Brain Juice

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Index

Making this magazine has been a long, arduous and challenging process. But it has ultimately been rewarding both for myself and Le Moyne College as a whole. We stand as the first and only science-based publication on campus, seeking to inspire an interest in neuroscience, educate the student body, and give STEM-interested students the opportunity to write, edit and publish. And I believe we did.

From the variety of our content, it should be clear that neuroscience is a field continually expanding and evolving, reaching out in almost every direction to understand and improve our world. Still, I believe neuroscience is merely in its infancy, and that, as a magazine, we are lucky to have a chance to document these first baby steps. I dream of the marvels of the “post-Newtonian age” of neuroscience, comparable to that of physics, as I once heard a neuroscientist call the future of the field.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the magazine, gain some knowledge about the marvelous organ you’re using to read it, and take away a greater interest in the science of the brain.

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Looking Ahead in Hopes of Better Days for Women in Systems and Computational Neuroscience

What Your Brain Does While Your Body Sweats

The Studious Brain: Study Tips Backed Up by Neuroscience

Your Brain on Politics

Neuroscientists Turned Entrepreneurs: 2015 Winners of the Ontario Brain Institute Entrepreneur Program

Engineering the Perfect Soldier: Neuroscience of the US Military

Neurobites!

Neuroscience News!

Bite-sized

Could Neuroscience Discover That We Lack Free Will? Two Le Moyne Philosophers Weigh In

Chat with a Brainiac: Interview with Neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Tso of SUNY Upstate

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A Short Tale of a Little Cousin’s Brain Surgery: Neurosurgery Translated into Plain English

Editor-in-Chief Kimberlyn Bailey

Managing Editor Melissa Schmitz

Copy Editor

Matthew Civilette

Graphic Designer Kimberlyn Bailey

Staff Writers

Taylor Morris Cara Mills Bryan Bauer Laurence Zagada Carlene Solomon

Opinion

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felt confident going to my icebreaker brunch on the first day of my summer fellowship at a big research university.

Gleaming letters of recommendation from my previous research and grades had gotten me in, calming me enough to give my neuroscience PI for the summer, whom I will call Dr. X, a chipper hello. Dr. X had a regal educational pedigree, least of which was a PhD from the ivy league, so I braced myself to give it my all. But, quite honestly, I had no idea what was involved in systems neuroscience. I had been stuck into this lab since my top picks had already been taken and just figured I would do well, since I had always done well.

Immediately after brunch, Dr. X took me and another summer fellow on a whirlwind tour of the university and his lab or at least it felt like a whirlwind to me. There were cold, stark rooms of monkeys, rats, and cats at the tippy top of the hospital adjoined to the university, which we would be using in our experiments. Not far from that was an even colder room with surgical equipment, a six-foot stack of electronics with dozens of plugs shooting out of it for taking various readings, and a medievallooking metal contraption to position animals for surgical procedures. In the corner

was an ancient computer, where Dr. X would scroll the nerd-mecca website Slashdot while his assistant did tedious procedures.

Back in the research building, two secretaries were stuffed in a little side room, their desks littered with pictures of their kids and pets.

In another tiny room was the desk of Dr. X’s unpaid research assistant, a college grad hoping to get into an MD/ PhD program. Another room held Dr. X’s 80s-style office.

Further into the lab, you first encounter a messy room strewn with what looked like several decades worth of the tinkering of an electrical/ computer engineer. Piles of old computers, disorganized electronic parts of all kinds and tools covered most every inch of counter surface, while vaguely labeled boxes covered most every inch of shelf space. Somehow, Dr. X and his colleagues found it easy to whip up whatever they might need

in here, digging amongst the piles to get the tools and parts they needed.

Walking in, I suddenly felt like I should have helped my father in the garage that one time he offered to teach me how to change a tire. Too late for that now. I hadn’t even taken physics yet to be able to identify a transistor from the piles. Dr. X gave me a transistor. I kept it in a mini Erlenmeyer flask like a pet rock to make the subject seem more approachable. Beside that was another messy room with a lab bench fit for chemistry – at last something familiar to me from my limited science coursework!

And, finally, there was the tiny room in which I would spend most of my time – a room I recall having bright green walls due to the acidity with which it is imbued in my memory, but which I suspect actually had the usual white color of the rest of the labs. There were several side-byside computers below shelves overfilled with books and journals. Here, I and another summer fellow were each assigned a computer, where we would be expected to code a program in MATLAB – an often used program for coding in research labs. I had never touched programming in my life, but I went with it. To keep busy, we were told to code programs which Dr. X had already coded in not just another language, but his own

0304 programming language that he had whipped up “for fun” between undergrad and grad school. If anything was clear to me at that point, it was that I was in territory completely foreign to me, that I was amongst someone with a higher stature in the scientific community than I could hope to achieve and that I was not just at the bottom of the lab totem poll, but an annoying gnat fly allowed to merely watch the real scientists at work from my little, acid-green cubicle.

Neuroscience is a field with about a 50-50 split between males and females, but such is not the case for the math and engineering heavy field of computational and systems neuroscience. And though I wasn’t looking for the imbalance – indeed, at the time, I knew nothing about it – I could feel it. All the sociology terms you learn in Women’s Studies 101 were potent: Imposter’s Syndrome, gender imbalance and the like. But through the fish-eye lens of what little I knew of those terms at that point, everything that confused me about the lab I took to be an indication of my lack of talent rather than my psychology and lack of experience.

The other fellow in the little room, a male engineering major who had done some coding before, successfully tinkered with MATLAB to get it working, while I struggled to even make MATLAB open a file. This is harder than you think it would be.

He had no trouble holding his own in a conversation about String Theory with Dr. X, while I felt I was listening to Spanish. A male MD/PhD student played around in the tech room to make this and that for his experiments and assured me that I would eventually get it – though it felt like the opposite of assurance. To add to all that, Dr. X recruited a male whiz kid from a local high school in the middle of his summer before college. He was bored enough to spare a few days to work on a project. He sat behind me, completing a project within the course of a few days, while I was still trying to figure out how to make MATLAB open that file. Almost exclusively, those with expertise in male-dominated college majors only flowed into this lab, and hence males filled out the lab.

A similar story, I suspect, fills out the

demographics in systems and computational neuroscience.

Then there was the aspiring MD/PhD assistant who held her own amongst the lab, despite her refusal to work on the engineering or the coding side of things. “I don’t do that stuff,” she told me, dismissively flitting her hand in the air. She had a mouth and an ego as big as a moose on a frame that couldn’t have been more than 4’9”.

She buzzed around the lab as fast as her little legs would take her and would go home for Muslim holidays, always coming back with feminist scorn for how everyone back home just wanted her to be a wife that cooks and cleans. This kind of puff-yourchest personality seemed to be what it took to survive here, if you weren’t of the usual stock of programming/ engineering/mathy types that was the blood of the lab. I, someone with only a few science courses and a shy demeanor, seemed to be just stuck here by accident. I wasn’t sure how to puff my chest quite like her.

