Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology,[1]biopsychology, or psychobiology[2] is the application of the principles of biology to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in humans and other animals. [3]

Behavioral neuroscience as a scientific discipline emerged from a variety of scientific and philosophical traditions in the 18th and 19th centuries. In philosophy, people like Ren Descartes proposed physical models to explain animal and human behavior. Descartes, for example, suggested that the pineal gland, a midline unpaired structure in the brain of many organisms, was the point of contact between mind and body. Descartes also elaborated on a theory in which the pneumatics of bodily fluids could explain reflexes and other motor behavior. This theory was inspired by moving statues in a garden in Paris.[4]

Other philosophers also helped give birth to psychology. One of the earliest textbooks in the new field, The Principles of Psychology by William James, argues that the scientific study of psychology should be grounded in an understanding of biology:

Our first conclusion, then, is that a certain amount of brain-physiology must be presupposed or included in Psychology.[5]

The emergence of both psychology and behavioral neuroscience as legitimate sciences can be traced from the emergence of physiology from anatomy, particularly neuroanatomy. Physiologists conducted experiments on living organisms, a practice that was distrusted by the dominant anatomists of the 18th and 19th centuries.[6] The influential work of Claude Bernard, Charles Bell, and William Harvey helped to convince the scientific community that reliable data could be obtained from living subjects.

Even before the 18th and 19th century, behavioral neuroscience was beginning to take form as far back as 1700 B.C.[7] The question that seems to continually arise is what is the connection between the mind and body. The debate is formally referred to as the mind-body problem. There are two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the mindbody problem; monism and dualism.[4]Plato and Aristotle are two of several philosophers who participated in this debate. Plato believed that the brain was where all mental thought and processes happened.[7] In contrast, Aristotle believed that the brain served the purpose of cooling down the emotions derived from the heart.[4] The mind-body problem was a stepping stone toward attempting to understand the connection between the mind and body.

Another debate arose about was localization of function or functional specialization versus equipotentiality which played a significant role in the development in behavioral neuroscience. As a result of localization of function research, many famous people found within psychology have come to various different conclusions. Wilder Penfield was able to develop a map of the cerebral cortex through studying epileptic patients along with Rassmussen.[4] Research on localization of function has led behavioral neuroscientist to a better understanding of which parts of the brain control behavior. This is best exemplified through the case study of Phineas Gage.

The term "psychobiology" has been used in a variety of contexts, emphasizing the importance of biology, which is the discipline that studies organic, neural and cellular modifications in behavior, plasticity in neuroscience, and biological diseases in all aspects, in addition, biology focuses and analyzes behavior and all the subjects it is concerned about, from a scientific point of view. In this context, psychology helps as a complementary, but important discipline in the neurobiological sciences. The role of psychology in this questions is that of a social tool that backs up the main or strongest biological science. The term "psychobiology" was first used in its modern sense by Knight Dunlap in his book An Outline of Psychobiology (1914).[8] Dunlap also was the founder and editor-in-chief of the journal Psychobiology. In the announcement of that journal, Dunlap writes that the journal will publish research "...bearing on the interconnection of mental and physiological functions", which describes the field of behavioral neuroscience even in its modern sense.[8]

In many cases, humans may serve as experimental subjects in behavioral neuroscience experiments; however, a great deal of the experimental literature in behavioral neuroscience comes from the study of non-human species, most frequently rats, mice, and monkeys. As a result, a critical assumption in behavioral neuroscience is that organisms share biological and behavioral similarities, enough to permit extrapolations across species. This allies behavioral neuroscience closely with comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology. Behavioral neuroscience also has paradigmatic and methodological similarities to neuropsychology, which relies heavily on the study of the behavior of humans with nervous system dysfunction (i.e., a non-experimentally based biological manipulation).

Synonyms for behavioral neuroscience include biopsychology, biological psychology, and psychobiology.[9]Physiological psychology is a subfield of behavioral neuroscience, with an appropriately narrower definition

The distinguishing characteristic of a behavioral neuroscience experiment is that either the independent variable of the experiment is biological, or some dependent variable is biological. In other words, the nervous system of the organism under study is permanently or temporarily altered, or some aspect of the nervous system is measured (usually to be related to a behavioral variable).

