Category: Psychology

Above: Professor Barry Van Veen wearing an electrode net that measures brain activity.

Neural circuits that activate when we daydream run in the opposite direction to how we process reality, a new study finds.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Liege in Belgium have tracked the electrical activity in the brains of people either watching a video or imagining watching a video (Dentico et al., 2014).

The findings could lead to new ways of understanding what happens in our brains when we sleep and dream.

The scientists also hope the results will reveal insights into how short-term memory works.

Professor Barry Van Veen, who led the study, said:

“A really important problem in brain research is understanding how different parts of the brain are functionally connected.

What areas are interacting?

What is the direction of communication?

We know that the brain does not function as a set of independent areas, but as a network of specialized areas that collaborate.”

The study used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the electrical activity in different regions of the brain while people were watching the video or imagining it.

When people watched the video, the electrical activity moved from the occipital lobe at the back of the brain, where visual information is processed forwards into the parietal lobe, where higher order processing takes place.

The reverse was seen when people were asked to generate visual imagery.

Professor Barry Van Veen said:

“There seems to be a lot in our brains and animal brains that is directional, that neural signals move in a particular direction, then stop, and start somewhere else.

I think this is really a new theme that had not been explored.”

Image credit: Nick Berard

New analysis of brain waves reveals consciousness in patients who appeared to be vegetative.

Scientist have used a new test on patients in a persistent vegetative state to show some have active brain networks that could support consciousness.

People with severe brain injuries — resulting from, say, car crashes or heart attacks — can appear to be unaware of the world around them, despite looking as though they are awake.

Patients in this state can look around the room, but do not react to anything said to them and none of their movements seem purposeful.

Nevertheless, the new test suggests some of these patients may have enough brain activity to support consciousness.

The researchers also asked some patients to try and imagine playing tennis, while an fMRI scanner was used to try and locate activity in the motor cortex.

In the image above, the middle person is imagining playing tennis, despite being in a persistent vegetative state.

In comparison, the right hand person is a healthy adult and the left-hand person is also in a persistent vegetative state, but showing little brain activity.

Dr Srivas Chennu, the study’s first author, said:

“Understanding how consciousness arises from the interactions between networks of brain regions is an elusive but fascinating scientific question.

But for patients diagnosed as vegetative and minimally conscious, and their families, this is far more than just an academic question — it takes on a very real significance.”

In the study, the brain activity of 32 patients who had been diagnosed as vegetative and minimally conscious was analysed (Chennu et al., 2014).

These patients were compared to a group of healthy adults.

The study used EEG (measuring the electrical activity of the brain) along with complex mathematics to examine networks of brain activity.

While many patients showed little activity, some had well-preserved networks in their brains that were similar to healthy adults.

Dr Tristan Bekinschtein, another of the study’s authors, said:

“Although there are limitations to how predictive our test would be used in isolation, combined with other tests it could help in the clinical assessment of patients.

If a patient’s ‘awareness’ networks are intact, then we know that they are likely to be aware of what is going on around them.

But unfortunately, they also suggest that vegetative patients with severely impaired networks at rest are unlikely to show any signs of consciousness.”

Image credit: Srivas Chennu

What people see, feel and experience, in the minutes after cardiac arrest and before they are brought back to life.

The largest ever study into near-death and out-of-body experiences has found that 40% of people have some ‘awareness’, even after they are considered clinically dead.

Fifteen hospitals in the US, UK and Australia took part in the four-year study.

Over 2,000 people were included in the research, all of whom had suffered cardiac arrest (Parnia et al., 2014).

Of those people, 330 survived and were asked afterwards what they had experienced.

Amongst the survivors, 140 said they had some kind of awareness or experience while they were before they were brought back to life.

One woman reported being aware of the medical staff, and described hearing the medical equipment around her beeping.

Another man recalled leaving his body and watching from a distance as medical staff worked on his body.

While many did not have very specific details about what happened after their hearts stopped, one-fifth reported a feeling of peacefulness.

One-third noticed that time seemed to either speed up or slow down in this period.

Others talked about the sensation of being dragged through water, or of seeing a bright flash.

Around 13% had an out-of-body experience which included a heightening of the senses.

The researchers believe one person showed evidence of conscious awareness three minutes after their heart had stopped beating.

