Mind Brain Research Articles

A Complexity Approach Toward Mind–Brain–Education (MBE); Challenges and Opportunities in Educational Intervention and Research

ABSTRACTIn the context of an educational or clinical intervention, we often ask questions such as “How does this intervention influence the task behavior of autistic children?” or “How does working memory influence inhibition of immediate responses?” What do we mean by the word influence here? In this article, we introduce the framework of complex dynamic systems (CDS) to disentangle the meaning of words such as influence, and to discuss the issue of education and intervention as something that takes place in the form of complex, real‐time, situated processes. What are the applied implications of such a CDS framework? Can we use it to improve education? Five general principles—process laws—are introduced, which can be used to guide the way we formulate research questions and methods, and the way we use the results of such research. In addition, we briefly discuss a project in progress, in which we ourselves attempt to apply the process laws that govern educational activities. Finally, we report about a discussion about the usability of the process laws, both in educational research and in the classroom, as was held during our workshop at the Mind, Brain, and Education Conference, November 2014.

Empathic control through coordinated interaction of amygdala, theory of mind and extended pain matrix brain regions

Brain regions in the “pain matrix”, can be activated by observing or reading about others in physical pain. In previous research, we found that reading stories about others' emotional suffering, by contrast, recruits a different group of brain regions mostly associated with thinking about others' minds. In the current study, we examined the neural circuits responsible for deliberately regulating empathic responses to others' pain and suffering. In Study 1, a sample of college-aged participants (n=18) read stories about physically painful and emotionally distressing events during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), while either actively empathizing with the main character or trying to remain objective. In Study 2, the same experiment was performed with professional social workers, who are chronically exposed to human suffering (n=21). Across both studies activity in the amygdala was associated with empathic regulation towards others' emotional pain, but not their physical pain. In addition, psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis and Granger causal modeling (GCM) showed that amygdala activity while reading about others' emotional pain was preceded by and positively coupled with activity in the theory of mind brain regions, and followed by and negatively coupled with activity in regions associated with physical pain and bodily sensations. Previous work has shown that the amygdala is critically involved in the deliberate control of self-focused distress — the current results extend the central importance of amygdala activity to the control of other-focused empathy, but only when considering others' emotional pain.

Epistemological implications of near-death experiences and other non-ordinary mental expressions: Moving beyond the concept of altered state of consciousness

During the last decades an increasing interest has developed in the so-called altered state of consciousness (ASCs); among these, near-death experiences (NDEs) are one of the most intriguing and debated examples. NDEs are deep and universal experiences with a clear phenomenology and incidence, while some of their features challenge the current views of human consciousness (focused on neural circuits and based on the concept of mind as a byproduct of brain circuitry) with relevant epistemological and historical implications.The origin of the ruling mechanist–reductionist paradigm can be traced back to Descartes’ radical separation of res cogitans and res extensa and the conflict between the nascent science and the Inquisition; this led to removing the subjective properties of mind from the field of scientific interest, relegating them to philosophy and theology in order to enable the development of modern science. However, the physics of the 20th century has eventually moved beyond the classical paradigm, permitting a profound renewal of scientific interest in the mind.Modern research on NDEs has contributed to reopening the debate surrounding the Cartesian separation, the mind–brain relationship and the nature of consciousness. It is now time to reappraise the relevance, strengths, and weaknesses of the available scientific interpretations of NDEs, their relationship with other ASCs, as well as the very concept of ASC; the latter looks to be ill-founded, suggesting the need for: (a) a revision of the conventional approach to subjective phenomena, including both the third- and first-person perspective; and (b) a deep reflection on the possible links between different non-ordinary mental expression, as regards both their phenomenology and mechanisms from a non-pathological perspective.

Zebrafish Swimming into Neuroscience Research: A Visible Mind in A Transparent Brain

Zebrafish is a relatively new vertebrate animal model with a conserved brain architecture and rich repertoire of behaviors. In recent years, we have witnessed the development of multiple approaches tailored for it, including in vivo electrophysiology, in vivo optical imaging and genetic manipulations. Due to the transparency and simplicity of the brain, larval zebrafish has emerged as an ideal model for dissecting brain functions at a whole-brain scale based on a strategy from synapses, neurons, circuitries to behaviors. In this review, we will summarize the recent important progress of sensory information processing, motor control, and learning and neural plasticity in the zebrafish research field, and pose the requirement for developing novel techniques. Zebrafish will become a sharp axe for neuroscience research and bring us more and more surprises in the future.

