Coffee, other stimulant drugs may cause high achievers to slack off: research

(Medical Xpress) -- While stimulants may improve unengaged workers’ performance, a new University of British Columbia study suggests that for others, caffeine and amphetamines can have the opposite effect, causing workers with higher motivation levels to slack off.

The study – published online today by Nature’s Neuropsychopharmacology – explored the impacts of stimulants on “slacker” rats and “worker” rats, and sheds important light on why stimulants might affect people differently, a question that has long been unclear. It also suggests that patients being treated with stimulants for a range of illnesses may benefit from more personalized treatment programs.

“Every day, millions of people use stimulants to wake up, stay alert and increase their productivity – from truckers driving all night to students cramming for exams,” says Jay Hosking, a PhD candidate in UBC’s Dept. of Psychology, who led the study. “These findings suggest that some stimulants may actually have an opposite effect for people who naturally favour the difficult tasks of life that come with greater rewards.”

Hosking says some individuals are more willing to concentrate and exert effort to achieve their goals than others. However, little is known about the brain mechanisms determining how much cognitive effort one will expend in decision-making for accomplishing tasks.

Hosking and study co-author Catharine Winstanley, a professor in UBC’s Dept. of Psychology, found that rats – like humans – show varying levels of willingness to expend high or low degrees of mental effort to obtain food rewards. When presented with stimulants, the “slacker” rats that typically avoided challenges worked significantly harder when given amphetamines, while “worker” rats that typically embraced challenges were less motivated by caffeine or amphetamine.

While more research is needed to understand the brain mechanisms at work, the study suggests that the amount of mental attention people devote to achieving their goals may play a role in determining how stimulants drugs affect them, Hosking says.

Winstanley, a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research scholar, says people with psychiatric illnesses, brain injuries and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may benefit from treatment programs with greater personalization, noting that patients often use stimulants to counter drowsiness and fatigue from their conditions and treatments, with mixed results.

“This study suggests there may be important benefits to taking greater account of baseline cognitive differences among individuals when considering treatment programs,” says Winstanley, who is a member of the Brain Research Centre at UBC and Vancouver Coastal Health.

More information: DOI: 10.1038/ NPP.2012.30

Provided by University of British Columbia

"Coffee, other stimulant drugs may cause high achievers to slack off: research." March 28th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-coffee-drugs-high-slack.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Depression has big impact on stroke, TIA survivors

 

Depression is more prevalent among stroke and transient ischemic attack survivors than in the general population, researchers reported in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke.

While most patients with stroke in the study had only mild disability, and only a fraction of those with TIAs had severe disability, depression rates were similar.

"The similar rates of depression following stroke and TIA could be due to similarities in the rates of other medical conditions or to the direct effects of brain injury on the risk of depression, but more studies are needed," said Nada El Husseini, M.D., M.H.S., an author of the study and a Stroke Fellow in the Department of Medicine, Division of Neurology, at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

Researchers, analyzing 1,450 adults with ischemic stroke (blockage of a blood vessel in the brain) and 397 with TIA, found: 

• Three months after hospitalization, depression affected 17.9 percent of stroke patients and 14.4 percent of TIA patients.
• At 12 months, depression affected 16.4 percent of stroke patients and 12.8 percent of TIA patients.
• Nearly 70 percent of stroke and TIA patients with persistent depression still weren't treated with antidepressant therapy at either the 3 or 12 month intervals.

"Patients need to be open about their symptoms of depression and discuss them with their physicians so that they can work together to improve outcomes," El Husseini said. "It is important for physicians to screen for depression on follow-up after both stroke and TIA."

Researchers defined depression using the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8), which covers a range of depressive symptoms: loss of interest and pleasure in doing things; feelings of sadness, helplessness and hopelessness; insomnia or oversleeping; lack of energy; feelings of worthlessness; inability to concentrate; loss of appetite or overeating; and moving or speaking slowly. Patients who scored 10 or more on that questionnaire were considered depressed.

Patients with stroke, who had persistent depression, tended to be younger, have greater stroke-related disability and couldn't work at three months follow-up.

"Physicians may need to be more vigilant in screening these patients because of their higher risk for long-term and persistent depression," El Husseini said.

The study participants were in the AVAIL (Adherence eValuation After Ischemic Stroke Longitudinal) Study and patients in hospitals participating in the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines™-Stroke in 2006-08.

The median age was 64 for stroke patients and 68 for TIA patients. About 44 percent of the stroke patients and 54 percent of the TIA patients were women. The majority of patients were white.

