Reconstructing Visual Perception using fMRIs - Wowza!

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this research, but ... WOWZA!

(Note: Follow any of the links on this page in order to see videos of this in action)

Researchers from University of California, Berkeley used fMRI scans to "reverse engineer" images of how the brain might put together visual stimuli. Below is their "simple outline" of the study (taken from their summary on the Gallant Lab web page).

"The goal of the experiment was to design a process for decoding dynamic natural visual experiences from human visual cortex. More specifically, we sought to use brain activity measurements to reconstruct natural movies seen by an observer. First, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in visual cortex as a person looked at several hours of movies. We then used these data to develop computational models that could predict the pattern of brain activity that would be elicited by any arbitrary movies (i.e., movies that were not in the initial set used to build the model). Next, we used fMRI to measure brain activity elicited by a second set of movies that were completely distinct from the first set. Finally, we used the computational models to process the elicited brain activity, in order to reconstruct the movies in the second set of movies"

It's a tricky one to understand - I think the summary on the Gizmodo blog is a bit more clear, and this summary article in a Berkeley newsletter includes quotes that might help.

Here's how I think I'd summarize it for students (and there is a STRONG chance I might be wrong here, so please correct me in the comments!): Participants spent time (a long time!) in an fMRI watching movie trailers, and the researchers used that data to create a model of what their brains were doing while watching the movies. Then they collected a LOT of random youtube clips and transformed them into data ("voxels") the computers could compare with the fMRI data they stored from the participants. The computers picked the youtube clips that best matched the fMRI data, and smooshed all those video clips into a composite video. When we watch the composite video, we can see the similarities to the original clips the fMRI participants watched (although there is a high chance of confirmation bias here, right?)

Please holler in the comments about this if you have time - I'd love to know if I'm understanding this correctly!









posted by Rob McEntarffer

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Infant Brains and Teenage Brains--Two New Articles

This weekend has been a boon for neuroscience articles.  Below are a couple of articles that we could use in our classes related to development and the human brain.

1)  National Geographic--The Teenage Brain

Printable version of the article
The article begins by asking rhetorical questions about our teens and their decision making process.  The article also deals with a cross-cultural/historical mention of adolescence and its tempering effect on behavior.  The article includes an excellent overview of brain development, including myelination.  Very nice article--but what else would one expect from National Geographic.


2)  The second article comes from NPR--the article describes a book and interview with the authors of Welcome to Your Child's Brain with an article entitled "How to Help Your Child's Brain Grow Up Strong."


The NPR article also discusses brain development, but highlights what infants are capable of which is considerably more than previously thought.  Help a child develop self-control is a highlight of both the book and article. It's another good read.  Also, in the left column of the article are links to other brain books and authors.


posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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PBS Nova Science Now "How Does the Brain Work?"

Tonight my family watched Nova Science Now "How Does the Brain Work?" What an amazing program! It covers a lot of ground - how magicians use attention, how Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation can impact judgment, how emergencies alter time perception, and artificial intelligence. Great "guest stars" too - Penn and Teller, Mo Rocca, and David Eagleman. If there is any way to get a copy to show in your classroom, you'll find dozens of short sections to show to go along with the Biopsych chapter. Great stuff.


posted by Rob McEntarffer

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Near-Death Experiences

If you discuss near-death experiences as a part of your consciousness chapter, check out this Scientific American article, "Peace of Mind: Near-Death Experiences Now Found to Have Scientific Explanations." Researchers are focusing on the role of dopamine in producing this phenomena.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=peace-of-mind-near-death

Kristin H. Whitlock

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Love this: How Will Shortz Edits a New York Times Crossword Puzzle

Okay, I promise one day to post my "how I got five crossword puzzles published in the New York Times" story here. I can tell you the blow by blow of making a puzzle and the chutzpah needed to sell your very first puzzle to the Times. I know at least one of you (thanks Rob!) is looking forward to reading this.

Until then, let me strongly encourage you to check out How Will Shortz Edits a New York Times Crossword Puzzle in the Atlantic. Shortz talks about the process that happens after the puzzle gird is finished, when the constructor (Liz Gorski, in this case) creates the clues. The editor's job is then to make the clues a little snappier, less obvious, more "fresh" -- fresh is a word that Will Shortz loves.

This is a great example of his mind, talking about Liz's clue for the word snow:

One clue that's fun and twisty is 11 Down: "Wet blanket" for SNOW. I can check the database—I bet she's not the first person to ever use that clue. That's just too nice a clue never to have been used before. Hold on one second, I'll see. There is a database of every clue back to my start. [A pause.] I see previous clever clues for SNOW that include "winter fall," "white blanket," "winter blanket," "white coat," "falling flakes"—that's not all that clever. This one's sort of cute—"serial killer." Snow on your TV, it's going to hurt your reception of a serial. Oh, one more. "Drifter," with a question mark. Well, I don't see "wet blanket." Maybe it is fresh.

How can you fit this into psychology? I suppose you can make it fit nicely into the Cognition unit when you talk about algorithms and heuristics. Me, I put it squarely in the Intelligence section, under Genius.  :-)

--posted by Steve

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Brain Pickings

Michael Sandler sent me an email about this blog a LONG time ago (thanks Michael!) and it looks like a good resource. This post reviews an intriguing book - The Mind - a collection of essays on the brain and consciousness edited by John Brockman. I haven't purchased the book yet but the list of authors is impressive: Pinker, Seligman, Gopnik, Haidt, Zimbardo, and Ramachandran! Looks great, and this blog might be another source for good psych stuff!