Then there was Dr. X himself.

Towering, intimidating, a baritonelike voice, but with a light sense of humor, who probably saw me more as an amusement than anything else. He would sit back during journal presentations, somewhat languid, and sigh while having small intellectual jousting matches with the other scientists in the room and with the article under discussion. He would work in the lab late at night, a night owl through and through, microwaving a snack before he relinquished himself to his office where, as much as I could tell, he would crinkle his brow at the computer for hours. He was the heart of the lab. The lab ran slowly, like he did, but carried heavy weights to do some pretty remarkable things.

I did eventually open that MATLAB file, letting out a wail big enough to bring Dr. X out of the shadows of his office. He told me that I had not only done it wrong, but crashed the computer at the same time. Back to square one. But, slowly, baby steps – I produced enough to make a measly presentation at the end of my summer fellowship. It was only when I spoke to another fellow in a different lab, who did have the right background for my lab, that I began to appreciate those

baby steps. She was shocked by the project I had been given in light of my lack of experience.

And, slowly, over the next few years, I would become one of the programming/engineering/mathy stock. And about a month or so ago, I met Dr. X again while at a talk, and, finally, did not feel so far below him.

In light of the sheer misery my experience in the lab put me through, this is no small feat. Statistically, girls do not make such feats. They drop out. They switch fields. They say they “just can’t” do math/programming/engineering.

I don’t blame them. Still to this day, I am not truly convinced I am as smart as my accomplishments makes me out to be.

I write this not as a prosecution of the lab I worked in or the state of systems and computational neuroscience. They did nothing wrong – the problem was my own perception and my utter unawareness of it. I write this instead as an anecdote to open to a much-needed discussion. Women in computer science and women in physics have an increasingly bountiful number of resources at their hands.

They have communities, conferences and programs to cope with the psychological predispositions that might hold them back and the gender biases they might encounter. Women in the “hard” neuroscience fields, however, have such a small fraction of such things. Indeed, I only became aware of these issues through the resources available to women in physics. I’ve even attended several conferences for women in physics, under the guise that neuroscience pulls from every science, just to glean the benefits I cannot otherwise have as a young, aspiring computational neuroscientist.

Women in computational and systems neuroscientist need more support, if these fields are to draw from the largest pool of talent, and if half the human race is to have every opportunity to better the world and themselves. I strongly urge – and I will myself push for as I advance my career – that similar resources enjoyed by these other groups should be built in the future. Perhaps then more women will make it to where I could only get with great struggle and feel they deserve it.

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xercise, whether it is training for a sport, working on your abs, or simply digging ditches, is an everyday activity in many people’s lives. People are familiar with a “runner’s high” or similar phenomenon. But it’s worth a closer look to learn the neuroscience behind it. Let me put you through a whirlwind tour of the neuroscience of exercise!

There are as many reasons to exercise as there are types, but what happens to our neurobiology during exercise has remained a mystery until very recently.

A small disclaimer before I continue: Most of our current data has been found through non-human animal trials, and we cannot be sure that the studies will persist as the research advances and is tested in humans.

That aside, however, human brains and those of various commonly used model organisms are quite similar, so we can be relatively confident in current research.

The neuroscience of exercise is too vast to review in a few breaths, so we will focus on two major topics.

The first is what happens in the brain while we work out and whether there is any difference between the neuroscience of aerobic-focused workouts and heavy lifting. Second, we’ll explore the current conclusions on how the brain changes from exercise when you maintain a long-term exercise regimen.

During the actual act of exer-

cising, multiple changes occur in the brain. There is evidence that blood flow to the brain increases, as well as an increase in the oxygenation of said blood. Animal trials have also shown changes in a multitude of neurotransmitters, including those responsible for alertness (norepinephrine), pleasure (dopamine), and pain reduction (naturally occurring opioids and endocannabinoids). These neurotransmitters, and many, many others, act as modulators for a host of growth and regulatory factors which work to mature and increase the survival rate of a host of specialized cells in the brain.

Aerobic exercise also impacts the brain to varying degrees, according to the intensity of the exercise.

For moderate to high intensity level aerobic workouts, there is an improvement in mood and anxiety responses after the workout has ended. We are currently unsure, however, why this effect does not occur during low intensity exercise. For an intensity that is too high for a given person, the evidence shows that the body increases production of cortisol – the stress hormone -- and other adrenal products

Heavy lifting exercises show similar results in the moderate to high intensity aerobic exercise range. But there is an interesting caveat: A noticeable decrease in mood directly after the exercise, and a greater increase in mood after a rest period of roughly thirty minutes.

The brain also reacts to a long-term exercise routine in different ways than

it reacts to a single session. Sticking to an exercise routine long-term can lead to a general increase in the concentration of molecules responsible for increased cell proliferation in blood vessels and around nerve synapses.

The brain’s stress response also changes. During exercise, the brain triggers the adrenal glands to release cortisol. But once the exercise session has ended, cortisol concentration in the blood decreases both while in the resting state and when responding to acute stressors. In sum, long-term exercise routines have a general therapeutic and neuroprotective effect, even after the actual workout has ended.

So if you are finding yourself stressed out about midterms, put down the coffee and have a short jog.

Better yet, create a routine, and you’ll find midterms and finals stress to be less dramatic after a workout. See you at library and the gym!

References 1. “Neuroscience of Exercise: From Neurobiology Mechanisms to Mental Health,” E Matta Mello Portugal, T Cevada, R Sobral-Monteiro-Junior, T Teixeira Guimaraes, E da Cruz Rubini, E Lattari, C Blois and A Camaz Deslandes, Neuropsychobiology, June 2015.

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tudying can be difficult. Knowing how to study is an important part of success in classes yet we are rarely taught how to do it! This leaves many students on their own, either searching endlessly for helpful tips or winging it with whatever works for them. With all the study tips out there on the internet, which can you trust? Neuroscience has some answers with these research-backed study tips!

Don’t:

Do:

se strategies involve what’s known as passive learning. In contrast to active learning techniques (like testing yourself ), passive learning techniques fail to activate your critical thinking. Essentially, it is like trying to learn through osmosis when you’re better off taking in information and transforming it into a form that makes sense to you (e.g., diagrams, graphs).

These more active methods engage your brain’s memory-retention pathways and therefore promote long-term effective learning.

can prove challenging if you’ve gotten behind in the semester. Even so, research shows that if you initially invest 10 minutes studying what you learned in class within 24 hours of the lecture, you only need to devote 5 minutes the next week, and as little as 2 minutes four weeks out in order to maintain retention. This is known as the curve of forgetting and serves as a simple formula to space out your studying.

