarming

By Olivia Zhu

Dr. Nicholas Ouellette looks for the organization in disorder.

Ouellette, associate professor in the mechanical engineering department at Yale University, studies collective motion in animal systems. On February 17, he presented his models of swarming of Chironomus riparius, the non-biting midge, as part of Duke’s Physics Colloquium. Ouellette ultimately hopes to pin down fundamental laws of biology through his physics research.

In the lab, Ouellette has found that Chironomus insects swarm in a columnar, teardrop shape in the center of their container. They only live in their flying state for two to three days, during which they mate, lay eggs and die. During this period, swarming affords them protection from predators and the opportunity to mate.

Ouellette and his lab have devised various methods of modeling the insects’ swarming. They found that the insect density remains constant, and that the “scattering,” or collisions of insects, mirrors that of an ideal gas over long periods of time. Interestingly, the graph of individual insect speed follows a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, even though the lab did not track the usual factors that create such a distribution, like temperature.

The most pressing question Ouellette would like to answer is which factors create a swarm—he has determined that close insect-insect repulsion contributes to swarming, but distant insect-insect attraction does not. To pursue this question, Ouellette is testing how many insects it takes to make a swarm.

Wildebeest stampede modeled in The Lion King

Other animals that exhibit collective motion are mackerel, wildebeests and starlings. Some familiar examples of collective motion modeling are visible as the Orcs storm the castle in Lord of the Rings and as the wildebeests charge the canyon in The Lion King.

Inside the Monkey Brain

By Ashley Mooney

On February 12, 2014

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Field Research, Neuroscience

By Ashley Mooney

Both in the lab and on a tropical island, primate behaviors can shed light on social-decision making.

To fully understand the biology of social-decision making, Michael Platt, director of the Duke Institute for Brain Science, conducts lab work at Duke and field research an island off the coast of Puerto Rico called Cayo Santiago. His research focuses on understanding both the physiological and social aspects of decision making.

“Our brains are exquisitely tuned to making [social] decisions and acquiring the information to inform them,” Platt said. “When these processes go awry, as occurs in disorders like autism, schizophrenia or anxiety disorders, the consequences can be devastating.”

Courtesy of Lauren Brent.

Platt’s group uses rhesus macaques as model animals because of their strong behavioral, physiological and neurobiological similarity to humans. But understanding how the monkey brain—and thus the human brain—works requires both laboratory-based biological information and social studies in a natural environment.

Researchers can combine the knowledge they gain from lab and field studies to create a holistic picture of the biological basis of behavior, said Lauren Brent, associate research fellow at the University of Exeter who did her post-doc with Platt at Duke.

Lab studies are best suited for quantitative, repeatable studies in which variables can be precisely controlled, Platt said. On the other hand, field studies emphasize external validity and an animal’s response in its natural conditions, but are not suitable for determining precise measurements of internal processes.

In the lab, Platt’s group studies the neural mechanisms that mediate prosocial and antisocial decisions, Platt said. They can also study the ways in which humans can enhance prosocial decisions using pharmacological or behavioral interventions.

On Cayo, the researchers are exploring the genetic factors that shape individual differences in social behavior and decision-making in free-living monkeys. They use observations, behavioral experiments and blood and fecal samples to study the monkeys non-invasively.

“The project on Cayo and the work that goes on the lab are complementary in the best sense because we can do things on Cayo that we can’t do in the lab,” Brent said. “For example, we have hundreds of monkeys, of known pedigree, interacting with each other in a purely spontaneous and naturalistic fashion. You can’t get that in a lab.”

Lauren Brent conducting behavioral observations on Cayo. Courtesy of Lauren Brent.

Although working with free-ranging monkeys can produce more naturalistic results, Brent noted that there are drawbacks to working in the field.

“Working with monkeys in the field is painstaking,” Brent said. “You need to be physically fit, but moreover it is a mentally demanding thing to do because you need to pay close attention to everything that is going on in the group at all times so that the data are as finely detailed and accurate as possible.”

Brent found that a monkey’s position in its social network is heritable and can impact the survival of its infants. She determined a monkey’s social connections using grooming and spatial proximity, or how long one monkey spends sitting next to other monkeys.

“Regardless of how big your family is, monkeys who are better connected in the grooming network have greater reproductive success,” Brent said. “Together, these results suggest that social interactions have adaptive benefits and are something on which selection has acted.”