Dive Brief:

A number of adjustments have made providing effective intervention and support for struggling students much easier for educators, and there's more to it than just technology. A rethinking of discipline has factored heavily into these efforts, as well. Greater awareness of the negative impacts of "zero-tolerance" policies that favor suspension, expulsion and referrals to the juvenile justice system for minor infractions has brought a rise in the use of restorative justice programs and other tactics focused on addressing what's causing students' behavioral issues, including socioeconomic factors and their home environment.

In a February interview, Sylacauga City Schools (AL) Director of Instruction and Intervention Carol Martin shared her district's best practices on RTI, noting the importance of data in intervention efforts and how to get parental buy-in. The latter has been a particularly sensitive topic for some, with parents naturally concerned about what data is being gathered on their children and how it is ultimately used by both the school/district and any third party.

"We have data workshops for parents, and assessment workshops, where we put all the data on the table for their child," Martin said."I think you have to make it personal. I believe we get uncomfortable when we dont have our own data in our hands. If parents can see a report telling exactly where their child grew, on what skills and what the percentages are what parent doesnt wanna know that?"

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Neuroscience developments have greatly improved district intervention strategies - Education Dive

August 18, 2017 | 10:30 a.m.

One of the best ways to describe Bethels new B.S. in Neuroscience degree is this: research focused. The breadth of research available to students sets Bethels program apart and ensures students are well prepared for medical and graduate school and their future careers.

Students need to leave their undergraduate experience with published papers and extensive research experience, says Melissa Cordes, assistant professor of biological sciences and a neuroscience faculty member. Getting into graduate school isnt just about grades any more, she explains. Thats why Bethels neuroscience major includes an independent research project. Additionally, neuroscience professors will work actively to make sure that each student has access to hands-on research opportunities both on and off Bethels campus.

Offered by the biology and psychology departments, the neuroscience major is a response to growth in the field and the interests of new and current students. In a proposal submitted as part of the approval process for the major, Bethel estimated that 30 to 40 students would participate in the program in its first four years.

Adam Johnson, professor of psychology, holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience and already works with students interested in the field. He recently toldBethel Magazineabout one unique research opportunity. With funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Johnson and a group of four Bethel students worked on research during the past academic year, then went to Boston University to continue. They were able to collaborate with post-doctoral researchers, graduate students, and Howard Eichenbaum, director of Boston Universitys Center for Memory and Brain. While the NIH does not have a history of funding undergraduate training programs, our program provides a truly innovative model for launching undergraduate students into the neurosciences, Johnson writes about the grant.

Students who major in neuroscience will gain extensive laboratory experience. For instance, one course immerses students in lab twice a week for four hours eacheight hours of lab a week. Neurosciences blending of biology and psychology means students will learn animal and human research techniques. Furthermore, theyll gain a solid scientific foundation, taking courses in microbiology and abnormal psychology, as well as organic chemistry and physics.

In addition to Cordes and Johnson, the neuroscience faculty will include William McVaugh, associate professor of biological sciences, and new psychology faculty member Sherryse Corrow. The neuroscience major continues Bethels tradition of academic excellence. To learn more about the program or to apply, visit the B.S. in Neuroscience webpage through thebiologyorpsychology departments.

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New Neuroscience Major Immerses Students in Research - Bethel University News

Neuroscientists who painstakingly map the twists and turns of neural circuitry through the brain are about to see their field expand to an industrial scale. A huge facility set to open in Suzhou, China, next month should transform high-resolution brain mapping, its developers say.

Where typical laboratories might use one or two brain-imaging systems, the new facility boasts 50 automated machines that can rapidly slice up a mouse brain, snap high-definition pictures of each slice and reconstruct those into a 3D picture. This factory-like scale will dramatically accelerate progress, says Hongkui Zeng, a molecular biologist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, which is partnering with the centre. Large-scale, standardized data generation in an industrial manner will change the way neuroscience is done, she says.

The institute, which will also image human brains, aims to be an international hub that will help researchers to map neural connectivity for everything from studies of Alzheimers disease to brain-inspired artificial-intelligence projects, says Qingming Luo, a researcher in biomedical imaging at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, China. Luo leads the new facility, called the HUST-Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics, which has a 5-year budget of 450 million yuan (US$67 million) and will employ some 120 scientists and technicians. Luo, who calls himself a brainsmatician, also built the institutes high-speed brain-imaging systems.