Different manipulations have advantages and limitations. Neural tissue destroyed by surgery, electric shock or neurotoxcin is a permanent manipulation and therefore limits follow-up investigation.[23] Most genetic manipulation techniques are also considered permanent.[23] Temporary lesions can be achieved with advanced in genetic manipulations, for example, certain genes can now be switched on and off with diet.[23] Pharmacological manipulations also allow blocking of certain neurotransmitters temporarily as the function returns to its previous state after the drug has been metabolized.[23]

In general, behavioral neuroscientists study similar themes and issues as academic psychologists, though limited by the need to use nonhuman animals. As a result, the bulk of literature in behavioral neuroscience deals with mental processes and behaviors that are shared across different animal models such as:

However, with increasing technical sophistication and with the development of more precise noninvasive methods that can be applied to human subjects, behavioral neuroscientists are beginning to contribute to other classical topic areas of psychology, philosophy, and linguistics, such as:

Behavioral neuroscience has also had a strong history of contributing to the understanding of medical disorders, including those that fall under the purview of clinical psychology and biological psychopathology (also known as abnormal psychology). Although animal models do not exist for all mental illnesses, the field has contributed important therapeutic data on a variety of conditions, including:

Nobel Laureates

The following Nobel Prize winners could reasonably be considered behavioral neuroscientists or neurobiologists. (This list omits winners who were almost exclusively neuroanatomists or neurophysiologists; i.e., those that did not measure behavioral or neurobiological variables.)

Kavli Prize in Neuroscience

Link:
Behavioral neuroscience - Wikipedia

Two lecture courses constitute the core curriculum in the first year:

NEU 555 Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience (6 credit hours)* *Course is crosslisted with BIO. Neuroscience students need to register for the NEU prefix. Course is only offered in the fall semesters.

NEU 556 Systems Neuroscience (4 credit hours)* *Course is crosslisted with BME. Neuroscience students need to register for the NEU prefix. Course is only offered in the spring semesters.

The core courses are designed for students who already have a background in basic Neuroscience. The course sequence that has two major goals. One is to expose students to advanced, cutting-edge research from all levels of analysis in Neuroscience - that is, from molecular through systems-level processes, including how those processes affect behavioral and cognitive processes. A second goal will be to introduce students to application of basic and practical knowledge in biomedical settings.

The courses consist of modules led by faculty members who specialize in those areas of research. Each module is one to two weeks in length, consisting of both lecture and translational' components. Modules are taught in ASU classrooms and in facilities at ourClinical Partner institutions. In both types of locations, part of each module may consist of tours of laboratories and clinical facilities as well as discussions with clinicians and neurosurgeons. This exposure in particular will help to provide an overview of major interdisciplinary projects that are currently underway at ASU and at the Clinical Partner Institutions. It will also provide an opportunity for students to observe firsthand how team-oriented translational projects can be implemented to help solve problems in biomedicine that have a direct societal impact.

This list of ASU courses is subject to change. Courses may not be available each semester or academic year. New courses are being developed and you are encouraged to propose course and seminar topics to participating faculty.

BIO 598: Neuroscience, Ethics and the Law (3) Meets for 15 weeks (full semester). Instructors: Betsy Grey (Law) and Jason Robert (SOLS)

BIO 611: Current Topics in Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) in Life Sciences (1) Meets for 5 weeks. Instructor: Karin Ellison

Bio 611: Current Topics in Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) in Life Sciences (1) Meets for 15 weeks (full semester). Instructors: Betsy Grey (Law) and Jason Robert (SOLS)

BME 451: Cell Biotechnology Laboratory (4) Mammalian cell culture techniques including mouse embryonic stem cells, the use of biorectors, cell fractionation and digital video imaging.

BME 520: Bioelectric Phenomena (3) Study of the origin, propagation and interactions of bioelectricity in living things; volume conductor problems, mathematical analysis of bioelectric interactions, and uses in medical diagnostics.

BME 521: Neuromuscular Control Systems (3) Overview of sensorimotor brain structures. Application of nonlinear, adaptive, optimal and supervisory control theory to eye-head-hand coordination and locomotion.

BME 524: Fundamentals of Applied Neural Control (3) Fundamental concepts of electrical stimulation and recording in the nervous system with the goal of functional control restoration.

BME 532: Prosthetic and Rehabilitation Engineering (3) Analysis and critical assessment of design and control strategies for state-of-the-art medical devices used in rehabilitation engineering.

BME 551: Movement Biomechanics (3) Mechanics applied to the analysis and modeling of physiological movements. Computational modeling of muscles, tendons, joints, and the skeletal system, with application to sports and rehabilitation.

BME 568: Medical Imaging (3) CT, SPECT, PET and MRI. 3-D in vivo measurements. Instrument design, physiological modeling, clinical protocols, reconstruction algorithms and quantitation issues.

BME 598: ST Integrative Neuroscience (3)

BME 598: ST Research Ethics/Law (2-3)

BIO 451: Cell Biotechnology Laboratory (4) Mammalian cell culture techniques, including mouse embryonic stem cells, the use of bioreactors, cell fractionation, and digital video imaging.

BIO 465: Neurophysiology (3) Detailed treatment of cellular and organismal neurophysiology and nervous system function.

BIO 467: Neurobiology (3) Introduction into basic nervous system anatomy and function.

BIO 508: Scientific Data Presentation (2) Techniques necessary for presentation of scientific data used in journal publications, grant proposals, and visual presentations.