1. Don’t highlight, reread, or rewrite notes. All of the- 1. Do space out study sessions. This

2. Don’t Multitask. When you’re switching rapidly between tasks,

you’re not allowing yourself to fully concentrate on what you’re doing.

New facts are usually stored in the hippocampus, which allows us to recall information in different settings (like new problems on an exam). When distracted, the striatum is activated instead, which functions to learn repetitive tasks that eventually become second nature. In this latter case you’re prepping your brain to only remember information as is, which will become a struggle when new problems arise on your exams!

Don’t cram.

2. Do test yourself. Whether you’re using

flashcards, the “blank sheet method” (writing out all you know from memory on a blank sheet), or practice questions, this strategy has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to learn because it forces you to use what you know in order to solve problems by activating critical thinking.

3. Don’t cram. Despite the popularity of cramming as a study tech- 3. Do mix up your topic review! nique, the science confirms that it’s a bad idea. Scientists suggest that you should study roughly 10 percent of the time between learning the material and your exam date. That is, if you had class on Monday and will be quizzed the following Monday, doing your serious studying on that Wednesday will give you maximum retention. (But of course, be sure to refresh yourself for a few minutes closer to the test date, as well!)

The Curve of Forgetting

Research shows that it’s more effective to study more of your subjects in small chunks rather than devoting full days to one single subject. This works in relation to the concept of spacing, but it’s also thought that alternating between subjects lets you create connections between the different topics and their similarities and differences, helping you remember the information better.

4. If studying seems difficult, you’re doing it right. Several of these strategies

rely on learning, forgetting, and relearning--which is hard!--in addition to the need for intense focus.

Researchers consider this a “desirable difficulty” because it is precisely this process that helps best to encode this information in long term memory through reinforcement of neural connections. The struggle may be real, but it’s probably also right!

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s a hub of neuroscience research, numerous inventions that spring up in labs throughout the Canadian province of Ontario have the potential to become positive contributions in today’s medical world. Indeed, Ontario is home to more than 500 top neuroscientists.

It takes, however, a lot of work and money to produce those inventions. And research scientists don’t have enough of either resource to manufacture them and get the word out. The market for neuroscience inventions is, nevertheless, promising, with a global market for neuroscience diagnostics and therapeutics estimated at 130 billion dollars and growing.

“Working with the Ontario Brain Institute, OCE is proud to be able to help accelerate the commercialization of this research and turn it into startup companies,” said Dr. Tom Corr, President and CEO of Ontario Centres of Excellence, one of the main co-investors in the program. “Together, we are fostering a new generation of neuroscience entrepreneurs.”

In the hopes of promoting and supporting these inventions and getting word out to the public, the Ontario Brain Institute started the Entrepreneur Program in 2012.

As a competition, researchers stand in front of a panel of judges to pitch their neuroscience-related inventions.

Successful candidates receive up to $60,000 and full-time mentoring to help commercialize their inventions.

At most, ten individuals are chosen each year, some being long-standing inventors, if not owners of companies, and others having only recently been in pursuit of becoming entrepreneurs.

This past June, seven entrepreneurs were accepted into the 2015 program after an intense competition.

One of the 2015 OBI winners,

Hossein Kassiri and his colleagues developed a wireless brain implant for the treatment of intractable epilepsy.

According to the Ontario Brain Institute, “…his company, Braincom, is developing an all-wireless implantable system for detection and closed-loop treatment of epileptic seizures. The detection and treatment method has proven accurate by over 90% success rate in seizure detection and abortion on both animal and human subjects.”

The system is also battery-independent.

Another 2015 OBI winner, Jonathan Lung, and his company, Sojourn Labs, are working on an electric bicycle in the form of a unique car where the wheels are computer controlled alongside a manual steering system. This is claimed to allow a greater range in irregular movements, allowing people with neurological conditions affecting motor skills to drive self-sufficiently and safely. Irregular movements can refer to freezing, spastic motions or bradykinesia.

2015 OBI winner Shayna Parker co-developed and programmed prototype software for a videogame with Dr. Jane Lawrence-Dewar.

This software is anticipated to help post-stroke patients rehabilitate their hand-eye coordination. Parker and LawrenceDewar have now established their own company, BrainShift.

As it is available as a phone application, it’s also especially handy to use.

Winner Mark Tucci and his company NeuroVox created a number of techniques aimed at assessing “the mental functioning of patients when traditional behavioral assessments alone are unreliable due to limitations in the patient’s ability to communicate, as a result of, for example, a

traumatic brain injury (TBI).” Starting in the 1990s, NeuroVox has expanded to use many different approaches, of which fMRI-based studies is only one.

2015 OBI winner, Pooja Viswanathan and her company, Braze Mobility, pitched the idea of creating an inexpensive, after-market navigation assistance system add-on for those suffering from movementimpairing neurological disorders.

This system could be installed on any commercial powered wheelchair and would have the capability to prevent collisions and providing feedback to the driver. The targeted audience for this software would be wheelchair users who are severely impaired to the point of being a danger to themselves at times, and also those for whom commanding a wheelchair is completely unsafe. The device allows users to be in control of their movement, while the inner program of the device ensures the user won’t be a risk to themselves or others.

Kiyanoosh Shapoori, another 2015 OPI winner, pitched the idea of developing an innovative, “…portable ultrasonic transcranial imaging sys-

0708 tem for immediate and on-site diagnosis of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in civilian emergency settings.” Acting as an ultrasound for the skull, the relatively compact imaging system can be quickly used to assess for possible injuries almost anywhere.

Lastly, Vera Nenadovic has established knowledge in relating theory and nonlinear dynamics to brain function in brain injury, epilepsy and autism. Nenadovic and her company, BrainsView, “…developed an EEGbased software system with the real-time capacity to monitor brain function and predict outcome after injury.”

Ontario’s growing initiative to boost innovative neuroscience-related technologies is a part of a burgeoning global push to do the same. In the United States, for example, the OBI Entrepreneur Program most closely mirrors the White House Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. The BRAIN Initiative, however, is geared less toward commercializing technologies than it is at developing them. Costing nearly half a billion dollars thus far, the BRAIN Initiative aims to fund neuroscience labs across the country to develop neurotechnologies until 2020, after which the new techniques will be used to advance our understanding of the brain.

References 1.

“Ontario Brain Institute and Ontario Centres of Excellence Partner to Launch the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs in Neuroscience,” http://www.oce-ontario. org/news-events/media/news-releases/2012/05/07/ OBI-OCE_fellowship 2.

“OCE, OBI invest $400,000 to expand largest Canadian initiative to create neuroscience entrepreneurs,” http://www.oce-ontario.org/news-events/media/newsreleases/2013/05/28/oce-obi-fellowships 3.