Old maps often require months or years of effort. The process involves shaving centimetre-long mouse brains into 15,000 ultrathin slices with a diamond blade, staining each layer with chemicals or fluorescent tags to pick out particular features, imaging each layer with a microscope and then reconstructing the images into a 3D map.

High-speed mapping

Thats where Luos institute can help. Its vast number of machines have impressive speed and resolution, collaborators say. According to Zeng, the devices can gather the same amount of detail on a mouse brain in two weeks as would require months using other technologies, such as super-resolution confocal imaging.

The Suzhou institute will generate a huge amount of data: each mouse brain map alone will be 8 terabytes, Luo says. But the volume of a human brain is nearly 1,500 times that of a mouse brain; it would take a single machine around 20 years to digitally reconstruct one at the institutes current rate. Luo aims to increase the speed of his machines and to use multiple devices in parallel.

Luo is keen for worldwide collaboration; along with the Allen Institute and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Stanford University in California is forming a partnership with the centre. But Luo says that interest is so high that he wont be able to accommodate everyone. We are already turning people down.

See the original post:
Industrial-scale high-resolution brain mapping for neuroscience - Next Big Future

Orlando Health is revamping its pediatric neurology and neurosurgery programs at its Winnie Palmer and Arnold Palmer hospitals in downtown Orlando, aiming to offer state-of-the-art procedures, such as fetal surgery.

To lead the multiyear effort, the health system has brought on board pediatric and fetal neurosurgeon Dr. Samer Elbabaa, who specializes in repairing spinal anomalies in unborn babies.

Our goal is to add expertise to treat the most complex conditions, in addition to focusing on coordination of care and research and education, said Elbabaa who arrived here three months ago from St. Louis, Mo.

The initiative adds another layer to the competition among the three childrens hospitals in Orlando, which, just by their sheer existence in a city this size, are an anomaly.

Florida Hospital currently boasts one of the most robust childrens neuroscience programs in the Southeast with the highest epilepsy surgery volume in Florida.

Nemours Childrens Hospital in Lake Nona has been recognized for its unique Muscular Dystrophy Association Clinic, led be world-renowned neurologist, Dr. Richard Finkel.

Elbabaas ultimate goal is for Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies to become a destination for spina bifida fetal surgery.

The condition is a neural tube anomaly. Each year, about 1,500 babies are born with it with various degrees of severity. Fetal surgeons like Elbabaa fix the defect in the fetus by opening moms pregnant belly.

Winnie Palmers program is at least a year away from accepting its first patient, but when open, it would be one of a first in Florida and one of the few in the Southeast, after Childrens Hospital at Vanderbilt in Tennessee.

In the meantime, Elbabaa has been working on establishing a coordinated system of care for kids with medical and surgical needs, ranging from brain tumors and epilepsy to autism and developmental delays.

He recently helped launch the Children Neuroscience Center of Excellence at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, bringing together various disciplines of pediatric neuroscience under one umbrella.

To further build the program, Arnold Palmer Hospital is planning to bring on board more pediatric specialists, including neuropsychiatrists, neurologists, psychologists and therapists for inpatient rehab. The center will eventually have its own physical space and an outpatient neurology clinic.

Creating a comprehensive multi-disciplinary approach to treating different conditions is a national trend. Florida Hospital and Nemours said they too have multi-disciplinary neurology programs.

Such programs can lead to better-coordinated care for patients. The model also allows hospitals to hire their own specialists, which can create competition for smaller, independent physician practices.

But thats not likely to happen for pediatric neurologists here because they are in short supply.

Orlando Health expands trauma center

There is a high demand and need for such specialized care, said Dr. Germano Falcao, a local independent pediatric neurologist. Its an underserved area, so they would be bringing additional resources here, said Falcao, who has privileges at Arnold Palmer Hospital.

Elbabaa is also gradually increasing the complexity level of pediatric surgeries to include skull-based and minimally invasive neurosurgeries at Arnold Palmer Hospital and eventually fetal surgery at Winnie Palmer Hospital, where more than 14,000 babies are delivered each year.

