(PEDRO ARMESTRE/AFP/GettyImages)

The concept is called reverse inference. Its both neurosciences greatest ambition, and the origin of its most frustratingly breathless overstatements.

Every so often, a person is unexpectedly thrust into a defining wedge-issue of an era. This time, I was asked rhetorically, Is being gay a choice? Well, my friend answered their own question; according to a series of studies, including one published inScientific Reportsin 2018, scientists have discovered neurological differences between gay and straight people. When subjects were shown a series of pornographic pictures, depending on the content of the images, people with different sexual orientations had different brain activity. In other words, there is a concrete biological origin of sexuality; there is such a thing as a gay or straight brainrather, a biologically-inevitably gay or straight brain.

As my friend concluded from this development, this proves that being gay is not simply psychological; theres an actual biology to it. Those in right-wing chatrooms trying to mock gay people by saying things to the effect of, I want to be a frog, therefore, Im a frog are now, scientifically verifiably, jerks. Just as one cant just decide to be a frog, one cannot simply claim to be gay and then, poof, become gay.

Without science, if someone states his or her sexual preference, either he or she is telling the truth or making it up. Either a person is gay or theyre pretending to be. With science, however, maybe this debate can be resolved for good.

Personally, I do not have a strong position on whenin the course of ones developmenta person starts being gay. Ive seen scientific arguments for genetic destiny, but Im also drawn to the idea that sexual preference is slowly shaped by an interplay of genetic and social factors throughout adolescence and even into adulthood.

I do, however, have a position on whether brain-imaging research supports the conclusion that being gay is a biological-inevitability. More importantly, I have a position on whether scientific research can inform our moral obligations towards supporting gay rights. In this essay, I hope to show that in specific, neuroscientific terms, we do not know with much confidence what being gay really is. Furthermore, even if we did, science cannot resolve the LGBTQ-rights aspect of the culture wars.

Brain Imaging Does Not Prove Biological Causation, and, Being LGBT is, in General, More than Sexual Orientation

Despite the involvement of extremely complex brain-recording technology, the design of the 2018 experiment was very simple. Scientists collected a group of people who were gay and another group of people who were straight, positioned them in a brain scanner, and showed them pornography. While the subjects awkwardly looked at naked bodies, researchers collected images of their brain activity, and, lo and behold, discovered that some areas of the brain showed differences.

However, one big issue is that straight people and gay people do not differ just in sexuality. There are also (in general) differences in personalities and lifestyles. What if the brain differences seen in this study are really just differences in social presentation? If being gay is (often) more than sexual preference, we cant be confident that the neurological differences are strictly about sexuality.

This confound is not unique just to studies dealing with sexuality. The way we conduct brain-imaging today struggles to prove causation in a traditional scientific sense. Before scientists are willing to adopt the term causation, they want to see that the manipulation of some variable has an impact on another. In other words, changing X reliably changes Y. Sure, we can compare brain activity between groups; however, we cannot intervene in a way that truly mimics what were recording.

The problem is two-fold. Commonly-used brain-recording technologies like EEG and fMRI do not offer very precise resolution. Instead, they record from large swaths of brain tissue. With these technologies, we can evaluate whether a large population of cells are more of less activebut not what any individual cell is doing. Its not clear whether neuroscience actually needs to know the functionality of each cell, but its clear that our recording technology provides highly ambiguous information.

The second half of the problem lies with the difficulty with brain stimulation. Non-invasive stimulation technologies (like transcranial magnetic stimulation) can be done pretty easily, but these technologies also lack precise resolution. In this case, even if our recording technologies provide un-ambiguous data, we could not intentionally produce that same activity pattern.

If we could reproducibly induce gay or straight preferences, we would know with real confidence that we had discovered the biological basis of homosexuality. Tangentially, if we had the technical capacity to change a persons sexual orientation, it would open up a pandoras box of ethical dilemmas (should a parent have the right to convert their child?). Fortunately, this horror scenariolike Mike Pences conversion-camp fantasyis well beyond our technical capabilities.

A Bigger Problem; Neurosciences Persistent Fallacy

Perhaps, though, we ought to try a thought experiment. Lets say its a little bit in the future, and a son just announced to his father that he is, in fact, gay. The father decides that he needs some verification, and, as such, the father takes his son to see the local scientist. The scientist explains that long ago, researchers identified the neural correlates to being gay, as described above, using the round-up and scan method. The scientist then tells the father that he can place the son in the scanner, and, after a short while, determine whether his brain has the characteristics that make his brain gay.