Greasing the Skids of the Musical Mind

Researchers suggest that musical training prepares the mind for learning; however, there are many obstacles to the implementation of research to practice in music education. The purpose of this article is to apply key principles of mind brain education to music education and to evaluate how music prepares the mind for learning. Practical teaching strategies and approaches are presented to maximize benefits for musical and general cognitive development. Application of such strategies and approaches discussed in mind brain education may enhance music classroom teaching and learning.

Can Brain Imaging Breach Our Mental Privacy?

Brain-imaging technologies have posed the problem of breaching our brain privacy. Until the invention of those technologies, many of us entertained the idea that nothing can threaten our mental privacy, as long as we kept it, for each of us has private access to his or her own mind but no access to any other. Yet, philosophically, the issue of private, mental accessibility appears to be quite unsettled, as there are still many philosophers who reject the idea of private, mental accessibility. I have attempted to refute such rejections and to establish this idea on firmer grounds. My arguments in this paper show that brain imaging allows no access to our mind and that mind privacy is quite different from brain privacy, as the latter can be breached by brain imaging, whereas the former cannot. A reduction of the mind to the body inescapably fails, as there is a categorial difference between mind and body or brain, which is compatible with their inseparability. Brain imaging cannot enable one to “read” the mind or to breach our mental privacy. There is no external access to one’s mind. Each of us has exclusive access to his or her own mind.

This Is Your Brain on College: Educating Students with the Brain in Mind

This Is Your Brain on College: Educating Students with the Brain in Mind

Stimulating the Self: The Influence of Conceptual Frameworks on Reactions to Deep Brain Stimulation

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is generally considered to have great practical potential. Yet along with its remarkable efficacy, which is currently being tested in application to many pathologies, come a certain number of complications. In particular, there seem to be several adverse psychological implications behind a relevant number of postoperative situations. Whether these effects have to be attributed to a reactive response to a new situation or whether they are caused by the stimulation itself, or both, remains to be elucidated. This article takes up this issue, and evaluates how various views and conceptual schemes concerning the mind–brain relationship might play a role in the ensuing (mal)adaptation to DBS treatment. It is valuable to investigate the relationship between different conceptual assumptions and the onset of psychosocial maladaptations in clinical settings. In particular, we hypothesize that the frequently reported maladaptations might be partially caused by a concep-tual shift away from dualism and toward a “neurocentric” materialism, promoted by the scientific explanation of the pathological situation. This article examines which conceptual framework is likely to play a dominant role in the perception of the general public of how the mind relates to the brain, and how this contrasts with the opinions of experts in cognitive neuroscience. We investigate how these different conceptual frameworks might play a role in the occurrence of psychosocial maladaptations to DBS treatment in clinical settings. Finally, we suggest how a more inclusive, embodied embedded stance toward the mind–brain relationship might help to overcome such maladaptations.

Biomania: Benefits, Risks, and Challenges

As a tongue-in-cheek expression of protest, the author uses the term biomania to characterize excessive enthusiasm for exclusively biological approaches to psychiatry, while fully appreciating the increasingly vital contributions of neuroscience to the profession. Advocating science-informed humanism, the article brings to bear psychological and philosophical thinking on age-old problems now informed by neuroscience, including free will, the mind–brain relation, and the nature of consciousness. All these problems are pertinent to understanding patients and to educating them and their family members in this age of biological psychiatry. Clinicians in all mental health disciplines must strive to balance science and humanism in their therapeutic endeavors without sacrificing either to the other. This article provides some guidance for that aspiration.

Teaching Mathematical Problem-Solving with the Brain in Mind: How can opening a closed problem help?

In the international literature, increasing numbers of articles and books are published about teaching and learning, with the brain in mind. For a long time, I have been sceptical about this question. However, seeing many unresolved issues in the teaching and learning of mathematics, I slowly started to study the relevant literature and have attempted to implement some ideas in my teaching. In this article, I will report on my experience with a selected mathematical problem in mathematics lessons and group study sessions; I will demonstrate how I modified the problem, based on my experience with the students, and I will reflect on my studies of brain-based mathematics teaching and learning.