Im coming to a center with high volume of delivery, and this community deserves to have a fetal surgery program, he said.

Treating the fetus in the womb is a field thats constantly changing, spurred by individual innovators, hospitals and competition, according to the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

There are currently about two dozen institutions in the U.S. and Canada that perform more complex fetal procedures, many of which are part of North American Fetal Therapy Network. But there are other centers that perform basic fetal procedures, such as transfusions and shunts. Taken together, it would be reasonable to estimate that there approximately 50 programs across the country, according to Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

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Similar to complex procedures like organ transplantation, parents usually have to travel to another state for fetal surgery.

Port Orange resident Elizabeth Watkins, for instance, decided to go to Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia last October, shortly after she found out that her unborn child had spina bifida.

The financial resources are a challenge, said Watkins, a social worker. She spent a month in Philadelphia, and after returning home, she was on bed rest until she delivered Scout six months ago at Winnie Palmer Hospital via Cesarean section.

Scout is a happy, healthy baby now, but she still needs close monitoring. Watkins has been driving regularly to Arnold Palmer Hospital to go to the Spina Bifida Clinic, where Elbabaa now cares for Scout.

We totally lucked out in getting him, she said. Having everyone together under the same roof benefits the parents and the patient, because everyone is on the same page.

Elbabaa also has his eye on the next generation of doctors and surgeons. He is planning to create learning opportunities for University of Central Florida medical students and eventually hopes to establish fellowships in pediatric neurology and neurosurgery.

We want to be a destination in which parents have confidence, he said. The community really deserves this.

nmiller@orlandosentinel.com, 407-420-5158 or @naseemmiller

More headlines...

Read the rest here:
Orlando Health revamping pediatric neurology services - Orlando Sentinel

Everybody seems to have an opinion about Googles recent sacking of its malware software engineer James Damore for circulating a memo arguing that women and men are suitable for different roles because they are intrinsically different. The debate so far has centred mainly on the pros and cons of diversity programmes, which partly sparked Damore to construct his document, and whether Google was right to fire Damore.

While there have been some less vocal comments about the biological differences Damore referred to ranging from finding them spot on to wrong his assertions havent been challenged much on the actual neuroscience behind his basic assumptions. Is there any truth to the idea that we are all destined by our biology? To understand this, lets take a look at the most recent advances in the field.

The memo, titled Googles Ideological Echo Chamber, was sent to an internal company network and criticised the companys diversity initiatives. It quoted psychological studies, Wikipedia entries and media reports to argue its case.

It claimed women are underrepresented in the tech industry because of biological differences, arguing that women have a stronger interest in people rather than things, and that they are prone to neuroticism and anxiety. Men, on the other hand, have a higher drive for status, according to the document. While the memo stopped short of actually spelling it out, it certainly implied that these differences are innate, fixed and unchangeable.

But this kind of thinking is changing at every level. Psychologys go-to list of cognitive differences between males and females has been dismantled, with overwhelming evidence that women and men are more similar than they are different. Many alleged sex differences in skills, aptitudes and personality including science-based interests have been shown not to fall into two neat categories,but rather exist on a spectrum.

At the level of the brain, the concept of a male or a female brain has been challenged supported by evidence indicating that brains are a mosaic of both male and female characteristics.

One breakthrough in our 21st-century understanding of the brain is that the brain is plastic, which means that it can change depending on the experiences it is exposed to. This was clearly demonstrated in the well-known taxi-driver studies which showed that acquiring expertise is associated with significant brain changes and many others. If brain characteristics can be altered by experience, then it certainly seems wrong to argue that sex differences are innate.

Take, for instance, the gender gap in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), which is presumably something Google is looking to address. It is often argued that this is associated with men having better spatial cognition it isnt. There is actually clear evidence that spatial cognition training can change the brain, boosting its performance. Whats more, the gender gap in spatial skills has been shown to be diminishing over time, even disappearing. In certain cultures, the situation is actually reversed.

Are men better at reading maps?

