Susana Alcantara, senior research scientist and neuroscience program leader at Sartorius, discusses her positive experience of presenting a webinar withSelectScience andher pride that the webinar later won a covetedBest in Digital Marketing Awardat Neuroscience 2019.
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Live-cell analysis in neuroscience research: An award winning webinar - SelectScience
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Latest Approach on Neuroscience Antibodies Assays Market 2019 | Growth, Demand, Scope & Forecast by 2025 | Top Key Players: Thermo Fisher...
Neuroscience research at the University of Sheffield has been recognized by Her Majesty The Queen for delivering real benefits in improving patient outcomes for people living with some of the most devastating neurodegenerative diseases.
The Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) based at the University of Sheffield was awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize today (21 November 2019) at St James's Palace.
The prize awarded to SITraN is unique in the honors system and only bestowed upon a UK college or university which demonstrates new and innovative approaches to its research and development that have delivered benefits to the public at local, national and global levels.
SITraN's vision is to harness the rapidly emerging, exciting developments in neuroscience to translate into new treatments and improved quality of life for patients with neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's Disease, Motor Neurone Disease (MND), Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
Achievements highlighted by the award include:
Professor Dame Pamela Shaw, Director of SITraN, said: "Receiving this award is a great honor. It gives recognition to our research teams who have made enormous scientific progress in treating some of the most devastating neurological diseases, making a real difference to patients' lives.
"We hope that this award will inspire confidence for patients and their families, research partners and donors as we continue to make discoveries that deepen the understanding of neurological diseases and open up the potential for new treatments and therapies."
SITraN - which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2020 - is considered a world-leader in neuroscience research. Its work forms part of the University of Sheffield's Neuroscience Institute, which aims to bring academics together from across varied specialties to translate scientific discoveries from the lab into pioneering treatments that will benefit people living with neurodegenerative diseases.
Professor Koen Lamberts, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield, said: "It's wonderful to see the Queen's Anniversary Award recognizing the University of Sheffield as a center for excellence in neuroscience research and teaching which has the power to transform people's lives.
"As well as making life-changing discoveries today, SITraN is nurturing the next generation of talented neuroscience students, whose research will lead to pioneering treatments for those living with neurological diseases in the future."
Chair of the Royal Anniversary Trust, Sir Damon Buffini, said: "The prizes are granted every two years by the Queen and are the most prestigious national honor awarded to UK universities and colleges for their work.
"Entries in the scheme are invited in any subject area and are subjected to rigorous independent assessment in a process managed by the Royal Anniversary Trust. Recommendations for the Queen's approval are made on the Prime Minister's advice.
"The criteria are demanding and look for outstanding excellence in the chosen field, for innovation and for evidence of real public benefit. Competition is strong and the award is a mark of high quality in education and training which is widely recognized internationally as well as in the UK."
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University of Sheffield receives Queen's Anniversary Prize for innovation in neuroscience - News-Medical.net
Oksana Zinchenko, Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, HSE University, has conducted a meta-analysis of 17 articles to find out which areas of the brain are involved decision-making for rendering social punishment. It would appear that in case of both victims of violations as well as witnesses, punishment decisions activate the brain regions responsible for focusing one's attention, processing information, and responding effectively to social interaction. The findings of the study were published in Scientific Reports.
Social punishment is necessary in order to maintain order and cooperation in society. In their everyday lives, people who have committed wrongdoings may face reprimand or rejection. A decision to invoke punishment may be implemented by a person who was affected because of such a violation of norms ('second-party punishment'), or by a neutral person, who nevertheless knows about the norm violation ('third-party punishment'). It used to be a known fact that certain brain areas activate in victims of violations as well as in witnesses in response to different forms of social punishment. However, it was not entirely clear to date which areas were activated in particular.