This is hard to explain because typically the brain stops functioning around 20-30 seconds after cardiac arrest.

Dr Sam Parnia, who led the study, said at its inception:

“Contrary to popular perception, death is not a specific moment.

It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning – a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death.

During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present.

There then follows a period of time, which may last from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process.

What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process.”

Image credit: Hasibul Haque Sakib

The benefits were particularly strong for those who were stressed.

Taking group walks in nature is associated with better mental well-being and lower stress and depression, a new large-scale study finds.

The study is one of the first to show that simply walking in nature doesn’t just benefit the body, but also the mind.

Sara Warber, one of the study’s authors, said:

“We hear people say they feel better after a walk or going outside but there haven’t been many studies of this large size to support the conclusion that these behaviors actually improve your mental health and well-being.”

The study evaluated a British program called ‘Walking for Health’ and it involved nearly 2,000 participants (Marselle et al., 2014).

Two matched groups of people were compared: some who took part in the group nature walks, and others who did not.

Over a three-month period, taking part in the group nature walks was associated with less depression, lower perceived stress and higher mood and mental wellbeing.

Those who seemed to see the most benefit were those who had been through a recent stressful life event, such as divorce, bereavement or a serious illness.

Warber continued:

“Walking is an inexpensive, low risk and accessible form of exercise and it turns out that combined with nature and group settings, it may be a very powerful, under-utilized stress buster.

Our findings suggest that something as simple as joining an outdoor walking group may not only improve someone’s daily positive emotions but may also contribute a non-pharmacological approach to serious conditions like depression.”

Walking in nature seems to be one of the keys to getting the most mental benefit; urban environments do not provide the same boost.

Much modern research is starting to pick up on the importance of the natural environment for our mental health.

For example, the Japanese are big fans of walking in the forest to promote their mental health.

The practice is called shinrin-yoku, which literally means ‘forest bathing’.

One study conducted by Japanese researchers has found that the practice is particularly useful for those suffering acute stress (Morita et al., 2006).

Their study of 498 people found that shinrin-yoku reduced hostility and depression as well as increasing people’s liveliness compared to comparable control groups.

• Read on: 10 Remarkable Ways Nature Can Heal Your Mind

Image credit: www.GlynLowe.com

Study finds intriguing link between decision-making and this subtle signal.

People’s decisions — good or bad — can be predicted by how big their pupils are moments before they even make the decision, a new study finds.

The research, published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, examined the size of people’s pupils (the central dark section of the eye) before they were given a decision-making task (Murphy et al., 2014).

Twenty-six participants looked at a cloud of dots and had to decide in which direction they were moving.

This was designed to mimic the types of perceptual decisions we make in everyday life.

They found that the larger the pupil was before the task, the worse the person subsequently performed.

This is because pupil size is a measure of a person’s arousal: the more aroused they are feeling, the wider their pupils are and the worse they perform on the test.

As with many things in life, the ideal level of arousal for most tasks is somewhere in the middle: when people’s arousal levels are low they are bored and when they are too high, they can’t concentrate.

Some people seem to be permanently too aroused: the researchers found that certain people whose pupils were the largest overall were the least consistent in the decisions they made.

Dr. Peter Murphy, who led the research, said:

“We are constantly required to make decisions about the world we live in.

In this study, we show that how precise and reliable a person is in making a straightforward decision about motion can be predicted by simply measuring their pupil size.

This finding suggests that the reliability with which an individual will make an upcoming decision is at least partly determined by pupil-linked ‘arousal’ or alertness, and furthermore, can potentially be deciphered on the fly.”

You may well ask whether we can actually notice these kinds of subtle changes in other people’s pupil size.

Well, studies show we do actually pick up on these sorts of subtle changes and process them unconsciously, like other aspects of body language.

And now you know, you’ll be peering all the more intently at the size of other people’s pupils!

• More on dilated pupils and the messages they are sending.

Image credit: Nick Kenrick

Adolescent behaviour can seem very weird to adults — this basic mental process helps explain why.

The minds of teenagers are much more sensitive to rewards than adults, and this may explain why their behaviour seems so extreme to adults.

The conclusions come from a new study, published in the journal Psychological Science (Roper et al., 2014).

It reveals that teenagers find it hard to adjust their behaviour when situations change.