Neuroscientists have long hoped that a persons mental state could be inferred based on the findings of a brain scan. What Russell Poldrack and many other neuroscientists have argued, however, is that this approach relies on questionable reasoning. If we understand a persons psychology, the argument goes, we can also identify the underlying neurology. Just throw the person in a brain-scanner, and theres your answer. However, going one step furthertaking that newly discovered neurologyand inferring that same psychology in a different person is something of a logical leap.

X Y does not imply Y X, because sometimes, maybe, Z Y. Also, some Xs are Ys does not imply that all Xs are Ys.

Its pretty simple. Scientists might be able to observe that gay people, on average, have one sort of brain. But not every gay persons brain is going to appear gay. Furthermore, some non-gay people may have brains that appear gay, even if they are not gay. The differences that scientists observe in the brain are based on group averages; they almost never perfectly distinguish between two groups of people, and, in the case of the study linked here, they did not appear to. The concept is called reverse inference. Its both neurosciences greatest ambition, and the origin of its most frustratingly breathless overstatements.

However, enlightened neuroscientists do note that reverse inference is not necessarily wrong, and, at times, it may be useful. Even if we cannot be 100% sure that a particular brain region underlies a particular trait, maybe we can be 95% sure. Oftentimes, the correlations we find with brain imaging research are suggestive. Nevertheless, especially in situations where there is some variability in the neurobiology (which, is basically, every brain scan study), people need to be very cautious in making that final reverse inference.

Conclusion

Neuroscience cannot tell us much about psychology without relying on current psychological measures. In order to conduct research, we have to have some operational definitions. In this caseif we want to identify the neural correlates of being gaywe have to rely on whether people say theyre gay. Self-report is a premise of the argument, which means that science is not well-prepared to transcend self-report. If a person states that he or she is gay, neuroscience is generally not in a position to elaborate.

As a scientist, I believe in the importance of science-advocacy, and I agree with the sentiment that much evil originates from humankinds attempts to define and divide our species into various categories. I also believe that sexuality does not have to be a rigid unchanging quality defined at birth.

However, in this case, we are likely placing solidarity-signaling over neutral scientific reasoning. Confidently asserting the existence of inevitably-gay-brains might make for the ultimate alliance with the LGBTQ community, but it may overstate the confidence of our science. Scientists are allying with the LGBTQ community certainly not because of political identity, no, but because its rational to do, in their viewbecause its scientific to do so.

But some political questions transcend objective reality. Whether climate change is happening is science, whether we should do something about it isnt. Whether or not we believe that a society ought to embrace homosexuality, or a government ought to protect LGBTQ rights, is a moral question, not a scientific one.The underlying scientific reality can inform our position on whether we support gay rights, but its only part of the equation.

Andrew Neff lectures in psychology at Rochester University and runs the blog Neuroscience From Underground.

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When Neuroscience Interjects Itself into Debates on Sexuality - Merion West

A new study by psychologist Shantanu Jadhav and his lab shines new light on how rats make decisions based on recent memories.

During sleep, the brain replays each memory from the day in a unique pattern of brain cell firings. The activation of a pattern essentially creates a recording of the memory so it can be stored for the long term.

This process, called memory consolidation, occurs while were awake, too. In a recent paper in Neuron, assistant professor of psychology Shantanu Jadhav and his lab demonstrate how memory consolidation works in rats brains when they make a decision.

With remarkable precision, Jadhav and his team identified and isolated specific patterns of brain cell firings in the animals that corresponded to individual memories. As a result, they could tell what the rodents were remembering. They also found a way to predict what the animals would do next.

In the long term, researchers hope that a greater understanding of how the brain processes memories will lead to treatments for diseases where memory is impaired, such as Alzheimers or other kinds of dementia.

The experiment

Jadhav and his collaborators designed a W-shaped maze. Each prong of the W held small wells with a tasty rat treat. A rat entering the maze on the right would find the nearest treat in the center. After that, the nearest treat would be on the left.

It worked in the opposite direction as well; after noshing on the left, the rodent went to the center and then back to the right. Over the course of 6 to 8 hours, the rats formed separate memories of each of the four parts of a roundtrip journey right to center, center to left, left to center and center to right. Each part corresponded to a unique and identifiable pattern of brain cell firings.

Decision time for the rats

When the rats arrived in the center of the maze, they paused for several seconds. During this time, they pondered their next move. They could go back to where they came from (no treat) or they could continue to the opposite side of the W (treat!).