A typical game for the study of social punishment is the Ultimatum where one test subject makes a decision about how much of the amount given to him or her will be given to another subject. The participant is free to divide it up as he or she likes, even keeping the entire amount. If the second participant finds the decision unfair, they can punish the offender (for example, reject the proposed division), i.e. execute 'second party punishment'. Alternatively, the punishment can be invoked by the third test subject, the witness of the transaction, which will constitute third-party punishment.
Oksana Zinchenko employed activation likelihood estimation (ALE) to analyze data on the brain activity of 383 participants of 17 studies devoted to the subject of social punishment. The participants were either playing the Ultimatum game or were engaged in other types of strategic games simulating norm-violating events that would result in a social punishment. While the participants were performing these tasks, the researchers applied functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to record their brain activity.
The analysis revealed that such areas of the brain as the bilateral claustrum (upon activation, spreading to the insular cortex), the left superior frontal and right interior frontal gyri were always activated for social punishment tasks. These areas related to either the salience network or central-executive network of the brain. These neuron systems are responsible for focusing attention, detecting errors, and processing contextual information - all essential components for punishment decision-making. The right interior frontal gyrus is regarded as a key region in the brain's 'emotional empathy network', required for adequate responses to various social interactions. As for the left superior frontal gyrus, its main function is believed to store information in the working memory during decision-making processes.
However, the meta-analysis revealed no concordant activation in other brain regions, including those corresponding with the mentalizing network, which operate in a different way with respect to second-party and third-party punishments. This network is responsible for evaluating a wrongdoer's intentions. Some regions of this network may be triggered differently, depending on the type of punishment under consideration.
The researchers have yet to perform a more in-depth analysis of the differences in the brain's responses to various types of social punishment. Meanwhile, we can better understand what mechanisms underlie social control and people's ability to cooperate by studying the similarities in information processing related to social punishment.
Reference: Zinchenko, O. (2019). Brain responses to social punishment: a meta-analysis. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49239-1
This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.
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Which Areas of the Brain Decide Punishment? - Technology Networks
BOCA RATON, Fla., Nov. 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Florida Atlantic University faculty, staff and students came together with local officials and community partners today to celebrate the 20th anniversary of FAU's John D. MacArthur Campus at Jupiter with a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new FAU Neuroscience Building and a new residence hall.
"I can't think of a better way to commemorate the 20th anniversary of our Jupiter campus than with a celebration marking the construction of two new state-of-the-art buildings," said FAU President John Kelly. "Our Jupiter campus is the only place on earth where Scripps and Max Planck sit next to each other, and FAU is working to ensure this incredible synergy is leveraged to create a unique learning laboratory where exemplary students can shine."
The university will construct the 58,000-square-foot FAU Neuroscience Building to enhance collaborative research with Scripps Research and Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI). The building will increase shared research and office space for new STEM faculty and provide the additional teaching and instructional space needed to support projected enrollment growth, especially in specific areas such as neuroscience, biotechnology, bioengineering, bioinformatics/data science and chemistry. The structure will also support increasing FAU intellectual property licensing activity and "spinout" companies. The $35 million transformative research space represents a significant investment by the state of Florida, FAU and its research partners. Construction is expected to start in the summer of 2020.
The $17.1 million, 165-bed residence hall will provide a total of 435 beds for the Jupiter campus that is currently at max capacity. Construction will begin in spring 2020 with completion set for summer 2021. Residential students living in the new hall will enjoy a fitness area, study rooms, laundry on each floor, computer lab and a rooftop patio.
These two new structures build on FAU's aggressive moves to ramp up its research footprint and academic offerings at the Jupiter campus. In November 2018, FAU expanded on existing graduate and undergraduate opportunities with the announcement of the FAU-Max Planck Academy, the only academic program in the world that will allow the brightest STEM high school students to work side-by-side with preeminent scientists at one of the world's leading neuroscience research institutions. FAU, MPFI and the Germany-based Max Planck Society will welcome the academy's first class in the fall 2020 semester.
