Mastodon
Brain Network For Social Attraction Identified

Brain Network For Social Attraction Identified

by | 2022 Jul 22 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

social brain

Humans do it. Birds do it. Fish do it. So do multitudes of other species. We flock together, come together, are attracted to our kind. We are a social species.

But the question is what makes us behave in this way. Or more specifically which brain circuits activate to make us want to do this and guide our behaviour to actually come together? This has been a mystery to researchers – but we do know of certain chemicals and hormones that drive this behaviour in human beings (see my review of oxytocin here).

Now researchers around Johannes M. Kappel at the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft have managed to identify a visual brain circuit that triggers social flocking.

They did this in zebrafish. To some people, I know, it sometimes sounds strange to use various animals to find these circuits and then apply this to human beings. But there are very good reasons for this including simplicity of brains and also ethical issues. It does also clearly identify mechanisms in the brain.

So, what did they find?

Well, the research into zebra fish larvae shows that they cannot resist being attracted to other zebra fish larvae. But this is related to how they swim; they have a particular jerky swimming motion. First off, the researchers were able to trick these larvae by replicating this swimming movement with a dot of light. And sure enough the larvae couldn’t resist following this dot around when moving in a similar jerky fashion.

They were then able to identify which specific regions were active. They found that a specific set of neurons in a region called the thalamus was responsible for this. The thalamus is a region that connects sensory signals to the rest of the brain. To see if this was indeed responsible for this, they were then able to deactivate these specific neurons, and, yes, the behaviour changed.

So we now know that a group of neurons in the thalamus responds to particularly social cues and drives behaviour to be social.

How this manifests in human beings will be more complex but those little zebra fish larvae have given us some important clues to our own social behaviours.

Quick Hits Alerts
Article Alerts
Newsletter
Premium Brain
Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

twitter / LinkedIn

Reference

Johannes M. Kappel, Dominique Förster, Katja Slangewal, Inbal Shainer, Fabian Svara, Joseph C. Donovan, Shachar Sherman, Michał Januszewski, Herwig Baier, Johannes Larsch. 
Visual recognition of social signals by a tectothalamic neural circuit. 
Nature, 2022
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04925-5

More Quick Hits

The Brainwaves That Boost Creativity

The Brainwaves That Boost Creativity

by | 2022 Jul 21 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

brain wave creativity

I outlined here how recent research has shown that the brains of highly creative individuals use different networks, and this also reminded me of separate piece of research from a few years ago that shows that creative brains have intriguing brain wave patterns.

In this study researchers around Caroline Di Bernardi Luft of the Queen Mary University of London found different brainwave patterns during creative thinking tasks in those who were more successful in these tasks.

What they found is that those who came up with more ideas in a creative thinking task “how many uses can you think of for a brick” or more distant relationships in associative chains e.g.  cat > dog > animal > pet > human > people > family.

So what was happening in the brain?

Well first off it is known that when doing these tasks that obvious associations are the ones that jump to mind first. The brain is designed to build associations. In the case of the brick the most obvious is to build a wall or house. But creative people seem to suppress the obvious ideas searching and enabling more creative solutions.

And indeed, the researchers found that certain brainwaves, specifically alpha oscillations, in the right temporal area of the brain, increase when individuals need to suppress obvious or misleading associations in different creative tasks.

So, it seems that alpha brain waves in this part of the brain help creatives to suppress ideas. But is this just an association or does this actively help?

The researchers then looked to see if this was indeed causal. To do this they activated study participants brains while doing tasks with a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation. This delivers a weak and safe electrical current to the brain and can stimulate various regions at various intensities.

And yes, when triggering alpha waves in the right temporal lobe participants could suppress the obvious ideas better.

So, one route to being creative is to suppress the obvious ideas that jump to mind. This is also triggered by brain waves patterns in the brain. But the good thing about this is that this can be actively trained though practising suppression or potential through neurofeedback techniques (structured brain wave training).

And that leaves me here trying to think of a non-obvious ending to this article.

Quick Hits Alerts
Article Alerts
Newsletter
Premium Brain
Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

twitter / LinkedIn

Reference

Caroline Di Bernardi Luft, Ioanna Zioga, Nicholas M. Thompson, Michael J. Banissy, Joydeep Bhattacharya. 
Right temporal alpha oscillations as a neural mechanism for inhibiting obvious associations. 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018; 201811465
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1811465115

More Quick Hits

How Creative Brains Function Differently

How Creative Brains Function Differently

by | 2022 Jul 20 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

creative brain

Can you learn creativity? Well, you can learn anything, and you can certainly learn to be more creative. But the big question is do those people high in creativity have brains that function differently? There has been a bunch of research that has promoted this idea that those high in creativity do have brains that function differently but there is still a lot to learn.

To help answer this question researchers at UCLA put exceptionally creative visual artists and scientists, known as “Big C” types (selected by a panel of experts and objective criteria) – into brain scanners to try to see what was happening in their brains during creative tasks.