These Six Great Neuroscience Ideas Could Make the Leap from Lab to Market,” Wency Leung, http://www. theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/ these-six-great-neuroscience-ideas-could-make-theleap-from-lab-to-market/article21681731/, November 2014 4.

“Ontario Brain Institute: Class of 2015,” http:// www.braininstitute.ca/our-people 5.

“About the Brain Initiative,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/BRAIN

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esearchers in industrial and academic labs have already achieved breakthroughs that sound like they are out of a sci-fi flick. In 2007, for example, neural engineers created a brain-machine interface through which a brain alone can command the actions of a robot.

Equipped with a far greater wealth of resources and money, it should be no surprise that modern U.S. military research has gone even farther to revolutionize modern warfare through neuroscience and, in a sense, hack the human brain to create the perfect military.

“There’s a tremendous amount of research going on around almost every aspect of the brain you can think of,” said Jonathan Moreno, author of “Mind Wars” and bioethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “How much of this is related to national security and counterintelligence? It turns out to be quite a lot.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the heart and soul of the military’s breakthrough technology. Their main focus has been the development of a brainmachine interface that detects and, in a sense, maxes out a soldier’s brain functionality using in-helmet or invehicle transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). For example, DARPA has created binoculars that convert subconscious responses to danger into conscious information. Such a system reduces the cognitive information processing a soldier must do, helping them to identify and respond to threats within their visual fields more quickly. More generally, studies sug-

gest that TMS can enhance mood, social cognition, working memory and learning.

Pharmaceuticals have been another significant branch of U.S military research. A 2008 report for the U.S. Army compared the effects of amphetamines with the effects of modafinil, a drug used to treat narcolepsy – the loss of the brain’s capacity to regulate sleep cycles. Motivating this report was the wish to craft the perfect soldier – one who can keep chugging on without the cognitive impairment usually accompanied by sleep deprivation.

United States troops first used modafinil during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In a study conducted by the Air Force’s Office of Scientific Research, 16 volunteers stayed awake for 28 hours over a four-day period, then slept from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Subjects who took modafinil performed significantly better on cognitive tests than those who took a placebo. Further research has shown that pilots who take modafinil remain alert for 40 hours. Additionally, there is an ongoing $3 billion investment by DARPA into what is called the “Metabolically Dominant Soldier.” DARPA is hoping to produce a “super-pill” that permits continuous peak performance and cognitive function 24 hours a day, for 3 to 5 days, without any calorie needs.

As this only covers a small portion of U.S. neuroscience research, it is clear that neuroscience will be forced to grapple with the ethics of its advancement. After all, the rich work of neuroscientists is the groundwork from which the U.S. military makes its advancements. There is nothing stop-

ping, for example, prosthetic neurotechnology developed for medical applications to be used in crafting the perfect, deadly soldier.

“Technology doesn’t care what it’s used for,” said Moreno. “It’s our ingenuity and the way we apply the technology, which does raise an interesting problem for scientists.”

Still, looking ahead, there is great promise in what U.S. military research has to offer.

References 1.“ Future developments in brainmachine interface research,” Mikhail A Lebedev, et al., Clinics, June 2011.

2. “The Dark Side of Military-Funded Neuroscience,” Katie Moisse, http:// abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews /dark-side-military-fundedneuroscience/story?id=15960496, March 2012 3. “Neuroscience, Ethics, and National Security: The State of the Art,” Michael N. Tennison, Jonathon D. Moreno, PLOS Biology, March 2012.

4. “Rethinking the thinking cap: Ethics of neural enhancement using noninvasive brain stimulation,” Roy Hamilton, MD, MS, Samuel Messing, BA, and Anjan Chatterjee, MD, Neurology, January 2011.

5. “A Fatigue Management System for Sustained Military Operations,” William F. Storm, Ph.D., DTIC document, March 2008.

6. Global Issues and Ethical Considerations in Human Enhancement Technologies,” Steven John Thompson, 2014.

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Locating Mathematical Beauty in the Brain

Tricky Neuroscience!

You know that feeling you get when you see an equation that sums up the universe – be it the physical or the mathematical universe – in one fell swoop with a few symbols? It is what nerds can only call the beauty of mathematics. Neuroscience of aesthetics has figured out that our perceptions of visual, moral, musical and mathematical beauty all stem from the same part of the brain: Field A1 of the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), a part of the “emotional brain,” related to processing and experiencing emotions.

Neuroscientists recruited mathematicians and non-mathematicians to view a series of equations in an fMRI scanner. Participants were then asked to rate the beauty of each equation and the extent to which they understand each equation. They found no relationship between understanding and perceptions of beauty. So, non-mathematicians, don’t feel shy about enjoying the beauty of math yourselves, because the researchers believe that “there is an abstract quality to beauty that is independent of culture and learning!”

We’re pretty consistent about which equations we see as beautiful. And the neuroscience seems to match up with the surveys: Activation of the mOFC while viewing an equation increased as the degree to which an equation was rated beautiful increased.

The most beautiful? Leonhard Euler’s identity:

Science is supposed to help us sort out the bad explanations from the good ones, or so we hope. It turns out neuroscience can have the opposite effect.

Researchers at Yale University polled three groups – neuroscience experts, students in a neuroscience class and those with little knowledge of the subject – about the quality of various arguments, with and without the inclusion of neuroscientific information. The respondents, for example, were given an explanation for a psychological phenomenon, with and without neuroscience-based evidence to back-up the explanation.

Across the board, the groups rated explanations with neuroscientific information as better, even if the neuroscience was logically irrelevant to the argument. Its mere inclusion boosted the perceived plausibility of the argument! There is, however, some good news: The experts were less swayed by the neuroscience than the non-expert groups, and the bad arguments were rated as worse overall.

The least? Srinivasa Ramanujan’s infinite series for 1/π:

Artificial Intelligence on the Cusp of Surpassing Human Capacity

You might have seen bits of the latest from robotics.

The feats achieved in that field, though impressive, amount to robots trying and sometimes succeeding at doing things the human brain coordinates with ease, like walking up stairs. In another, lesser known arena of artificial intelligence, however, AI researchers are creating software that might be surpassing the capabilities of human brains even now.

DeepMind, the Google-owned artificial intelligence company, has created a computer algorithm that can learn how to play dozens of games, from the classic arcade game Pong to chess. The software has even beaten professional gamers of many of these games.

The latest defeated professional was world-renowned Lee Sedol of the ancient Chinese chess-like game Go this past March. Using statistical analyses of which moves were the most

likely to win, the software, named AlphaGo, beat Sedol, spurring an uproar from the press.

It is still up for debate whether this marks the advancement of AI past that of which the human brain is capable.

Lee insisted that his loss was “[his] “defeat, not the defeat of mankind.” In a later match, Sedol successfully avenged his loss, beating the software. Another professional Go player has promised to beat the software and an additional professional player commented, “AlphaGo seems like it knows everything! I want to study it and learn from it!”

