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Category: Neuroscience

Sports fans are NOT testosterone-crazed couch potatoes

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On December 13, 2011

In Behavior/Psychology, Neuroscience

By Karl Leif Bates

A new study out of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience that compared personality traits and sports-watching habits has found that the Cameron Crazies probably aren’t crazy at all.

competitive couch potatoes

Couch Potato contest in Chicago, 2009. Steve Janowski via Wikimedia Commons

As part of a much larger series of studies that gathered psychological and biophysical measures from more than 500 people, Duke psychologists Gregory Appelbaum and Stephen Mitroff looked through the data to see if sports fans were true to their stereotype as slothful shut-ins.

Running a series of regression analyses on a sub-set of 293 participants, they compared self-reported consumption of sporting events with other traits, including  hormone levels, exercise frequency, extroversion, and autism.

Bottom line: Sports fans are MORE extroverted and active than non-fans. They are no more likely to have attention deficit disorder or to be hyper-testosteroned.

But they still may be prone to buffalo-wing breath.

CITATION – “What is the identity of a sports spectator?” Gregory Appelbaum, L., et al. Personality and Individual Differences (2011). doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.10.048

 

OP Effects on Developing Zebrafish Nervous System

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On November 22, 2011

In Animals, Biology, Neuroscience

Jeannie Chung

Organophosphates were some of the most widely used pesticides before mounting evidence of harm to ecosystems caused the U.S. and Europe to ban them. Unfortunately, OPs are still being used in China, India and other developing countries, causing water pollution that may have far-reaching effects.

Jerry Yen,  a doctoral candidate, presented his talk on OP(organophosphate compound) effects on the Zebrafish’s nervous system as part of the series sponsored by the Integrated Toxicology and Environmental Health Program Seminar.

Yen said Zebrafish are useful for study because they are relatively fast developing, exhibit high fecundity (lots of embryos to work with) and mostly transparent, allowing visualization of the anatomy through early development.

Early exposures to organophosphates can lead to alterations in adult phenotypes, Yen said.  Specifically, he studied the possible effects of OPs in a specific gene, Kcc2, expressed only in the nervous system.

Kcc2 is the gene for a potassium chloride transporter responsible for lowering Cl- neurons in the system. 86% of the zebrafish Kcc2 gene matches with the human gene, so the effects it shows can be related to the effect OP doses will have on humans. At two days development of the Zebrafish, OP exposure causes the spinal cord to lose all of its Kcc2 expression.

Yen said the different variations of the expression of Kcc2 may affect muscle movement. An audience member suggested studying the variations of the speed the Zebrafish swims at depending on the Kcc2 expression.

Here is a short video that was played in the seminar. The embryo was studied under the microscope. Note how specific parts of the spinal cord are very clear despite being under development. Zebrafish egg development

Your brain on memories

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On November 15, 2011

In Behavior/Psychology, Neuroscience, Science Communication & Education, Students, Visualization

By Ashley Yeager

Students map the molecules associated with memory and how they flow through a brain cell. Courtesy of Craig Roberts, Duke.

9/11. JFK’s assassination. A man on the moon.

These words probably evoke a memory of where you were and how you reacted, if you were alive when the events occurred.

The exact molecules and brain processes that form memories and make some memories stronger than others haven’t been worked out yet. But by “walking” through our brain cells, a team of Duke students is taking a more vivid look at how we remember the past.

With Duke computer science faculty, neuroscientist Craig Roberts and his students have created and tested a virtual representation of our brain cells. In this world, students move around a virtual neuron, rearranging and organizing molecules to express their understanding of our memories.

In this 3-D environment of a neuron, students can mock how molecules flow through the brain to make memories. Courtesy of Craig Roberts, Duke.

Working in a shared digital space from individual computers, the students collaborate in both real life and cyberspace to model the flow of molecules from brain cell to brain cell. Computer scientists Julian Lombardi and Mark McCahill designed the neuronal landscape on Open Cobalt, a community-based, open-source web page for developing virtual, 3-D workspaces.

Roberts, the assistant director of education of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, says he trying to harness the “eventuality of the Internet,” where we’ll explore ideas and solve scientific problems on media-rich, multi-dimensional websites.

Roberts says he wanted to teach students about learning and memory. But he also wanted to experiment with whether 2-D or 3-D environments affected how different types of learners participated in class and retained what they were supposed to be studying.

He and undergrad student Daniel Wilson assessed the learning types of the students in the neurobiology class and then gauged their reactions to the 3-D environment compared to the 2-D work done in a collaborative Google document.

A 2-D Google doc mapping molecule movements for making memories. Courtesy of Craig Roberts, Duke.

“We’re finding that active learners perceive greater benefit from the 2-D environment than reflective learners. Visual learners perceive greater benefit than verbal learners from the 3-D environment,” Robert says. He presented the 3-D neuronal environment, his research results and other learning media he has been experimenting with at the 2011 Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington D.C. on Sat. Nov. 12

By developing different environments in which students can learn, teachers may be able to engage all their students, independent of learning style, Roberts says.

He also said he “sees it as icing on the cake” that in a neurobiology course on learning and memory, students are working in a “learner-centric,” non-lecturing environment to expand their understanding of how they remember and recall the past.

Do we judge ourselves by our covers?

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On October 25, 2011

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

By Becca Bayham

After giving a lecture at a major women’s magazine, Dan Ariely was faced with a dilemma — in the shape of a huge Prada duffel bag.