Brain Pickings


posted by Rob McEntarffer

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Ten years ago: a hero on September 11

Durham, 1996: It was my second year teaching AP Psychology and I was still fumbling around,

Circa 1996 in my classroom - John is on the left, I'm in the middle

trying to figure out how to pace the course. Since my creativity to organization ratio is normally 10:1, the classes were fun but not always well structured. I realized this in September when I was reminding the class about a test the following day, and this senior on the front row starts freaking out, looking wildly around the room at this classmates. "Wait, we have a test tomorrow? How did I not know this? Did you know?" His classmates all nodded. "How do I not know what's happening in here?" I remember teasing him about this, but that night I realized that he had a point - the students who were organized could compensate for my chaotic nature, but this student needed more structure.

So I typed out an outline for the next few weeks, with page numbers to read, important topics and quiz/test dates, and the next day in class I proudly handed it to him. "Look, John Cerqueira," I said, "it even has your name on it." It was called the Cerqueira guide, and John beamed proudly, showing it off to his classmates. Of course, every student who saw it wanted one as well, so I made copies for the whole class. It then became a tradition - for every unit we did, the students got a copy of the Cerqueira guide. After John graduated I continued to use the name on the guides, so with every class I got to tell the story of John and taught them how to pronounce the name (sir-KWEHR-uh). Don't say "the guide," don't say "that outline thing," say the Cerqueira guide," I'd tell them.

On September 11, 2001, I was on the 2nd day of a new job. I left teaching after the 1999-200 school year and was a stay at home dad for a year, but I was anxious to get back to work and got a non-teaching job at a school near my house. I found out about the attacks at work and crowded around a TV with my new co-workers as we watched the horrors unfold that morning.

I didn't have any personal connection to 9/11 or so I thought, until the next day when I was reading the USA Today and spotted a name so distinctive I recognized it immediately. John Cerqueira had gone to NC State University, and after graduation landed a job with a telecommunications company in the World Trade Center. He was in a meeting that morning when the first plane hit the tower above him, and he and the others in his office began to climb down from the 81st floor. (I loved the fact that the USA Today reporter noted that John had been "late as usual" and was carrying his breakfast in hand when he arrived at work!)

When John reached the 68th floor, he and his manager, Michael Benfante, noticed a woman in a wheelchair who was crying because she was unable to descend the stairs. The two men grabbed the emergency chair in the stairwell, helped the woman (Tina Henson) into the chair, and resumed their descent. It took the nearly an hour to descend those stairs. When they reached the lobby, it looked nothing like it had earlier that morning: "The lobby is completely destroyed. Turnstiles blown out near the walls, counters cracked in half, doors off hinges, floor to ceiling plate glass windows broken. What captures my attention the most is the desolate West side highway, the thick coat of what looks like a new fallen snow." This was John's description of that moment that he captured in his book, Hero Sandwich.

The men watched as rescue workers put Tina into the back of an ambulance, then they turned to look at the building behind them. They saw flames at the top, and saw the figures of people who had thrown themselves from the top of the tower. Suddenly, the tower itself began to disintegrate, and they had to run for their lives to escape the falling debris. They dove under nearby vehicles and were able to avoid being injured.

John and Michael were featured as heroes on Oprah and on Good Morning America and in People Magazine, and each has written a book about the experience (Michael's is here). Out local TV station has followed John over the years as well and they just aired an update on John for the 10th anniversary. But for me, I'd like to think that John will be remembered in a different way as well. When I returned to teaching AP Psychology in the 2008-09 school year and started to update those old Cerqueira guides, I had a moment when I thought: should I just change the name to a study guide? And then I thought both of John's heroism and his face that day in class, and I thought, no, my students need to know his story. So they continue to be Cerqueira guides, I continue to teach students how to pronounce his name, and I continue to tell the story, starting with "and John, being John, was running late to work that day..."

-- posted by Steve

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Memories of 911

As the anniversary of 9-11 approaches, an article in Scientific American looks at the accuracy of our memories for this tragic day. Psychologists have talked about "flashbulb memories" and many believe that they are accurate representations of our memories for emotional events. This article is an interview with Elizabeth A Phelps, who is the lead investigator of a study looking into the accuracy of 9-11 memories.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=911-memory-accuracy&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20110907

Kristin H. Whitlock

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CNS/TBI Neuroskills Newsletter

One of the great things about the internet is the wonderful resources one can find to assist in virtually any aspect of life and adjustments one may be confronted with.  For a few years now, I've been receiving a newsletter put out by a company called Centre for Neuroskills that assists people with traumatic brain injury (TBI).  In addition to patient and family services, they also provide some excellent resources.

Below  is a partial listing from their newsletter:

• Traumatic Brain Injury Resource Guide
• Pharmacology Guide--this is an amazing resource of all kinds of psychoactive drugs
• Veterans and TBI
• Concussions and Brain Injury Facts and Symptoms
• The CNS Store
• Laminated Cards for Sale

Brain Injury Information

• Overview of TBI 
• Brain Map 
• What to Expect 
• Vision 
• Sexuality 
• MTBI 
• Coma 
• Cognition and Communication 
• Children 
• Anoxia 
• Concussion Guide 
• Epidemiology 
• Biochemics of Injury 
• Special Reports

One external link is to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website about TBI


Following CNS on social media:
Keep up to date with daily breaking TBI research and news, as well as CNS services, products, employment opportunities and educational videos.

Go to CNS Twitter 

Go to CNS Facebook 

Go to CNS Youtube Channel 

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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Placebo bands, get your red hot placebo bands

If you (like Rob McEntarffer) are big fans of the placebo bands that Rob posted about back in January, you're in luck - they're back in stock! I just placed an order myself and will report back to the blog when mine arrives. I believe it will cure everything that ails me, so I can't wait!

--posted by Steve

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