AVAIL included a geographically national representative group of 106 hospitals.

GWTG-Stroke puts the expertise of the American Stroke Association to work for hospital teams, helping to ensure that the care they provide to stroke patients is aligned with the latest scientific guidelines.

Provided by American Heart Association

"Depression has big impact on stroke, TIA survivors." March 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-depression-big-impact-tia-survivors.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Mind-pops more likely with schizophrenia

(Medical Xpress) -- Almost everyone reports experiencing mind-pops at some time or another, but some experience them more than others according to research conducted by the University of Hertfordshire. In the paper to be published in Psychiatry Research, findings suggest that mind-pop experiences are related to hallucinations in those people suffering from schizophrenia.

Mind-pops are those little thoughts, words, images or tunes that suddenly pop into your mind at unexpected times and are totally unrelated to your current activity. These involuntary ‘mind-pops’ have become a topic of scientific study only recently even though they were described long ago by novelists such as Vladamir Nabokov.

The researchers, Professor Keith Laws, Professor Lia Kvavilashvili and Dr Ia Elua, compared the frequency of mind-pops in thirty-seven people with schizophrenia, thirty-one people with depression and twenty-six mentally healthy individuals. Their study found that all 100% schizophrenia patients reported experiencing mind-pops, compared to 81% of the depressed patients and 86% of the mentally healthy individuals.

In addition, schizophrenia patients experienced mind-pops significantly more frequently than depressed patients and mentally healthy people. Professor Laws added: “Mind-pops were more common both in patients who had experienced hallucinations in the past and in those who were currently experiencing hallucinations.”

Based on the findings of the research, the team has suggested that verbal hallucinations, the chief symptom of schizophrenia, may be related to the mind-pop phenomenon that almost everybody experiences, but just manifests itself in a different way!

The full research papers can be viewed online at Psychiatry Research at http://bit.ly/ACpTcL.

Provided by University of Hertfordshire

"Mind-pops more likely with schizophrenia." March 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-mind-pops-schizophrenia.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Emergency dispatchers suffer from symptoms of PTSD, study reveals

Dispatchers who answer 911 and 999 emergency calls suffer emotional distress which can lead to symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a new study reports. The research, published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, reveals that direct exposure to traumatic events is not necessary to lead to post-trauma disorders.

The research was conducted by Dr Michelle Lilly from Northern Illinois University and researcher Heather Pierce, a former 911 dispatcher.

"Post-Traumatic psychological disorders are usually associated with front line emergency workers, such as police officers, fire fighters or combat veterans," said Dr Lilly. "Usually research considers links between disorders and how much emotional distress is experienced on the scene of a traumatic event. However, this is the first study on emergency dispatchers, who experience the trauma indirectly."

The research analyzed the responses of 171 currently serving emergency dispatchers from 24 US states. The majority of the sample was female and Caucasian, with an average age of 38 and over 11 years of service.

The dispatchers were asked about the types of potentially traumatic calls they handle and the amount of emotional distress they experienced. They were also asked to rate the types of calls which caused the most distress and to remember the worst call they had dealt with during their career.

The most commonly identified worst calls were the unexpected injury or death of a child, 16.4%, followed by suicidal callers, 12.9%, shootings involving officers, 9.9%, and calls involving the unexpected death of an adult, 9.9%.

The results showed that levels of peritraumatic distress, distress experienced during or after an event, reported by dispatchers was high and occurred in reaction to an average of 32% of potentially traumatic calls. A further 3.5% of the sample reported symptoms severe enough to qualify for a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

These results are a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate on defining a traumatic event, which takes place as official guidelines are set to be published in 2013. This research supports a broad definition as it shows dispatchers experience significant levels of emotional distress at work even though they are not physically present during a traumatic event, or even know the victim of a trauma.

"Our research is the first to reveal the extent of emotional distress experienced by emergency dispatchers while on duty," concluded Pierce. "The results show the need to provide these workers with prevention and intervention support as is currently provided for their frontline colleagues. This includes briefings and training in ways to handle emotional distress."

