Category: Behavior/Psychology Page 21 of 27

Advice in the "Love Market" from Dan Ariely

On February 11, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Business/Economics, Faculty, Lecture

In a simulation in which he doled out five dollars to every audience member, Ariely demonstrated that a small gender inequality leads to an enormous balance of power. One gender would be competing, in this case paying, for a partner of the opposite sex, and thus expending all of their resources supply and demand-style.

By Olivia Zhu

With Valentine’s Day approaching—ripe with the promise of love for some and fraught with the bitter reminder of love unfulfilled for others—Duke professor Dan Ariely shared what he’s learned about the “love market” by analyzing romance from a behavioral economic perspective.

Starting with the premise of assortative mating—the principle that “hot” people date “hot” people, and “not hot” people date others who are “not hot”—Ariely asked how the “not hot” psychologically cope with their “unattractive” partners. His answer: “not hot” people “reframe what is important to them” and focus on non-physical qualities, like humor.

Using regression-based labor analysis, Ariely discovered that the most attractive quality in men was height. In fact, for a 5’ 9” man to be equally attractive to a 5’ 10” man, he would have to make $40,000 more in salary per year. Not to fear—men were equally shallow. The most attractive quality in a woman was BMI, with the optimal being 18.5 (slightly underweight). No amount of money could make up for a woman’s BMI; men didn’t care about a woman’s salary or her graduate degree.

Ariely also discussed the pitfalls of online dating. Online dating often ends in repeated disappointment, he said, not only because of embellished profiles, but because your imagination fills in the gaps of a potential date’s personality with ideal, untrue qualities. Moreover, online dating is inefficient, with an exchange rate of six hours of talking for one coffee date.

To improve your online dating experience, Ariely suggested “going and doing stuff together,” even if in an online environment, and asking provoking questions about past relationships and sexual fantasies rather than sticking with mundane, interview-style dates. He also found that too many online “options” decreased one’s happiness by making one pickier. Perhaps we shouldn’t have so much freedom in our love lives, after all.

Why Cute Babies are a Cognitive Illusion

By sa160@duke.edu

On February 11, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Lecture, Neuroscience

By Nonie Arora

Daniel Dennett, Co-Director Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, spoke last week to a packed room at Duke University’s annual Mind, Brain, and Behavior lecture. He said that The Hard Problem of Consciousness, which describes how we have subjective conscious experiences, rests on a series of straightforward mistakes.

“The Hard Problem is a cognitive illusion,” Dennett said.

Cartesian Theater. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Dennett’s conclusion rests on two tenets: (1) there is no Cartesian theater and (2) there is no second transduction. The Cartesian theater is an image of a place where the show happens; Dennett said it is where the decisions get made, according to some philosophers.

The second transduction is the idea that the nervous system first converts outer stimuli to neural signals and then the brain translates these signals to some other medium of consciousness, as originally suggested by Descartes. Some theorists still believe that there is a second transduction into a physical medium in the brain that has not been identified, but according to Dennett’s book Kinds of Minds, this idea is a myth.

Dennett said that the features in our brain are more similar to DVDs than to cinema films. They are not iconic. If you show a caveman a DVD, what will he think? He’ll think: where are the mini pictures, where is the sound? Anybody who thinks that there is a Hard Problem is making the analogous naive error about consciousness, Dennett explained.

Depiction of consciousness. Credit: New Yorker 1969 Saul Steinberg

We are the “unwitting creators of fiction,” he said. “Babies are not inherently cute. They’re cute because we adore them. Shapes of babies faces stimulate nurturing behavior… This is an evolved adaptation. We misinterpret an inner reaction as an outer cause,” he said.

He believes that we project our innate predispositions into the manifest world. Thus, we have a propensity to think that babies are cute. “We have expectations about our expectations,” he said. “Not only do we feel the urge to reach out and cuddle, we expect to feel that urge. Our satisfaction of that expectation confirms our perception of cuteness of the baby.”