The brain is also porous or permeable and will respond to and change as a function of attitudes and expectations, both external and internal. Stereotype threat is a well-known process in which people feel anxiety connected with particular skills perceived to be associated with members of another group. This can affect their performance and their brain activity. For example, girls may feel this way about maths thinking its a boy thing. Sadly, this mechanism has been shown to be real for example affecting girls performance on maths tasks.

It also changes brain activity. One study showed that people who perceived themselves as being of lower status than others had different volumes of grey matter in brain regions involved in experiencing emotions and reacting to stress than those who did not. We have also shown this to be true in our lab when it comes to taking a negative, self-critical view of events in your life.

So if you are in an environment where there are stereotypical views that, as a member of a particular group, youre unlikely to succeed, this may indeed make you anxious and self-critical. And that will actually affect the way your brain works, meaning it is not necessarily something you were born with. And of course, this holds true for mens brains as well.

Damore strongly opposed certain social engineering activities to make the tech industry more welcoming to women. But actually, research shows that empowerment techniques can alter brain activity and overcome the negative effects on performance of stereotype threat and performance anxiety. Importantly, altering a self-critical mindset will actually make the brain process information differently.

So even if biology could be blamed for the problems Damore identified they could also arise from the very environment he appears to be channelling with stereotypical, deterministic thinking about aptitudes and abilities. I dont know the details of the diversity training he was so clearly uncomfortable with, but if it involves changing this environment and offering forms of training and empowerment to their employees, then they are doing exactly the right thing to alter what Damore wrongly assumed to be fixed and unchangeable.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Gina Rippon has received funding from the Wellcome Foundation, MRC, EPSRC, Lord Hadwen Trust

See the article here:
What neuroscience can tell us about the Google diversity memo - Yahoo News

How does the brain give rise to the mind? How and where are memories stored? What is the biological basis of consciousness? What is the neural basis of decision making? How are mental illnesses related to changes in brain function?

These are just a few of the intriguing and unresolved questions in the field of neuroscience. Neuroscience is a broad and interdisciplinary subject, drawing from psychology and biology, as well as computer science, chemistry, engineering, medicine and other fields. Thus, the neuroscience curriculum provides breadth as well as depth in the core areas of neuroscience.

Neuroscience is a rapidly changing field, and those changes come about through intensive research. Students will gain experience with neuroscience research methods through laboratory work and have the opportunity to engage in independent research in conjunction with a faculty mentor.

See the article here:
Neuroscience | Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Do women care too much about people to be suitable for certain roles? Credit: Beer5020/Shutterstock

Everybody seems to have an opinion about Google's recent sacking of its malware software engineer James Damore for circulating a memo arguing that women and men are suitable for different roles because they are intrinsically different. The debate so far has centred mainly on the pros and cons of diversity programmes, which partly sparked Damore to construct his document, and whether Google was right to fire Damore.

While there have been some less vocal comments about the biological differences Damore referred to ranging from finding them "spot on" to "wrong" his assertions haven't been challenged much on the actual neuroscience behind his basic assumptions. Is there any truth to the idea that we are all destined by our biology? To understand this, let's take a look at the most recent advances in the field.

The memo, titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", was sent to an internal company network and criticised the company's diversity initiatives. It quoted psychological studies, Wikipedia entries and media reports to argue its case.

It claimed women are underrepresented in the tech industry because of biological differences, arguing that women have a "stronger interest in people rather than things", and that they are prone to neuroticism and anxiety. Men, on the other hand, have a higher drive for status, according to the document. While the memo stopped short of actually spelling it out, it certainly implied that these differences are innate, fixed and unchangeable.

But this kind of thinking is changing at every level. Psychology's go-to list of cognitive differences between males and females has been dismantled, with overwhelming evidence that women and men are more similar than they are different. Many alleged sex differences in skills, aptitudes and personality including science-based interests have been shown not to fall into two neat categories,but rather exist on a spectrum.

At the level of the brain, the concept of a male or a female brain has been challenged supported by evidence indicating that brains are a mosaic of both male and female characteristics.

Our changeable brains

One breakthrough in our 21st-century understanding of the brain is that the brain is "plastic", which means that it can change depending on the experiences it is exposed to. This was clearly demonstrated in the well-known "taxi-driver studies" which showed that acquiring expertise is associated with significant brain changes and many others. If brain characteristics can be altered by experience, then it certainly seems wrong to argue that sex differences are innate.

