Brains On Purpose™

Neurososcience "evolved from an interdisciplinary specialty to a full fledged scholarly discipline"

Using new methods of analysis, researchers have tracked 10 years of neuroscience. One member of the team was quoted in a release.

"We wanted to map changes in science over the past decade. To do so, we started with more than 35 million citations between the articles in over 7000 scientific journals. This network of citations represents the flow of information between researchers in the world and the results show that significant changes have occurred in the life sciences. Neuroscience has gone from being an interdisciplinary research area to being a scientific discipline in its own right, ranking alongside physics, chemistry, economics, law, molecular biology and medicine," says Martin Rosvall, Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics, Umeå University. This analysis has resulted in some striking images (featured in the article), which elegantly demonstrate the change in the discipline over time.

Click to download the article "Mapping Change in Large Networks" (PLoS ONE).

Note (added January 29, 2010) - Here is the e-mail Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz sent me in response to this article (posted with permission):

Statistical researchers who specialize in the use of network mapping tools are generally careful to stress that a lot of value judgments about what is important can get hidden in these kinds of analyses  ... this paper REALLY shows that's true ... of course the media piece just parrots the scientific establishment's view that what this paper reports is all just wonderful ...

This paper clearly shows the obvious, that a big chunk of what was called molecular biology is now called neuroscience.  It also seems to claim the whole field of neurology has become neuroscience, which is a dubious claim.

"studying the citation pattern between about 7000 scientific journals over the past decade, we find that neuroscience has transformed from an interdisciplinary specialty to a mature and stand-alone discipline."

A lot of non-molecular biologists with a memory of what the NIH once represented think the days of interdisciplinary specialty were much better ... they were certainly more conducive to seeing human beings as intrinsically different from snails and fruit flies.

Brain talk: How to talk with your clients about neuroscience

Last November, I posted a poll in a post titled Do you tell your clients about neuroscience? A quick poll. I appreciate the time and thought taken by those who responded.

The first question I asked was

How much information do you typically share with your clients about neuroscience? 1=Not Much, 5=Everything I Know

The responses:

1 - 5.6%
   
2 - 22.2%  

3 - 38.9% 

4 - 16.7%

5 - 16.7%

It appears that only about a third of respondents are discussing neuroscience with clients higher than at a mid-level.

The responses to the rest of the questions were helpful. Some of the comments indicated confusion between psychology and neuroscience. The ideas about neuroscience were certainly not monolithic; people have varying notions of what brain science is and what it can (and cannot) tell us.

As one who shares what I know about neuroscience not only professionally, but also with my friends and family, I recommend brain talk as a facilitator of communication. Talking about neuroscience also increases self-awareness. But I am not, today, going to continue listing benefits. Instead I want to recommend a resource.

Do you want to improve your ability to discuss the brain with clients? Then I have an excellent course for you being taught by someone for whom I have much respect. I have before blogged about Bonnie Badenoch at BonP. Now I am happy to report that you can take from her a class via distance education in February.

Our hidden brain: How much of an influence does it have on our decisions?

For those of you always happy to learn more about the decision-making process (isn't that true of all conflict professionals?), here's a new book for you: The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives.

Right now you can click to listen to an NPR interview of the author Shankar Vedantam; it is the 11:00 segment.

And here are two reviews and an excerpt for you below.

From The Washington Post's review of the book:

In "The Hidden Brain," Vedantam reviews this new science and applies it speculatively to practical circumstances in which our subconscious leanings might mislead us. How investors choose stocks, how soldiers obey leaders in battle, how spouses respond in arguments -- these consequential behaviors can be shaped by automatic mental routines that preempt our reason. ...

From the book review "The Out-of-Sight Mind" (New York Times):

Invisible forces that control our behavior have inspired our best story tellers, from Euripides to Steven Spielberg. Whether we’re yanked around by jealous gods, Oedipal urges or poltergeists, the idea that we feel powerless to direct our own actions has a visceral appeal, one exploited by Shankar Vedantam in “The Hidden Brain,” his exploration of the unconscious mind.

Most previous popular treatments of subliminal forces haven’t been data driven. Vedantam, who until recently wrote

After reading this interview of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who wouldn't want to increase mindfulness in mediations?

In this interview from Shambala Sun, Dr. Kabat-Zinn talks about the neuroscience of mindfulness and meditation. He then goes on to talk about some of the new frontiers mindfulness has entered recently.

The mindfulness work is spilling into areas way beyond medicine and healthcare and also beyond psychology and neuroscience. It’s moving into programs on childbirth and parenting, education, business, athletics and professional sports, the legal profession, criminal justice, even politics. For instance, Tim Ryan, a Democratic congressman from Ohio, has become a major advocate of greater support for mindfulness research and program implementation in both healthcare and education, based on his own experiences with ongoing practice. In so many different domains, it’s becoming recognized as virtually axiomatic that the mind and body are and always have been on intimate speaking terms, at least biologically. We need to learn to be much more tuned in to the conversation and participate actively if we are going to function effectively and optimize our health and well-being.