Interested in hearing more from Dennett?

Learn more about the illusion of consciousness or why babies aren’t actually cute.

Learn to Fly a Drone in Three Minutes

By Erin Weeks

On January 29, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Computers/Technology, Engineering, Faculty, Lecture, Visualization

By Erin Weeks

Missy Cummings has accomplished a lot of difficult things in her life — she was one of the Navy’s first female pilots, after all — but being a guest on The Colbert Report, she said, was hard.

Cummings told the story of her journey from Naval lieutenant to media drone expert last week at the Visualization Friday Forum seminar series in a talk (video archived here) titled “Designing a System for Navigating Small Drones in Tight Spaces.”

Missy Cummings joined Duke as an associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science last semester.

Last semester, Cummings moved her renowned Humans and Automation Lab from MIT to Duke University. She’s wasted no time immersing herself in the new university and volunteered for the semester’s first seminar to introduce herself and her lab’s latest work to Duke’s visualization community.

Cummings’ research over recent years has centered on the development of a smartphone interface through which, she said, anyone can learn to pilot a one-pound drone in three minutes. The technology could be a boon to the U.S. Army, which now issues smartphones to its personnel and mostly relies on cumbersome, gas-powered drones.

The lab tested the technology by asking volunteers to maneuver a drone through an obstacle course both in the field — where they learned wind and cold temperatures are not a drone’s friend — and in simulated environments.

One of the things they discovered in both cases was that individuals who performed well in a spatial reasoning test were more likely to complete the obstacle course. Moreover, these performances tended to be gendered, with men scoring higher than women in spatial reasoning. Interestingly, Cummings noted, other studies have shown women tend to perform better piloting drones in long-term, “boring” scenarios with little action.

Cummings is interested in teasing out the reasons for these results, which could have significant implications for the U.S. Army or companies one day interested in hiring drone pilots.

As Stephen Colbert confirmed, you may be able to fly a drone with three minutes’ training, but that doesn’t mean you can fly it well.

Cummings talks to a full house at the Visualization Friday Forum on January 24.

Passion, Determination Drive Liu's Research Forward

By Karl Bates

On January 10, 2014

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Guest Post, Science Communication & Education, Students

Guest post by Madeleine Gonzalez, NC School of Science and Math

Long before she was a scientist, Irene Liu was an animal lover, cutting coupons for food for the cats and dogs that she wished she had, admiring birds, and even subscribing to the famous Ranger Rick magazine. Naturally her interest would stem from this passion, leading to her exciting career in evolutionary biology.

Irene Liu gently handling a captured bird during some fieldwork in a mangrove swamp. (Photo courtesy of Irene Liu)

Today she uses birds to answer questions that are applicable across different systems and organisms. At the University of Maryland, she began with questions like, “Do birds have dialects?” and today, as a graduate student at Duke University, she investigates the extra-pair mating habits of blackbirds.

“We know that birds are famous for infidelity,” she says. ” Within one breeding season you can see mom and dad and baby birds. They look like they are one family, but actually mom and dad are off mating with other individuals and will then raise together these chicks in this nest,” she describes. Irene Liu works to understand the benefits of infidelity in bird populations, exploring how patterns vary on frequency.

Between the fieldwork, the lab work, and the occasional, tedious computational work, Irene Liu has had some extraordinary experiences.

Working around the people with similar drive and interests, she has thrived as a young scientist.

She loves her field work. “Getting out to these isolated places that most people don’t get to see is a real privilege, and seeing nature just happening as if I am not even there.” She plays a fun game of catching and outsmarting the birds as she collects samples and records her observations, which may not always be particularly easy. In fact, certain obstacles have been particularly devastating.

One time while returning from the Bahamas, her summer collections were seized and incinerated at the airport after failing to comply with US regulations and not being informed of the necessary permits beforehand. However, she returned in the following year to collect an even better sample, thoroughly learning a lesson the hard way.

A redwing blackbird that fell into Irene’s clutches sports his new ankle band.