The scientists monitored the rats decision-making process in real-time. First, the rats replayed the sequence of brain cell firings from a memory of one of the four legs of their journey.

But what surprised the scientists was that the rats' brains played the sequence in reverse order, rewinding the recording of the memory. This process is called reverse replay and enables the rats to recall the past in order to decide what to do next.

The rats also pondered their future. Here, the rats played their memories brain cell firings in the original order in which they occurred in a process called forward replay.

Reverse and forward replay occur in the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure located close to the brain's center. (It actually means seahorse in Greek.) The hippocampus handles spatial memory, which in both rats and humans makes it possible to determine location and navigation from place to place. "It's the internal GPS system for navigation in the mammalian brain," Jadhav said.

The brain firings involved in reverse and forward replay are called sharp-wave ripples. In both rats and humans, they happen in bursts that last a few hundred milliseconds a good thing. It may take an hour to go to work, but if recalling the memory of your route took that long youd never return home.

What will the rat do next?

Jadhav and his fellow researchers wanted to see if they could predict the rats route by analyzing their brain cell firings. They observed that the rats final decision on what route to take next didn't happen in the hippocampus, which only sifted through the options. It was in the prefrontal cortex, located behind the forehead, where the animals future path was determined.

The researchers matched activity in the prefrontal cortex to the four brain firing patterns that occurred during the rats journey. Whichever patterns wound up being activated by the prefrontal cortex indicated the route the animal would travel.

Just before the animals moved on from the center, Jadhav and his team observed the pattern fire, enabling them to foresee the rats' next move. "We could actually predict the rats' future," Jadhav said.

Brandeis graduate students Justin D. Shin and Wenbo Tang co-authored the Neuron paper.This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Whitehall Foundation.

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The neuroscience behind remembering the past and plotting the future - Brandeis University

The filmgoers didnt flinch at the scene of the dapper man planting a time bomb in the trunk of the convertible, or tense up as the unsuspecting driver and his beautiful blonde companion drove slowly through the town teeming with pedestrians, or jump out of their seats when the bomb exploded in fiery carnage. And they sure as heck werent wowed by the technical artistry of this famous opening shot of Orson Welles 1958 noir masterpiece, Touch of Evil, a single three-minute take that ratchets up the suspense to 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.

In fairness, lab mice arent cineastes. But where the rodents fell short as film critics they more than delivered as portals into the brain. As the mice watched the film clip, scientists eavesdropped on each ones visual cortex. By the end of the study, the textbook understanding of how the brain sees had been as badly damaged as the Touch of Evil convertible, scientistsreportedon Monday.

The new insights into the workings of the visual cortex, they said, could improve technologies as diverse as self-driving cars and brain prostheses to let the blind see.

Neuroscience lets us make better object recognition systems for, say, self-driving cars and artificial intelligence-based diagnostics, said Joel Zylberberg of York University, an expert on machine learning and neuroscience who was not involved in the new research. But computer vision has been hampered by an insufficient understanding of visual processing in the brain. The unprecedented findings in the new study, he said, promise to change that.

The textbook understanding of how the brain sees, starting with streams of photons landing on the retina, reflects research from the 1960s that won two of its pioneers aNobel prizein medicine in 1981. It basically holds that neurons in the primary visual cortex, where the signals go first, respond to edges: vertical edges, horizontal edges, and every edge orientation in between, moving and static. We see a laptop screen because of how its edges abut whats behind it, sidewalks because of where their edges touch the curbs. Higher-order brain systems take these rudimentary perceptions and process them into the perception of a scene or object.

Its been known for more than a decade that this textbook model is partly wrong and largely incomplete, said neurobiologist Saskia de Vries of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, who led the mouse-vision study. To see if she could do better, she and her colleagues showed mice simple gratings (lots of edges), moving gratings,118 photos, and the Touch of Evil opening, recording the resulting electrical activity from hundreds of neurons in six regions of each mouses visual cortex.

Which visual features neurons responded to showed that the textbook model doesnt hold up very well, de Vries said. Only about 10% of the mices visual neurons responded to specific kinds of edges (straight or tilted, horizontal or vertical, sharp or blurry, fat or slender) as per the textbook version of the visual cortex, she and her colleagues reported in Nature Neuroscience. Instead, some responded only to movements of facial muscles, others to several features rather than to a single kind of edge. Yet others, they speculate, might even respond to sounds.