BIO 515: Science, Technology and Public Affairs (3) Explores the political, economic, cultural, and moral foundations of science and technology policy and governance in democratic society.

BIO 550: Advanced Cell Biology (3) Applies contemporary electron microscopic and biochemical/molecular techniques for studying eukaryotic cell functions. Mechanisms of intracellular protein trafficking.

BIO 551: Biomembranes (3) Structure and function of biological membranes, emphasizing synthesis, fluidity, exocytosis, endocytosis, and cell responses to hormones and neurotransmitters.

BIO 591: Responsible conduct of research (3) The class is designed to introduce graduate students to ethical issues in the research environment. Topics will include skills needed for success in graduate school and beyond, ethical issues in data handling, authorship, human genetics, conflict of interest, mentoring, experimental animals and human subjects, and other issues. Faculty facilitators will participate in discussing case studies and students will develop case studies based on their own experiences.

BIO 598: Developmental Neurobiology (6)* *Course prefix will change to NEU 557 beginning Fall 2011 This course is designed to examine the Development of the Nervous System. The class starts with neural induction, birth order, NS system axis formation, then goes to pathfinding, dendritic growth, synaptogenesis. This is followed by synapse elimination and programmed cell death. Finally, excitability homeostasis, neural circuit development, and Rett and Fragile X will be covered as two examples for neurodevelopmental diseases.

BIO 569: Cellular Physiology (3) Emphasizes the molecular basis for cell structure and function.

APM 530: Mathematical Cell Physiology (3) Alternate Fall or Spring Mathematical modeling of dynamical aspects of cell physiology. Diffusion, membrane transport, intracellular calcium channel kinetics, calcium oscillations and waves.

APM 531: Mathematical Neuroscience I (3) Fall Mathematical modeling of electrochemical processes in nerve cells. Dendritic modeling, dendritic spines and synaptic plasticity, bifurcation analysis of excitable membrane models, deterministic and stochastic methods for threshold dynamics and bursting, relaxation oscillations. You should have taken a previous graduate-level PDE course.

APM 532: Mathematical Neuroscience II (3) Spring Mathematical modeling of systems neuroscience. Network dynamics, coupled phase oscillators, central pattern generators, neural coding, learning and memory. You should have taken advanced ordinary differential equations and also taken APM 530 or APM 531 prior to enrolling in this course.

PSY 426: Neuroanatomy (4) fall Structure and function of mammalian brain, including sheep brain dissection (cross-listed with 591).

PSY 425: Biobasis of Behavior (3) spring

PSY 470: Psychopharmacology (3) select semesters

PSY 512: Advanced Learning (3) select semesters

PSY 524: Advanced Physiological Psychology (3) select semesters Contributions of physiological processes and brain function to fundamental behavioral processes.

PSY 528: Sensation and Perception (3) select semesters Principles of sensory and perceptual processes, emphasizing research literature.

PSY 573: Psychopathology (3) - fall Theory and research relating to the contribution of psychological, social, physiological, and genetic factors to the development and persistence of abnormal behavior.

PSY 591: Neuroanatomy (4) fall Structure and function of mammalian brain, including sheep brain dissection (cross-listed with 426).

PSY 591: Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (3)

PSY 591: Neuropsychopharmacology (3) select semesters

PSY 591: Grant Writing and Professional Development (3) select semesters

PSY 624: Clinical Neuroscience (3) select semesters Examines the biological underpinnings of psychological disorders at the molecular, cellular, and system levels (e.g., schizophrenia, depression, anxiety). Lecture, pro-seminar.

PSY 555: Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research (3) select semesters Reviews research techniques. Analyzes lab and field research; applications to specific topics.

SHS 513: Neurophysiology of the Auditory System (3) fall or spring Focuses on the neurophysiology of the normal auditory system and on changes associated with hearing loss. Lecture, discussion, demonstrations. Prerequisite: instructor approval.

SHS 519: Auditory Pathologies and Disorders (3) Familiarizes students with major diseases, pathologies, and disorders of the human auditory system. Lecture, discussion, case studies, demonstrations, field trips, seminar, student.

SHS 520: Otoneurologic Applications in Audiology (3) Advanced otologic, neurologic, and audiologic approaches in the differential diagnosis of peripheral and central disorders of the auditory system. Lecture, lab, discussion, case studies, seminar, student presentations.

SHS 545: Speech Perception by the Hearing Impaired (2) Focuses on the perception of speech by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Lecture, discussion, case studies, seminar, student presentations. Prerequisite: instructor approval.

SHS 555: Cochlear Implants The design and function of implantable neural prostheses for the restoration of hearing in adults and children.

SHS 567: Neural Bases of Communication Disorders (3) Neuroscience and its application to matters of normal and disordered communication.

SHS 575: Aphasia and Related Neurogenic Language Disorders (3)Assessment and treatment of acquired neurolinguistic impairment.

