Week Five: Most Outrageous fMRI Study

In 2007, in anticipation of the 2008 presidential, the New York Times ran an article called, "This is Your Brain on Politics." This article discussed the results of an fMRI study that correlated brain activity of a group of swing voters when looking at pictures and videos related to politics to how one felt about the upcoming elections.

This study came to several faulty and preposterous conclusions such as that "voters sense both peril and promise in party brands," because when shown the words, "Democrat," "Republican" and "Independent," their amygdala (which deals with anxiety and disgust) and brain regions associated with the reward system (which is related to desire and the feeling connected) lit up. This is extrapolating a lot from brain regions that are part of very complex systems and have several different functions.

Another strange conclusion was that "Mitt Romney shows potential." They supported this with the observation that when subjects were shown Romney's picture, their amygdala showed a high level of activity, but then when shown the video of him, their amygdala activity went down, indicating that their anxiety towards him died down, perhaps meaning voters will become more comfortable with Romney as they see more of him. This could really just be that the subjects haven't seen much of Romney (remember, this is before the 2008 election, when John McCain was the more prominent Republican candidate), and therefore their brain reacted stronger to the unfamiliar face of Romney, but then had then become habituated by the time they saw the video.

Their are several other just as ridiculous interpretations that this article talks about, I highly encourage you to take a look and laugh, here. I can't believe that such a highly respected newspaper would publish something like this!

Participation in a Psych/Neuro Study - Neurogenetics, Hariri Lab

I participated in the Hariri Lab neurogenetics study (made popular by the flyers around campus bearing the slogan, "DO YOU HAVE A BRAIN?". It was one of the more interesting, comprehensive studies I've participated in, and am excited to hear about discoveries they make.

The first day, Dr. Hariri interviewed me on a wide range of topics to assess personal experience and personality traits - everything from my lifestyle choices to events from my past. I feel like what he learned about me makes him about as knowledgeable about me as one of my closest friends. I just hope that my information is safe!

Look, it's my sagittal slices of my brain!

The second day, Dr. Hariri tested me in a variety of mental tasks including working memory tasks (a particularly frustrating one for me was listening to a stream of numbers and adding the last two numbers I heard - so easy to get confused!), tests of mental math and vocabulary, and even assessment of my pattern recognition skills. I walked out of there feeling pretty dumb, but I didn't get any calls about having a learning disability, so hopefully I'm alright...

The third day, I went in for an MRI scan, where I performed simple number recognition tasks and matching tasks. This lasted for about an hour, and I'm not sure I'd want to do it again - I had to stay extremely still, the MRI machine made lots of loud noise, and I started feeling pretty claustrophobic.

Then before I left, I spit into a sequencing kit for 23andme. So out of all of this, I got a cash payment, an MRI scan of my brain, and a free 23andme account. Overall very worthwhile.

You should consider participating as well! Studies like this need a large database of subjects to come to concrete conclusions to link genetics and behavior/brain characteristics (which are never truly concrete because of things like epigenetics that are contributed by our environment - the nurture side of development). Click here if "you have a brain."

Week Four: Ideal Mind-Reading Machine

Inspired by the TV show Chuck, in which Chuck Bartowski (seen here to the left) has the CIA supercomputer, aka the Intersect, inserted into his brain.

You said it didn't necessarily have to be particularly realistic, right? What I think would be an awesome invention would be some kind of chip that could be inserted into our brains that would work like a smartphone. We could then use our mind to send texts, call people (that'd basically be like immediate mind-reading between two or more people), take notes in class, play games (maybe counterproductive to the previous task...), take photos (instant photographic memory), a library/encyclopedia sort thing where all the knowledge you encounter could be stored and recalled, a diary where all your memories could be stored and recalled, etc. Basically we'd become super-human. As crazy sci-fi as this may seem, I'd like to think that maybe one day in the faraway future, this kind of technology could happen! All I hope is that we wouldn't end up something like this... 

 

Week Three: Experience with someone suffering from a brain disorder

In high school, I used to volunteer at Camp Summit, a camp for children and adults with all kinds of disabilities. This camp provides a "barrier-free outdoors experience" for those who might otherwise not get the chance. The first weekend that I went to volunteer was a retreat for developmentally delayed adults. I'm not going to lie, I was really nervous, because I had never come in contact with someone who was mentally delayed, and was uncomfortable with the thought of interacting with them. But once I got there, it came pretty naturally because I realized just how "normal" most of them were. Easiest way to put it: most of them were physically adult but still mentally children.

This is me with Mickey! She was one of my favorite campers, she actually still FB messages me sometimes to catch up. She's such a sweetheart and is convinced she's going to marry Elvis Presley.

It was definitely surreal having to feed a 60 year old, or make sure that a 40 year old brushed his teeth at night, or talk to a 50 year old about her crush on Elvis Presley... But it helped me overcome an uneasiness that I had with the mentally disabled. At the end of the day, volunteering at this camp changed me for the better - I came out a person so much more grateful for the blessings in my life and empathetic for those not as lucky.

And hey, if you believe in Camp Summit's mission, feel free to find out more here.

Week Two: What do you find confusing about statistics or journal articles?

"Let me count the ways..." I'm actually taking (read: struggling in) Statistics 111 right now, and we discussed Z transformations and Bayes' rule (both of which are mentioned in the neuroimaging reading by Poldrack for next class) among other things in class today. I've never really taken much statistics, so basically everything is kind of confusing to me at the moment.

In related news, in scientific journal articles, I'd say that the hardest part is almost always the statistical analysis to determine significance of data. I hope that the combination of my statistics class and this class will help me understand this better. It also doesn't help that it's usually written very densely in very technical paragraph-form. Which is also the case for most "Materials & Methods" sections, which are very frequently filled with very technical jargon and little fluidity.

Finally, the Baron & Kenny (1986) paper gave me some trouble - I still don't think I quite know the difference between mediators and moderators.

Yay for addressing confusions! All in this together?