Provided by Wiley

"Emergency dispatchers suffer from symptoms of PTSD, study reveals." March 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-emergency-dispatchers-symptoms-ptsd-reveals.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Rama Navami 2012

“The most fortunate Kausalya looks charming as she sits on the beautiful bedstead holding the child Rama in her lap. Gazing upon His moon-like face again and again, she makes her eyes like a Chakora bird to His form.” (Gitavali, 7.1) subhaga seja sobhita kausilyā rucira rāma-sisu goda liye | bāra-bāra bidhubadana bilokati locana cāru cakora kiye || Rama Navami celebrates the appearance day of Lord Ramachandra, the delight of the Raghu dynasty, who has a moon-like countenance to please the Chakora-like devotees, who never tire of gazing upon His beautiful face, which wears an enchanting smile and gives off a soothing radiance that douses the fire of material suffering. In fact, it is the association with the divine that is the only remedy for all ills, for the root of pain and misery is forgetfulness of that supremely fortunate person, who holds every opulence at the same time and to the fullest degree; hence one of His many names is Bhagavan. In general social etiquette, it is not polite to stare at others. The reason for this should be quite obvious. Would you like it if someone else was looking at you all the time? Perhaps you wouldn’t mind the attention if the sentiment was positive, but after a while, the instinctual reaction would be, “Hey man, quit looking at me! Can I help you with something?” Indeed, the gawking husband has been the painful burden of the devoted wife for ages, as the man can’t help but try to assess the attractiveness of another female when he first sees her. Of course this is very rude behavior towards the wife, for the desire to look at another woman indicates that the man might not be pleased with whom he has for a life partner. One sneaky way to get around the impoliteness of staring is to find situations where the person being looked at either doesn’t know what you are doing or is powerless to stop you. Thankfully for us, the creator made one situation which is favorable for staring and which also doesn’t violate any common standards of decency. The young child, especially the dependent, can be looked at nonstop, especially if they are really new to this world. Their vision can be so enchanting, making you really believe in a higher power, for how else to explain such innocence placed into a tiny bundle of joy? For a mother a long time ago, she couldn’t help but stare at her newborn. To make the situation that much more auspicious, the delight she held in her lap was the honoree of the soon-to-be instituted tradition of Rama Navami. During a period of time in the Treta Yuga, King Dasharatha was at the helm of Raghu’s clan, the dynasty of kings originating with King Ikshvaku and which subsequently had the good fortune of including King Raghu as one of its members. The descendants in that line were thus often referred to as Raghava. A key for rulers in this family was to keep it going. If you have a famous family that is known for its ability to protect the citizens, to give them proper guidance in all matters of life and to keep out the influence of sin and vice, including that which comes from foreign attack, it’s important to keep that line of succession going. This way the citizens won’t have to worry when the king gets old. They can rest assured knowing that he will pass on his good reputation and character to his heir. This was the problem for Dasharatha. He had no sons to whom to pass down the kingdom. After consulting with his royal priests, it was decided that a sacrifice would be held. The queens would eat the remnants of that sacrifice, and from that sanctified food they would become pregnant with child. Sure enough, everything went according to plan, except no one could predict the beauty and grace of the four children. The four sons born to Dasharatha were expansions of Lord Vishnu, the Supreme Personality of Godhead in His opulently adorned, four-handed form. The eldest Rama was Vishnu Himself, and the three younger brothers were partial expansions. Queen Kausalya gave birth to Rama, Kaikeyi to Bharata, and Sumitra to Lakshmana and Shatrughna. The children were a delight for their mothers, and Rama was especially enchanting to everyone, including Dasharatha. There is much attention paid when a new child is born, and since these boys were to be successors in the ancestral line, there was even more celebration when they took birth. Brahmanas were fed, cows were milked, and gifts were distributed quite liberally by the king. The townspeople felt as if the four boys were their own children, so they showed up to the royal palace with so many gifts. They also decorated their homes very nicely, creating auspiciousness all around. Whenever the Supreme Lord personally appears, there is automatically an auspicious condition, but these residents had pure love, so they didn’t take anything for granted. They prayed for the welfare of the four sons, that they would grow up to be brave, strong, pious, and just as dedicated to the welfare of all as Dasharatha. Queen Kausalya had a special benefit, for she got to spend time with Rama alone. In those quiet moments, she got to stare at her young child, and there was nothing He could do about it. As one gets a little older, the smothering attention from the mother can become a bother. The child doesn’t know any better, as they can’t understand at such a young age what type of attachment the mother has formed with them. In the infant years, though, the child can only pleasantly smile in return when the mother constantly stares at them. In the above referenced verse from the Gitavali of Goswami Tulsidas, we see that Dasharatha’s chief queen looked especially charming when seated on her wonderful bedstead. She held the Supreme Lord in her lap, for she earned His company from pious acts performed in previous lives. Can we imagine the happiness she felt? The most beautiful person in the world lay in her lap in a form that required motherly affection. He was in front of her in a special form that best brought out spontaneous, parental affection, loving feelings that were not inhibited in any way. Of course to try to understand Kausalya’s feelings at the time is a little difficult, so the kind poet gives us some help. He says that she made her eyes like those of the Chakora bird, which constantly stares at the moon. The Chakora has a pure love for the moon, for it looks constantly at the bright luminous body in the dark sky and doesn’t ask for anything in return. No other light gives it as much happiness, and when that moon is gone, there is no source of happiness that can replace it. In a similar manner, Queen Kausalya’s only source of pleasure was Rama, and because of this she was considered most fortunate, or subhaga. How can she be described in any other way? Where we get our primary pleasure is what will determine how fortunate or unfortunate we are. The drunkard worships the bottle of whiskey and thus finds only distress amidst illusory and temporary elation. The gambler worships the game and the next roll of the dice, and the sensually stirred person hangs on the next move of their significant other, not realizing that the same type of pleasure is already available to the less intelligent animals. The voracious meat eater takes their pleasure from the flesh of animals that were needlessly killed. Because these sources are not pure, those taking their primary pleasure from them will be in unfortunate circumstances. On the other hand, one who finds pleasure from the person who is the most fortunate, Bhagavan, can in many ways be considered more fortunate than God Himself. Lord Rama has the company of His devotees and His pleasure potency expansions like Sita Devi, but the Chakora-like devotees have the association of both Shri Rama and His associates. As they depend only upon Rama and His every move for their happiness, they are never bereft of the pleasure that is every person’s birthright. On Rama Navami, we celebrate that very fortunate queen, who would love her son for the rest of her life. He would have to leave her company several times when He got older, but never did He leave her heart. She constantly gazed upon His moon-like face, and not at any time was the behavior impolite. On the contrary, the Chakora-like devotees know that devotion is the only auspicious path, and that through following it Rama will never abandon them, either in this life or the next. In Closing: In common circumstances impolite to stare, To look at someone for too long we don’t dare. In one situation that behavior is actually fine, To stare at newborn, they are too young to mind. Shri Rama created this for His loving mother, She stared at Him in her quiet room, for God no bother. So adorable was the Supreme Lord in the small size, That mother like a Chakora bird made her eyes. On Rama Navami the mother and son we celebrate, To Lord and devotee’s pleasure this life we dedicate.