Take, for instance, the gender gap in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), which is presumably something Google is looking to address. It is often argued that this is associated with men having better spatial cognition it isn't. There is actually clear evidence that spatial cognition training can change the brain, boosting its performance. What's more, the gender gap in spatial skills has been shown to be diminishing over time, even disappearing. In certain cultures, the situation is actually reversed.

The brain is also porous or permeable and will respond to and change as a function of attitudes and expectations, both external and internal. "Stereotype threat" is a well-known process in which people feel anxiety connected with particular skills perceived to be associated with members of another group. This can affect their performance and their brain activity. For example, girls may feel this way about maths thinking it's a "boy thing". Sadly, this mechanism has been shown to be real for example affecting girls' performance on maths tasks.

It also changes brain activity. One study showed that people who perceived themselves as being of lower status than others had different volumes of grey matter in brain regions involved in experiencing emotions and reacting to stress than those who did not. We have also shown this to be true in our lab when it comes to taking a negative, self-critical view of events in your life.

So if you are in an environment where there are stereotypical views that, as a member of a particular group, you're unlikely to succeed, this may indeed make you anxious and self-critical. And that will actually affect the way your brain works, meaning it is not necessarily something you were born with. And of course, this holds true for men's brains as well.

Damore strongly opposed certain "social engineering" activities to make the tech industry more welcoming to women. But actually, research shows that empowerment techniques can alter brain activity and overcome the negative effects on performance of stereotype threat and performance anxiety. Importantly, altering a self-critical mindset will actually make the brain process information differently.

So even if biology could be blamed for the problems Damore identified they could also arise from the very environment he appears to be channelling with stereotypical, deterministic thinking about aptitudes and abilities. I don't know the details of the diversity training he was so clearly uncomfortable with, but if it involves changing this environment and offering forms of training and empowerment to their employees, then they are doing exactly the right thing to alter what Damore wrongly assumed to be fixed and unchangeable.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

More here:
What neuroscience can tell us about the Google diversity memo - Medical Xpress

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Fall Seminar Series at the University atBuffalo Research Institute on Addictions will feature nationalexperts on heavy drinking in young adults, dating violence,financing addiction treatment and tobacco use.

The four-part seminar series is free and open to the public. Allseminars take place on Fridays at 10 a.m. on the first floor of RIAat 1021 Main St. on UBs Downtown Campus.

The Fall Seminar Series kicks off Sept. 8 with a talk by PeterW. Kalivas, PhD, on Using Tetra Partite Synaptic Plasticityto Treat Addiction. Kalivas is professor and chair of theDepartment of Neurosciences at the Medical University of SouthCarolina. His research explores the brain molecules and circuitsthat underlie addiction, with his research lab conducting studieson the neuroplasticity underlying the development of addiction todrugs of abuse, as well as the learning and memory deficitsassociated with poor rearing environments.

On Sept. 22, Meghan McDevitt-Murphy, PhD, will discussBeyond Self-Medication: Exploring Comorbidity between PTSDand Substance Misuse. McDevitt-Murphy is an associateprofessor of psychology at the University of Memphis. Her researchfocuses on the co-occurrence of PTSD and substance misuse. She hasconducted studies to develop interventions for hazardous drinkingamong veterans and has explored PTSD and substance misuse in bothveteran and non-veteran samples. She is a Fellow in the Associationfor Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.

The series continues on Oct. 6 with a talk by Richard Saitz, MD,MPH, on Integrating Unhealthy Alcohol and Other Drug Use andGeneral Health Care: When Best Laid Plans Go Awry. Saitz ischair and professor of community health sciences at the BostonUniversity School of Public Health and professor of medicine at BUSchool of Medicine. His primary areas of expertise include chroniccare management and integrated care for unhealthy substance use andother mental health conditions, and integrating substance-relatedand general health care. He is a Fellow in the American College ofPhysicians and a Distinguished Fellow in the American Society ofAddiction Medicine.