“I have become the obsessive person that will call the government agencies and check,” she says. It has made her the permit expert within the department and inspired a seminar.

For other young or aspiring scientists, Liu advises, “Pick something that makes you want to get out of bed every morning, but being happy does not mean denying that there are going to be challenges and obstacles in the way.”

Even though an event such as her experience in the Bahamas can be utterly discouraging and disappointing, it is the passion that will drive the progress and ambition. It is important to remember that there is a time to worry about the future and there is a time to work, Liu said. The future is overwhelming sometimes with a given task at hand, but it’s important to not lose perspective. Even for basic research, sometimes people demand tangible immediate benefits, but that is not guaranteed.

“Our solutions to the world’s greatest problems will surely come from the most unexpected places. You don’t have linear consequences,” Liu said.

Mady Gonzales interviewed Irene Liu and wrote this post as part of a Science Communication seminar led by NCSSM Dean of Science Amy Sheck.

Fish Need Hugs Too!

By Karl Bates

On December 18, 2013

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Guest Post, Neuroscience

Guest post by Lauren Burianek, Doctoral Candidate in Cell Biology

In humans, massages are used for stress relief and relaxation. Tight wraps called Thundershirts can be used on dogs to reduce anxiety from thunderstorms or separation, and giant rolling brush machines are used in the milk industry to calm and comfort dairy cows. Physical touch can have some beneficial roles, but who knew that fish respond to touch, too?

Researchers at the Duke-NUS Graduate School in Singapore studied the effects of physical sensations on fear behaviors in zebrafish.

The zebrafish Danio rerio, workhorse of the lab, is the sensitive type. (public domain photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Zebrafish become afraid when they smell pheromones released by injured fish, and they respond by freezing in place, darting around quickly, or sinking. Why do the fish respond this way? Researcher Annett Schirmer explains, “species develop a sensitivity to these chemicals throughout the course of evolution such that these chemicals can trigger an automatic response, such as fear.”

In other words, by becoming afraid when a nearby fish is injured, the fish can escape or hide from predators more quickly, leading to an increased chance of survival.

Schirmer said that as a kid, her father would claim that his fish enjoyed being petted. “I never believed him,” she said. Instead of petting the fish, however, the scientists used moving water as a non-social physical touch. They wanted to see if physical touch could reduce fear responses in fish, similar to how physical touch can comfort humans and other animals.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxzl54tUi2U?rel=0]

The zebrafish were exposed to the fear-inducing pheromone and then were either placed in a tank with still water or a tank with a water current for two minutes. The fish exposed to the water current showed fewer fear behaviors and lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, than the fish that were placed in the non-moving water. It seemed that the moving water helped to calm and reduce anxiety in the fish.

Fish have a sense of touch for feeling movement and changes in water pressure that comes from cells along the sides of their body called lateral line cells. When fish with damaged lateral line cells were put through the same study, the fish exposed to the water current did not show as large of a decrease in fear behaviors, suggesting that they really are responding to physical sensations from their sense of touch.

Fish swimming in schools feel movement from nearby fish and the current of the water as they are swimming through it. These sensations may reduce fear responses in a similar manner. Schirmer adds, “Current stirs up water and brings nutrients and oxygen. So I think that in the water, touch is a rich emotional stimulus that is, to some degree, also socially relevant.”

CITATION: Tactile Stimulation Reduces Fear in Fish, Annett Schirmer, Suresh Jesuthasan, and Ajay S. Mathuru. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. Online Nov. 22, 2013. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00167

Pretty pictures show lemurs responding to changing climate

By Karl Bates

On December 13, 2013

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Climate/Global Change, Computers/Technology, Guest Post, Visualization

Guest Post by Sheena Faherty, Biology Graduate Student

Madagascar’s much-adored and fuzzy lemurs might be “sweated out” of habitats by warming environments under global climate change. Or will they?