Perhaps professional players can learn from AlphaGo and surpass it. Still, as a learning algorithm, it is conceivable that AlphaGo can simply learn from the professional players and overcome them once again.

The next game DeepMind hopes to tackle? Starcraft II.

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magine you have a button in both your left and right hand and you are instructed to press whichever one you like. When subjects perform this task in an fMRI brain scanner, Soon et. al. (2008) have found brain activity that reliably indicates which button will be pressed, seven to ten seconds before the subjects report making their decision. If your brain has already started pressing the left button seconds before you decide to do it, does this mean that your decisions don’t really determine what you do?

Philosophers have long had sparring matches with neuroscience on what results like these mean. Brain Juice sat down with two professors in the Le Moyne Philosophy Department to find out their their thoughts on what discoveries like this mean for human free will.

Dr. Richard Cocks says that

he could never become persuaded that he has no free will. This is not because he dismisses neurological studies about conscious decision, but for reasons of logic: He claims that if our choices were determined by something other than our conscious decision, that would mean that we have

Imagine being able to perfectly predict a person’s decisions ahead of time. To Dr. Monteleone, this would imply that it was impossible for the person to do anything other than the predicted action.

And if the person is only able to do that one thing, is there any sense in saying that they do that thing freely? no free will. But if we had no free will, we would never be making decisions at all, so we could not possibly decide that we lack free will. To put it simply: If we’re making a decision at all, it is because we have free will.

Dr. Cocks says it is possible that determinism is true. However,

that would mean there is no such thing as rationality in the universe and nobody would be making decisions. It would be as though we are all playing through a cosmic script from which we could never stray, not even in our thoughts.

If that were the case, we would not have what philosophers call “agency”. But then, says Dr. Cocks, all people who do see themselves as agents must believe that their decisions are not determined.

As for the fMRI study, Dr. Cocks is untroubled by the result. It may very well be that the brain initiated the process of pressing the left button seconds before decision is made. Even so, if your brain initiated this process, your final selection could still overrule it. If this is possible, then free will is safe.

Dr. John Monteleone thinks that the authors of the neurological study casually assume that their subjects have free will. On the other hand, if their actions can be accurately predicted, is this assumption justified? Imagine being able to perfectly predict a person’s decisions ahead of time. To Dr. Monteleone, this would imply that it was impossible for the person to do anything other than the predicted action. If this person is only able to do that one thing, is there any sense in saying that they do that thing freely? Philosophers like Harry Frankfurt and Daniel Dennett have argued that there is -- that people can decide freely even when their decision is inevitable.

References 1. “Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain,” C Soon, M Brass, H Heinze and J Haynes, Nature Neuroscience, May 2008

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r. Daniel Tso is currently a principal investigator and associate professor of neurosurgery, neuroscience, and ophthalmology at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Tso has a PhD from Harvard Medical School, as well as postdoctoral work at Rockefeller University and has been at SUNY Upstate for over fifteen years. We sat down with Dr. Tso to talk about his work and views as a neuroscientist.

What do you study in your lab?

The ultimate goal of the research is to better understand how the brain works. Of course that is a huge endeavor, so we have chosen to narrow our scope, using the visual system as a model. The visual brain isn’t just a tiny part of the brain, but is actually a major portion -- perhaps a quarter -of the human brain. Primates (including humans) are very visual animals and devote a tremendous amount of “brain power” and resources towards vision. There are reasons to believe that much of what we learn about how the visual system works may also be applied to many other parts.

One reason the visual system is an attractive model system is that, as a sensory system, an experimenter can control the level of input to the system, by controlling visual stimuli.

Since people care greatly about their vision, research on the visual system and its disorders receive an appreciable (though not necessarily sufficient) amount of funding. For these and other reasons, we know more about the visual system -- at many different levels (from molecules to behavior) -- than any other neural system. This means that there is a great foundation of existing knowledge upon which we can ask ever-deepening and complex

Interview

questions.

Focusing our specific research efforts further, we have chosen to emphasize the “early” visual system, from the retina to the first few stages of the visual cortex. In particular, focus is made on the visual pathway that is thought to be responsible for form vision and object recognition (aka the WHAT pathway). We primarily study function (physiology) and functional connectivity using methods such as multi-electrode recordings of multiple single neurons and functional imaging. The aim is to understand the properties of single neurons, how they are organized into functional groups, and how the connections they make (circuits) lead to visual perception and visually guided behavior.

What should undergraduates who want to go into systems neuroscience be doing during their college years?

In my opinion, students interested in pursuing systems neuroscience should be sure to gain a strong background in subjects that are particularly difficult to learn later, such as math (at least through differential equations), computer programming, signal processing, statistics, and other quantitative skills. But a wide range of other courses including biology, psychology, biochemistry, physiology, anatomy, even micro-economics) are also helpful, not to mention every neuroscience course you can get.

Don’t forget a proper education in writing and scientific communication: English, reading courses and journal clubs in scientific literature, etc.

What sparked your interest in your field?

I took computer program-

ming in high school and became interested in “information processing”.

I also involved myself in electronics.

Thus, with the addition of biology and medicine, I became interested in biological information processing and the notion of neural circuits. Two key pieces of my early inspiration were: 1) a great intro course in neurobiology, taught by leaders in the field; 2) oneon-one tutorial sessions with a neuroscientist during which we discussed papers, ideas, etc. She later introduced me to a neuroscience lab where I began an undergrad thesis project in neurochemistry, which would later shift into the neurophysiology of the visual system. I also completed a couple summers of neurophysiology research back in my home town (at Johns Hopkins).

What would you say is the developmental stage of neuroscience compared to other fields, like physics?

That’s difficult to say, neuroscience has the breadth, from neurobiology, genetics, physiology/

medicine, behavior, AI, all the way to neuroethics, law, neuro-economics.

Likewise, physics ranges from quantum mechanics and string theory all the way to The Big Bang, multiverse theory, causality, time, etc. Both disciplines are heading towards “big science” (physics has been that way for decades), where it is difficult for single individuals to make many contributions rather than teams. Probably the best way to compare these disciplines is to say that they are both at their infancy relative to what likely lies ahead (and both offer opportunities for mistakes that may drastically shorten our futures).

In comparison, biology and chemistry should probably be considered more limited right now, at least until we break free from terrestrial boundaries.

As a principle investigator at SUNY Upstate, what would you say are the benefits of choosing a grad school that is conjoined with a hospital?

As Upstate is also relatively small, the unified campus permits an easier interchange between clinical, translational, and basic science efforts. It is common that single investigators or even students work on projects that intersect basic benchwork with clinically relevant issues or even direct clinical experience.

What personal qualities do you think make a great neuroscientist?