The Fall Seminar Series concludes on Nov. 3 with a discussion byKaren Farchaus Stein, PhD, RN, on Who Am I: Current andFuture-Oriented Identities as Determinants of Adolescent and YoungAdult Alcohol Use. Farchaus Stein is the Brody EndowedProfessor at the University of Rochester School of Nursing.Steins research addresses health risk behaviors inadolescent and young adult females and focuses on individualdifferences in identity development as a determinant of thesebehaviors. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.

For more information about RIAs Fall Seminar Series,contact Kathleen Parks, PhD, at 716-887-3301 or visit http://www.buffalo.edu/ria/news_events/seminars.html.

RIA is a research center of the University at Buffalo and anational leader in the study of alcohol and substance abuse issues.RIAs research programs, most of which have multiple-yearfunding, are supported by federal, state and private foundationgrants. Located on UBs Downtown Campus, RIA is a member ofthe Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and a key contributor toUBs reputation for research excellence. To learn more, visitbuffalo.edu/ria.

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RIA fall seminars explore neuroscience of addiction, PTSD, addiction treatment and adolescent alcohol use - UB News Center

Unable to find someone to take the buildings, Caltech plans to pick up and move seven historic bungalows to a parking lot two blocks away to free up space for a $200 million neuroscience research center.

The Spanish Colonial Revival-style bungalow court, built in 1923, is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, according to Pasadenas Design and Historic Preservation department.

The city suggested it might qualify as historically significant and we actually hired a historic preservation architect to do a study of it, said Hall Daily, Caltechs director of government relations. They deemed it was significant, not because the buildings are significant at all, but because Pasadena prizes bungalow courts and has established them as a priority to preserve.

Caltech offered to pay part of the relocation costs if a private party would take the bungalows, but there were few sites in Pasadena that could accommodate the homes. The institute has successfully relocated 40 buildings for preservation in the last 25 years with most moving off campus, Hall said.

The little buildings will be disconnected from their foundations, shored up and then trucked to their new home down the street. Caltech did not have an estimate for the cost.

Pasadena is considered the birthplace of the bungalow court, a collection of small one-to-two bedroom houses with common space in between. Developed generally from 1909 to 1942, bungalow courts were originally meant for transient, seasonal use, but over time became permanent residences sought for their unique architectural style, according to a city report.

They are very nicely designed, but theyre designed to work together, said Sue Mossman, executive director of Pasadena Heritage. Newlyweds, single-parent families and young adults often sought out the bungalows because they offered a sense of community at a lower cost, she said.

Pasadena had 112 bungalow courts left during a 2011 count, down from highs of more than 200 in previous decades. Of the remaining courts, 91 had a historic designation or were eligible.

We have lost a lot of them and they have become ever more precious, Mossman said.

Pasadena Heritage supports Caltechs solution for preserving the buildings and the layout of the homes, Mossman said.

Its not easy and its not inexpensive, but it can be so worth it if you look at the whole picture, she said.

Caltechs bungalow court, used for graduate student housing, no longer fits with the other buildings at the southwest corner of Wilson Avenue and Del Mar Boulevard. As the campus has evolved and changed over the years, the bungalows neighbors were replaced with parking lots and academic buildings.

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The proposed new site is a small parking lot in a residential area near San Pasqual Street and Catalina Avenue. The rest of that block is used for graduate student apartments.

Caltech must maintain the original configuration of the court as much as possible. Early plans suggest they may flip the layout by 90 degrees so the courtyard would face south. The courtyard may also be narrowed by five to 10 feet in width and length due to the smaller size of the new lot, according to a project description.

Caltech is constrained in part by their master plan, a guiding document for development on campus. Pasadena Heritage wants Caltech to seek an amendment from the City Council to allow more space for the court, but that may take too long.

One of the reasons officials at Caltech chose to pick up and move the court is because its faster than wading through bureaucracy.

Most of the options take much longer to resolve, said Hall, the Caltech official. In light of that fact that wed really like to put together this neuroscience center, I think it serves all parties to move it very close by.

Caltech wants to break ground on the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Neuroscience Research Building in early 2018, so the bungalow court needs a new home quickly.

The 150,000-square foot neuroscience facility, scheduled to open in 2020, will have labs and offices for researchers, a 150-seat lecture hall and support spaces for the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering.

