Finished...

At about 4pm on Friday the 20th of August, if you were anywhere in the vicinity of central London, you may have noticed an audible collective gasp; a long and satisfied expulsion of anxious tension. This was the moment that my masters drew to a close, as each and every student on the course handed over their thesis, the fruits of nine months hard slog, before promptly retiring to either the pub, or to bed. In my case, the latter was my chosen option, having spent the entire previous evening, night, morning and afternoon tweaking, redrafting, and desperately trying to get the darn thing printed in time. I did, with five minutes to spare.

In the end, I think I turned in a really good piece of work. I hope so. It has certainly had a lot of praise from the two individuals who will be marking my work, which can only be a good sign. As an extra bonus, it looks likely to be published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, which will be a huge boost to my fledgling career.

Essentially, our project set out to examine what happens when a specific sound becomes behaviourally important. Numerous studies on animals have shown that when a target frequency is paired with an electric shock (to make it behaviourally significant) the area of the brain which ‘looks out’ for that sound gets bigger. What isn’t understood is how this affects the ability to perceive that tone.

We paired a target frequency with a shock, like the animal studies, and participants had to discriminate between the target frequency and other frequencies, some very close and some much further from the target. If, as the animal studies suggest, this leads to an expansion of the target representation on the cortex, will the participants get better at telling the target frequency from tones that are very very close to the target?

The answer, is yes. When subjects were being conditioned with the shock, they became much better at telling apart tones that were very close in frequency. This effect happened rapidly, and did not occur when participants were not being conditioned.

The neuroimaging results also indicated that there was greater brain activity in response to the frequency that was paired with the shock, compared to all other tones. This would fit with the expanded representation demonstrated in the animal studies.

So what? What does all this mean? Well, firstly, we have demonstrated that the human brain begins to adapt and change to our environment within minutes, something that would have been inconceivable a few years ago. Secondly, studies like ours help us to understand the basics of more complex mechanisms, which future studies will elucidate further. How does early musical training produce a child genius? How are our sensory memories stored, and what does this tell us about memory as a whole? What are the limits of the brains ability to change itself, and how can we use this information to treat brain damage or stroke? All these bigger questions will need a basic foundation to expand upon, and studies like ours, which may in isolation appear trivial, can provide the basis for these foundations.

Finally, some rest.

Lectures - finished.

Coursework - completed.

By pure chance, it turns out that my research project supervisor is out of the country this week, the week immediately after my final coursework assignment was handed in, meaning that I have had an entire week with absolutely nothing to do. It has been total bliss.

Starting on Tuesday we should hopefully be in a position to start the research. Initially we will pilot the equipment on ourselves, in order to check everything is in working order. Then we go live and begin testing our participants, and we are hoping to complete the bulk of the research in two or three weeks, provided we can keep a steady stream of particpants coming in and out of the lab.

Obviously I shall keep you up to date with our progress!

I have noticed a worrying trend in my academic career - they always leave things on a downer.

My last lecture on the MSc was on the subject of depression.

When I did my undergraduate degree, our final module was on the psychology of ageing, which was structured in a chronological way so that we ended up covering the cheery topic "bereavement, loneliness and dying".

My final essay topic for the MSc? "Has research into the biological basis of depression had any impact on its treatment?"

Hmm, am I subtly being set-up for a lifetime of professional disappointment?

Oscillations

I am currently attempting to steer myself through the penultimate essay on my MSc course, which unfortunately is proving to be without a doubt the hardest essay I have ever had to write.

It's about 'the functional role of brain oscillations', and is quite interesting at the same time as being obscenely dull. Essentially, I am writing about how there has always been a bias toward examining where in the brain things are processed, but now there is loads of evidence to suggest that observing when the brain works it's magic are just as essential.

It turns out that brain cells oscillate - the electrical activity they display is not random, it has a rhythm. Nothing particularly remarkable about that, but huge numbers of brain cells actually oscillate together - they become synchronised in their activity, and are extremely accurate (to under a millisecond).

To complicate matters, the frequency at which they oscillate, the speed of the rhythm, varies across different parts of the brain, and also varies for different activities. So we have clusters of cells all 'wobbling' together, at a certain frequency, and other clusters all doing the same at a different frequency.

These oscillations are the brain waves you may have seen on TV, when people are made to do experiments wearing funny electrodes on their head, which produces squiggly lines on a monitor.

So, as I said - the timing of brain activity is equally as valid a field of study as the physical layout of the brain. Neuroscientists are easily seduced by fancy looking brain images, and this may go some way to explain the bias towards the where, but this has meant out knowledge of the when is now lagging behind.

Anyway, its horrifically complicated in places, and the afore mentioned bias in the research means its patchy and inconsistent, and this essay is proving to be a real challenge. But then, I knowingly chose what I thought was the hardest question, as it is potentially the one that may be of must use to me in my future research, so I think I made the right decision in picking this essay.

Still, another 1,500 words to write by Friday, and I stupidly signed up for a two day course starting on thursday...

Better get oscillating!

Nearly there....