Personal qualities, like kindness, humility, self-promotion? I’m quite sure one can find neuroscientist with nearly any imaginable combination of personal qualities. However, giving the current state of competition for funding, jobs, etc. it certainly helps to have an amount of perseverance, optimism, and high standards of excellence, with a pinch of the willingness to self-promote.

If you had control over all the funds involved in The White House BRAIN Initiative, where would you invest it within neuroscience and why?

I know the two main consultants for the BRAIN Initiative (Bargman and Newsome) and don’t think they and their committees have steered the resources unwisely. But I also believe that the NEI (National Eye Institute) has had the correct philosophy for some time, which is: put most resources in R01’s (individual investigator research grants). The idea is simply to try to give as many investigators as possible at least some support--enough to pursue their specific (good!) ideas. It can be foolish to try to second guess the “best” direction from the top down – instead, let science be driven from the bottom up.

Sure, steering is sometimes warranted, for example in the case of a specific disease that needs to be addressed.

But perhaps as a parallel to evolution and economics, it is often better to let as many individual efforts find their own successful niches as possible.

Neuroscience seems like it is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary.

Is it a better idea to specialize in another science – say, get a PhD in computer science – and do neuroscience research alongside that or after that?

Academic “neuroscientists” were asking this same question nearly 50 years ago, before “neuroscience” became a word. It was perhaps a real question several decades ago, but probably not so much now: most better schools have neuroscience programs now, and the better ones recognize the need for its student to receive a broad-based education. At such schools, I think there is no reason not to enter into the neuroscience program, but a student may still need to seek out specialized training and coursework in other foundational disciplines. Choose a mentor that understands this rather than one that simply wants you to crank out the lab results of his own experiments. Truly, the key to the best training and graduate-level preparation for a career in the neurosciences (if not other fields) is the choice of one’s mentor.

Unfortunately, by the time one enters graduate school, it is getting very late to really learn subjects like math, computer programming, engineering, etc. – one simply doesn’t have the time anymore for these intensive subjects. So, it’s best to learn such subjects while in college.

A Short Tale of a Little Cousin’s Brain Surgery: Neurosurgery Translated 2. “Curve of Forgetting,” https://uwaterloo.ca/counselling-services/curveinto Plain English forgetting, date accessed: 23 March 2016.

Front and back cover http://images.radiopaedia.org/images/23495/010d7bf1d42726dc87e5 3. “Why interleaving enhances inductive learning: The Roles of discriminahttp://images.clipartpanda.com/pinky-clipart-final.jpg bfea5a4bdb.jpg tion and retrieval,” Memory & Cognition, November 2012. http://e2ua.com/WDF-1199507.html https://www.mskcc.org/sites/default/files/node/35212/inline_images/ 4. “The Effects of Spacing and Mixing Practice Problems,” Journal for http://dirt2.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/bernie.jpg fig2.png Research in Mathematical Education, January 2009. http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/donald-trump-vector-illustrationWhat Your Brain Does While Your Body Sweats 5. “Study smart: Make the most of your study time with these drawnportrait-images-59442833.jpg http://betterbodiesclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Brainfrom-the-research tips,” http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/11/studyIndex Fitness.jpg smart.aspx, date accessed: 23 March 2016. https://online.science.psu.edu/sites/default/files/bisc004/content/ 6. “The Read-Recite-Review Study Strategy: Effective and Portable,” Engineering the Perfect Soldier: Neuroscience of the US Military neuron.jpg http://bgfons.com/upload/camouflage_texture781.jpg Psychological Science, April 2009.

Neurobites! Bite-sized Neuroscience News! http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41SvEYu%2BXAL._SX322_ 7. “Don’t Talk to a Friend While Reading This; Multi-Tasking Adversely http://images.clipartpanda.com/pinky-clipart-final.jpg Affects the Brain’s Learning Systems, UCLA Scientists Report,” http:// https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/1f/30/c6/1f30c69d6115a BO1,204,203,200_.jpg Neuroscientists Turned Entrepreneurs: 2015 Winners of the Ontario Brain newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Don-t-Talk-to-a-Friend-While-Reading-7212, f154a457554515b0844.jpg date accessed: 27 March 2016.

Institute Entrepreneur Program https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cf/99/c7/ http://www.braininstitute.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/entre- 8. “Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction,” Procf99c7717d94023fa4e503d08dc2a2b6.jpg preneurs_stats_for_web-01.png?itok=z8Cis4MZ ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of Chat with a Brainiac: Interview with Neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Tso of Screenshots from video: https://www.youtube.com/ America, June 2006.

SUNY Upstate watch?v=WyWIqe2OZGM http://www.sunyeye.org/data/1276178969_danihp2.jpg References for “Neurobites! Bite-sized Neuroscience Your Brain on Politics Could Neuroscience Discover That We Lack Free Will? Two Le Moyne News! http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/wp-content/blogs.dir/455/ Philosophers Weigh In 1. “The experience of mathematical beauty and its neural correlates,” files/2012/04/i-3c9f6c2f2b93b55da67670c6b971f067-ACC.JPG http://cdn.meaningfullife.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/gods_ Semir Zeki, John Romaya, Dionigi Benincasa and Michael Atiyah, Frontiers https://www.zestxlabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Who-wonomnipotence_vs_free_will.jpg of Human Neuroscience, February 2014. the-January-GOP-Debates-FINAL.pdf The Studious Brain: Study Tips Backed Up by Neuroscience 2. “The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations,” Deena Weisberg, http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/thisweek/2009/12/images/hm00.jpg https://www.flickr.com/photos/flamephoenix1991/8376271918 Frank Keil, Joshua Goodstein, Elizabeth Rawson and Jeremy Gray, Journal http://quincypublicschools.com/library/files/2011/08/book-stack.png References for “The Studious Brain: Study Tips Backed of Cognitive Neuroscience, February 2008 https://uwaterloo.ca/counselling-services/curve-forgetting Up by Neuroscience 3. “The Go Files,” Tanguy Chouard, http://www.nature.com/news/theLooking Ahead in Hopes of Better Days for Women in Systems and 1. “Spacing Effects in Learning: A Temporal Ridgeline of Optimal Retengo-files-ai-computer-clinches-victory-against-go-champion-1.19553, Computational Neuroscience tion,” Psychological Science, November 2008.

March 2016 Screenshot from the anime Kyousogiga (2013)

Image sources (copied or used in graphic design):

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n January of this year, I was studying the neurotransmitters of the central and peripheral nervous system before I learned I was about to get a much greater lesson on the brain. I found out midway into my study session that a tumor was found in the brain of my cousin. Despite the worry this provoked, my interest in medicine made me eager to know the details. I hope to carry you all through the journey of my cousin’s diagnosis and treatment in laymen’s terms.