I would add alternative dispute resolution to Dr. Kabat-Zinn's list of arenas where mindfulness in enjoying increased attention.

Congratulations to Mediate.com

Well-deserved recognition for Mediate.com! Here's the press release:

Mediate.com Receives Prestigious American Bar Association (ABA) Award

Eugene, Oregon - Mediate.com, the leading mediation web site in the world, has received the 2010 American Bar Association (ABA) Lawyer as Problem Solver Award.  The award is for the use of “legal skills in creative, innovative and often non­traditional ways.” The award presentation will be on April 9, 2010 in San Francisco. 

In awarding the Problem Solver Award to Mediate.com, the American Bar Association provides the following statement:

“Mediate.com has been at the forefront of making the power of the Internet accessible to lawyers, mediators and dispute resolution practitioners. Mediate.com has been developing digital products and resources that have advanced the presence and depth of the field of dispute resolution in immeasurable ways and fundamentally altered the practice of mediation by making online strategies practical and available.

“Mediate.com offers the field one of the most used information resources, replete with blogs, cutting edge articles, news of mediation and negotiation practice, as well as a place for interactive dialogue. The website is a practical tool for practitioners and helps them become more effective problem solvers.

“Mediate.com applies the technology of the internet directly to lawyers and dispute resolution practitioners. The founders of Mediate.com had the foresight to see the importance and applications of the Internet and bring them to bear on a developing field of practice. This groundbreaking website has given tools and resources to the public and to ADR professionals to do their own problem solving in virtually every field of law.”

James Melamed, CEO of Mediate.com, responded to news of the award saying that, “If ever there was

We think with more than just our minds: Conflict reaches clear down to our toes

A negotiation is so much more than minds and brains interacting with each other. Our bodies are an integral part of any conflict resolution, and not just to hold up our heads that house our brains. Whole people are in the room, and the conflict goes from head to toe. Our cognition is embodied.

I have posted about embodied cognition before, but it is good to remember often that we are more than what is above our neck. A new article was a good reminder for me today of the whole-body person that we each are. I am passing it along as a reminder for you. From "The Body of Knowledge: Understanding Embodied Cognition" (Association for Psychological Science's Observer):

The cold shoulder. A heavy topic. A heroic white knight. We regularly use concrete, sensory-rich metaphors like these to express abstract ideas and complicated emotions. But a growing body of research is suggesting that these metaphors are more than just colorful literary devices — there may be an underlying neural basis that literally embodies these metaphors. Psychological scientists are giving us more insight into embodied cognition — the notion that the brain circuits responsible for abstract thinking are closely tied to those circuits that analyze and process sensory experiences— and its role in how we think and feel about our world.

[Author] APS Fellow and Charter Member Art Glenberg (Arizona State University) says embodiment “provides a counterweight to the prevailing view that cognition is something in the head that is pretty much separate from behavior. ...

(He goes on to say we are animals and that all of our cognition is directed towards survival and reproduction. I don't happen to agree that those are our only goals but that opinion of his does not detract from the article.)

The authors take a look at several research studies on various effects of embodied cognition. The studies are not in the least boring. I invite you to read the article, and bet many of you will find the studies intriguing.

About the vast left-brain conspiracy and those driven to ecstasy by all things neuro

A little less than enthusiasm is contained in a recent blog post at New Scientist about The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (My earlier post about the book.) I am mentioning the post not so much because of the book review but because I very much appreciate a term the writer has coined. From The vast left-brain conspiracy:

I use the term "neuro-enthusiasta" for those given to excessive excitement over what brain science teaches. I have been warning, often in these pages, of its mostly amusing excesses and its tendency to produce newspaper headlines exclaiming that the brain "lights up" when people think and feel various things.

Still, I did not foresee "neuro-" becoming a universal prefix. We have neuro-economics, neuro-theology, neuro-aesthetics and now, if Iain McGilchrist is to be believed, neuro-history.

Talk by Richard Davidson: Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain

Click to watch this talk given by Richard Davidson at Google. From YouTube:

In this talk, Richard J. Davidson will explore recent scientific research on the neuroscience of positive human qualities and how they can be cultivated through contemplative practice. Distinctions among different forms of contemplative practices will be introduced and they will be shown to have different neural and behavioral consequences, as well as important consequences for physical health in both long-term and novice practitioners. New research also shows that meditation-based interventions delivered online can produce behavioral and neural changes. Collectively, this body of research indicates that we can cultivate adaptive neural changes and strengthen positive human qualities through systematic mental practice.