Coursework deadlines:

MODULE	EXAMINATION	DEADLINE/DATE
Introduction to cognitive neuroscience	2,000-3,000 word written essay	12 February 2010
Structure and measurement of the human brain	2-hour unseen written exam	15 January 2010
Experimental design and statistics	Coursework	Announced in class
Methods I: lesion approaches	Two 1,000-1,500 word written reports	Report 1: 18 December 2009 Report 2: 12 February 2010
Methods II: neuroimaging	Two 1,000-1,500 word written reports	Report 1: 26 March 2010 Report 2: 9 April 2010
Current issues I: fundamental processes	2,000-3,000 word written essay	9 April 2010
Current issues II: elaborative and adaptive processes	2,000-3,000 word written essay	23 April 2010
Current issues III: translational research	2,000-3,000 word written essay	7 May 2010
Research project	10,000-12,000 word written dissertation	20 August 2010

I recently had to write a mini essay on how the mainstream press might misrepresent data from neuroimaging studies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). I thought that, given the nature of the question, it might be a good thing to put up on my blog, so here it is, with a few tweaks and extra explanations of some of the terminology thrown in along the way.



How might fMRI data be misrepresented in news articles targeted to the general
public?


Like many complex disciplines, cognitive neuroscience is plagued by misrepresentation in the media. Most journalists lack the skills, or the integrity, to identify reputable sources of research, and there is a tendency to sensationalise and exaggerate the significance of research, which falsely presents findings as a series of epoch-defining breakthroughs, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the aggregate nature of scientific advancement. Additionally, the mainstream media reports research in isolation, detached from the context of a theoretical framework. The journalist may cite a few key comments from the author, falsely presenting scientists as infallible authority figures. Often, in an attempt to provide balance, a dissenting voice from an opposing scholar is also presented, making science appear to the public as a series of contradictory, diametrically opposed irrelevancies.


These are generic flaws of pseudoscientific journalism, whereas cognitive neuroscience is specifically vulnerable to misrepresentation. This is because it is is a field in which the public has a great interest, but very little knowledge. This enthusiasm for neuroimaging is understandable, as cognitive neuroscience examines intrinsically human topics, such as consciousness, personality, and emotion. Because of the perceived impenetrability of the brain in the public consciousness there is a tacit belief that this research is utterly incomprehensible, leading to ready acceptance of the press reports without critical appraisal. For example, research has shown that presenting an image of a brain in an article will make the scientific credibility of the research appear greater to the reader (McCabe & Castel, 2008). A similar effect has been demonstrated when neuroscientific terminology is inserted into an article, even when it bears little relevance to the discussion (Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson, & Gray, 2008). Clearly, this mystification of brain function amongst the public is open to abuse, deliberate or unintentional.


Reports of fMRI in the press tend to be overly optimistic about its potential, fail to explain its limitations, and are not sufficiently critical of the methodology (Racine, Bar-Ilan, & Illes, 2005). This problem is exacerbated by the contention that much fMRI data has already been distorted and excagerated by the researcher, knowingly or otherwise (Vul, Harris, Winkielman, & Pashler, 2009). This means that the general public, who are untrained in how to critically appraise neuroscientific research, are often presented with news reports which bear little resemblance to the true results.


(At this point, I will interject to remind you about the difference between forward and reverse inferences. A forward inference is when the researcher plots in advance what brain activation they expect to see when a person does a given task in the scanner. This might be as simple as "the participant will do a language task, so we expect to see the left posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus activated, because this is where we process and understand language". This kind of inference is not perfect, but it is better than the alternative, because we are making and testing a prediction.

The alternative, the reverse inference, is severely frowned upon in cognitive neuroscience. Imagine we did the experiment I just described, and as well as activation in the superior temporal gyrus we also saw activation in several other areas which we were not expecting to be activated. We could not then start to speculate on why these other areas were activated, because brain areas often have more than one function, so guess work is considered very bad science indeed. With that little aside out of the way, you should all be able to follow my next point!)


Additionally, the fallacy of reverse inference, avoided by credible neuroscientists, still appears viable to laypeople, especially given the popular myth that we humans only use 10% of our brain (this is not true - every part of the brain has a known function). This myth masks the complex and multipurpose nature of brain function, supporting the notion that brain activity is easily attributable to specific cognitive functions.


Racine, Bar-Ilan, and Illes (2005) examined the portrayal of fMRI research in the media, and identified three key trends, “‘neuro-realism’, ‘neuro-essentialism’ and ‘neuro-policy’” (p. 2). Neuro-realism, they claim, is the phenomenon whereby subjective findings falsely appear as objective fact when viewed within the context of a neuroimaging study. The second, neuro-essentialism, describes the tendency to attribute a self or personality to the brain itself, almost to the point where the brain is depicted as being self-aware, admonishing the individual from any degree of control. Finally, neuro-policy is the politicisation of neuroscientific research to fit and reinforce a social or political agenda. Taken as a whole, these trends misrepresent the findings and usage of fMRI in cognitive neuroscience, ignoring its true purpose as a scientific tool to devise and test hypotheses, and to detail the true workings of the mind and brain.




References

McCabe, D. P., & Castel, A. D. (2008) Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107, 343-352.

Racine, E., Bar-Ilan, O., & Illes, J. (2005). fMRI in the public eye. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(2), 159-164.

Vul, E., Harris, C., Winkielman, P., & Pashler, H. (2009). Puzzlingly high correlations in fMRI studies of emotion, personality, and social cognition. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(3), 274-290.

Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477.


There you go, I hope you will all now be a little more sceptical next time you see an astonishing revelation about the brain on the news or in the paper!

Just one more thing...

When I said after lectures finish it was just the research project to work on, I neglected to mention:

A 1,500 word critical analysis of a neuroimaging paper due on Friday,
A 1,500 word essay due on April 9th.
A 2,000 - 3,000 word essay also due on April 9th.
A 2,000 - 3,000 word essay due on April 23rd.
Another 2,000 - 3,000 word essay due on May 7th.

I think I shall be a busy boy over the coming weeks.