'Impossible' problem solved after non-invasive brain stimulation

(L-R) Professor Allan Snyder and Richard Chi found brain stimulation helped people solve a puzzle.

(Medical Xpress) -- Brain stimulation can markedly improve people's ability to solve highly complex problems, a recent University of Sydney study suggests.

The findings by Professor Allan Snyder and Richard Chi, from the University of Sydney, are published in Neuroscience Letters.

"The results suggest non-invasive brain stimulation could assist people in solving tasks that appear straightforward but are inherently difficult," said Professor Snyder.

Our minds have evolved to solve certain problems effortlessly, yet we struggle to solve others that appear simple but require us to apply an unfamiliar paradigm, to 'think outside the box'.

The famous 'nine dots puzzle'. Can you join them using only four straight lines without taking your pen off the page?

"As an example we have taken the famous nine dots problem, where you are asked to join all the dots with four straight lines without taking the pen off the page," Professor Snyder said.

"Surprisingly, investigations over the last century show that almost no one can do this."

Now the researchers have shown that more than 40 percent of the people they tested were able to solve the nine dots problem after receiving 10 minutes of safe, non-invasive brain stimulation.

Specifically the left anterior temporal lobe of the brain is inhibited while simultaneously the right anterior temporal lobe is excited, employing a technique known as transcranial direct current stimulation.

Using the same procedure the researchers have previously reported success in amplifying insight and memory.

Chi and Snyder suggest that their unique brain stimulation protocol could ultimately enable people to "escape the tricks our minds impose on us," as Professor Snyder describes it, and solve tasks that appear deceptively simple.