Touch of Evil elicited responses from the greatest number of neurons. That makes sense. In Welles opening scene, the camera zooms in and pans out, it sweeps across the scene, and different people and objects move into and out of the frame, a smorgasbord of imagery that should cover just about everything a visual cortex might need to process. But textbooks say that fewer neurons respond to complex visual scenes than to the simpler, edge-based elements the scenes are made of. The Allen Institute team found the opposite: Static gratings interested the fewest neurons; Welles had a much bigger fan base.

All told, 77% of neurons throughout the mices visual cortex responded to at least one thing the scientists showed them. But in some neighborhoods, only 33% did. The rest seemed to be on strike.

Thats not supposed to happen either. Thats a huge finding, said neuroscientist Bruno Olshausen of the University of California, Berkeley, who hasarguedthat neuroscience understands no more than 20% of how the visual cortex actually operates. Every visual neuron supposedly responds tosomekind of edge, so what are these silent neurons doing? Olshausen asked. Assuming the finding isnt an artifact, thats a huge population of [visual] neurons that arent doing vision. This should be a wake up call to everyone in the field. Something is dramatically wrong with the standard model.

The surprise finding, he added, makes this a tour de force and a first in neuroscience, to systematically characterize such a large population of neurons across different layers, areas and using different stimuli. The data will be invaluable to theorists and modelers for years to come.

It could be that the scientists didnt show the mice images with the particular feature that these unresponsive visual neurons notice. But that seems unlikely, given the diversity of images: butterflies, leopards, fences, mountains, trees, leaves, rocks, sidewalks, windows, staircases, pencils, and more. Instead, de Vries said, I think its a reflection that other things are going on in the visual cortex, like visual neurons processing sound or something else non-visual.

Since machine-vision developers take their cues from how brains see, the Allen Institute results, if confirmed, carry an important message, Yorks Zylberberg said. It shows that there isnt a mess of [undifferentiated neurons] doing all the same thing, which is what we put into our systems now. Instead, theres at least 10 different types of visual neurons that respond to specific aspects of the visual worlda complexity that computerized object-recognition systems might profitably emulate.

As for the scientists choice of flicks, we picked Touch of Evil because we were looking for a movie clip that had a lot of diverse motion without camera cuts, de Vries said.

Republished with permission from STAT. This article originally appeared on December 16 2019

Original post:
What Mice Watching Orson Welles's Touch of Evil Can Teach Scientists about Vision - Scientific American

A look at the day's major movers, including Carclo, IXICO, Powerhouse Energy, OnTheMarket and Nichols

() saw its shares top the market gainers on Monday, leaping nearly 77% higher to 1.15p after the global learning and skills development partner, announced the sale of its Malaysian business, to AAA Management Science Academy PLT for a total cash consideration of MYR 400,000 (about75,000).

The group said the cash consideration will be payable over a 13 month period and will be used towards the repayment of an existing bank loan in Malaysia, with the proposed transaction expected to complete on 31 December 2019.

Sam Malafeh, the chief executive officer of Malvern, said: "We are pleased to have agreed the sale of the Malaysian business, which will now allow us to focus on growing our core operations in the UK and Singapore."

PLC (), the manufacturer of injection moulded plastic parts, hardened 39% to 14.6p after it completed its exit from the Wipac business.

The business has been put into administration and most of its assets have been bought by a subsidiary of Wuhu Technology for 10.5mln.

The net proceeds from the sale will be applied by the administrators to reduce the outstanding liabilities owed to the creditors of Wipac Limited. About 3.5mln of the net proceeds will be paid by the administrator to the 's pension scheme and roughly 5.0mln will be used to reduce the outstanding drawn balance of the group's revolving credit facility.

() stormed 15% higher to 81p after revealing a 2.4mln expansion of study programmes with two large pharma client contracts.

The data analytics company that deliver insights in neuroscience said it has agreed around a 1.8mln extension to a Phase III study in Huntington's Disease (HD), previously announced in September 2018.

In addition, it continued, it has been awarded around a 0.6mln extension to a study programme in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), previously announced in October 2019.

IXICO reveals 2.4mln expansion of study programmes

() stormed 15% higher to 81p after revealing a 2.4mln expansion of study programmes with two large pharma client contracts.

The data analytics company that deliver insights in neuroscience said it has agreed around a 1.8mln extension to a Phase III study in Huntington's Disease (HD), previously announced in September 2018.

In addition, it continued, it has been awarded around a 0.6mln extension to a study programme in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), previously announced in October 2019.