"I am incredibly proud of the strides that FAU and the world-class research institutes located on its campus have made in building a robust life science ecosystem in Palm Beach County," said State Rep. MaryLynn Magar. "I am honored to carry that message to Tallahassee and encourage my fellow legislators to continue the state's investment in the unprecedented educational programs and groundbreaking research partnerships that are taking place here in Jupiter."
Other 20th anniversary celebratory events include a ribbon cutting on May 11, 2020 when FAU and MPFI officials open the FAU-Max Planck Academy building.
Named after businessman and philanthropist John D. MacArthur, FAU's Jupiter campus opened on 135 acres of land donated by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in the fall of 1999. The campus established the nationally ranked Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the first public honors institution to be built from the ground up in the United States. FAU's Jupiter campus was built into the master plan of the Abacoa community to help engage local residents and to serve the people of Palm Beach and Martin counties. In 2005, FAU welcomed Scripps Research faculty and staff to its Jupiter campus and a groundbreaking for the MPFI building was held in 2010.
In addition to being home to Scripps Research and MPFI, FAU Jupiter is home to the faculty labs of the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. Recognized as a center of scientific activity, the campus also serves as the headquarters for two of FAU's primary research organizations, the Brain Institute and the Institute for Human Health and Disease Intervention (I-HEALTH). The College of Education also hosts the Academy for Community Inclusion and the community-centered Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD) program on the Jupiter campus. The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, housed in the Elinor Bernon Rosenthal Lifelong Learning Complex on the Jupiter campus, is the largest membership organization of its kind in the country delivering personal enrichment courses covering a broad range of stimulating topics that are taught by leading experts.
- FAU -
About Florida Atlantic University: Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University, with an annual economic impact of $6.3 billion, serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at sites throughout its six-county service region in southeast Florida. FAU's world-class teaching and research faculty serves students through 10 colleges: the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, the College of Business, the College for Design and Social Inquiry, the College of Education, the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Graduate College, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. FAU is ranked as a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University is placing special focus on the rapid development of critical areas that form the basis of its strategic plan: Healthy aging, biotech, coastal and marine issues, neuroscience, regenerative medicine, informatics, lifespan and the environment. These areas provide opportunities for faculty and students to build upon FAU's existing strengths in research and scholarship. For more information, visit http://www.fau.edu.
This news release was issued on behalf of Newswise. For more information, visit http://www.newswise.com.
Media Contacts: Lynda RysavyLFigueredo@fau.eduPhone: 561-475-0960
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Groundbreaking for Neuroscience Building and Residence Hall Mark 20th Anniversary Of FAU's John D. MacArthur Campus - BioSpace
Finding it difficult to convince prospective clients that something really bad might happen to them?
What you are up against is the normal brain function for four-tenths of the general population and the fact that people still smoke is one clue, a speaker suggested Monday at the Top Broker Summit.
Keynote speaker Tali Sharot showed the summit a slide with a photo of a cigarette package warning the buyer that smoking kills.
Threats and warnings like this only have limited impact because people say, Yes, smoking kills but mostly it kills the other guy, said Sharot, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College in London, England.
Optimism bias is the tendency to imagine the future as being more positive for people to over-estimate the likelihood of positive events and underestimate the likelihood of negative events.
When we renovate our house, we think about how lovely this house will be and we dont necessarily focus on that burst pipe or that tree that might fall into the roof, said Sharot, who has a PhD in psychology and neuroscience from New York University.
Top Broker Summit is produced by Canadian Underwriter magazine and is taking place Monday at the Ritz-Carlton across the road from Torontos Roy Thomson Hall.
Optimism bias is something developed over millions of years of primate evolution, suggested Sharot.
Overall its a good thing because if we expect the future to be bright, it reduces stress and anxiety. About four in ten people have somewhat of an optimism bias. Of the 20% who dont about half of them have clinical depression, said Sharot.
The downside is most people do not tend to take rational precautions.
If we underestimate our risk, we might not buy insurance when we should, said Sharot, author of The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain.
So if you are focused on telling clients what horrible things might happen to them by accident, you might need to re-frame your message, suggested Sharot.