Provided by University of Sydney

"'Impossible' problem solved after non-invasive brain stimulation." March 29th, 2012.http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-impossible-problem-non-invasive-brain.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

அதிகம்ஆசைப்பட்டால்

ஒரு ஊரில் ஒரு கிழவரும், கிழவியும் இருந்தனர்... கிழவர் எது செய்தாலும், கிழவிக்கு பிடிக்காது. இருவருக்கும் அடிக்கடி சண்டை வரும். ஒரு நாள் ஆற்றங்கரைக்கு சென்றார் கிழவர். அங்கே காலில் அடிபட்டு, நடக்க முடியாமல் இருந்தது ஒரு குருவி. பரிதாபப்பட்டு அதை வீட்டுக்கு எடுத்து வந்து, ஒரு கூண்டு வாங்கி, அதனுள் வைத்தார் கிழவர். இதை கண்ட கிழவிக்கு கோபம்... "இந்த நொண்டிக் குருவியை, இங்கு எதற்குக் கொண்டு வந்தாய்?' என்று ஆத்திரப்பட்டு, அந்த குருவியை கூண்டிலிருந்து எடுத்து வீசி எறிந்தாள். பறந்து சென்ற குருவி, பழையபடி ஆற்றங்கரை மரத்தின் மேல் உட்கார்ந்து கொண்டது. மறுநாள், ஆற்றங்கரைக்குப் போனார் கிழவர்... அப்போது, "பெரியவரே... நீங்கள் செய்த உதவிக்கு நன்றி. அதோ பாரும்... அங்கே மூன்று பானைகள் மூடி போட்டு வைக்கப்பட்டிருக்கின்றன. அதில், ஒரு பானையை எடுத்துக் கொண்டு, வீட்டுக்குப் போய் திறந்து பாரும்...' என்றது குருவி. கிழவரும், மூன்று பானைகளில் ஒன்றுடன் வீட்டுக்குப் போய் திறந்து பார்த்தார்... ஒரே ஆச்சரியம்... பானை நிறையத் தங்கக் காசுகள் இருந்ததைப் பார்த்து சந்தோஷப்பட்டார். "இனி செலவுக்குக் கஷ்டமில்லை...' என்று எண்ணினார். அப்போது அங்கே வந்தாள் கிழவி... "ஏது, இந்த பானை நிறைய தங்கக் காசு?' என்று கேட்டாள். கிழவரும், தான் ஆற்றங்கரை பக்கம் போனதையும், அந்த நொண்டிக் குருவி, இந்த பானையை காண்பித்ததையும் விவரமாகச் சொன்னார். அதைக் கேட்ட கிழவி, "ஓ... அந்த நொண்டிக் குருவியா! சரி... நானும் போய் அந்த குருவியைப் பார்த்துவிட்டு, இதைவிட பெரிய பானையை கொண்டு வருகிறேன் பார்...' என்று சொல்லி, ஆற்றங்கரைக்குப் போனாள். அங்கே அந்த குருவி இருந்ததைப் பார்த்தாள். கிழவியை பார்த்து, "எங்கே இந்தப் பக்கம் வந்தாய்?' என்று கேட்டது குருவி. "சும்மா தான் உன்னை பார்த்து விட்டுப் போகலாமென்று வந்தேன். உன்னை அனாவசியமாக நான் வீசியெறிந்து விட்டேன். என்னை மன்னித்து விடு. என் புருஷனுக்கு ஒரு பானையை காண்பித்தது போல், எனக்கும் ஒரு பானையை காண்பிக்க வேண்டும்...' என்று வேண்டினாள் கிழவி. குருவியும், "கவலைப்படாதே... அதோ இருக்கும் மூன்று பானைகளில், ஒன்றை எடுத்துக் கொண்டு, வீட்டுக்குப் போய் திறந்து பார்...' என்றது. கிழவியும், மூன்று பானைகளில் பெரிதாக இருந்த ஒரு பானையுடன், அவசர அவசரமாக வீட்டுக்குப் போய் பானையை திறந்தாள். அவ்வளவுதான்... பானையிலிருந்து தேளும், நட்டுவாக்காலியும் குதித்து ஓடியது கண்டு, ஓவென்று அலறி ஓடினாள். அதிக ஆசைப்படக் கூடாது; பொறாமை கொண்டு எதையும் செய்யக்கூடாது. தனக்கு எது கிடைக்குமோ அதைத்தான் அடைய வேண்டும். "அவனுக்குக் கிடைத்ததே... அதே போல் எனக்கும் கிடைக்க வேண்டும்...' என்று நினைக்கக் கூடாது. "எண்ணம் போல்தான் எதுவும் கிடைக்கும்; வீண் ஆசை கூடாது"

Study: Conservatives' trust in science has fallen dramatically since mid-1970s

While trust in science remained stable among people who self-identified as moderates and liberals in the United States between 1974 and 2010, trust in science fell among self-identified conservatives by more than 25 percent during the same period, according to new research from Gordon Gauchat, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research.