Thinking about seeing: Perceptual sources of knowledge are encoded in the theory of mind brain regions of sighted and blind adults

Blind people’s inferences about how other people see provide a window into fundamental questions about the human capacity to think about one another’s thoughts. By working with blind individuals, we can ask both what kinds of representations people form about others’ minds, and how much these representations depend on the observer having had similar mental states themselves. Thinking about others’ mental states depends on a specific group of brain regions, including the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ). We investigated the representations of others’ mental states in these brain regions, using multivoxel pattern analyses (MVPA). We found that, first, in the RTPJ of sighted adults, the pattern of neural response distinguished the source of the mental state (did the protagonist see or hear something?) but not the valence (did the protagonist feel good or bad?). Second, these neural representations were preserved in congenitally blind adults. These results suggest that the temporo-parietal junction contains explicit, abstract representations of features of others’ mental states, including the perceptual source. The persistence of these representations in congenitally blind adults, who have no first-person experience with sight, provides evidence that these representations emerge even in the absence of relevant first-person perceptual experiences.

Integrating culture-as-situated-cognition and neuroscience prediction models

The interface of mind, brain, culture, and behavior has provided rich ground for speculation, theorizing and empirical research. To date, theorizing has focused on between-country difference and much research has focused on quasi-experimental design in which groups are compared and the reasons for found differences imputed to be about the culture-brain interface. The authors of this paper argue for a somewhat different approach. We conceptualize culture as a set of human universals that are dynamically triggered in context. In doing so we integrate culture-as-situated-cognition (CSC) and neuroscience prediction (NP) models to yield a number of novel predictions: first, all societies include cues triggering both individualistic and collectivistic mindsets. Second, whether a mindset is triggered by a particular cue and what a triggered mindset implies for judgment, affective and behavioral response depends on spreading activation within the associative network activated at that moment. Third, universal features of culture are likely necessary from an evolutionary perspective; societies develop and sustain specific instantiations of these universals whether or not these particular instantiations were ever optimal, simply because they are the way ‘we’ do things. The CSC–NP model explains why models that assume fixed differences do not always find behavioral differences; effects are probabilistic, not deterministic. It also explains why models that assume that particular cultural practices are functional are unlikely to be supported. We review extant studies that combine neuroscientific and priming methods and highlight what needs to be done in future studies to address gaps in current understanding of the mind–brain–culture–behavior interface.

Is it time to train neurologists in the management of mood and anxiety disorders?

Depression and anxiety disorders are the most frequent psychiatric comorbidities in people with epilepsy (PWE), with lifetime prevalence rates estimated to range between 30 and 35% in population-based studies [ [1] Tellez-Zenteno J.F. Patten S.B. Jetté N. Williams J. Wiebe S. Psychiatric comorbidity in epilepsy: a population-based analysis. Epilepsia. 2007; 48: 2336-2344 Crossref PubMed Scopus (762) Google Scholar ]. The need for their timely identification and treatment has been recognized for the last two decades. In fact, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) has singled out psychiatric comorbid disorders as one of its benchmarks, while various aspects of mood and anxiety disorders in epilepsy have been the topic of major lectures and symposia at national and international scientific epilepsy congresses for the last ten years (e.g., American Epilepsy Society, European Epilepsy Congress, International Epilepsy Congress of the International League Against Epilepsy, Brain Mind and Epilepsy Congress). Yet, despite the wide recognition of the problems associated with these two conditions, they remain undiagnosed and untreated in a vast majority of these patients. Asato et al. address this problem head-on, as illustrated in their statement “again and again it is pointed out that the comorbidities continue to be under-recognized and undertreated and that patients with epilepsy have significant unmet mental health needs. Nonetheless, there is no indication that this disappointing state of affairs will change anytime” [ [2] Asato M.R. Caplan R. Hermann B.P. Epilepsy and comorbidities—what are we waiting for?. Epilepsy Behav. 2014; 31: 127-128 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (27) Google Scholar ].

Neuroenergetics at the brain–mind interface: a conceptual approach

Modern neuroimaging techniques, such as PET and fMRI, attracted specialists in cognitive processing to the problems of brain energy and its transformations in relation to information processing. Neuroenergetics has experienced explosive progress during the last decade, complex biochemical and biophysical models of energy turnover in the brain necessitate the search of the general principles behind them, which could be linked to the cognitive view of the brain. In our conceptual descriptive generalization, we consider how the basic thermodynamical reasoning can be used to better understand brain energy. We suggest how thermodynamical principles can be applied to the existing data and theories to obtain the holistic framework of energetic processes in the brain coupled with information processing. This novel and purely descriptive framework permits the integration of approaches of different disciplines to cognitive processing: psychology, physics, physiology, mathematics, molecular biology, biochemistry, etc. Thus, the proposed general principled approach would be helpful for specialists from different fields of cognition.