PowerHouse Energy Group PLC () slipped 4% to 0.47p after the waste-to-energy company said it is in talks to acquire its development partner, Waste2Tricity (W2T).

The acquisition would be in the form of a non-cash transaction using PowerHouse shares to acquire the whole of the issued share capital of W2T, at a ratio of 60% PowerHouse to 40% W2T.

The directors of PowerHouse believe that the enlarged company would be better understood by its customers and investors.

Shares in Rightmove wannabe () fell 4.0% to 73p after it placed shares at 70p each, raising 3.4mln.

The property listings website also announced it is to take a 20% stake in Glanty, the owner and developer of 'teclet', an automated portal for the lettings industry that is designed to reduce overheads and maximise efficiencies for lettings agents.

The 20% stake will cost OnTheMarket 797,000, spread over 10 months.

The fizz went out of () the shares were down 16% at 1,435p after it flagged new soft drink taxes in the Middle East.

The companys flagship product, Vimto, is a popular drink in the Muslim community during Ramadan and the concern is that sales of the drink will be hit by a recently implemented excise tax of 50% to be levied on the retail price of non-carbonated sweetened drinks in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Ramadan trading period accounts for roughly 80% of annual in-country revenues, Nichols revealed.

() late on Fridayunveiled plans to raise up to 3.25mln with backing from private and professional investors. A 1.5mln tranche is being undertakenvia the financial platform Primary bid at 8p a share, a 26% discount to the close last Thursday. Lombard Odier, meanwhile, will pay 1.75mln for 21.875mln Futura shares.

() the battery metals and energy storage company has announced a partnership deal with ion Ventures Ltd, an investor in and developer of energy storage and flexibility assets. In a statement, Regency - which is strategically focused around battery metals - said the parties have executed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to partner on Regency's existing pipeline of projects, with a view to identifying and prioritising the most commercially attractive projects, securing funding and then moving quickly to first cash flow.

Augmented and virtual reality investor PLC () has notched up its first realised gain with the sale of 3D artificial intelligence platform Artomatix. The investment was held by 25.9% owned associate Suir Valley Ventures (SVV) with the sale price a cash multiple of approximately five times its initial investment. will book a profit of 1.6mln from the sale.

() has signed its second exclusive distribution contract in a week for grape fungicide Mevalone. Italian group Sipcam will market, distribute and sell the product in Portugal and the Benelux region.

(), the data analytics company delivering insights in neuroscience, has got a pre-Christmas boost, revealing a 2.4mln expansion of study programmes with two large pharma client contracts. In a brief statement, the AIM-listed firm said it has agreed around a 1.8mln extension to a Phase III study in Huntington's Disease (HD), previously announced in September 2018. In addition, it continued, it has been awarded around a 0.6mln extension to a study programme in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), previously announced in October 2019.

() said its interim results revealed the CBD specialists seed to shelf strategy was working, with the companys chief executive upbeat on the prospects for next year. Shareholders have come to know me for my conservative approach and I am not one for grand predictions but I remain confident that our multi-channel sales approach can bring success to our company, said Nick Tulloch in commentsaccompanying its first-half update.

Just in time for a bit of last-minute Christmas shopping for the devoted angler, () has opened a new store. It is located in Swinton, Greater Manchester and brings the total number of Angling Direct stores across the UK to 34, ten of which have been opened this year.

Minds + Machines Group Limited (), the top-level domain registry company, has revealed that it has continued to trade well in the fourth quarter as it announced the completed renegotiation of an onerous legacy contract. In a brief statement, the group said that further to its announcement of 18 July 2019, all existing and future liabilities, estimated at US$7.9mln, arising from that contract have been settled through a single one-off payment of US$5.1mln.

U.S. Oil & Gas PLC (USOIL) told investors that it is presently preparing applications for permits to drill three new wells. The company said it hopes to drill a well in the first quarter of 2020, subject to regulatory approvals, and subsequent drilling would depend upon the outcome of the first well

() has told investors it has kicked off a new drill programme at the Baita Plai polymetallic minein Romania. Findings from the programme will be used to further define the grades and resource, the company said. It will support existing efforts to confirm a JORC compliant resource statement for the project. Operations are advancing at Baita Plai where the cold commissioning of new mine operations also started last week.

() has updated on the Horse Hill oil project where the new horizontal well has completed its initial flow testing period, showing positive rates but also a requirement for certain interventions. Fellow Horse Hill stakeholder () highlighted that the new horizontal well initially flowed at some 1,087 barrels of fluid per day during clean-up with oil cuts of up to 60%.