"You can see this distrust in science among conservatives reflected in the current Republican primary campaign," said Gauchat, whose study appears in the April issue of the American Sociological Review. "When people want to define themselves as conservatives relative to moderates and liberals, you often hear them raising questions about the validity of global warming and evolution and talking about how 'intellectual elites' and scientists don't necessarily have the whole truth."

Relying on data from the 1974-2010 waves of the nationally representative General Social Survey, the study found that people who self-identified as conservatives began the period with the highest trust in science, relative to self-identified moderates and liberals, and ended the period with the lowest.

In addition to examining how the relationship between political ideology and trust in science changed over almost 40 years, Gauchat also explored how other social and demographic characteristics—including frequency of church attendance—related to trust in science over that same period. Gauchat found that, while trust in science declined between 1974 and 2010 among those who frequently attended church, there was no statistically significant group-specific change in trust in science over that period among any of the other social or demographic factors he examined, including gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

"This study shows that the public trust in science has not declined since the mid-1970s except among self-identified conservatives and among those who frequently attend church," Gauchat said. "It also provides evidence that, in the United States, there is a tension between religion and science in some contexts. This tension is evident in public controversies such as that over the teaching of evolution."

As for why self-identified conservatives were much less likely to trust science in 2010 than they were in the mid-1970s, Gauchat offered several possibilities. One is the conservative movement itself.

"Over the last several decades, there's been an effort among those who define themselves as conservatives to clearly identify what it means to be a conservative," Gauchat said. "For whatever reason, this appears to involve opposing science and universities and what is perceived as the 'liberal culture.' So, self-identified conservatives seem to lump these groups together and rally around the notion that what makes 'us' conservatives is that we don't agree with 'them.'"

Another possibility, according to Gauchat, is the changing role of science in the United States. "In the past, the scientific community was viewed as concerned primarily with macro structural matters such as winning the space race," Gauchat said. "Today, conservatives perceive the scientific community as more focused on regulatory matters such as stopping industry from producing too much carbon dioxide. Conservatives often oppose government regulation, and they increasingly perceive science as on the side of regulation, especially as scientific evidence is used more frequently in the work of government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and in public debates over issues such as climate change."

The study also found that the declining trust in science among conservatives was not attributable to changes among less educated conservatives, but rather to rising distrust among better educated conservatives. "It is a significant finding and the opposite of what many might expect," Gauchat said.

As for the study's implications, Gauchat said it raises important questions about the future role of science in public policy. "In a political climate in which all sides do not share a basic trust in science, scientific evidence no longer is viewed as a politically neutral factor in judging whether a public policy is good or bad," said Gauchat, who is also concerned that the increasingly politicized view of science could turn people away from careers in the field. "I think this would be very detrimental to an advanced economy where you need people with science and engineering backgrounds."

Provided by American Sociological Association

"Study: Conservatives' trust in science has fallen dramatically since mid-1970s." March 29th, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-science-fallen-mid-1970s.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

A sociologist's guide to trust

Coye Cheshire. Credit: Heather Ford

Trust. The word gets bandied about a lot when talking about the Web today. We want people to trust our systems. Companies are supposedly building “trusted computing” and “designing for trust”.

But, as sociologist Coye Cheshire, professor at the School of Information, will tell you, trust is a thing that happens between people not things. When we talk about trust in systems, we’re usually talking about the related concepts of reliability or credibility.

Designing for trustworthiness

Take trustworthiness, for example. Trustworthiness is a characteristic that we infer based on other characteristics. It’s an assessment of a person’s future behavior, theoretically linked to concepts like perceived competence and motivations. When we ask someone to watch our bags at the airport, for example, we look around and base our decision to trust someone on perceived competence (do they look like they could apprehend someone if someone tried to steal something?) and motivation (do they look like they need my bag or the things inside it?)

Although we can’t really design for trust, we can design symbols to signal competence or motivation by using things like trust badges or seals that signal what Cheshire calls “trust-warranting” characteristics. We can also expose through design the “symptoms” of trust — by-products of actions that are associated with trust, such as high customer satisfaction. But by designing trust seals or exposing customer reviews, we’re not actually designing trust into a system; we’re just helping people make decisions about who might behave in their interest in the future.