SHS 576: Neuromotor Speech Disorders Neurophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of motor speech disorders; theory and models of normal and disordered speech production.

SHS 581: Right Hemisphere Syndrome, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Dementia (3) Studies the nature, characteristics, and clinical management of cognitive and communicative impairments accompanying right hemisphere damage, TBI, and dementia.

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Neuroscience (PhD) | School of Life Sciences

Do you want to be happier? That's a pretty silly question--who doesn't want more happiness? Fortunately, there are simple things we can all do to raise our happiness quotient that are actually supported by scientific research. And even though brain scans show that the happiest person on earth is Tibetan monk Matthieu Ricard, you can do each of these things every day. No need to travel to a remote mountaintop, sit in meditation for hours, or even quit your day job.

UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb, Psychology Today blogger and author of The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time, has studied many of the ways we can gently tweak our attitudes, outlooks, and behaviors to bring more happiness into our lives. Here are some of his top recommendations:

There's plenty of scientific evidence to support the notion that being grateful makes us happier. As Korb notes, it increases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with our reward centers, and also the pleasurable effects of taking drugs. In other words, feeling grateful gives you a natural high. Not only that, feelings of gratitude increase your serotonin levels, which is what antidepressants also do. No wonder gratitude is such a mood-booster. And, Korb says, even if you're feeling very down and can't come up with a single thing you're grateful for, the mere act of searching will give you some of these effects by leading you to focus on the good aspects of your life.

My simple approach to daily gratitude is to mentally list three things I'm grateful for before getting out of bed in the morning. That helps set me up for a better mood throughout the day. But any time is a good time for gratitude.

Our brains are hard-wired to pay more attention to negative rather than positive information, and this applies at least as much to our evaluation of ourselves as it does to anything else. But focusing on the things we're proud of has many brain benefits. For one thing, pride is a powerful brain-stimulating emotion, and focusing on happy memories (assuming your accomplishments made you happy) is another way to release serotonin in your brain. And, Korb notes, "Several studies have shown that reflecting on your positive qualities is a type of self-affirmation that actually strengthens your abilities to change bad habits." So focusing on what you've done right might actually help you accomplish more good stuff in the future.

Making a decision, choosing a goal or setting an intention all have a positive effect on the brain, decreasing stress and anxiety and increasing problem-solving ability, according to Korb. And--this will be difficult for some people (including me)--but your brain will benefit most if you make a good-enough decision sooner, rather than wait for the most complete information in order to make the best possible decision.

Research suggests that the ability to make decisions quickly (and then make them right after the fact if need be) is one of the ways entrepreneurs' brains differ from everyone else's. And, according to Korb, making a good-enough decision activates a part of the pre-frontal cortex that makes you feel more in control. And choosing to do something you want to do will not only make you happier. Research shows that the mere act of having chosen will make you enjoy whatever you choose more. In other words, choose what you love and you'll love what you choose.

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3 Simple Ways to Make Yourself Happy Every Day According to Neuroscience - Inc.com

For Bryan Johnson, the founder and CEO of neuroscience startup Kernel, the question is when, not if, we all have computer chips inside of our brains. Kernel, founded last fall with more than $100 million of Johnsons own money, is trying to better understand the human brain, so that we may one day program it to improve.

The company is focusing first on medical applications, to gain a deeper understanding of the diverse and complex ways the brain can fail. Eventually, Johnson would like to move toward augmenting the organ to make us smarter and healthier and pave the way for interfacing directly with computing devices.

Kernel wants to improve human cognition

Johnson, who made his fortune selling his payments company Braintree to PayPal for $800 million in 2013, doesnt have past experience in neuroscience. He is, however, riding a new wave of interest from Silicon Valley. There is a growing fear, among some futurists and other Silicon Valley elite, that humans will develop a crippling dependence on machines and software that continue to rapidly accelerate beyond our capabilities and understanding. This is a fear not necessarily shared by the neuroscience community, which is less focused on enhancing human intelligence, at least right now, than they are on treating people with Alzheimer's and helping paraplegics regain movement.

Yet the goal of Kernel, ultimately, is to allow humans to outcompete or at least co-evolve alongside machines by becoming a little digital themselves. Kernel has made some big claims: promising to improve neurodegenerative disease, for instance, to help pave the way for improving cognition. But for the last decade, brain implants have only dealt with movements, and have typically only been used in paraplegic people beyond experimental medical trials and stimulation devices for conditions like epilepsy.

We know if we put a chip in the brain and release electrical signals, that we can ameliorate symptoms of Parkinson's, Johnson tells me. This has been done for spinal cord pain, obesity, anorexia what hasnt been done is the reading and writing of neural code. Johnson points to the programming of yeast cells and CRISPR gene editing as examples of breakthroughs that apply the principles of computing to living organisms. What I wanted to do was work with the brain the same way we work with other complex biological systems like biology and genetics.