A team of researchers at the Duke Lemur Center is employing high-tech heat cameras used in fire fighting, sports medicine and cancer diagnostics to take “glowing” rainbow pictures of lemurs and their forest surroundings. The results look similar to a child’s coloring project gone rogue.

A mother and baby Coquerel’s Sifaka at the Lemur Center in thermograph and visible light. (Leslie Digby)

This technology, known as infrared thermography, is a camera that allows researchers to detect surface temperatures of lemurs and their hang-outs in the forest—at different depths and heights—and on varying surfaces such as the ground, leaves, and tree trunks.

Combining these data with records of where an animal prefers to spend time, the researchers can begin to determine what temperatures make lemurs most happy.

Leslie Digby, an associate professor in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, and her students want to see how the lemurs are changing their behavior to warm-up on cool days, and cool-down on warm days without having to shiver or sweat.

This sounds rather like a lizard basking on a rock during a sunny day to warm his cold-blooded body up, but lemurs aren’t cold-blooded. They shouldn’t have to do this.

It turns out that even though lemurs are warm-blooded, they can conserve precious energy by channeling their inner Buddha — using sunning behaviors, just like lizards, to fine-tune core body temperatures.

Digby’s team is trying to understand why some species have seemingly restricted territories, even without obvious geographical barriers like mountain ranges or rivers. They suspect temperature plays a part.

“We know that primate species ranges have been very different in the past, so understanding how flexible these animals are, or [are] not, to temperatures can help us understand these larger scale impacts [of changing climate]”, says Digby.

Figuring out how animals respond to alterations in their environment, like rising temperatures, can help scientists anticipate species’ survival in the face of globally changing climates. And knowing which areas of the forest are preferred by lemurs, could help direct conservation efforts, like reforesting parts that have been cut down, or preserving those areas that have not.

Changing temperatures will undoubtedly have major impacts on lemur home ranges in the future, potentially altering them until the animals are forced into an area outside their thermal limits. By gearing her research toward understanding the thermal tolerances of lemurs, Digby is doing her part to protect the vulnerable lemurs.

A ringtailed lemur striking the classic belly-warming Buddha pose in one of the natural enclosures at Duke Lemur Center. (David Haring)

Lemurs' neck bling tracks siestas, insomnia

By Robin Smith

On November 5, 2013

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Guest Post

Guest post by Robin A. Smith, Duke Lemur Center

The fancy neck charm this lemur is wearing is no fashion accessory. Weighing in at just under an ounce, it’s a battery-powered data logger that measures light exposure and activity levels continuously over many days.

In a study to appear in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Duke researcher Ken Glander and colleagues at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center (LRC) outfitted twenty lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center with the special gadgets — called Daysimeters — to study the animals’ daily ups and downs.

The five species in the study — mongoose lemurs, Coquerel’s sifakas, ringtail lemurs, red-ruffed lemurs and black-and-white lemurs — wore their new jewelry around the clock for a week while they went about their regular routine of lounging, leaping, napping and climbing trees.

Sifaka with a light-and-motion dosimeter looks like Flava Flav

Lemurs in this study are generally more active during the day than at night. But when the researchers downloaded the data, they found that several species also stirred after dark, and all of them took periodic rests during the day — often retreating to a shady spot for a midday siesta.

The results could help researchers understand the sleep disturbances common among people with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, and whether light therapy could help reset their internal clock for a more solid night’s sleep.

For their next experiment, they’ll use a lighting fixture custom-built by the Lighting Research Center to find out how different light-dark cycles — similar to seasonal changes in day length or the waxing and waning of the moon — affect patterns of rest and activity in two groups of ringtail lemurs: one consisting of younger animals that are less than two years old, and another over twenty.

“We’re not saying that lemurs have dementia,” Glander said. “But we think that lemurs can tell us something about how some animals manage to stay healthy despite having segmented sleep.”

CITATION: “Measured daily activity and light exposure levels for five species of lemurs,” Rea, M., et al. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2013.