Highlight the gain instead of focusing on all the terrible things that can happen or the dangers out there, she said. You might say, Well, if you have this insurance, then you will be safe. There will be progress. Perhaps if you have it you will feel better.
Sharot has a lab where researchers study brain mechanisms that give rise to how people make decisions and how people think about the future. In an experiment, researchers found everyones brain did a good job of encoding good information but not as good of a job at encoding unexpected bad news.
A case in point is peoples perception of the risk their marriage will end.
Of every five couples walking down the aisle, approximately two end up splitting their assets but when you ask newlyweds about their own likelihood of divorce, they estimate it at about zero per cent and even divorce lawyers, who should know better, usually underestimate their own likelihood of divorce, said Sharot.
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Why 80% of the population may decline insurance they need - Canadian Underwriter
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cerevel Therapeutics, a company dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of the brain to treat neuroscience diseases, will present new data from a Phase 1 dose-escalation clinical trial evaluating the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of multiple repeated doses of CVL-865 (formerly PF-06372865) in healthy volunteers. The readout will be presented at the 2019 American Epilepsy Society Meeting, taking place from December 6-10 in Baltimore, Maryland. CVL-865 is a novel 2/3/5-subtype selective GABAA receptor positive allosteric modulator that is being investigated for the treatment of epilepsy.
Details of the poster presentation are as follows:
Title: Safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of multiple repeated doses of the 2/3/5-subtype selective GABAA positive allosteric modulator PF-06372865 in healthy volunteersAuthors: Rachel Gurrell, Mark Whitlock, Adam OgdenPoster Session #: 2.225Date/Time: Sunday, December 8, 2019 from 10:00AM 4:00PM ETLocation: The Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore
About Cerevel TherapeuticsCerevel Therapeutics is dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of the brain to treat neuroscience diseases. The company seeks to unlock the science surrounding new treatment opportunities through understanding the neurocircuitry of neuroscience diseases and associated symptoms. Cerevel Therapeutics has a diversified pipeline comprising five clinical-stage investigational therapies and several preclinical compounds with the potential to treat a range of neuroscience diseases, including Parkinsons, epilepsy, schizophrenia and substance use disorders. Headquartered in Boston, Cerevel Therapeutics is advancing its current research and development programs while exploring new modalities through internal research efforts, external collaborations or potential acquisitions. For more information, visit http://www.cerevel.com.
Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release contains forward-looking statements that are based on managements beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: may, will, could, would, should, expect, intend, plan, anticipate, believe, estimate, predict, project, potential, continue, ongoing or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. These statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Although we believe that we have a reasonable basis for each forward-looking statement contained in this press release, we caution you that these statements are based on a combination of facts and factors currently known by us and our projections of the future, about which we cannot be certain. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements about the potential of our research and development programs and the potential attributes and benefits of our product candidates. We cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements in this press release will prove to be accurate. Furthermore, if the forward-looking statements prove to be inaccurate, the inaccuracy may be material. In light of the significant uncertainties in these forward-looking statements, you should not regard these statements as a representation or warranty by us or any other person that we will achieve our objectives and plans in any specified time frame, or at all. The forward-looking statements in this press release represent our views as of the date of this press release. We anticipate that subsequent events and developments will cause our views to change. However, while we may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we have no current intention of doing so except to the extent required by applicable law. You should, therefore, not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.
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Cerevel Therapeutics to Present Safety, Tolerability, and Pharmacokinetics Results From Phase 1 Trial of CVL-865 - Business Wire
A $106 million Weill Family Foundationinitiative will bring together interdisciplinary researchers and clinicians at three West Coast universities in hopes of finding new treatments for brain and nervous system disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley), the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the University of Washington (UW) have launched the Weill Neurohub, a cutting-edge research network that seeks to promote collaborations among investigators from an array of fields, including artificial intelligence, engineering and data science.
The gains in knowledge amassed by neuroscientists over the past few decades can now be brought to the next level with supercomputers, electronic brain-computer interfaces, nanotechnology, robotics and powerful imaging tools, Sanford I. Weill, the foundations chairman, said in a press release.