And what did they find?

They found that, yes, creative people do use their brains differently and in an interesting way. When the brain processes information and engages in tasks the brain tends to send all signals through standard pathways and these are connected through various “hubs” such as a region called the thalamus. However, in creative people’s brains this seems to happen differently. They connect regions of the brains without going through these hubs.

This therefore suggests that this is an inborn process – I, for example, have no idea how to connect ideas without using my thalamus!

But this piece of research was also interesting because they compared different population groups specifically visual arts and sciences but also compared this to an IQ-matched comparison group to make sure this is not just a signature of intelligence. And they also found something else interesting.

They found that these Big C creatives had more efficient local brain connections at rest but when they ramped up on creativity tasks, they used the pattern above using less efficient but more divergent routes. So, this shows two things that are happening in the brains of creatives. They have efficient local connections and divergent global connections and when they ramp up for creative tasks their networks use less efficient but more novel pathways. That’s precisely why they’re so creative.

So yes, anther one to show that truly creative people do have brains that operate differently – how much can be learned is another question – but this seems to show this is a fixed attribute. But that is another question for another day.

I’m just trying to figure out how to make my brain less efficient!

Quick Hits Alerts
Article Alerts
Newsletter
Premium Brain
Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

twitter / LinkedIn

Reference

Ariana Anderson, Kevin Japardi, Kendra S. Knudsen, Susan Y. Bookheimer, Dara G. Ghahremani, Robert M. Bilder. 
Big-C creativity in artists and scientists is associated with more random global but less random local fMRI functional connectivity.
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2022
DOI: 10.1037/aca0000463

More Quick Hits

Experts Don’t Give the Best Advice – Just More of It

Experts Don’t Give the Best Advice – Just More of It

by | 2022 Jul 19 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

expert advice brain

Ok, that is a massive generalisation, and the research didn’t actually look at experts in the sense that we understand it. It is nevertheless insightful and does indeed match some of my personal observations in many fields – from sports to business (I am an expert in a few areas). It also matches other research into the area of how experts are often not as expert as they think themselves.

So, what did these researchers do – and find?

First off, Levari et al. conducted a study with 1’100 participants playing a game called Word Scramble. In this participants are given a board of letters and have 60 seconds to form as many words as possible. Participants played three rounds with different boards. They then asked the participants who they would like to get advice from to learn how to perform better. Unsurprisingly most participants responded that they would like to get advice from the top performers.

That is a logical and natural instinct. If you want to perform better, ask those that are better. But then it gets really interesting.

The researchers then asked 100 of the participants to play a further 6 rounds, then write advice for future players, and rate the quality of their advice. Unsurprisingly the best performers rated their advice as better.

From here another 2’085 participants were then randomly assigned to an advice or no-advice group. Both groups played rounds in total with the advice group receiving advice after their first round. And what happened? The expected. Those that received advice improved quicker and improved with each subsequent piece of advice.

So far so good but when we look at who was giving the advice this is where we get a surprise. Those that were better performers did not give better advice than those who were lower performers. Or this was not reflected in the results. Those participants improved with any advice from anybody. Remember those that had performed better had rated their advice as better. Not so according to the data.

They then got a group of undergraduates who were uninvolved with the study to categorise the advice. For example, it could be ranked as more articulate, or it could be “should” advice, or “should not” advice. And what did they find. There was only one property that was significantly different to the advice that was ranked as best. There was more of it!

This shows that those who were ranked as experts and whose advice was seen as best simply gave the most advice. However, this advice did not correlate with any better performance in contrast to advice from “non-experts”. But interestingly people receiving advice perceive quantity as a sign of quality. Ummm!

There are multiple reasons for both of these effects one is that being an expert does not necessarily mean you can put yourself in the position of a non-expert and formulate more effective advice for them.

And as they showed at the start of the experiment, we do want to receive advice from the best performers “the experts” – it just that this may not be any better than from non-experts. In Word Scramble at least.

Quick Hits Alerts
Article Alerts
Newsletter
Premium Brain
Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

twitter / LinkedIn

Reference

David E. Levari, Daniel T. Gilbert, Timothy D. Wilson. 
Tips From the Top: Do the Best Performers Really Give the Best Advice? 
Psychological Science, 2022; 33 (5): 685
DOI: 10.1177/09567976211054089

More Quick Hits

Do Men and Women Have Different Brains?

Do Men and Women Have Different Brains?

by | 2022 Jul 19 | Feature, Society Brains

We probably all believe, to some degree, that men’s and women’s brains differ. But the research is contradictory, and a major review last year found no significant differences – going against most people’s gut feeling and general observations. But some more recent research points to what the differences might actually be . . .

 

This content is only for Premium Brains - please subscribe to access this. All subscriptions come with a free trial.
Register for free to receive access to "Healthy Brains" and other selected articles.
Subscribe to Premium Brain (monthly or annual) to access all articles and access the download page.

Subscribe now

 

leadership brain magazine