Of course, our understanding of genes is much farther along that our understanding of the brain. Frankly, the technologies we have for interacting with the brain are blunt tools at best, says Blake Richards, a neuroscientist and assistant professor and the University of Toronto who focuses on how the brain modifies itself and learns from experience. Most neuroprostheses involve dropping a big array of electrodes into the brain.

The technologies we have for interacting with the human brain are blunt tools at best.

This makes Johnsons vision sound both difficult and distant, with a laundry list of scientific obstacles standing in its way. He will need more money hes currently declining outside investment but may take venture capital funds in the future. The project also requires time, perhaps decades, to achieve anything close to Kernels cyborg vision, which currently resides only in fiction. But despite these hurdles, Johnson is intent on starting now with Kernel as one of the early leaders in an emerging hybrid field, one that blends the cash-flush, experimental spirit of Silicon Valley with the most cutting-edge neuroscience research.

Brain hacking, so to speak, has been a futurist fascination for decades. The idea that we will, inevitably, have chips in our brains and ways to interface directly with computing devices has been a staple of the most seminal cyberpunk works, from William Gibsons Neuromancer to Masamune Shirows Ghost in the Shell to the Wachowskis The Matrix. The reality, however, is far more complicated and dangerous. Very few people in the world have multi-electrode arrays implanted inside their skulls today. Those who do only undergo the invasive surgery required as a last resort, to alleviate the symptoms of severe neurological conditions or as a way to restore movement to paralyzed patients or allow amputees to move prosthetic limbs.

Richards is skeptical of any company promising advancements that require invasive surgery. People are only going to be amenable to the idea [of an implant] if they have a very serious medical condition they might get help with, he adds. Most healthy individuals are uncomfortable with the idea of having a doctor crack open their skull.

Johnson is first to admit the difficulties Kernel must reckon with to even begin working on these types of technologies, principally the idea of working exclusively with patients who have severe neurological conditions. He says that working with brain implants is a requirement right now. Theres no tech that exists in the world that allows you to be outside the brain and gain access to critical data, he says. You need to be inside the brain, inside the skull. Down the line, Kernel would like to explore less invasive ways of working with the human brain.

Yet even then, moving beyond the medical field and into the realm of improving cognition requires a significant amount of scientific progress, Richards points out. We understand very little about the human brain compared with what we understand about the mouse brain, he says. Almost all of our data on the human brain comes from epileptic patients, which is problematic for understanding how the brain works at large.

You need to be inside the brain, inside the skull.

To really understand the brain, Richards adds, will take years of work. Well need to hone how we gather data from the brain itself a challenging task with its own complications and improve our understanding of how the brain carries out core functions. From there, researchers will still have to work within the confines of ethical medical trials and regulatory boundaries that restrict how and to what effect we can work on human brains. As it stands today, Richards says, we dont even yet have have a thorough grasp of how the brain does everyday tasks like storing information we can recall later or letting us conjure conversations from years in the past. The computations and algorithms carried in the brain are still largely mysterious to us.

These challenges havent stopped Johnson from setting his sights on neuroscience as the next frontier. While companies have in the past tried to make commercial headway in the field of neuroprosthetics, Johnson is focusing instead on investing in research that may yield new insights into the brain. He may be one of the first to pour a Silicon Valley fortune into the field, but he suspects others will follow in his quest to transform the brain as a computing platform, even if it takes years of research and billions of dollars of investment.

For Johnson, those stipulations are just part of the deal. Money has always been a means to an end for the 39-year-old entrepreneur. After he sold Braintree to PayPal, Johnson decided that what he did next had to have the maximum positive impact possible. So he began talking with friends, experts, and fellow tech industry contemporaries, trying to discover where and for what his wealth could be best used to explore.

After talking with hundreds of people, Johnson says he decided that neuroscience had the most potential. Intelligence is the most precious and powerful resource for humans, he says. Weve always built these tools, starting with the rock, thermostat, calculator. Now we have AI. Our tools and [digital] intelligence are increasing at great velocity. On the flip side, human intelligence is just about the same as its always been.

Intelligence is the most precious and powerful resource for humans.

So Johnson enlisted the help of some of the best scientists in the field to start looking into neuroprosthetics. These are devices implanted within the skull that mimic, substitute, or assist functions of the brain, ranging from controlling the motor cortex to preventing the onset of seizures. Johnsons idea, at least at first, is to have his team at Kernel explore and better understand core brain functions like information recall, memory, and neuronal communication.

To do this, the company is developing its own hardware and software to try and alleviate the devastating effects of neurological and degenerative diseases like epilepsy, dementia, and Alzheimer's. Its being aided greatly by the research and expertise of Theodore Berger, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California. Back in 2002, Bergers research proved that it was possible to use software and mathematical modeling to replicate the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible for memory and its eventual degradation. Nearly a decade later, Bergers lab at USC used a chip implanted inside the brain of rats to restore lost memory and improve information recall.