Dr. Jatin Vaidya, who led the study, said:

“The rewards have a strong, perceptional draw and are more enticing to the teenager.

Even when a behavior is no longer in a teenager’s best interest to continue, they will because the effect of the reward is still there and lasts much longer in adolescents than in adults.”

It’s well-known that, as a group, teenagers generally make poor, impulsive, risky decisions, which most adults immediately know are wrong (of course, there’s no point telling them!).

Psychologists have generally believed that this is down to under-development in the brain’s ‘self-control centres’: the frontal lobes.

The new research, though, suggests that it stems from a more fundamental process: the way rewards are processed in the brain.

In the study, both adolescents and adults carried out a simple computer task which involved spotting targets on the computer screen in return for small monetary rewards.

Hidden in the symbols was a sequence that people learned wholly unconsciously, which enabled them to increase their winnings.

But, when that pattern changed, and participants were told they had a new target, it was the adolescents who couldn’t adapt.

Professor Shaun Vecera, who co-authored the study, explained:

“Even though you’ve told them, ‘You have a new target,’ the adolescents can’t get rid of the association they learned before.

It’s as if that association is much more potent for the adolescent than for the adult.

The fact that the reward is gone doesn’t matter.

They will act as if the reward is still there.”

The researchers think this may explain some common teenage behaviours.

For example, sometimes they continue to make inappropriate jokes in class long after their friends have stopped laughing.

It may even help explain teenage obsessions with texting and video games which can seem out of all proportion to the rewards they are receiving.

Vaidya warned that the disproportionate attention teenagers pay to rewards may make them particularly vulnerable to the allure of modern technology:

 “I’m not saying they shouldn’t be allowed access to technology.

But they need help in regulating their attention so they can develop those impulse-control skills.”

Image credit: chiaralily

Messages sent from India to France, directly from one human brain to another.

An international team of roboticists and neuroscientists have demonstrated brain-to-brain communication between two people over the internet for the first time.

Professor Alvaro Pascual-Leone, of Harvard Medical School, explained the thinking behind the study:

“We wanted to find out if one could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person and injecting brain activity into the second person, and do so across great physical distances by leveraging existing communication pathways.”

“One such pathway is, of course, the internet, so our question became, ‘Could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication between subjects located far away from each other in India and France?'”

The scientists in France and Spain used EEG (electroencephalogram) and TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) technology (Grau et al., 2014).

The EEG allows you to read brain waves, so it can do the transmitting end; while the TMS allows you to ‘inject’ the message in the brain, so it can do the receiving end.

Here’s what the two people communicating with each other looked like:

On the left one person was sitting in India with an EEG headset on, which measured their brain waves.

The messages — which were ‘hola’ and ‘ciao’ — were encoded into binary and sent to the receiver in France.

On the right, TMS was used to stimulate the brain of the receiver with the binary message.

The person receiving the message ‘saw’ a series of flashes at the edge of their peripheral vision: this is the result of the magnetic stimulation of their visual cortex, which is located at the back of the brain.

The sequence of flashes allowed the receiver to decode the message.

Three different people sat under the TMS machine as receivers and successfully received the simple messages with only a 15% error rate.

Previous studies have demonstrated computer-to-brain communication over the internet, but this is the first to demonstrate human-to-human communication in this way.

Pascual-Leone continued:

“By using advanced precision neuro-technologies including wireless EEG and robotized TMS, we were able to directly and noninvasively transmit a thought from one person to another, without them having to speak or write.

This in itself is a remarkable step in human communication, but being able to do so across a distance of thousands of miles is a critically important proof-of-principle for the development of brain-to-brain communications.”

Image credit: Tim Sheerman-Chase & PLoS ONE

New study finds 5 days away from electronic devices has dramatic effects on children.

Children who spend five days away from their smartphones, televisions and other screens were substantially better at reading facial emotions afterwards, a new study has found.

The UCLA study suggests that children’s social skills are hurt by spending less and less time interacting face-to-face (Uhls et al., 2014).

Professor Patricia Greenfield, who co-authored the study, said:

“Many people are looking at the benefits of digital media in education, and not many are looking at the costs.

Decreased sensitivity to emotional cues — losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people — is one of the costs.

The displacement of in-person social interaction by screen interaction seems to be reducing social skills.”

The study tested two groups of sixth-grade students at how well they could judge facial emotions in pictures and videos.