As the behavioral economist walked down the street with the bag (a gift from the magazine), he wondered whether he should display the large Prada logo to passersby or hide it against his side.

He decided to hide the logo, but “I was surprised that I still felt like I was walking around with a Prada bag,” Ariely said. “What if I had Ferrari underwear… would I walk a little faster?”

How do the things we wear affect how we think about ourselves? Ariely explored this question (among others) at a Chautauqua lecture on Oct. 18.

In one of Ariely’s experiments, subjects wore shirts emblazoned with the word “stingy” or “generous.” After wearing the shirts around for awhile, participants completed tasks that evaluated their generosity. Strangely enough, “generous” t-shirt wearers gave more during these tasks than those with the “stingy” shirt on.

The word on a participant’s shirt “kind of penetrated their personality,” Ariely said. Notably, the effect was just as strong when participants wore shirts with the writing on the inside.

“Telling ourselves who we are seems to be a crucial element,” Ariely said.

It’s like giving money to a beggar. Giving money doesn’t instantly make you a better person, but it points out certain qualities in yourself. We learn about ourselves the same way that we learn about other people — by observing our actions.

In another study, women were given designer purses, but some were told that their purses were fake. Then participants played a game where cheating was advantageous.

Everyone started fairly enough, but eventually began to cheat. And once they’d cheated a little bit, they just cheated the rest of the time.

“We call this the ‘what the hell’ effect. Everyone who’s been dieting knows this feeling… I’m not good, so I might as well enjoy,” Ariely said.

Interestingly, women wearing counterfeit goods started cheating a lot earlier. Did having fake bags “penetrate their personality,” just as in the t-shirt experiment?

“What if fashion’s not just about telling other people who we are, but also about telling ourselves who we are?” Ariely said.

Human brain isn't so special, neurobiologist says

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On September 21, 2011

In Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Lecture, Neuroscience

Mark Changizi argues that speech, writing and music evolved from our brain's interactions with nature.Image courtesy of changizi.com.

By Ashley Yeager

Mark Changizi says there’s no “special sauce” in the human brain. Instead, he argues that our way of thinking is just the brain’s ability to recognize and mimic visual and sound patterns found in nature.

Changizi, an evolutionary neurobiologist and director of Human Cognition at 2ai Labs, spoke about his research during Duke’s first neurohumanities research group seminar on Sept. 20. The group is co-organized by the Franklin Humanities Institute and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.

During his talk, Changizi explored with the audience of both scientists and artists his investigations between shapes and sounds, nature and the fundamental elements of speech, music and writing.

He said that our brains didn’t evolve to have language and music instincts. Instead, language and music shaped themselves to be tailored to our brains. Because our brains were cut for nature, language and music mimicked it to transform ape to man.*

Comparing letter structures, with simple opaque, object positions like fallen trees, for example, Changizi explained that there are 36 topological shapes that form the basis for the letters found in 100 different writing systems across the world.

He showed the audience how these different structures could be made by crossing his arms. Most would think that this makes an X, but based on the position of the two objects, the shapes are ultimately two T intersections, he said.

By dropping objects and listening to the thunks and bangs, he explained the origin of sounds that have become words. And, by walking across the room, he pointed out elements in music such as pitch, loudness and melody.

Changizi's latest book explores how speech, music and writing evolved. Credit: changizi.com

“If you have a dog, you know exactly where he is in the house and probably what he is doing, just by listening to his movements,” Changizi said. The same goes for kids banging drawers in the kitchen.

Changizi explores this idea and more of his research in his latest book, Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella 2011).

He said he has drawn a lot of  inspiration from art, adding that artists and those in the humanities are the true experimentalists that must shape the complicated structures to affect human minds.

It’s these experimentalists who really know “what minds like or don’t like,” he said, adding that he turns to their work to explore the “universal regularities” that are being discovered about the mind.

*This passage is adapted from Changizi’s book. To read an excerpt, click here.

Mapping Movement

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On August 30, 2011

In Biomedical Engineering, Computers/Technology, Engineering, Neuroscience

Guest Post By Viviane Callier

The way your brain tells your hands and feet to move is unique to you.  Your brain uses a map to control where your hands are going, and your map wouldn’t work in anyone else’s head.  Understanding how these maps are created in different brains, and how unique they are to individuals, is key to designing next-generation prosthetics.

You have a map in your head that coordinates physical movement. It wouldn't work in any other head, or body.

In contrast to a robot, the brain is not programmed to solve mathematical equations for the forces required to produce a given movement.  Instead, it learns both forward maps, which link a firing pattern of neurons to a specific movement, and inverse maps, which are used to infer the pattern of neuron activation pattern required to produce a desired movement. These maps are built through trial and error, and kept in memory. Due to the randomness involved in trial and error exploration, no two brains build quite the same movement maps.

To study the process by which brains learn these maps,  Tim Hanson, a graduate student in the neurobiology lab of Miguel Nicolelis, has been using electrodes to record activity patterns from individual neurons in the brains of monkeys who are learning to control prosthetic arms.

The team wants to design a general way to connect prosthetics to a person’s individual brain map, which is a challenge because no two brains make the same map.  The commonality between people is not the particular maps, but rather how these maps are learned.  Therefore, future brain-controlled prosthetics need to integrate well with the biological process by which these maps are learned.

By recording the activity of the brain and correlating it with behavior over time as control of the prosthetic arm improves, Hanson can visualize the map being created in the monkey’s brain.

Observing the learning process in real time in a monkey’s brain will further understanding of how we learn, and potentially aid prosthetic design, Hanson says.

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