The Neurohub will seize this opportunity by building bridges between people with diverse talents and training and bringing them together in a common cause: discovering new treatments to help the millions of patients with such conditions as Alzheimers diseaseand mental illness, he said.
The initiative will support collaborative projects with near-term transformational prospects, as well as pioneering investigators novel project ideas. It also intends to recruit new talent to fill knowledge gaps, and train the next generation of clinicians and scientists. In addition, the UCSF-based Neurohubwill host symposiums and other meetings in order to share knowledge, promote new alliances and motivate scientists.
To fuel development of high-impact new approaches, the Neurohub will begin by funding projects built upon at least one of these four fields: imaging, engineering, genomics and molecular therapies, and computation and data analytics. For their computational and device manufacturing expertise, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will provide support for the initiative. Other labs overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy that specialize in bioengineering, imaging and data science, also will contribute.
The announcement cites a 2016 study by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundationthat found the economic burden of psychiatric and neurological diseases, such as ALS, Parkinsons and Alzheimers,.exceeds $1.5 trillion annually in the U.S nearly 9% of the gross national product.
Each year, more than 5,600 U.S. residents are diagnosed with ALS.With one in five residents turning 65 or older in the next decade, California has the nations largest aging population. That presents significant challenges that extend beyond the state, said Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Every day, millions of people in California, the nation and the world are facing the uncertainty of neuro-related diseases, mental illness and brain injuries, and collaboration between different disciplines in science, academia, government and philanthropy is critical to meet this challenge, Newsom said while thanking the Weill Family Foundation.
Together, we must accelerate the development and use cutting-edge technology, innovation and tools that will advance research and practical application that will benefit people across the world and for generations to come. California is at the forefront of this innovation, Gavin said.
The gift expands on the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established in 2016 with $185 million from the foundation.
Now, with the Weill Neurohub, were going even further: eliminating institutional boundaries between three great public research universities, and also other disciplinary walls between traditional neuroscience and non-traditional approaches to understanding the brain, said Stephen Hauser, MD. Hauser is Weill Institute director and a Neurohub co-director along with Berkeleys Ehud Isacoff, PhD, the Evan Rauch Chair of Neuroscience.
By embracing engineering, data analysis and imaging science at this dramatically higher level areas in which both Berkeley and the UW are among the best in the world neuroscientists on all three campuses will gain crucial tools and insights that will bring us closer to our shared goal of reducing suffering from brain diseases.
Tom Daniel, PhD, is the UW Joan and Richard Komen Endowed Chair and a member of the initiatives leadership committee. He said the Neurohub is unlike any other effort.
To my knowledge, this is a nationally unique enterprise drawing on diverse approaches to accomplish goals no single institution could reach alone, as well as seeding and accelerating research and discovery, Daniel said.
Mary M. Chapman began her professional career at United Press International, running both print and broadcast desks. She then became a Michigan correspondent for what is now Bloomberg BNA, where she mainly covered the automotive industry plus legal, tax and regulatory issues. A member of the Automotive Press Association and one of a relatively small number of women on the car beat, Chapman has discussed the automotive industry multiple times of National Public Radio, and in 2014 was selected as an honorary judge at the prestigious Cobble Beach Concours dElegance. She has written for numerous national outlets including Time, People, Al-Jazeera America, Fortune, Daily Beast, MSN.com, Newsweek, The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. The winner of the Society of Professional Journalists award for outstanding reporting, Chapman has had dozens of articles in The New York Times, including two on the coveted front page. She has completed a manuscript about centenarian car enthusiast Margaret Dunning, titled Belle of the Concours.
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Margarida graduated with a BS in Health Sciences from the University of Lisbon and a MSc in Biotechnology from Instituto Superior Tcnico (IST-UL). She worked as a molecular biologist research associate at a Cambridge UK-based biotech company that discovers and develops therapeutic, fully human monoclonal antibodies.