One group then went off to the Pali institute — a nature and science camp near Los Angeles — for five days.

At the camp, the children weren’t allowed to use any electronic devices, while the other group went about their normal, everyday lives.

It was quite a change for those children who attended the Pali Institute as the usual amount of time they spent texting, watching TV and playing video games was 4.5 hours per day — and that was on a typical school day.

After five days at the Institute, the children’s ability to read facial emotions improved tremendously in comparison to those who’d had their electronic devices for the week.

The number of errors they made on the test reduced by around one-third.

Yalda Uhls, who was the study’s lead author, said:

“You can’t learn nonverbal emotional cues from a screen in the way you can learn it from face-to-face communication.

If you’re not practicing face-to-face communication, you could be losing important social skills.”

We are social creatures. We need device-free time.”

Good advice for us all, I’m sure, children and adults alike.

Image credit: horizontal.integration

Where is this crowd looking?

It’s an ability we all use without giving it a second thought.

We can see a crowd of people staring off in another direction and be able to turn around and look almost exactly where they are looking.

Dr. Timothy Sweeny, who studies visual perception, explains it like this:

“Imagine sitting in the stands at a baseball game.

Out of the blue, a dozen people shift their gaze upward, right above your head.

Your reaction to this information — is a foul ball headed your way? — will be different than if just one person looked over your head.”

While it feels perfectly natural to follow a group’s gaze, the almost instant calculation our brains are doing is very complex.

How does it work?

New research, published in the journal Psychological Science, explores how the brain is able to make the calculation so quickly (Sweeny & Whitney, 2014)

To investigate, the researchers had people looking at various computer-generated crowds in which varying numbers of people’s gaze was different.

After seeing the crowd for only one-fifth of a second, people were able to estimate where they were looking with remarkable accuracy.

They also found that the more gazes in the group were pointed in the same direction, the more accurate people were.

This was despite the fact that one-fifth of a second is not long enough to look around the faces individually.

Instead, they think, our brains process the whole crowd as a single entity.

Sweeny, who led the new research explained:

“We see the group as an entity, the same way we see an entire tree without paying attention to the individual leaves.

What our brains are doing is picking up the ‘visual gist’ of the scene using a special process vision scientists call ‘ensemble coding’.

All kinds of other studies have found we have remarkable abilities resulting from ensemble encoding. We can:

• average the emotions of 16 different faces in half a second.
• quickly determine the average size of shapes.
• even guestimate the male to female ratio in a crowd pretty accurately.

All of this likely because of…

“…the importance of group behavior in human experience — perceiving groups is so important that we have, in fact, evolved dedicated brain processes to perceive them.”

Image credit: Espen Sundve

What does a trustworthy face look like?

Trustworthiness, along with dominance, is one of the two most fundamental judgements we make about a face in the instant after we see it for the first time.

It’s so important that our unconscious can processes the trustworthiness of a face in a tiny fraction of a second, even without our conscious mind being aware of seeing the face.

A new study that demonstrates this, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggests our unconscious perception of faces is more powerful than previously thought (Freeman et al., 2014).

Trustworthy faces

Two typical signals of trustworthy faces are prominent cheekbones and higher inner eyebrows, with the reverse being automatically judged untrustworthy.

The researchers used real and artificially generated faces with the requisite features as stimuli in their experiment.

Here are the real and computer-generated faces, with trustworthiness ranging from low to high:

People were shown the faces for only 33 milliseconds: that’s one-third the time it takes for even the fastest blink.

Then, just to make sure the face didn’t reach conscious awareness, they were immediately shown another face for one-third of a second — by comparison, half an ice-age.

This stops the brain consciously processing the first face.

Despite these efforts to make it hard to perceive the faces, brain imaging revealed that the amygdala — a structure important in social judgement of faces — showed activity that suggested it was tracking their relative trustworthiness.

Jonathan Freeman, who led the study, explained the results:

“Our findings suggest that the brain automatically responds to a face’s trustworthiness before it is even consciously perceived.

The results are consistent with an extensive body of research suggesting that we form spontaneous judgments of other people that can be largely outside awareness.

These findings provide evidence that the amygdala’s processing of social cues in the absence of awareness may be more extensive than previously understood.”

Image credits: Venessa Miemis & The Journal of Neuroscience