The buildings name comes Tianqiao Chen and Chrissy Luo, two philanthropists who donated $115 million last year to support the institutes endeavors to better understand the brain.

Chen, a businessman who started games company Shanda Interactive Entertainment, is among the richest individuals in China, according to Forbes.

More:
To build a $200 million neuroscience lab, Caltech is relocating ... - The Pasadena Star-News

Everybody seems to have an opinion about Googles recent sacking of its malware software engineer James Damore for circulating a memo arguing that women and men are suitable for different roles because they are intrinsically different. The debate so far has centred mainly on the pros and cons of diversity programmes, which partly sparked Damore to construct his document, and whether Google was right to fire Damore.

While there have been some less vocal comments about the biological differences Damore referred to ranging from finding them spot on to wrong his assertions havent been challenged much on the actual neuroscience behind his basic assumptions. Is there any truth to the idea that we are all destined by our biology? To understand this, lets take a look at the most recent advances in the field.

The memo, titled Googles Ideological Echo Chamber, was sent to an internal company network and criticised the companys diversity initiatives. It quoted psychological studies, Wikipedia entries and media reports to argue its case.

It claimed women are underrepresented in the tech industry because of biological differences, arguing that women have a stronger interest in people rather than things, and that they are prone to neuroticism and anxiety. Men, on the other hand, have a higher drive for status, according to the document. While the memo stopped short of actually spelling it out, it certainly implied that these differences are innate, fixed and unchangeable.

But this kind of thinking is changing at every level. Psychologys go-to list of cognitive differences between males and females has been dismantled, with overwhelming evidence that women and men are more similar than they are different. Many alleged sex differences in skills, aptitudes and personality including science-based interests have been shown not to fall into two neat categories,but rather exist on a spectrum.

At the level of the brain, the concept of a male or a female brain has been challenged supported by evidence indicating that brains are a mosaic of both male and female characteristics.

One breakthrough in our 21st-century understanding of the brain is that the brain is plastic, which means that it can change depending on the experiences it is exposed to. This was clearly demonstrated in the well-known taxi-driver studies which showed that acquiring expertise is associated with significant brain changes and many others. If brain characteristics can be altered by experience, then it certainly seems wrong to argue that sex differences are innate.

Take, for instance, the gender gap in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), which is presumably something Google is looking to address. It is often argued that this is associated with men having better spatial cognition it isnt. There is actually clear evidence that spatial cognition training can change the brain, boosting its performance. Whats more, the gender gap in spatial skills has been shown to be diminishing over time, even disappearing. In certain cultures, the situation is actually reversed.

The brain is also porous or permeable and will respond to and change as a function of attitudes and expectations, both external and internal. Stereotype threat is a well-known process in which people feel anxiety connected with particular skills perceived to be associated with members of another group. This can affect their performance and their brain activity. For example, girls may feel this way about maths thinking its a boy thing. Sadly, this mechanism has been shown to be real for example affecting girls performance on maths tasks.

It also changes brain activity. One study showed that people who perceived themselves as being of lower status than others had different volumes of grey matter in brain regions involved in experiencing emotions and reacting to stress than those who did not. We have also shown this to be true in our lab when it comes to taking a negative, self-critical view of events in your life.

So if you are in an environment where there are stereotypical views that, as a member of a particular group, youre unlikely to succeed, this may indeed make you anxious and self-critical. And that will actually affect the way your brain works, meaning it is not necessarily something you were born with. And of course, this holds true for mens brains as well.

Damore strongly opposed certain social engineering activities to make the tech industry more welcoming to women. But actually, research shows that empowerment techniques can alter brain activity and overcome the negative effects on performance of stereotype threat and performance anxiety. Importantly, altering a self-critical mindset will actually make the brain process information differently.

So even if biology could be blamed for the problems Damore identified they could also arise from the very environment he appears to be channelling with stereotypical, deterministic thinking about aptitudes and abilities. I dont know the details of the diversity training he was so clearly uncomfortable with, but if it involves changing this environment and offering forms of training and empowerment to their employees, then they are doing exactly the right thing to alter what Damore wrongly assumed to be fixed and unchangeable.

Read the rest here:
What neuroscience can tell us about the Google diversity memo - The Conversation UK