Reputation: implicit and explicit

Knowing who to trust can be helped along by reputation cues — something that has become increasingly popular as a way to gauge competence on the Web today. There are two ways to build for reputation: implicit mechanisms, where we expose different variables relating to a person’s contribution — for example “number of edits” — versus explicit mechanisms where we ask people to rate others based on their experience working with them.

Implicit reputation design is challenging, says Cheshire.

“It means that we’re guessing ‘likely associates’ of particular behaviors or outcomes. For example, in online Q/A forums, we know that showing one’s tenure on the site (“member for 5 years”) and/or number of contributions (“4353 posts”) can imply lots of things. But out of context this could be either a 5-year spammer or a 5-year expert who is fairly active.

Explicit reputation systems are often seen as a solution to this challenge, since it means that real people are filling in missing context by giving an up/down rating on the person or content. But this in turn creates a collective action challenge, since you need people to take the time and effort to do the ratings — which is why we often want to find a way to use the earlier ‘implicit’ information in the first place!”

Cheshire believes that this problem of finding consistent, reliable correlates of trustworthiness from implicit information really depends on the context of a particular online environment. And this is at the heart of Cheshire’s work: discovering how people assess another person’s future behaviour in different online environments.

Do they rate competence higher than motivation, for example? In an experiment, Cheshire and his colleagues asked participants to choose which goods and services they would buy when faced with a series of differently worded advertisements. To improve the accuracy of the results, they said that participants could invest $5 of the money they were getting to participate in the survey ($10) in choosing the most trustworthy seller.

They found that competence matters more when buying a used good (such as a camera) and that motivation matters for buying services (such as website design) where a longer-term relationship is required.

Designing for interpersonal trust

When it comes to designing for interpersonal trust, three key features are essential, says Cheshire:

• Repeated interactions between parties over time 
• Acts of risk-taking 
• The presence of uncertainty

In a study to work out different levels of trust between individuals based on levels of uncertainty, Cheshire and his colleagues found that as uncertainty goes up, the potential for trust to develop does too. The paradox of building assurance structures such as those that guarantee risk-free interactions on eBay, for example, is that they decrease uncertainty and thus the potential for interpersonal trust. In other words, designing for “trust” can actually decrease the potential for trust!

Betrayal (when someone doesn’t follow through on their promises) is something often attributed to systems. But again, these are actually issues of credibility, reliability, and security; systems do not betray us, says Cheshire, but people who build, maintain, and support them might. When designing crowdsourced platforms like Ushahidi or Wikipedia, this is an important distinction. We need to design the system to be secure and to enable participants to make good decisions about who to trust, but we can’t magically ensure that people will trust one another through that system.

Cross-cultural differences in trust and trusting

Cheshire also found that cross-cultural differences matter when it comes to trust. He played the same trust game in the US and Japan, allowing players to choose how much to trust to their partner, as well as whether to return anything entrusted to them; individuals were partnered with either the same fixed-partner or a new, random partner on every trial. They found that Americans took more risks and trusted their partners more than did the Japanese — even in the random-partner exchanges. They also found that the opportunity to choose the level of risk helped improve the level of mutual cooperation for both American and Japanese participants.

In new research just completed in Romania and the US, Cheshire found that regional and societal differences do exist and can be rather large, but that the experience of building trust can essentially erase the effect of region or disposition to trust. Developing systems that enable trust to be built among people is really essential to his work. In the end, Cheshire is driven by the need to understand how trust can be repaired.

“My interest in trust began over ten years ago when it became very clear to me that assessing trustworthiness and building trust with other human beings are fundamental aspects of human social interaction, community-building, and collective action in all offline and online settings. Going forward, my work is now focused on detailing what happens to interpersonal trust when individuals move from more secure, reliable, and certain interactions to environments that lack such assurances. Ultimately, I want to gather empirical evidence from many different sources to detail how individuals build trust through experience in uncertain environments and, perhaps most of all, repair trust when and if it fails.”

Provided by University of California - Berkeley

"A sociologist's guide to trust." March 29th, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-sociologist.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Brain wiring a no-brainer? Scans reveal astonishingly simple 3D grid structure

Curvature in this DSI image of a whole human brain turns out to be folding of 2-D sheets of parallel neuronal fibers that cross paths at right angles. This picture came from the new Connectom scanner. Credit: Van Wedeen, M.D., Martinos Center and Dept. of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University Medical School

The brain appears to be wired more like the checkerboard streets of New York City than the curvy lanes of Columbia, Md., suggests a new brain imaging study. The most detailed images, to date, reveal a pervasive 3D grid structure with no diagonals, say scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health.