The only symptoms that spurred the search for a diagnosis were recurring headaches and frequent vomiting. After a physical examination by her primary care physician, an MRI revealed a pineal tumor (1.8 cm x 2.2 cm) with obstructive hydrocephalus — the blockage of the regular flow of cerebrospinal fluid away from the brain, resulting in swelling.

This was the presumable cause of my cousin’s headaches and vomiting. In total, three surgeries were performed as treatment: a biopsy (extracting a small sample of the tumor tissue to diagnose its type), cerebral shunt (effectively creating a valve through which the cerebrospinal fluid could flow) and removal of the tumor.

My cousin’s doctors began with an endoscopic tumor biopsy. An incision was made into the left frontalis muscle – a muscle in the forehead area that is used to create facial expressions – which allowed a proper entrance of an endoscope to collect

a tumor tissue sample. Much to the relief of my family, lab analysis of the sample revealed that this tumor was benign.

Later laboratory tests identified the tumor as what is called a germinoma tumor because it is composed of germ cells (cells involved in sexual reproduction) that were relatively undifferentiated (unspecialized for a specific function in the body, e.g. muscle cells). Germinomas comprise approximately 60% of brain germ cell tumors and are typically difficult to remove due to their high abundance of collagen. These germ cells accumulated to form a pineocytoma – a tumor of the pineal gland that, fortunately, typically has a positive prognosis. The pineal gland is a pea-sized organ that secretes melatonin – the hormone that regulates sleep patterns. But my cousin’s symptoms, which are typical of pineal tumors, surpringly did not include changes to her sleep patterns!

To relieve intracranial pressure, a series of pro-

cedures were used to, in essence, produce plumbing in my cousin’s body that could act as a drainage system for the built up cerebrospinal fluid. The first procedure was called an endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV). In this procedure, doctors punctured a hole in the thin membrane at the bottom of the third ventricle. A ventricle is not only a chamber in the heart: It is also a general term for a cavity in an organ, which, in this case, is filled with cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. The ETV was then accompanied by an external ventricular drain (EVD). In an EVD, a long, thin tube is placed in a fluid-filled ventricle of the brain and is then connected to an external drainage system outside of the body. The moderating force for drainage within this system is just gravity: The lower the drainage system is relative to the ventricle being drained, the more drainage occurs. In this case, which is common, the tube was led down to her stomach, out of which it emerged and

drained into a container. Along the catheter is a fluid pump, which only opens and allows the drainage system to work only when pressure is elevated around the brain – we certainly don’t want all the protective fluid to drain out of the skull!

Finally, about a week after my cousin’s diagnosis, the tumor was removed on her 17th birthday. What a birthday present! The surgery involved a four-inch incision and a lot of time and patience on the surgeon’s part. During the operation, the surgeon touched a portion of the medulla oblongata – the bottom half of the brainstem that controls involuntary functions – dedicated to vomiting.

When my cousin woke up in the recovery room, she vomited uncontrollably! In the end, though, 27 stitches

sealed my cousin’s incision and the surgery was successful. My cousin will be undergoing periodic MRI’s for monitoring purposes, and may have radiation therapy done if necessary.

Scientists have speculated and found some evidence for genetic causes for the occurrence of pineal gland tumors as well as indications that these tumors favor one gender over another. Despite this, the exact cause of pineal cell tumors remains unknown. I hope, for my cousin’s sake and for others, that the scientific community will continue to pursue research into the causes of these tumors and refine their treatment.

References

1. “Final Diagnosis – Germinoma,” Manuel Zarandona, MD, and Geoffrey

Murdoch, MD, http://path.upmc.edu/ cases/case422/dx.html.

2. “Endoscopic Third Ventriculostomy,” Connor Mallucci, http://www. shinecharity.org.uk/hydrocephalus/ information-publications/endoscopic-third-ventriculostomy, 2011.

3. External Ventricular Drainage (EVD),” National Health Service, http://www. gosh.nhs.uk/medical-information-0/ procedures-and-treatments/externalventricular-drainage-evd, June 2014.

4. Ventriculoperitoneal Shunting,” Jospeh V. Campellone, M.D., David Zieve, M.D., MHA, and Bethanne Black, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003019.htm, October 2013.

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n light of the tense state of the political arena nowadays, people are flinging insults at one another about their political views as if we are playing a nation-wide game of dodgeball. We size up one another’s intelligence, upbringing, race and many other characteristics in an attempt to sum up and slur one another’s political views. But what, objectively, can be said to cause one to love one candidate, policy or party over another? And what can science tell us about the particulars of the current election? Neuroscience has some tentative answers.

our rationality. Studies suggest that those with sizable ACCs are better at handling conflict and find adaptation easier. The amygdala, on the other

“The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data.”

hand, handles the formation of emotional memories and the process of Liberal vs. Conservative Brains fear conditioning. As a specific type of classical conditioning, fear condition The structure of our brain – ing (think Pavlov’s dog), is a triggering that is, the size and the amount of acof the physiological and emotional tivity of different regions – may hold fear responses learned from certain some clues as to what views we hold. stimuli being consistently accompaA number of studies have found that nied by something dislikable. Those self-identified liberals have larger and with larger amygdalas are more likely more active anterior cingulate cortito be swayed by emotion. ces (ACC), while conservatives have

The implications of these larger amygdalas. findings are obvious, albeit certainly

The ACC is all about microworth taking with a grain of salt. management: We use it to filter inThe studies suggest that perhaps formation by importance and reguconservatives are more swayed by late emotions so they don’t hinder their emotions and less comfortable with change, fearing what Liberals tend to have larger and more active anterior cingulate cortex, responsible for regulating emotions. Con- change could bring and servatives tend to have larger and more active amygda- preferring stability. Thus, las, responsible for the formation of emotional memories they prefer what worked and fear conditioning. previously (ex. marriage only between a man and a woman) to what could possibly work differently (ex. gay marriage). Liberals, in contrast, might be more comfortable with change and more open to it because their brains are suited to adaptation, and less prone to the sways of their emotions over logic, because their brains have a beefier system for keeping the emotions in check.

These findings should most certainly be taken with a grain of salt, like all studies that draw possibly subjective conclu-

Feature sions from placing subjects into an MRI machine and seeing what lights up. It is hard to ignore that these interpretations are flattering to liberals and not so much to conservatives.

And these studies, of course, fail to take into account neuroplasticity and how our views can switch from one extreme to the next. Indeed, a study of British citizens found liberalism gives way to conservatism in old age in the British population.

Loyalty to Personal Political Views

But let’s mull on this subject of plasticity a bit further. How much “plasticity” is there in our political views in the short term? How much of a dent can we truly expect the millions upon millions of campaign dollars spent each election to have on voters and how much can we expect ourselves to be swayed by reason and reconsideration? Unfortunately, neuroscience seems to suggest we’re stuck in our ways and little of it has to do with reasoning.