Duke's First Annual Brain Games

By Sonal Gagrani

On October 14, 2013

In Behavior/Psychology, Science Communication & Education, Students

by Sonal Gagrani

Question: How many miles of myelin-covered nerve fibers exist in the brain of the average 20 year old?

In an effort to bring together students and faculty to celebrate and spread the awareness of neuroscience, the Neuroscience Majors Union, Synapse, and the neuroscience education team put together its first annual Brain Games. Students who had signed up beforehand to compete formed four teams with one faculty mentor per team to collaborate on various neuroscience related games.

Faculty mentors included Dr. Jenni Groh, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dr. Nina Sherwood, Assistant Research Professor in Biology, Dr. Leonard White, Associate Professor in the Duke Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, and Dr. Tobias Egner, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience.

The games consisted of 6 different sections of play. The first was the Left Brain game in which a neuroscience related word or phrase was shown to one member of a team and he or she had to use describe that word with other words so that the team could guess it.

In the second game, called Timing is Everything, teams had to chronologically arrange a given series of events such as discoveries about neurotransmitters and drugs or the order of founding of certain neuroscience/psychology programs at Duke.

photo by Sonal Gagrani

The third game was called the Match game in which students, without their faculty mentors, had to match facts to the correct faculty to whom they belonged. Facts ranged from baby pictures of faculty to which pets they had to which instruments they played. Dr. Groh plays the banjo, Dr. Marty Woldorff juggles flaming torches and Dr. Craig Roberts has written a paper on the management of lower extremity lawn mower injuries in children. So many things you never knew about professors at Duke!

After this came the Right Brain game, similar to the Left Brain game but instead of using words, teams drew pictures of the given neuroscience phrases. The fifth game was the Numerical Cognition Game, which was essentially Price is Right: Neuroscience Version. Given a prompt, the teams had to guess the value of what was shown without going over the true value, like the myelin question. Answer: 100,000 miles!

The end of the Brain Games was a bonus round that allowed teams to bet any amount of points that they wanted. They viewed two images quickly switching back and forth that had a very slight difference between them and had to identify what that change was. This presents a phenomenon known as change blindness where it is very difficult to detect quick or subtle changes between two photos or environments. Surprisingly, all the teams were able to identify the change and all finished with comparable scores.

Shaina Gong, a sophomore neuroscience major and visual arts minor from the winning team said about the experience, “I signed up for this without knowing what I was really going to do. I was really nervous actually, like, what if I didn’t know enough neuro for this? But it was fine and really fun! Anyone interested in neuroscience should definitely try it out!”

Duke Experts Ponder "Brains on Trial"

By Clara Colombatto

On September 13, 2013

In Behavior/Psychology, Faculty, Neuroscience

Guest Post by Clara Colombatto T’15

Neuroscience research is finding its way into the legal system in an increasing number of cases. A panel of four Duke Professors explored the gap between laboratory and courtroom and its consequences on the attribution of guilt and responsibility in a Sept. 11 discussion at the Nasher Museum that was taped for broadcast on PBS-TV the next night.

“Every time we introduce new science into the courtroom, there’s an overconfidence by jurors in the science, as if that’s the objective truth,” said panelist Nita Farahany, Professor of Law, Genome Sciences and Policy, and Philosophy. But when transferring experimental evidence to real-life situations there are many caveats.

The panel discussion taping in the Nasher Museum Auditorium. Host Alan Alda is at right. (Megan Morr, Duke Photography)

Farahany played a significant role in the two-hour series “Brains on Trial,” a PBS special that explores the role and implications of recent advances in neuroscience in criminal justice. The show is hosted by Alan Alda, six-time Golden Globe winner and science journalist, who also moderated Wednesday’s discussion.

In addition to Farahany, the panelists were Ahmad Hariri, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Investigator at the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Scott Huettel, the Jerry G. and Patricia Crawford Hubbard Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Decision Sciences, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, the Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics in the Philosophy Department and the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

The Duke experts said neuroscientific evidence is starting to show the potential to determine, for example, if a witness is lying, if a juror is racially biased, if a brain disease impedes voluntary action, or if executive control regions are not yet developed in a juvenile defendant.