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$106M Weill Family Foundation Gift Opens Neurohub Research Network - ALS News Today
Fake news is a relatively new term, but its now seen by some as one of the greatest threats to democracy and free debate. But how does it work? Neuroscience can provide at least some insight.
The first job of fake news is to catch our attention, and for that reason, novelty is key. Researchers Gordon Pennycook and David Rand have suggested that one reason hyperpartisan claims are so successful is that they tend to be outlandish. In a world full of surprises, humans have developed an exquisite ability to rapidly detect and orient towards unexpected information or events. Novelty is an essential concept underlying the neural basis of behavior, and plays a role at nearly all stages of neural processing.
Sensory neuroscience has shown that only unexpected information can filter through to higher stages of processing. The sensory cortex may have therefore evolved to adapt to, to predict, and to quiet down the expected regularities of our experiences, focusing on events that are unpredictable or surprising. Neural responses gradually reduce each time were exposed to the same information, as the brain learns that this stimulus has no reward associated with it.
Novelty itself is related to motivation. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with reward anticipation, increases when we are confronted by novelty. When we see something new, we recognize its potential to reward us in some way. Studies have shown that the hippocampus ability to create new synaptic connections between neurons (a process known as plasticity) is increased by the influence of novelty. By increasing the brains plasticity, the potential to learn new concepts is also increased.
The primary region involved in responding to novel stimuli the substantia nigra/ventral segmental area, or SN/VTA is closely linked to the hippocampus and the amygdala, both of which play important roles in learning and memory. While the hippocampus compares stimuli against existing memories, the amygdala responds to emotional stimuli and strengthens associated long-term memories.
This aspect of learning and memory formation is of particular interest to my own lab, where we study brain oscillations involved in long-term memory consolidation. That process occurs during sleep, a somewhat limited timeframe to integrate all of our daily information. For that reason, the brain is adapted to prioritize certain types of information. Highly emotionally provocative information stands a stronger chance of lingering in our minds and being incorporated into long-term memory banks.
The allure of fake news is therefore reinforced by its relationship to memory formation. A recent study published in Psychological Science highlighted that exposure to propaganda can induce false memories. In one of the largest false-memory experiments to date, scientists gathered up registered voters in the Republic of Ireland in the week preceding the 2018 abortion referendum. Half of the participants reported a false memory for at least one fabricated event, with more than a third of participants reporting a specific eyewitness memory. In-depth analysis revealed that voters were most susceptible to forming false memories for fake news that closely aligned with their beliefs, particularly if they had low cognitive ability.
The ability of fake news to grab our attention and then highjack our learning and memory circuitry goes a long way to explaining its success. But its strongest selling point is its ability to appeal to our emotions. Studies of online networks show text spreads more virally when it contains a high degree of moral emotion, which drives much of what we do. Decisions are often driven by deep-seated emotions that can be difficult to identify. In the process of making a judgment, people consult or refer to an emotional catalog carrying all the positive and negative tags consciously or unconsciously associated with a given context.
We rely on our ability to place information into an emotional frame of reference that combines facts with feelings. Our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, long before were aware of them. This processing operates with exposures to emotional content as short as 1/250th of a second, an interval so brief that there is no recognition or recall of the stimulus.
Merely being exposed to a fake news headline can increase later belief in that headline so scrolling through social media feeds laden with emotionally provocative content has the power to change the way we see the world and make political decisions.
The novelty and emotional conviction of fake news, and the way these properties interact with the framework of our memories, exceeds our brains analytical capabilities. Though its impossible to imagine a democratic structure without disagreement, no constitutional settlement can function if everything is a value judgement based on misinformation. In the absence of any authoritative perspective on reality, we are doomed to navigate our identities and political beliefs at the mercy of our brains more basal functions.
The capacity to nurture and sustain peaceful disagreement is a positive characteristic of a truly democratic political system. But before democratic politics can begin, we must be able to distinguish between opinions and facts, fake news and objective truth.