One study from Emory University found that partisan voters view political messages almost entirely with their emotions and without any engagement from their reasoning faculties.

“What we saw instead,” said Drew Western, director of clinical psychology at Emory University,” was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts. The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data.”

Even when we confront a new piece of information about a candidate we like, we hold our views.

Western and his team found that, in both self-identified republicans and democrats, new negative information about a favored candidate was engaged with first in areas of the brain related to emotion and conflict resolution, which was followed by a trigger of the reward system.

1718 tary Hilary Clinton evoked roughly

Western has a proposal for lican debates, one with and without equal measures of engagement. Furwhat this means.

Trump present. Luckily for the rether, they found that engagement

“Essentially, it appears as if searchers, he had refused to attend was highest when immigration and partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidobecause Megyn Kelly, with whom he scope until they get the conclusions terrorism were the topic and that, had a feud, was set to be a moderathey want, and then they get surprisingly, the topic of massively reinforced for it, universal health care did with the elimination of neganot even make it into the tive emotional states and actitop four most engaging vation of positive ones.” issues.

There are a few take In the case of the reaways that we get from these publican debate – which results. For whatever reasons was the same republican masses of voters have favored debate of the ZESTx study Donald Trump, it shouldn’t aswhen Trump was present tonish us that he has remained – Ted Cruz was the top popular in spite of the numercandidate (If we combine ous times he’s done someCruz’s attentional and thing many proclaimed would emotional engagement sink his candidacy. We appear of the ZESTx study as a to be wired to be devoted to measure of total brain our candidates. We’re left with engagement, the ZESTx the impression, therefore, that study appears consistent the drama of the election cycle with this one). The most has so little actual impact on engaging issues for rethe views of voters that is bepublican viewers were comes largely unimportant. economics and terrorism.

Instead, the most important These results are way to sway the results seems not meant to be predicto be to ensure that voters tive. But it is worth noting know each candidate so each that the researchers also voter can accurately “attune” polled another group for themselves to the candidate each debate, asking them they are predisposed to like to rate how each candiAverage attentional and emotional engagement ratings of the audienand will, in all likelihood, stick date performed. These with. Perhaps it is not surpris- ce for each candidate during January republican debates. The graphs polls were drastically difrepresent two separate debates, illustrating the difference in these ing then that Senator Bernie rating when candidate Trump attends the debate (top) and when he ferent from the engageSanders can manage a massive does not attend (bottom). ment measures. Interestupshot in polls right before a ingly, the engagement state primary, as he saturates measures taken in January a state with public relations efforts turn out to be closer to the current tor. They found that Trump’s presence leading up to it, attuning all people ranking of candidates, as of the start (January 14th, 2016 debate) signifiwho could possibly, if you will, “Feel of April. While Ted Cruz ranked fourth cantly stunted any candidate’s ability the Bern.” and Trump did not make the top four, to emotionally engage with viewers, they were the most engaging canwhile he remained in the lead for atThe Neuroscience of the Current Elecdidates, and are currently the fronttention measures. When Trump is tion Cycle runners of the republican primary. absent (January 28th, 2016 debate), Similarly, while Senator Sanders had emotional engagement rose for all

Neuroscience has dabbled drastically lower ratings than Clinton, candidates, with the now droppeda bit in explaining the tumultuous their engagement was roughly the out Rubio in the lead. current election cycle. Several studsame, and in terms of committed del In another study, Northies have monitored brain activity of egates, Clinton and Sanders are comwestern University conducted took Americans across the political specing closer to one another’s numbers. a similar approach, but took a vagutrum while watching recent debates.

With neuroscience merely in er measure, which they call “brain

ZESTx Labs claim to have a its infancy, neuropolitics cannot offer engagement.” Their subjects were methodology by which to measure much beyond MRI and similar studies self-identified democrats watching “attentional and emotional engagethat looks for vague correlations. Sima January democrat debate and selfment” of a person in response to an ilarly, interpretations of these studies identified republicans watching a Janadvertisement. They conducted their are merely weak conjectures. But as uary republican debate. study using the two January repubneuromarketing and neuropolitics

Senator Sanders and Secre-

continue to proliferate in current research trends, we should expect to see more of these sorts of studies and more sophisticated ones as time goes on.

The Neuroscience of Trump?

And to those enjoying the spectacle of the election cycle – or, to put it another way, the spectacle of Trump – have no fear about its end.

Neuroscience might even allow us a closer look at Trump than this election cycle allows us, even if it is much more than many of us ever wanted, whatever the outcome of the election. Dr. Jacopo Annese and his team at The Brain Observatory of the University of California San Diego quite literally want Trump’s brain.

The Brain Observatory seeks post-mortem brain donations and richly detailed autobiographies from those with unusual personalities (Do we see now how Trump comes into this now?). The lab creates novel technologies used to study how personalities and other traits can be understood within the brain’s chemical and electrical signaling systems. The ultimate goal is to create a sort of catalog of personalities and traits matched to different kinds of brains and brain features. The Brain Observatory has received a wide range of interesting specimen, ranging from a man who couldn’t remember anything past 20 seconds to a woman who can’t feel fear. And to that end, Trump seems perfect to Annese and his team.

Annese explained, “[We want] someone with an interesting life, a politician or businessman whose biography has already been written. We want to write the last few chapters of their biography in neurological terms. We should go after Donald Trump, really; that’s a lot of work saved up front for us.”

A spokesperson of Trump was contacted to ask whether Trump would consider,, but never got back with an answer.

With Trump Stakes, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Magazine, Trump reality shows, Trump board games, Trump Wine, Trump Air-

lines and Trump Water behind us, all we need now is Trump Brain.

References 1. “The Neuroscience of Politics,” http://thebrainbank.scienceblog. com/2016/03/01/the-neuroscienceof-politics-what-your-brain-saysabout-your-vote/, March 2016 2. “Do We Become More Conservative With Age?,” http://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/ do-we-become-more-conservativewith-age-young-old-politics, James Tilley, November 2015 3. “Emory Study Lights Up the Political Brain,” http://www.emory.edu/news/ Releases/PoliticalBrain1138113163. html, Beverley Clark, January 2006 4. “The Neuroscience of Politics,”

http://brainworldmagazine.com/theneuroscience-of-politics/, April 2015 5. “Who Won the GOP Debate?,” https://www.zestxlabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Who-wonthe-January-GOP-Debates-FINAL.pdf, 2016 6. “Why You Already Made Up Your Mind About Donald Trump,” http:// www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/ stories/2016/01/opinion-fortune-voter-opinion.html, Moran Cerf, January 2016 7. “Brain Collector Seeks Trump-Like Donors to Probe How Personality is Formed,” http://www.bloomberg. com/news/articles/2011-04-21/braincollector-seeks-trump-like-donorsto-probe-how-personality-is-formed, Elizabeth Lopatto, April 2011