Now, Berger splits his time between USC and Kernel as the startups acting chief science officer. Kernel itself, now a little more than 20 employees, operates out of Los Angeles, near Bergers lab where the team can collaborate with the biomedical engineers there and observe the scientists work. Kernel plans to gather data from human trials, with an implantable medical device not unlike the one used in Bergers animal trials back in 2011.

To help Kernel and aid in its longer-term efforts, the company has also scooped up Kendall Research Systems (KRS), a spin-out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that focuses on neural interface devices for use in research and clinical trials. As part of the deal, announced today, Kernel is bringing on KRS founder and CEO Christian Wentz. Johnson has also courted some other big names in the neuroscience field from the MIT community. Ed Boyden, a professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, has signed on as chief scientific advisor. And Adam Marblestone, a neuroscientists who focuses on improving data collection from the brain, is now Kernels chief strategy officer, having worked in the past with Boydens Synthetic Neurobiology Group.

I cant agree more than these things are all possible.

I cant agree more that these things are all possible, says Chad Bouton, a biomedical engineering veteran of the Battelle Institute and now the vice president of advanced engineering and technology at the Feinstein Institute of Medical Research. What I often say is we are trying to figure out how to crack the neural code in the human body. If we can crack the neural code, then we can unlock so many doors.

Bouton says that weve already made substantial progress in figuring out how the motor cortex drives the function of limbs. We can crack the code in the motor area of the brain, he says. But if we could crack the code in the rest of the nervous system, and understand these messages passing back and forth, we would be able to better diagnose and treat diseases.

In the future, however, Johnson has grander ambitions beyond medical treatment. He wants to use these implants and hopefully, one day, make the process of receiving them less invasive to augment human intelligence. He envisions a world where the human brain is made smarter, faster, and more creative. Most importantly, however, Johnson sees a world where humans, and not just machines, improve over time.

Artificial intelligence may soon displace millions of jobs and render obsolete the livelihoods of everyday workers or, in the minds of some more outlandish technologists, induce a doomsday event for the human race. This is another driving force behind the creation of Kernel.

I think if humanity were to identify a singularly thing to work on, the thing that would demand the greatest minds of our generation, its human intelligence, Johnson says, specifically, the ability to co-evolve with artificial intelligence.

It is for this reason that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has begun putting together a team of his own to explore the possibilities of human augmentation, first for medical purposes and inevitably for human enhancement. Last week, Musk dropped hints of his interest in human enhancement by telling a crowd at the World Government Summit in Dubai by saying that we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence. His new venture, however, remains relatively under wraps for now, with a public announcement sometime soon.

Elon Musk is also working on human augmentation

As far as I know, Elon and I are the only two pursuing this from a commercial perspective, Johnson says. Thats fantastic. Im so happy that hes in the game. Johnson notes that the number of calls hes received from interested investors has increased since low-key chatter of Musks plans began circulating in the Bay Area late last year.

Even in the neuroscience community, there is a general consensus that enhancing both AI and human cognition are complementary goals. The current success in AI came out because of their mimicking of the ways the brain operates, says Richards, who himself studied AI before transitioning to neuroscience research. Theres a building cross-talk between AI and neuroscience whereby AI takes inspiration from neuroscience and neuroscience takes inspiration from AI. Slowly but surely were working toward a broad theory of intelligence, both artificial and natural.

Whether Kernel helps the humanity achieve that broad theory and goes even further beyond will largely depend on how it decides to use Johnsons money, and whether the hurdles of scientific progress impede the founders bold vision of the future. Were entertained by Black Mirror, but outside of that, were not discussing [human intelligence] as a populace, Johnson says. Im trying to get the best minds of our generation in government and tech and media to talk about this problem. Brain science is the new rocket science.

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Kernel is trying to hack the human brain but neuroscience has a ... - The Verge

On March 9, the Emmet ONeal Library and UAB will come together to hold their second Neuroscience Caf.

Created by leadership with the Comprehensive Neuroscience Center at UAB, the program features a series of talks organized by Mountain Brook residents Dr. Peter King, professor of neurology at UAB, and Dr. Laura Volpicelli-Daley, assistant professor of neurology at UAB.

The series was designed to inform communities on disease topics, King said, and is held at various local libraries. The upcoming lecture at EOL will cover Substance Abuse and Addiction: From Molecular Mechanisms to Therapeutics, and is led by Dr. Cayce Paddock, director of addiction psychiatry at UAB, and Dr. Jeremy Day, a UAB neuroscientist who is studying the regulation of genes involved in addiction. Other topics in the Mountain Brook series include depression, concussions in football, sleep disorders, autism, Alzheimers disease and Parkinsons disease.