Examining the Dilemma between Theory and Epistemology of ISP Knowledge for Secondary Liability

Holders of rights sue the intermediately service providers (ISPs) for contributory liability through the ISPs knowledge of infringement specifically for copyright infringement trademark and other rights. Formalism in the light of corrective justice strictly limits ISPs liability to fault based liability theory, but to evaluate ISPs fault gives credit to the probabilistic knowledge that requires ISPs to serve as the police for owners of rights. Furthermore, they are for establishing corrective justice law applies the mathematics though on the knowledge of fault via attempts to achieve all of the answers regarding the measure of evaluating ISPs’ knowledge from secondary liability rather than computing philosophy, social science, or realism. Other common theories recognize chief – justice brain or reasonable man mind induced as critical of ISPs’ knowledge of infringement. This is in contrast with computing mind philosophy. Research will answer inconsistency of theories and ISP knowledge to protect all parties’ rights.

Look Again: Effects of Brain Images and Mind–Brain Dualism on Lay Evaluations of Research

Brain scans have frequently been credited with uniquely seductive and persuasive qualities, leading to claims that fMRI research receives a disproportionate share of public attention and funding. It has been suggested that functional brain images are fascinating because they contradict dualist beliefs regarding the relationship between the body and the mind. Although previous research has indicated that brain images can increase judgments of an article's scientific reasoning, the hypotheses that brain scans make research appear more interesting, surprising, or worthy of funding have not been tested. Neither has the relation between the allure of brain imaging and dualism. In the following three studies, laypersons rated both fictional research descriptions and real science news articles accompanied by brain scans, bar charts, or photographs. Across 988 participants, we found little evidence of neuroimaging's seductive allure or of its relation to self-professed dualistic beliefs. These results, taken together with other recent null findings, suggest that brain images are less powerful than has been argued.

Slippery slopes. Some considerations for favoring a good marriage between education and the science of the mind–brain–behavior, and forestalling the risks

Abstract The paper briefly discusses historical and contemporary reasons for fostering the enterprise of establishing education as an applied science, grounded on theoretical and empirical research in the sciences of the mind, brain, and behavior. The bulk of the paper discusses potential risks that threaten the enterprise, and proposes three levels of contribution that cognitive science can bring into: education policymaking, educational research, and educational practice.

Can neuroimaging help solve the mind–body problem?

The brain–mind problem is a fundamented issue addressed by philosophers and neuroscientists for centuries. They have been divided into those believing that the mind is just a reflection of physiological processes (two monistic view) and those claiming that while the mind has parallel brain activities, they are basically different and unbridgeable entities (dualistic view). The availability of modern neuro-imaging, particularly fMRI, has allowed new approaches to this problem. fMRI has been very effective in identifying brain areas involved in neural and mental processes.

The Speculative Neuroscience of the Future Human Brain

The hallmark of our species is our ability to hybridize symbolic thinking with behavioral output. We began with the symmetrical hand axe around 1.7 mya and have progressed, slowly at first, then with greater rapidity, to producing increasingly more complex hybridized products. We now live in the age where our drive to hybridize has pushed us to the brink of a neuroscientific revolution, where for the first time we are in a position to willfully alter the brain and hence, our behavior and evolution. Nootropics, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), deep brain stimulation (DBS) and invasive brain mind interface (BMI) technology are allowing humans to treat previously inaccessible diseases as well as open up potential vistas for cognitive enhancement. In the future, the possibility exists for humans to hybridize with BMIs and mobile architectures. The notion of self is becoming increasingly extended. All of this to say: are we in control of our brains, or are they in control of us?

Narrowing, but not bridging, the brain–mind gap: Comment on “Dissipation of dark energy by cortex in knowledge retrieval” by Antonio Capolupo, Walter J. Freeman and Giuseppe Vitiello

Narrowing, but not bridging, the brain–mind gap: Comment on “Dissipation of dark energy by cortex in knowledge retrieval” by Antonio Capolupo, Walter J. Freeman and Giuseppe Vitiello