() is looking forward to commencing phase 2 of its drilling programme at the Namibia Tantalite Investment (NTI) Mine. In its final results statement covering the year to the end of June, the Namibia-focused company said Phase 2 exploration step-out drilling should be completed in the first half of 2020 and is expected to identify further mineral resources.

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Carclo motors after it completes exit from Wipac business - Proactive Investors UK

Whether or not Hal will one day refuse to 'open the pod bay doors' IRL will depend on the research goals the field of artificial intelligence (AI) sets for itself.

Supercomputer: HAL 9000 is a fictional artificial intelligence character and the main antagonist in the Space Odyssey series.

Currently, the field is not prioritising the goal of developing a flexible, general purpose intelligent system like HAL. Instead, most efforts are focused on building specialised AI systems that perform well often much better than humans in highly restricted domains.

These are the AI systems that power Googles search, Facebooks news feed and Netflixs recommendation engine; answer phones at call centres; translate natural languages from one to another; and even provide medical diagnoses. So the portrait of AI that Stanley Kubrick developed in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, while appropriate for the time (after all, Kubricks film came out in 1968), appears pretty outdated in light of current developments.

That is not to say a superhuman general intelligence like HAL could not be built in principle, although what exactly it would take remains an open scientific question. But from a practical perspective, it seems highly unlikely that anything like HAL will be built in the near future either by academic researchers or industry.

The future of AI is probably more accurately depicted by a toaster that knows when you want to eat breakfast in the morning, than anything resembling a super intelligence like HAL.

Does this mean that artificial intelligence and other related fields like machine learning and computational neuroscience have nothing interesting to offer? Far from it. Its just that the goals have changed.

Artificial intelligence these days is more closely connected to the rapidly growing fields of machine learning, neural networks, and computational neuroscience. Major tech companies like Google and Facebook, among many others, have been investing heavily in these areas in recent years and large in-house AI research groups are quickly becoming the norm.A perfect example of this is Google Brain.

So AI isnt going anywhere, its just being transformed and incorporated into quite literally everything from internet search to self-driving cars to 'intelligent' appliances. The future of AI is probably more accurately depicted by a toaster that knows when you want to eat breakfast in the morning, than anything resembling a super intelligence like HAL.

Virtually everything in the popular media today about AI concerns deep learning. These algorithms work by using statistics to find patterns in data, and they have revolutionised the field of AI in recent years. Despite their immense power and ability to match, and in many cases exceed, human performance on image categorisation and other tasks, there are some things at which humans still excel.

For instance, deep convolutional neural networks must be trained on massive amounts of data, far more than humans require to exhibit comparable performance. Moreover, network training must be supervised in the sense that when the network is learning, each output the network produces for a given input is compared against a stored version of the correct output. The difference between actual and ideal provides an error signal to improve network performance.

Incredible brainpower: AI software has been designed with cognitive abilities similar to those of the human brain, explain Crossley and Kaplan.

And yet humans can learn to do a remarkable variety of things like visually categorise objects and drive cars based on relatively small data sets without explicit supervision. By comparison, a deep neural network might require a training set of millions of images or tens of millions of driving trials, respectively.

The critical question is, how do we do this? Our brains are powerful neural networks shaped by millions of years of evolution to do unsupervised, or better, self-supervised, learning sometimes on the basis of limited data. This is where AI will be informed by ongoing work in the cognitive science and neuroscience of learning.

Cognitive science is the study of how the brain gives rise to the many facets of the mind, including learning, memory, attention, decision making, skilled action, emotion, etc. Cognitive science is therefore inherently interdisciplinary. It draws from biology, neuroscience, philosophy, physics, psychology, among others.

In particular, cognitive science has a long and intimate relationship with computer science and artificial intelligence. The influence between these two fields is bidirectional. AI influences cognitive science by providing new analysis methods and computational frameworks with which neural and psychological phenomena can be crisply described.

Will artificial intelligence ever match or surpass human intelligence on every dimension? At the moment, all we can do is speculate, but a few things seem unambiguously true.

Cognitive science is at the heart of AI in the sense that the very concept of "intelligence" is fundamentally entangled with comparisons to human behaviour, but there are much more tangible instances of cognitive science influencing AI. For instance, the earliest artificial neural nets were created in an attempt to mimic the processing methods of the human brain.

More recent and further advanced artificial neural nets (e.g., deep neural nets) are sometimes deeply grounded in contemporary neuroscience. For instance, the architecture of artificial deep convolutional neural nets (the current state of the art in image classification) is heavily inspired by the architecture of the human visual system.

The spirit of appealing to how the brain does things to improve AI systems remains prevalent in the current AI research (e.g., complimentary learning systems, deep reinforcement learning, training protocols inspired by "memory replay" in the hippocampus), and it is common for modern AI research papers to include a section on biological plausibility that is, how closely matched are the workings of the computational system to what is known about how the brain performs similar tasks.

This all raises an interesting question about the frontiers of cognitive science and AI. The reciprocity between cognitive science and artificial intelligence can be seen even at the final frontier of each discipline. In particular, will cognitive science ever fully understand how the brain implements human cognition, and the corresponding general human intelligence?

And back to our a version of our original question about HAL: Will artificial intelligence ever match or surpass human intelligence on every dimension?

At the moment, all we can do is speculate, but a few things seem unambiguously true. The continued pursuit of how the brain implements the mind will yield ever richer computational principles that can inspire novel artificial intelligence approaches. Similarly, ongoing progress in AI will continue to inspire new frameworks for thinking about the wealth of data in cognitive science.

Dr Matthew Crossley is a researcher in the Department of Cognitive Science at Macquarie University working on category and motor learning. Dr David Kaplan is a researcher in the Department of Cognitive Science at Macquarie University working on motor learning and the foundations of cognitive science.

Understanding cognition, which includes processes such as attention, perception, memory, reading and language, is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time. The new Bachelor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences degree the only one of its kind in Australia provides a strong foundation in the rapidly growing fields of cognitive science, neuroscience and computation.

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Will there ever be a supercomputer that can think like HAL? - Macquarie University

For many people, the New Year is a time to adopt new habits as a renewed commitment to personal health. Newly enthusiastic fitness buffs pack into gyms and grocery stores are filled with shoppers eager to try out new diets.

But, does scientific evidence support the claims made for these diets? In a review article published in the Dec. 26 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine neuroscientist Mark Mattson, Ph.D., concludes that intermittent fasting does.

Mattson, who has studied the health impact of intermittent fasting for 25 years, and adopted it himself about 20 years ago, writes that "intermittent fasting could be part of a healthy lifestyle." A professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Mattson says his new article is intended to help clarify the science and clinical applications of intermittent fasting in ways that may help physicians guide patients who want to try it.

Intermittent fasting diets, he says, fall generally into two categories: daily time-restricted feeding, which narrows eating times to 68 hours per day, and so-called 5:2 intermittent fasting, in which people limit themselves to one moderate-sized meal two days each week.

An array of animal and some human studies have shown that alternating between times of fasting and eating supports cellular health, probably by triggering an age-old adaptation to periods of food scarcity called metabolic switching. Such a switch occurs when cells use up their stores of rapidly accessible, sugar-based fuel, and begin converting fat into energy in a slower metabolic process.

Mattson says studies have shown that this switch improves blood sugar regulation, increases resistance to stress and suppresses inflammation. Because most Americans eat three meals plus snacks each day, they do not experience the switch, or the suggested benefits.

In the article, Mattson notes that four studies in both animals and people found intermittent fasting also decreased blood pressure, blood lipid levels and resting heart rates.

Evidence is also mounting that intermittent fasting can modify risk factors associated with obesity and diabetes, says Mattson. Two studies at the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust of 100 overweight women showed that those on the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet lost the same amount of weight as women who restricted calories, but did better on measures of insulin sensitivity and reduced belly fat than those in the calorie-reduction group.

More recently, Mattson says, preliminary studies suggest that intermittent fasting could benefit brain health too. A multicenter clinical trial at the University of Toronto in April found that 220 healthy, nonobese adults who maintained a calorie restricted diet for two years showed signs of improved memory in a battery of cognitive tests. While far more research needs to be done to prove any effects of intermittent fasting on learning and memory, Mattson says if that proof is found, the fasting -; or a pharmaceutical equivalent that mimics it -; may offer interventions that can stave off neurodegeneration and dementia.

We are at a transition point where we could soon consider adding information about intermittent fasting to medical school curricula alongside standard advice about healthy diets and exercise."

Mark Mattson, Ph.D., neuroscientist, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Mattson acknowledges that researchers do "not fully understand the specific mechanisms of metabolic switching and that "some people are unable or unwilling to adhere" to the fasting regimens. But he argues that with guidance and some patience, most people can incorporate them into their lives. It takes some time for the body to adjust to intermittent fasting, and to get beyond initial hunger pangs and irritability that accompany it. "Patients should be advised that feeling hungry and irritable is common initially and usually passes after two weeks to a month as the body and brain become accustomed to the new habit," Mattson says.

To manage this hurdle, Mattson suggests that physicians advise patients to gradually increase the duration and frequency of the fasting periods over the course of several months, instead of "going cold turkey." As with all lifestyle changes, says Mattson, it's important for physicians to know the science so they can communicate potential benefits, harms and challenges, and offer support.

Link:
Intermittent fasting could lead to improved health - News-Medical.net

Andreas Kappes, lecturer, City, University of London; Tali Sharot, professor of cognitive neuroscience, UCL

WEVE all been there. You are in the middle of a heated disagreement when you lose respect for the opposing party. Whether it is about the latest election or childcare, you feel like your considered arguments are not appreciated perhaps even ignored. But did you ever wonder what exactly is happening in the mind of the person on the other side?

In a recent study, just published in Nature Neuroscience, we and our colleagues recorded peoples brain activity during disagreements to find out.

In our experiment, we asked 21 pairs of volunteers to make financial decisions. In particular, they each had to assess the value of real estates and bet money on their assessments. The more confident they were in their assessment, the more money they wagered.

Each volunteer lay in a brain imaging scanner while performing the task so we could record their brain activity. The two scanners were separated by a glass wall, and the volunteers were able to see the assessments and bets of the other person on their screen.

When volunteers agreed on the price of the real estate, each of them became more confident in their assessment, and they bet more money on it. That makes sense if I agree with you then you feel more sure that you must be right. Each persons brain activity also reflected the encoding of the confidence of their partner. In particular, activity of a brain region called the posterior medial frontal cortex, which we know is involved in cognitive dissonance, tracked the confidence of the partner. We found that the more confident one volunteer was, the more confident the partner became, and vice versa.

However and this is the interesting part when people disagreed, their brains became less sensitive to the strength of others opinions. After disagreement, the posterior medial frontal cortex could no longer track the partners confidence. Consequently, the opinion of the disagreeing partner had little impact on peoples conviction that they were correct, regardless of whether the disagreeing partner was very sure in their assessment or not at all.

It was not the case that the volunteers were not paying attention to their partner when they disagreed with them. We know this because we tested our volunteers memory of their partners assessments and bets. Rather, it seems that contradictory opinions were more likely to be considered categorically wrong and therefore the strength of those opinions was unimportant.

We suspect that when disagreements are about heated topics such as politics, people will be even less likely to take note of the strength of contradictory opinions.

Our findings may shed light on some puzzling recent trends in society. For instance, over the last decade, climate scientists have expressed greater confidence that climate change is man-made. Yet, a survey by the Pew research centre in Washington, DC shows that the percentage of Republicans in the US who believe this notion to be true has dropped over the same period. While there are complex, multi-layered reasons for this specific trend, it may also be related to a bias in how the strength of other peoples opinions is encoded in our brain.

The findings can also be extrapolated to political current events. Take the recent impeachment hearings against US president Donald Trump. Our study suggests that whether a witness appears calm, confident and in command of the facts (as government official Bill Taylor was described when testifying during the hearings) or unsteady and uncertain (as FBI chief Robert Muller was described when testifying about his special counsel investigation back in July) will matter little to those who already oppose impeachment when testimonies are unsupportive of the president. But they will affect the conviction of those who are in favour of impeachment.

So how can we increase our chances of being heard by members of an opposing group? Our study lends new support to a tried and tested recipe (as the Queen recently put it while addressing a country divided over Brexit) finding the common ground.

The strength of a carefully reasoned opinion is less likely to be registered when launching into a disagreement with a sturdy pile of evidence describing why we are right and the other side is wrong. But if we start from common ground that is the parts of the problem we agree on we will avoid being categorised as a disputer from the very beginning, making it more likely that the strength of our arguments will matter.

Take, for example, the attempt to alter the conviction of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children because they falsely believe vaccines are linked to autism. It has been shown that presenting strong evidence refuting the link does little to change their minds. Instead, focusing solely on the fact that vaccines protect children from potentially deadly disease a statement that the parents can more easily agree with can increase their intention to vaccinate their children by threefold.

So in the midst of that heated disagreement, try to remember that the key to change is often finding a shared belief or motive.

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Heres what happens in the brain when we disagree - Metro Newspaper UK