These brain disorders have a high and often devastating impact on patients and their families, King said. UAB has a wealth of expertise in these brain disorders, both at the clinical and research level, and the caf is an opportunity to inform the community about these disorders and the exciting progress that has been made in understanding the causes and advancing new treatments.

The caf features a presentation designed to be understood by anyone with an interest in neuroscience without having a background in it, King said, but suggests people at high school age or older will benefit the most.

The caf starts at 6:30 p.m., and no registration is required. Subsequent Neuroscience Cafs will discuss autism on April 13 and Alzheimers on May 11. For more information, contact the Emmet ONeal Library at 879-0459.

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Neuroscience Caf brings science talks to Emmet O'Neal ... - Village Living

The Ji Lab at Baylor College of Medicine investigates how the neural circuits in the brain encode, consolidate, and retrieve memories using lab rats.

Source: Ji Lab/Baylor College of Medicine

Specific neurons in the hippocampus (called hippocampal place cells) remember when and where your brain experiences a broad range of sensory stimulation and emotions, including fear. Hippocampal place cells also drive subsequent fear-based avoidance behaviors, according to a new rodent study from the Ji Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine.

The February 2017 study, Hippocampal Awake Replay in Fear Memory Retrieval, was published online ahead of print today inNature Neuroscience. This is the first time neuroscientists have identified specific patterns of electrical activity in the hippocampal place cells of lab rats associated with specific memories. In this case, the memory of afearful experience.

Hippocampal place cellsare activated anytime a human or animal moves within and between locations. These place cells keep track of everywhere your body goes and tag each location with a specific neural code that includes sensory perceptions based on stimuli that evokepleasure,pain, reward, etc.

All animals (including humans) seek pleasure and avoid pain. Therefore, it makes sense that when hippocampal place cells tag a specific location as being associated withphysicalor psychologicalpain, parts of the brain becomehardwired to avoid this location. From an evolutionary standpoint, learning to avoid life-threatening environments is key to any species' survival.

At the beginning of this new experiment, the researchers inserted tiny probes to monitor the electrical activity generated by neurons in the hippocampus. Then, they conditioned a fearful memory by exposing lab rats to mild foot shocks in a specific shock zone as the rats explored a troughlike track. Lastly, the researchers observed neural activity in hippocampal place cells as each lab rat was placed back on the track and began to explore.

The researchers found that specific place cells linked to the 'shock zone' were reactivated anytime a rat got close to the place where foot shocks had been administered. The anticipatory thought of getting a shock appeared to triggeravoidance behaviors that caused the rodents to bypass the shock zoneand avoid crossing the fearful path.

According to the abstract of this study, the fear reactivation of place cells occurred in ripple-associated awake replay of the exact location linked to a cell sequence that had been encoded along the path inthe shock zone.

These findingsreveal a specific hippocampal place-cell pattern underlying inhibitory avoidance behavior. Thisstudy also provides strong evidence for the involvement of awake replay in fear memory retrieval.

In recent years, a few different neuroscientific studies have reported that hippocampal place cells play a central role in storing location data and forming episodic memories. However, exactly how 'place cells' retrieve memories associated with a particular placeand subsequently drive avoidance behaviorshas remained a mystery until now.

In a statement, Daoyun Ji, associate professor of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor College of Medicine,described the recent findingsfrom his lab:

"Our laboratory rats cannot tell us what memory they are recalling at any particular time. To overcome that, we designed an experiment that would allow us to know what was going on in the animal's brain right before a certain event.

Interestingly, from the brain activity we can tell that the animal was 'mentally traveling' from its current location to the shock place. These patterns corresponding to the shock place re-emerged right at the moment when a specific memory is remembered.

We are also interested in determining how the spiking patterns of place neurons in the hippocampus can be used by other parts of the brain, such as those involved in making decisions."

This study from Daoyun Ji's Lab breaks new ground by discovering that milliseconds before a lab rat decides to avoid going back to a place where it previously had a fearful experience, the brain is recalling specific memories associated with the exact physical location where the fearful experience occurred.

Like most people, I have an innate fear of rats. Staring at the enlarged image of the rat below evokes a slight fear-based responseand is probably encoding my hippocampal place cells to the place I'm sitting now as I stare at this image while typing this blog post. Your hippocampal place cells are probably being activated, too. If this image makes you uneasy or sticks in your mind, itwill most likely be linked to when and where you are reading this by yourhippocampal place cells.

Source: Ji Lab/Baylor College of Medicine

Zooming in on this potentially menacing image of a rat from Ji'sLab barreling down a track towards the viewer triggers flashbacks in my mind's eye to the torture chamber "Room 101" from George Orwell's1984.

While being brainwashed by the Thought Police inRoom 101, WinstonSmith (the protagonist in1984),must confront his biggest fear: A wire cage that fits snuggly on a person's head with a trap door that houses two very large (and ravenous) rats eager todevour the cage wearer's face.