Some discoveries might save lives: Kent Kiehl, a professor of psychology, neuroscience and law at the University of New Mexico who has worked with Sinott-Armstrong, found that lower activity in the anterior cingulate predicts repeat offenses in psychopaths.

Hariri said his work is adding a piece to the puzzle by finding out how gene expression maps onto these brain pathways.

However, Scott Huettel points out that mistakes might arise from inaccurate generalization of function and anatomy that are unique to each individual, or from incorrect interpretation of a pattern of activation.

Hariri also warns about the risks of transferring results from an artificial laboratory setting to a real life situation which is subject to the forces of emotions and intentions.

Philosopher Sinnott-Armstrong raises ethical issues: brain imaging may violate privacy, and threaten our fundamental belief that we are in control of our thoughts, especially when those thoughts might be self-incriminating.

So the transfer of scientific evidence and legal cases is a sophisticated problem. While research advances, as Sinnott-Armstrong notes, “the court has to figure out the right procedure to minimize dangers while still extracting as much information as possible.”

World Suicide Prevention Day sheds light on youth suicide

By Ashley Mooney

On September 10, 2013

In Behavior/Psychology, Field Research, Global Health, Lecture, Medicine

By Ashley Mooney

Although suicide is one of the leading causes of death in youth world wide, prevention research is often undervalued, said Monica Swahn, associate vice president for research at Georgia State University, who visited Duke this week.

In her talk to global health advocates and medical students on Monday, Sept. 9, she presented her data on social factors that contribute to youth suicide attempts in Kamapala, Uganda. Swahn noted that suicide research is often focused on deaths, which most countries generally are good at tracking. Her interest, however, was in suicide ideation—the ideas, thoughts and feelings that precede suicide planning and attempts, since twenty times as many people think about suicide as actually succeed at it.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

“We talk about why are people at risk for suicidal behaviors and suicidal thoughts, and typically we come from a psychological perspective, but there are also biological factors and social-environmental factors,” Swahn said.

Approximately one million people commit suicide every year, and about 20 million attempt suicide. In the United States, suicide is the third leading cause of death for youth ages 10 to 24. Swahn’s study population, however, focused on “slum youth” living in Uganda.

“I still struggle with the term slum youth,” she said. “When we talk about slum youth, it’s one of those difficult conventions of how many street youth are there in the world, well there’s no way to know exactly. Estimates range from 100-300 million worldwide.”

Swahn’s data show that 31 percent of “slum youth” living in Kampala report suicide ideation. Of those who think often of suicide, many also reported either that both of their parents had died or neglected them due to alcohol abuse. Girls were also more likely to report suicide ideation than boys.

For the 23 percent of Ugandan youth who reported actually planning a suicide attempt, the majority expressed that they suffered from parental neglect due to alcohol, sadness and the feeling of expecting to die early.

“Suicide is a very complex problem not unlike other global health problems that we study, in that there are also differences across countries and cultures, but those haven’t been studied consistently,” Swahn said.

Studies of suicide prevention in Uganda will become increasingly important, Swahn said, with the population continuing to expand past the country’s capacity to meet its people’s healthcare needs. Right now, Uganda has a population of approximately 37 million, and Swahn noted that the country is expected to experience a five-fold increase in its population by 2050.

Swahn showed a sign that hangs outside of the clinic where she collected her survey data. (Photo by Ashley Mooney)

Beyond the challenges of a rapidly increasing population, Uganda suffers from the highest level of alcohol consumption per capita in the world, contributing to the neglect due to alcohol that many youth thinking of suicide cited in the surveys.

Even though Swahn has identified some of the correlates to suicide in the slum youth, knowing what the problem is remains only a small part of the battle.

“By the time we do a cross-sectional survey like this, it’s almost too late,” she said. “The question is, how do we broaden the access to care?”