"Far from being just a tangle of wires, the brain's connections turn out to be more like ribbon cables -- folding 2D sheets of parallel neuronal fibers that cross paths at right angles, like the warp and weft of a fabric," explained Van Wedeen, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and the Harvard Medical School. "This grid structure is continuous and consistent at all scales and across humans and other primate species."

Wedeen and colleagues report new evidence of the brain's elegant simplicity March 30, 2012 in the journal Science. The study was funded, in part, by the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Human Connectome Project of the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, and other NIH components.

"Getting a high resolution wiring diagram of our brains is a landmark in human neuroanatomy," said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. "This new technology may reveal individual differences in brain connections that could aid diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders."

Knowledge gained from the study helped shape design specifications for the most powerful brain scanner of its kind, which was installed at MGH's Martinos Center last fall. The new Connectom diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner can visualize the networks of crisscrossing fibers – by which different parts of the brain communicate with each other – in 10-fold higher detail than conventional scanners, said Wedeen.

This detail from a DSI scan shows a fabric-like 3-D grid structure of connections in monkey brain. Credit: Van Wedeen, M.D., Martinos Center and Dept. of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University Medical School

"This one-of-a-kind instrument is bringing into sharper focus an astonishingly simple architecture that makes sense in light of how the brain grows," he explained. "The wiring of the mature brain appears to mirror three primal pathways established in embryonic development."

As the brain gets wired up in early development, its connections form along perpendicular pathways, running horizontally, vertically and transversely. This grid structure appears to guide connectivity like lane markers on a highway, which would limit options for growing nerve fibers to change direction during development. If they can turn in just four directions: left, right, up or down, this may enforce a more efficient, orderly way for the fibers to find their proper connections – and for the structure to adapt through evolution, suggest the researchers.

Obtaining detailed images of these pathways in human brain has long eluded researchers, in part, because the human cortex, or outer mantle, develops many folds, nooks and crannies that obscure the structure of its connections. Although studies using chemical tracers in neural tracts of animal brains yielded hints of a grid structure, such invasive techniques could not be used in humans.

Wedeen's team is part of a Human Connectome Project Harvard/MGH-UCLA consortium that is optimizing MRI technology to more accurately to image the pathways. In diffusion imaging, the scanner detects movement of water inside the fibers to reveal their locations. A high resolution technique called diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) makes it possible to see the different orientations of multiple fibers that cross at a single location – the key to seeing the grid structure.

In the current study, researchers performed DSI scans on postmortem brains of four types of monkeys – rhesus, owl, marmoset and galago – and in living humans. They saw the same 2D sheet structure containing parallel fibers crossing paths everywhere in all of the brains – even in local path neighborhoods. The grid structure of cortex pathways was continuous with those of lower brain structures, including memory and emotion centers. The more complex human and rhesus brains showed more differentiation between pathways than simpler species.

Among immediate implications, the findings suggest a simplifying framework for understanding the brain's structure, pathways and connectivity.

The technology used in the current study was able to see only about 25 percent of the grid structure in human brain. It was only apparent in large central circuitry, not in outlying areas where the folding obscures it. But lessons learned were incorporated into the design of the newly installed Connectom scanner, which can see 75 percent of it, according to Wedeen.

Much as a telescope with a larger mirror or lens provides a clearer image, the new scanner markedly boosts resolving power by magnifying magnetic fields with magnetically stronger copper coils, called gradients. Gradients make it possible to vary the magnetic field and get a precise fix on locations in the brain. The Connectom scanner's gradients are seven times stronger than those of conventional scanners. Scans that would have previously taken hours – and, thus would have been impractical with living human subjects – can now be performed in minutes.

"Before, we had just driving directions. Now, we have a map showing how all the highways and byways are interconnected," said Wedeen. "Brain wiring is not like the wiring in your basement, where it just needs to connect the right endpoints. Rather, the grid is the language of the brain and wiring and re-wiring work by modifying it."

More information: Wedeen VJ, Rosene DL, Ruopeng W, Guangping D, Mortazavi F, Hagmann P, Kass JH, Tseng W-YI. The Geometric Structure of the Brain Fiber Pathways: A Continuous Orthogonal Grid. March 30, 2012 Science.

Provided by National Institutes of Health

"Brain wiring a no-brainer? Scans reveal astonishingly simple 3D grid structure." March 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-brain-wiring-no-brainer-scans-reveal.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek