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Human Behavior

The 29 Senses of Normal – The Good Men Project

The mental disorder business, where folks sit around a table and turn symptom pictures into mental disorders, rests on the Orwellian conceit that the average person is gullible enough to believe that there is a clear meaning to the word normal and a clear meaning to the word abnormal. Anyone willing to give the matter a seconds thought would see that these words have so many usages as to empty them of meaning. But few people are willing to give the matter that seconds thought.

It is one of our more astounding places of intellectual shoddiness not to seeand not to shout it out loudthat the word normal is used in so many various and contradictory ways as to render the word both useless and ridiculous. It is a preposterous word, a dangerous word, and an offensive word. And if you dont agree with me, youre not normal!

Here, in lightning fashion, are 29 ways that the word normal is used in discourse about members of our species.

1. Normal = customary

It is normal for a human being to believe in gods.

2. Normal = customary in context

It was normal for French postmodernists to wear kimonos and other unusual attire.

3. Normal = predictable

Given that he was hungry, that no one was watching, and that the apple pie was just sitting there, it was normal for him to steal a piece.

4. Normal = desirable

It isnt normal for our kids not to want their own kids.

5. Normal = acceptable

It isnt normal for a person to walk out during the eulogy. People should know better.

6. Normal = time-limited

It was normal for her to feel sad about the death of her husband but its been two years now.

7. Normal = possible

Since some human beings have been cannibals, eating your enemy is a normal human behavior.

8. Normal = motivated

Once we understood her motives her behavior struck us as completely normal.

9. Normal = rational

He answered all of my questions in a completely rational manner and seemed normal to me.

10. Normal = happy

Shed been unhappy for a long time but shes more normal now, more like her old self.

11. Normal = becalmed

Hed beenanxiousand agitated for months before the premiere of his play but hes much more normal now.

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12. Normal = free of torment

I had no idea he was so tormented by crazy existential angst about the meaning of life! I thought he was more normal than that.

13. Normal = restrained

He used to flare up terribly and get enraged but hes much more normal now.

14. Normal = controlled

Johnny used to be so fidgety in class but now that hes on those three medications he can sit still like a normal student.

15. Normal = self-interested

It is completely normal not to want to blow the whistle at work if that would cost you your job.

16. Normal = not sad

He was feeling blue at his last job but hes feeling much more normal at his new job.

17. Normal = average

Hisintelligencefalls within the normal range.

18. Normal = moral

Homosexuals are sinners. They arent normal.

19. Normal = legal

Its normal to drive a little over the speed limit but he was going ninety.

20. Normal = age appropriate

Thats normal behavior for a two-year-old.

21. Normal = developmentally appropriate

Its normal to act and feel that way when you leave home for the first time.

22. Normal = free of compulsion

He used to drink alcoholically but now he can drink normally.

23. Normal = free of obsession

He used to obsess about meeting Marilyn Monroe in Heaven but now he has normal interests.

24. Normal = free of biological defect

His brain tumor is preventing him from thinking and acting normally.

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25. Normal = free of psychological defect

How could anyone be normal with a mother like that?

26. Normal = free ofspiritualdefect

The devil got a hold of him for a few years but he fought the devil off and now hes normal again.

27. Normal = free ofpersonalitydefect

Hershynesswas really hampering her but now she can speak up like a normal person.

28. Normal = free of social defect

He was living a very isolated life but now he goes out like any normal person.

29. Normal = free of unnamable defect

We cant say whats wrong with him but he just isnt normal.

Have I captured every sense and usage of the word normal? Of course I havent. Are some of these innocent enough and hardly worth railing against? Of course they are. But the main point remains. The word normal cant be saved. It and abnormal should vanish from our human conversation. What would happen if we simply got rid of the words normal and abnormal? We would gain clarity, integrity, and a shot at dealing in new and better ways with what actually ails human beings.

Is a cannibal normal? Is a kimono-clad postmodernist normal? Is a widow still grieving normal? Is a passive, medicated child normal? Is it more normal to drink or more normal to abstain? Everything is normal turned this way or that! And, dangerously, everything is abnormal. When we use words this loosely they become weapons of destruction.

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More than a hundred years of language analysis has not helped us all that much in understanding that the words we use matter. It is perhaps not in the nature of our speciesnot normal (wink, wink)for a sufficient number of people to care enough about the terrible consequences of lame naming (consequences like forcing three, four, or five normalizing medications on a child). I see no hope for any change, as this intellectual shoddiness and carelessness look to be perfectly normal.

This post was previously published on psychologytoday.com.

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Human Behavior

Aaron Sorkin Dramatizes ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ – Shepherd Express

One of the fears going into 2020 was that the Democratic National Convention would become a replay of 1968only this time with right wing agitation stoking the violence instead of left-wing protests. As it happened, this years DNC went virtual but 50-plus years later the argument over 1968 continues. Did the mayhem that erupted in Chicago around the DNC frighten middle-class voters, ushering Nixon into the White House on a law-and-order platform?

And in the words of William Kunstler to Tom Hayden in The Trial of the Chicago 7, Who started the riot, Tom? Writer-director Aaron Sorkin (Moneyball, Steve Jobs) poses the situation from many angles, apportioning responsibility across many hands and weighing the different varieties of idealism. Sorkin doesnt tell us what to think as much as give us things to think about.

The cast is tops, playing recognizably believable versions of people who were notorious in their day. The prominent defendants in the federal case brought against several DNC protest leaders by the Nixon administration in 1969 were a mixed bag with Abbie Hoffman (hilariously channeled by Sacha Baron Cohen), Jerry Reuben (Jeremy Strong), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Dellinger is the odd man out, a middle-class dad and scoutmaster who happens to be a pacifist. The others are young, and Sorkin neatly positions them across the political spectrum: Davis is an idealist whose only commitment is to end the killing in Vietnam. Hayden wants to change the system by working within the system. Hoffman, a prankster who thinks the system is absurd, calls for a cultural as well as a political revolution. His friend Reuben is even more fervid, teaching bomb-making classes in preparation for storming the citadel.

Seale, a Black Panther leader, stands in a class by himself. Dr. King had a dream. Now he has a bullet in his head, he says. He expects no mercy from the system. Hes not playing games.

Except for Seale, the defendants are represented by star attorney William Kunstler, played with world-weary, street (and court)-wise pragmatism by Milwaukee-reared Mark Rylance. In Sorkins screenplay, Kunstler is the anchor that keeps his unruly clients more or less in line. Sitting across from them on the dais is Federal Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), speaking in orotund patrician vowels and boding no dissent.

Abbie Hoffman and Reuben are determined to monkey-wrench the proceedings. They wear judicial robes to court and when ordered to remove them, strip to reveal police uniforms. Contempt of court citations stream from the bench. Seales attempts to plead his case are struck down with force. Eventually he is carried into the courtroom bound and gagged and chained to a chair. Sorkin suggests that Judge Hoffman was senescent, unaware that heas much as Abbie Hoffman and Reubenis turning the trial into a spectacle.

Sorkin repeatedly flashes back from the courtroom to events on the ground near the DNC. Told to give no quarter, Chicago Mayor Richard Daleys police are ready to break heads. Most of the protesters think they are making a statement on the war for convention delegates and the hovering network news cameras, but a combination of irresponsible parties, unanticipated circumstances and the heat of events sparked the clashes that remain synonymous with Chicago 1968.

With a masterful understanding of human behavior, Sorkin manages to endow all the leading figures with sympathy except perhaps for oneNixons blunt-speaking Attorney General John Mitchell, who orders the prosecution for reasons that have less to do with law enforcement than with politics and his own petulance.

To read more film previews and reviews,click here.

To read more articles by David Luhrssen,click here.

David Luhrssen lectured at UWM and the MIAD. He is author of The Vietnam War on Film, Encyclopedia of Classic Rock, and Hammer of the Gods: Thule Society and the Birth of Nazism.

Nov. 16, 2020

9:30 a.m.

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Aaron Sorkin Dramatizes 'The Trial of the Chicago 7' - Shepherd Express

Human Behavior

Learning action plans: The no cost way to increase learning transfer – Training Journal

As a learning professional, the end goal of your learning interventions is not just to improve the learning of participants, but to elicit application of learning back on the job. The process of taking what is learned in a training intervention and applying that learning to an on-the-job setting is known as learning transfer.

It is only through this process that L&D interventions can be said to have made a measurable difference to an employees performance. Yet, it is surprisingly rare. Authors disagree on the exact success rate but estimates suggest that only 10-22% of training leads to learning transfer.

This article will outline an easy to implement method that can increase the amount of learning transferred to the role with no set up costs. To understand why there is little transfer, let's take a look at what learners usually do after training.

The noise

When learners return to their work following a typical training event, the first thing they do is check their email, catch up on social media, or chat to their team about what they missed during the training. One thing's for sure, they arent thinking about what they can do to turn their learning into tangible improvements on the job.

A poorly defined goal is hard to achieve; without definition its hard to know if progress towards the goal has been made.

This influx of information; email, social media, side conversations, scrambles the message the training tried so hard to deliver. The training message now has to compete with office gossip, critical updates from teammates and managers as well as the addictive infinite stream of email and social media for the slim chance of being transferred to the long-term memory of the learner.

Good luck.

However, as a learning professional, there is something you can do to boost the signal of your training message and increase post-training follow through: learning action plans.

Learning action plans, a learner-generated plan to implement their learning following a training event, can keep the training message clear, and cut through the noise of the post-training onslaught of sensory information to increase the chances of learning implementation and training transfer.

Research on effectiveness of learning action plans

Learning action plans have been shown to increase attention in training and improve performance scores on trained behaviour post-training as well as result in higher goal achievement acrossa number of domains.

Learning action plans work by:

Key factors to consider when creating your own learning action plan

Clarity

Learners need to be clear what exactly they want to achieve. A learning action plan should prompt the learner to reflect on their learning and define the elements they will take ownership of for seeing through into action. A poorly defined goal is hard to achieve; without definition its hard to know if progress towards the goal has been made.

Desire

Understanding why we want something helps us to formulate in our mind how we get it. Why are you reading this article? Chances are you want to improve the effectiveness of your training, or you want your learners to learn more, or you are dissatisfied with the effectiveness of training in general.

You have a burning desire to improve your training and are looking for practical implementations. With your desire framed clearly in your mind, you are more likely to take steps to follow through and implement learning action plans. Good! Read on.

Support

Human beings are social animals, we crave interaction with others. Organisations are living organisms, constantly changing and teeming with life and energy generated by the countless interactions made by its people throughout the day.

People help others and require help from others. Its the same with learning. What help do you need to action your plan? Do you need additional information, if so from who? Maybe you need to check your progress regularly with a colleague or manager? Do you need your manager to help expose you to more situations where you will use your new skills?

Maybe you need time to practice a new skill; and the support of your manager to make this time?

Action

Now that youve defined what, why, and who, its time to define how you are going to do it. What specific actions are you going to take and in what situations will you take them? Visualize yourself in that situation following through on your plan.

For example, following a communication skills course: time management training: I am going to block 15 minutes at the start of my day to plan the rest of my day in 30-minute chunks. If I do not complete my task in the allotted 30 minutes, I move to the next task/30 minutes regardless.

Towards the end of your training, ask your learners to take a few moments to think about what they want to change about their behavior based on what they learned in training. Ask them to commit this to paper along with a timeline of when they will do this by, and any support they will need from managers/colleagues to achieve their goal.

Use the template below torapidly kick-start learning transfer after your next training event:

Learning action plan template

Key takeaways

The learning action plan is possibly the most psychologically important tool in your learning transfer toolkit, it leverages decades of human behaviour research in the areas of accountability, social commitment, and goal setting.

Learning action plans are easy to set up, use the template above and add to the final slide of your training deck, or use the template to create a survey to be sent electronically to learners on completion of self-directed learning modules.

Want to boost the chances of learning transfer happening? Encourage your learners to send their action plan to their manager and prompt a discussion about their learning and the support required to turn learning into performance.

About the author

Fergal Connolly is a learning transfer expert and holds an MSc in Education and Training, and a BSc in Psychology.

Continued here:
Learning action plans: The no cost way to increase learning transfer - Training Journal

Human Behavior

Male Science Fiction Movies are About Men Having a Romance with Their AI Women: Shalini Kantayya on Coded Bias – Filmmaker Magazine

A.I. and machine learning models can decide who is accepted into college, who gets housing, who gets approved for loans, who gets a job, what advertisements appear on our social media and when. The extent of what A.I. dictates in our lives, and how, is unfathomable to us because it is essentially unregulated, yet we have accepted these invisible systems into our lives with incredible faith and speed. We trust the algorithms, assuming their mathematical functions lack the ability or will to hurt us. But activist and filmmaker Shalini Kantayyas film Coded Bias shows us how these systems will always be, for better and for worse, reflections of the people who made them. Algorithms and A.I., Kantayya reveals to us, are prone to recreating and even automating our worst human biases.

With no government regulation, algorithms and A.I. that discriminate against women and people of color can freely enter the world. When these biases in the system are discovered after theyve already been implemented, programmers and the companies who employed them are not at fault. It is written off as a technical issue the programmer did not intend; there are no legal repercussions. But as is typically the case in many fields, Black women are at the head of the charge for improvements in the tech industry. Computer scientist and poet Joy Bualomwini (who calls herself a poet of code), started the Algorithmic Justice League when she discovered her facial recognition software wasnt recognizing her face because it was biased towards white complexions. She ends the film testifying before Congress and scaring Democrats and Republicans alike with the dangers of unregulated tech.

Another reason these algorithms are so untouchable is because the language surrounding them is abstruse and its functions hardly ever transparent to consumers. Kantayya tells us how she streamlined this technobabble with Coded Bias so that we can understand the havoc A.I. wreaks every day in the background of our lives. In doing so, the algorithms feel much more manageable and maybe a little less horrifying because of that.

Filmmaker: As the election came down to the difference of just thousands or hundreds of votes, it is hard not to think about what Coded Bias shows about social medias potential to sway elections one way or the other.

Shalini Kantayya: Zeynep Tufecki recites this Facebook study that was published in Nature magazine in 2010 that shows the difference between the small, incremental change of showing your friends faces with an I Voted sign that Facebook implemented [versus] not showing their faces. They found out that Facebook could sway in excess of over 300,000 people to the polls. Basically, what that goes to show is how these imperceptible changes in the way the algorithms work can have very real outcomes on human behavior.

Filmmaker: The doc also shows how unregulated tech is a rare mutual fear between Democrats and Republicans.

Kantayya: AOC, left liberal from Queens, is agreeing with Jim Jordan, conservative Republican from Ohio. Theres this scene where Jim Jordan says, Wait a minute. 117 Million people are in a police database that [police] can access without a warrant, and theres no one in elected office overseeing this process? That was a rare moment where I hoped both sides of the aisle could see the issue.

Filmmaker: How do you start into this? Is your shooting schedule the first skeleton of the project?

Kantayya: No. I couldnt talk to people at parties about what I was working on because it was so hard to describe. I think I started with a few core interviews, maybe four, and from that process fell down the rabbit hole, went deeper and deeper into the story and built the arc from that. I think it wasnt until when Joy went to D.C to testify before Congress that I had a documentary. I had a beginning, middle, end and the character had gone on a journey. [laughs]

Filmmaker: Who or what decided when your shoot ended?

Kantayya: I am the person that decides. I think getting to Sundance was a big marker for the film being finished. Im so grateful that we made it in time for the premiere, because it pushed us do so much work in a short amount of time. But I think the film wasnt really finished at Sundance. We were supposed to play at SXSW, which I wish we could have done, but I dont think the film was finished until June when we finished it [for] the New York Human Rights Watch Film Festival. This was the directors cut, and I did feel the difference in how that cut of the film was received.

Filmmaker: This film is a brisk hour twenty, and this is the kind of film whose goal is to get in front of many people as it can.

Kantayya: I thought a lot about how to make the film palatable. It has a lot of dense subject matter and it was such a rigorous edit in so many ways. But it was really important that the film was palatable, and we made some really hard choices. There are so many gems on the cutting room floor, and I was one of the editors. I was committed to making a film that you want more of.

Filmmaker: How much or little of an expert do you have to become to facilitate this best to a mainstream audience?

Kantayya: I still have this humility speaking about it. Ive now spoken to Stanfords Human Centered A.I. Institute. Ive spoken to some really astute engineers and its always very humbling to me. [laughs] The cast in Coded Bias are some of the smartest people Ive ever interviewed; I think there are 7 PhDs in the film. They have advanced degrees in mathematics and science. But I hope the film levels the playing field. When I was at Sundance, someone at Google said, Weve been having this conversation internally and your film made it a conversation we can have for everyone. I hope the film makes people feel that they dont need a degree from Stanford to understand the technologies that will impact civil rights and democracy, our lives and opportunities in real ways.

Filmmaker: Because so much of the language in these interviews can be abstruse, how much do your editors also have to become experts to even begin to know what theyre working with and how?

Kantayya: I edited a lot of the scene work and big structural work with the interviews. They were so rigorous and dense, so I did a lot of that work myself. My editors, Zachary Ludescher and Alex Gilwit, effortlessly work between editing and special effects. They have this incredible ability to work between mediums. There were some scenes we werent sure would work until the special effects were roughed in. So, I was really lucky to have two editors that were really astute at special effects as well.

Filmmaker: You highlight hero Joy, the primary subject of the film and part of the Algorithmic Justice League, by sometimes shooting her in slow motion.

Kantayya: I feel like one of the most beautiful things about documentaries is that they make heroes out of real people. I was happy to shoot that in a very stylized way. In a documentary where theres so much beyond your control, Im always grateful when theres a chance for me to control some of the elements.

Filmmaker: Did getting funding for a doc ever feel daunting and undoable to you?

Kantayya: Documentary has had a ladder, I think. Coded Bias is 100% funded by foundations. In the beginning, I went through the front door with applications. Im not a filmmaker that has enough rich friends and access to capital, so I did it through the foundation route.And I did build a career like that, through small grants, always trying to overdeliver until I got the reputation to do bigger grants. I dont think its the easiest path, but it is a path thats open to everyone. Limitations define your creativity, and you have to work with what you have. But Im happy when they compare this film to The Social Dilemma, because it was certainly made at a different scale.

Filmmaker: You were one of the last films to get a proper, theatrical, festival premiere when you premiered Sundance.

Kantayya: Getting to premiere at Sundance is amazing under any circumstances. We didnt know it was going to be the last [in person] film festival for years. [laughs] But Im also grateful because it informed how we reedited the film. Getting to watch the film with an audience, and feel them with the film or feel for moments when I may have lost them, really informed how we reedited Coded Bias. Like every filmmaker, I miss the movie theater, and were just trying to reinvent ourselves in this new environment.

Filmmaker: Early in the film you show a montage of science fiction films to show how the tech industry aims to manifest the tools and futures those films envisage. I realized all of the films you show were directed by white men, so the bulk of the visions of the future we try to manifest is a future predominantly envisaged by white men.

Kantayya: What I learned in the making of Coded Biasis that theres always been this conversation between science fiction writers and technology developers. Marvin Minsky at MIT labs was in conversation with Arthur C. Clarke and was the one who actually made HAL in 2001. What I feel is that both technology developers and science fiction artists have been limited by the white male gaze. Its something we talk about in cinema with Hollywood so White and other movements. I think that can restrict imagination. Joy and I were joking that a lot of these male science fiction movies are about men having a romance with their A.I. women, including some of my favorite films like Blade Runner. [laughs] We also geeked out about what science fiction by women would look like. But I hope Coded Bias unleashes the genius of the other half of the population and stretches our imaginations. I think by recentering the conversation on women and people of color, who happen to be the ones leading the fight on bias in A.I., it shifts our imagination about what these technologies can be.

Filmmaker: Can you talk about building the arc of the A.I. narration that begins the film clean and objective and becomes distorted, more biased, and eventually racist and misogynistic over time?

Kantayya: I was constantly thinking about how to keep a cohesive narrative structure when there are so many storylines and geographies. Through research I discovered Tay, a real chatbot that became an anti-Semitic, racist, sexist nightmare. [Tay was a chatbot designed by Microsoft and released on Twitter, that learned from Twitter users to post inflammatory racist and misogynistic tweets and was shut down within 16 hours of its launch] Half of the film uses the voice of Tay and its actual transcripts from the Taybot. Then, about halfway through the film, the voice of the chatbot morphs. Tay dies and it becomes this other voice, which is a womans voice that eerily sounds a bit like Siri. Thats written narration. The A.I. as a narrator was a device inspired by 2001 that comments on what the HAL of today is. [laughs]

We have to tell people that the A.I. narration is a reference to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, because it became known to me that a lot of young people have not seen 2001. [laughs] Oh my god! It was only through showing my film to high school kids. I did a hands up to see how many had seen it.

Filmmaker: And there were zero hands up?

Kantayya: Yeah. [laughs] So I was like, basically you didnt get the reference.

Filmmaker: Another idea in the film, is that this tech is just a reflection of us. It is not this separate and magical thing as its been imagined in pop culture, it has inherited all its programmersweaknesses and biases. The difference is that those biases are automated, or that theres no human element where the algorithm questions if its wrong.

Kantayya: Human bias can be coded and we all have it. We often dont realize it. Steve Wozniaks wife got a different credit score than him on the Apple Credit Card and he was like, How can this be? We have all the same money, all the same assets, everything. It could be because women have a shorter history of credit in the US, or a shorter history of having mortgages. But the computer was somehow picking up on historical inequalities, and the programmer didnt know that, so its an example of unconscious bias. A similar thing happened with Amazon. They installed a sorting system for resumes and were like This is great, this is going to undo the human bias that we all have, and lo and behold the A.I. system is picking up on who got hired, who got promoted, who had job retention in the past and it discriminated against any candidate that was a woman. It had the exact opposite impact. It just goes to show that even when the programmers have the best of intentions, the A.I. can pick up on unconscious biases and historic inequalities.

Filmmaker: Finally, I just want to confirm, the working title for this film was Racist Robots?

Kantayya: [laughs] I tested it. I loved that title so much! [laughs] But people wouldnt let me keep it.

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Male Science Fiction Movies are About Men Having a Romance with Their AI Women: Shalini Kantayya on Coded Bias - Filmmaker Magazine

Neuroscience

Neureka: Playing mind games to expand neuroscience research – Siliconrepublic.com

Our featured start-up for Future Health Week is Neureka, a young company looking to expand the possibilities of neuroscience research.

Neureka is a smartphone app designed to dramatically scale up the number of participants we can recruit for research studies in the area of brain health, explained Neureka founder Dr Claire Gillan.

The app, she said, plays host to gold-standard cognitive neuroscience tests in the form of interactive games users can play on their phone. The data from these gaming experiences is collated with information provided by users on their diet, exercise and mental health, so that a distraction in your downtime can become a useful tool for researchers.

Waiting in line or riding the bus, any time users spend on the app helps basic scientists to power up their research studies a critical step forward for research in this area that has long been plagued by small samples that produce results that cannot be reproduced, said Gillan.

People are very willing to participate in a research app, but they need something in return DR CLAIRE GILLAN

Launched this summer, Neureka attracted 3,000 active users in its first few months. Even with advertising costs we are able to acquire new users at a cost thats rare in academic research, especially given the amount of data we are able to collect per user, said Gillan.

In terms of investment, the start-up has already raised close to 2m in funding. With this backing, Gillan believes that Neureka can make studies more comprehensive by expanding their reach.

Traditional research studies are often confined to one region or, worse yet, one particular class of people like university undergraduates. Moving out of the lab helps us to not just size up our studies, but make them more representative of the population as a whole, she explained.

Because of the nature of the app, anyone can participate in the research from anywhere in the world. To make that an attractive proposition, Neureka has taken what Gillan described as somewhat boring lab-based tests and turned them into fun games that preserve their scientific relevance.

These games are modified versions of clinically validated tests to study memory, mental flexibility and decision-making. Previous research has already established that some of these tests can differentiate people with and without dementia, while others have never been studied in this context before, said Gillan.

Gillan emphasised that Neureka users are not mere guinea pigs. Work is in the early stages, but the app aims to feed back findings to users and educate them on risk factors for dementia and methods to help keep their brains healthier for longer.

This could be hugely valuable to public health as up to 40pc of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed with a combination of lifestyle interventions. Many people remain unaware of all the little things that they can do to reduce their own risk for dementia. Even something simple like wearing a hearing aid can potentially reduce the risk of dementia, said Gillan. Although each activity only reduces the risk by a little bit, collectively they make a big difference.

Providing users with information and feedback also proved essential to improving engagement with the app. People are very willing to participate in a research app, but they need something in return, if even just to understand their progress.

As well as the games, the Neureka app includes a daily mood tracker in order to study networks of depression systems. The data can tell us how specific events set off cascades of symptoms that in some cases may kickstart episodes of serious mental illness, said Gillan.

We are about to launch a new feature that helps the public detect fake news by watching out for tell-tale signs that a finding has been overblown in the media, she added.

Gillans academic journey started at University College Dublin, then the University of Cambridge, followed by New York Universitys Centre for Neural Science. She returned to Dublin in 2017 and became assistant professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin, where she started her own research lab.

Supported by almost 3m in funding, the Gillan Lab is focused on developing online methods for large-scale research in the areas of mental health and dementia. Gillan herself has published 39 peer-reviewed papers including first-author papers in psychiatric journals, with several thousand citations.

The lab has a central goal of translating basic neuroscience into tools of clinical value and we use large samples and data-driven methods like machine learning to try and achieve those goals, said Gillan. My team has a wide range of backgrounds including marketing, game development, clinical service delivery, psychology and neuroscience.

Next steps for Neureka will include partnering with SciStarter, a citizen science initiative in the US, to increase engagement with the citizen science community there. More features will also be added to the app and Gillan is open to commercialisation.

Although we are currently a non-profit app focused on research applications, if the app proves useful, we foresee a future where Neureka could be better managed as a commercial entity, leaving the science to the scientists and the business to a dedicated team, she said.

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Original post:
Neureka: Playing mind games to expand neuroscience research - Siliconrepublic.com

Neuroscience

"I’ve noticed a massive improvement in my aiming": How neuroscience can help you get better at Call of Duty – Gamesradar

There remains a woefully prevalent misconception lurking behind the pomp and pageantry of video game shooters, and it's the idea that you're either naturally good at them, or you're not.

Similar to equally false theories that skills such as singing and drawing are innate, and thus unteachable, it's an argument that implies there's no point trying to improve your form with the digital firearm, as you'll never be able to match the talents of the naturally gifted. It's one video game genre where you apparently can't, as they say, 'git gud'.

It's also an idea that is, of course, absolute nonsense, but hopefully you already knew that. What you might not know is the hows and whys of what makes that claim so untrue, especially when it relates to your brain chemistry, and the way in which that lump of fat and tissue lodged between your skull interacts with video games over time.

"Most video games will stimulate your mind to some degree," explains Colin Gardner, a PHD student of neuroscience at the University of Georgia, USA.

"But when it comes to shooters, it will be stimulating areas in your brain such as your visual centers, the pathways on which the visual information then travels to go around your brain, and your primary motor cortex, which plays a major part in getting your body to move."

"As you continually play, it'll strengthen neuronal the cells that make up your nervous system and relay information. This will enhance the connections in your primary motor cortex and allow for faster, better movement with, in this case, your hands and fingers. Although it isn't on the same level as something like playing guitar or the piano, as far as I know, in terms of stimulation it still will provide something for your brain to do and to grow."

Gardner's interests in both video games and science go back to his childhood, but it's only in recent years that he began to explore the connection between the two. He tells me that he enjoys all sorts of games, but when it comes to the subject of neuroscience shooters represent the most interesting genre for study, as their demand for high-speed trigger fingers and pinpoint precision make them the perfect metric "to track improvement in your brain's reaction time and muscle memory".

"The ridiculous amount of information that has to translate from the screen to your eyes through your brain and down to your hand is just such a cool process in my opinion. Not to get too philosophical, I also think that with shooters it's a good way to improve your mindset and the way you see things. You can always just get mad and say 'bad game is bad', but with shooters there's always areas you can see where you need to improve and things you can do better. I think that's a good mindset to have in life."

A few weeks ago, Gardner floated an idea on the official subreddit for one of his current favourite shooters, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Would the COD community be interested in a video that explains "what's going on in your brain as you engage and try to aim onto your opponent"? Within a matter of days, the post had received hundreds of upvotes. Evidently, it seems, a lot of Call of Duty players were keen to unlock the neurological potential behind their K:D ratio.

"With shooters there's always areas you can see where you need to improve and things you can do better."

"It's funny, the idea for this came to me after I had been playing guitar and learning Ozzy Osbourne's Mr. Crowley outro solo," Gardner admits. "I had to practice slowly until my fingers built up the procedural muscle memory to be able to do it. I realised it's almost the same thing with video games, and moving your mouse or joystick to aim."

Ok, so, as someone who regularly plays Call of Duty: Warzone myself, how do I improve my chances at being the last man standing in Verdansk? Let's start with the basics, which if decades of scientific research is to be believed (and it absolutely should be) also happen to resemble the foundation for improving almost everything else in your life: physical health.

Gardner elaborates: "With reaction speeds, you can actually start to see improvements through changes in diet and exercise. For example, Lutein and zeaxanthin [nutrients found in high concentration in many fruits and vegetables] has been shown in studies to cause your brain and visual system to begin to work more quickly and react to things faster. There are other factors that will lower your reaction speeds like lack of sleep, alcohol, and so on."

Beyond what we put in our body, and how much we exercise it, Gardner also points to aim trainers, programs designed to help you practice and track your precision skills, as a reliable tool for improving one's FPS performance.

"Aim trainers help build what's called procedural memory, our ability to perform motor tasks automatically, which, in turn, will cause faster reaction times and more accurate responses. I use Aim Lab for my aim trainer, for example, and have noticed a massive improvement in my aiming, especially it's consistency."

As it happens, Aim Lab's creator Statespace was founded by Dr. Wayne Mackey, a professor of yep, you guessed it neuroscience at NYU. It's just one example of the scientific field's growing interest in video games as a new frontier for uncovering the secrets within our head.

Historically, conversations around the relationship between video games and psychology have been turbulent at best, with tabloid headlines peddling unsubstantiated claims about their harmful effects on the brain. Myriad studies have proven the inverse, of course, while also stressing that we've still only scratched the surface when it comes to our understanding of the cerebral realm, let alone its relationship to external stimuli as involving and ever evolving as video games.

That's not a huge surprise. Whenever someone boots up their console of choice, they're essentially starting an interaction between two supercomputers, one organic, the other man-made, as both speak to each other in a polyphonic dance of audiovisual signals, neuromotor relays, and lightning-speed electrochemistry.

"The amount of detail that our brains work to connect our visual pathways to the rest of our brain is just mind blowing," Gardner tells me, the day after his video goes live on YouTube. "And all of it to improve our Darwinian chances of survival." It's no wonder he finds the whole thing so interesting.

For more, check out the best Call of Duty games to play right now, or watch our full review of Watch Dogs Legion in the video below.

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"I've noticed a massive improvement in my aiming": How neuroscience can help you get better at Call of Duty - Gamesradar

Neuroscience

Global Neuroscience Market 2020 | Know the Companies List Could Potentially Benefit or Loose out From the Impact of COVID-19 | Top Companies: GE…

Neuroscience-MarketOverview of Neuroscience Market 2020-2025:

Global Neuroscience Market 2020 research report presents analysis of market size, share, and growth, trends, cost structure, statistical and comprehensive data of the global market. Research reports analyses the major opportunities, CAGR, yearly growth rates to help the readers to understand the qualitative and quantitative aspects of theGlobal NeuroscienceMarket. The competition landscape, company overview, financials, recent developments and long-term investments related to theGlobal Neuroscience Marketare mentioned in this report.

The key segments covered in this report are geographical segments, end-use/application segments, and competitor segments. The local segment, regional supply, application, and wise demand, major players, prices are also available by 2025. Global Neuroscience Market are mentioned in the competition landscape, company overview, financials, recent developments and long-term investments.

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Top Key players profiled in the Neuroscience market report include:GE Healthcare, Siemens Healthineers, Noldus Information Technology, Mightex Bioscience, Thomas RECORDING GmbH, Blackrock Microsystems, Tucker-Davis Technologies, Plexon, Phoenix Technology Group, NeuroNexus, Alpha Omega and More

Market by Type Whole Brain Imaging Neuro-Microscopy Electrophysiology Technologies Neuro-Cellular Manipulation Stereotaxic Surgeries Animal Behavior OthersMarket by Application Hospitals Diagnostic Laboratories Research Institutes Others

global Neuroscience market report also highlights key insights on the factors that drive the growth of the market as well as key challenges that are required to Neuroscience market growth in the projection period. Here provide the perspectives for the impact of COVID-19 from the long and short term. Neuroscience market contain the influence of the crisis on the industry chain, especially for marketing channels. Update the industry economic revitalization plan of the country-wise government.

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Years Considered to Estimate the Market Size:History Year: 2015-2019Base Year: 2019Estimated Year: 2020Forecast Year: 2020-2025Regions Covered in the Global Neuroscience Market:The Middle East and Africa(GCC Countries and Egypt)North America(the United States, Mexico, and Canada)South America(Brazil etc.)Europe(Turkey, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.)Asia-Pacific(Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia)

Key questions answered in this report:

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Key point summary of the Global Neuroscience Market report:

Detailed TOC of Neuroscience Market Report 2020-2025:Chapter 1: Neuroscience Market OverviewChapter 2: Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3: Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4: Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5: Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6: Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7: Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8: Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9: Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10: Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11: Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12: Neuroscience Market ForecastContinued

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Global Neuroscience Market 2020 | Know the Companies List Could Potentially Benefit or Loose out From the Impact of COVID-19 | Top Companies: GE...

Neuroscience

The True Perception That Moves People – PRovoke Media

Communication is all about changing the perception of target audiences. With the increasing and constantly changing demand of consumers and stakeholders, understanding true perception that motivates and moves people at the most fundamental level, and establishing relevance by building deeper and more meaningful emotional connections with people, can empower organizations to make the right move. This is even more relevant given the global events this year. The publics perception has been reshaped by evolving global contexts, ongoing transformational change, uncertainty, and disruption of systems.

Neuroscience has been used in marketing for an in-depth understanding of consumers for years. Utilizing both non-conscious and conscious data, marketers are able to elicit emotional response to ensure that their messaging impacts both purchasing behavior and brand loyalty. The majority of neuroscience research applications are conducted through stimulus and response testing by exposing participants to certain advertisements and gathering consumer data beyond what is self-reported.

What perceptual neuroscience allows us to do is to go even deeper, by pinpointing with absolute precision the elements, experiences, language, and other stimuli that create interest and action

among audiences. BCWs NeuroLab, a new offering based on an exclusive partnership with the Lab of Misfits (the worlds only neurodesign lab), is focused on discovering true perception and providing deeper insights about audiences, in a bid to create compelling ways to build meaningful connections between brands and their stakeholders. Its designed to help the agency and its clients understand the conscious and unconscious mechanisms that shape audience perception and spark behavior.

Our goal here is to really understand whats driving people's motivations at the most fundamental level and use that information to drive greater connections between brands and audiences," BCW chief innovation officer Chad Latz said to PRovoke. Our solutions use brain science and experiments that enable us to study how people experience a variety of stimuli from language and ideas to images, emotions, and events all in an effort to help find values and connections shared between clients and their stakeholders.

While behavioral science studies outcomes, BCW NeuroLab evaluates the underlying motivators that move people to act and, as a result, provides the opportunity to make communication more engaging. Lets take neuroscience for brand communications strategy, one pillar of BCW NeuroLab, as an example. Advanced technologies can be used to design experiments, in order to generate a holistic understanding of stakeholders thoughts, feelings and the things they value most. This will include a psychographic understanding of the audience, which focuses on factors such as motivations, beliefs, and priorities, which will help to refine brand purpose, marketplace strategy, positioning, and activation.

An example of how we design experiments comes from some work we did with a company that specializes in protecting, repairing and replacing damaged tech products. Through monitoring participants brain waves, heart rates, and galvanic skin responses in a smartly designed environment, the experiment was able to provide a further understanding of how tech frustrations affect a users body and mind. The results showed that, while seemingly small in impact, tech frustrations bring out the worst versions of ourselves and make us feel more distant from those closest to us, more cautious, less creative, delusional, and can even unleash unconscious social biases. What an interesting finding with the potential of leading to a more resonating messaging and positioning of technology with purpose!

This case paints a future scenario of communications practices, where the understanding of stakeholders perception and deep needs allows organizations to further refine their strategy, and even identify ownable territories. We can use perceptual neuroscience to analyze the obstacles and opportunities for organizations to better drive engagement, transformation, and impact.

The new era of communications is here. With the broader application of big data and AI in communication, perceptual neuroscience can be added to better understand stakeholders behavior on modern-day communication channels such as social media. With AI algorithms used to analyze increasingly robust data and neuroscience helping to find values and connections shared between organizations and their stakeholders, communication practitioners will be empowered to further enhance their persuasive messaging and targeting strategies.

While there are concerns around this field when companies exploit blind spots in human psychology to gain an advantage, we advocate for transparency, accountability and supervision to understand stakeholders' subconscious thoughts to provide genuine value for clients and their audiences. Communication practitioners can optimize the story and create more powerful and authentic connections with stakeholders based on neuroscience. Consider too that the effectiveness of public service announcements can be boosted by encouraging society to engage in positive behaviors. As human behavior continues to evolve in response to the world around us, the future of the communication industry will rely on the limitless opportunities through neuroscience and other innovations. By using innovation to build genuine, lasting connections with key stakeholders, communications will play an even more important role in creating value for brands and the consumers they serve.

====

Joe Peng, Regional Managing Director and Head of Digital Innovation, BCW Asia Pacific

To help brands understand the conscious and unconscious mechanisms that shape audience perception and spark behavior, BCW NeuroLab was launched in August 2020 as part of an exclusive partnership with the Lab of Misfits, led by world-renowned neuroscientist R. Beau Lotto, Ph.D.

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The True Perception That Moves People - PRovoke Media

Neuroscience

ST Medical Monday: "Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain" – Public Radio Tulsa

Our guest is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a noted expert on both psychology and neuroscience who's also a University Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University in Boston. She tells us about her new book, "Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain." As was noted of this book in a starred review in Kirkus: "An excellent education in brain science.... [Feldman Barrett] deftly employs metaphor and anecdote to deliver an insightful overview of her favorite subject.... So short and sweet that most readers will continue to the 35-page appendix, in which the author delves more deeply, but with no less clarity, into topics ranging from teleology to the Myers-Briggs personality test to 'Plato's writings about the human psyche.' Outstanding popular science."

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ST Medical Monday: "Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain" - Public Radio Tulsa

Neuroscience

Kelly A. Toth – Hartford Business

Honoree Category: Nurse

Kelly A. Toth, manager of Hartford HealthCares Ayer Neuroscience Institute, has been described as a hidden gem of a leader during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 17, Toth was deployed to support Hartford HealthCares COVID-19 operations, including the regional operations command center and development of the drive-through testing site at MidState Medical Center.

After a five-month deployment, Toth accepted a position as a manager of the Ayer Neuroscience Institute.

She created a team and process at MidState Medical Centers drive-through testing site that is far above any other testing process in the Hartford HealthCare system.

I developed the most efficient testing site resulting in consistent waits of five minutes or less while processing upwards of 300 patients a day, she said.

Toth has been highly regarded by her executive leadership team for her leadership skills and tireless effort to support the COVID-19 initiative, oftentimes working seven days a week.

This experience has been humbling, but from it I have learned to lead by influence, which will only further benefit me as I advance in my career, she said.

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Kelly A. Toth - Hartford Business