Hypothetically, if Winston Smith's hippocampal place cells could be measured in Ji's neuroscience laboratory, Room 101would evoke fearful memories and avoidance behaviors much like the lab rats who steered clear of the 'shock zone' in their habitrail.

The next goal of Ji and his colleagues is to investigate whether the hippocampal spiking patterns they identified are absolutely required to guide (or misguide) humanand animal behavior.

The researchersalso plan to explore what role spiking patterns in the hippocampus might play in diseases that involve memory loss, such as Alzheimer's disease. Stay tuned for more cutting-edge research on hippocampal place cells in the months and years ahead.

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The Neuroscience of Fearful Memories and Avoidance Behaviors ... - Psychology Today (blog)

Breaking down what makes top performers so great, and setting up practice and reflection to stimulate certain neural responses, can help you clone your best talent.

February 21, 2017

by William Seidman

The best talent is almost always deeply engaged and incredibly productive. Wouldnt it be great if learning leaders could clone those people? Well, they can.

There are two parts to being able to clone your people: the ability to reverse engineer the top performers to really understand what makes them extraordinary, and the ability to quickly and efficiently develop others to think and act like those top performers.

Self-discovery allows an organization to quickly and effectively reverse engineer top performers. Self-directed learning, based on advances in neuroscience, enables an organization to quickly develop everyone to be like the best.

We began with a question that can be quite difficult to answer: How do top performers actually become top performers? As with trying to reverse engineer top performers, there was neither good information nor robust methodologies on how to develop lesser performers into top performers.

The closest answer is that experts spend 10,000 hours working to become an expert, with no definition of what that work meant. Ten thousand hours of unfocused learning was hardly going to meet our requirements. Fortunately, starting about 2005, the emerging neuroscience of learning suggested a way to solve this problem.

Neuroscience showed the basic building block of all learning is the rewiring of neurons into new patterns. What causes neurons to rewire? The scientific saying is neurons that fire together wire together. Firing together means a sufficient number and depth of meaningful experiences around a defined set of attitudes and behaviors cause the brain to rewire or learn the new patterns. Once rewired, these patterns are the new unconscious competence.

But what experiences cause the brain to rewire and, most critically, how do you get non-top performers to want to become top performers enough to do the practice required to rewire their neurons? Lets answer the second question first. Here again the breakthrough came from neuroscience. The science shows that certain types of images and actions cause neural changes that drive our attitudes and behaviors. When someone feels they are making a contribution to a greater social good for family, teammates, the organization and/or society, their brain releases endorphins and dopamine called a dopamine squirt which make them feel great and more receptive to new ideas.

Similarly, if a person writes down their greater purpose, the act of writing suppresses portions of the brain associated with fear and resistance to change and stimulates portions of the brain associated with a sense of greater control, also making them more open to new ideas. Finally, if all of this is done with others in some sort of social group, other neurochemicals serotonin and oxytocin are released that cause people to want to promote collaboration and group success.

It is possible to create an effective methodology to rapidly develop non-top performers to become top performers. It would need to include:

Most of these ideas should sound familiar from the protocol for reverse engineering top performers. Top performers are driven by a compelling purpose to achieve a greater social good and work hard to achieve mastery by continuously practicing their skills. The key is to present images from the reverse engineering of the top performers to non-top performers in ways that stimulate the desired neural responses.

The process begins with the top performers description of their purpose. By presenting the top performers purpose to groups of non-top performers and asking them to identify, discuss and write ways they too can contribute to the great purpose, all of the above neural changes occur. The non-top performers want to become top performers because they too can be part of a greater purpose and it feels great. Further, because our brains are very efficient at processing images associated with a greater purpose, an initial powerful motivation can be stimulated in a few minutes and firmly entrenched in about an hour.

Moving to the need to practice, by asking the top performers how they learned to become top performers, learning leaders can identify their most valuable learning experiences. By modifying these high yield experiences so non-top performers can try them in their own environment, repeating this practical application multiple times in rapid succession and then sharing the learning with a social group, the time needed to become a top performer can be reduced to 40 hours or less.

These methodologies are so simple, fast and robust they can be provided using a protocol similar to that used for reverse engineering top performance. We call this protocol, neuroscience-based self-directed learning, and its prompts guide a non-top performer to:

As a result, anyone, anytime, residing anywhere in the world can quickly learn to think and act like the top performers. Essentially, you can clone your best people.

William Seidman is the CEO of Cerebyte Inc., a company focused on creating high-performing organizational cultures, and co-author of The Star Factor. Comment below or email editor@CLOmedia.com.

Tags: neuroscience, self-directed learning, top performers

See the original post:
EssayThe Neuroscience of Self-directed Learning - Chief Learning Officer

Publishers own websites couldbe mightier than the almighty news feed when it comes to impact for advertisers, according to newneuroscience research comparing social platforms and premium sites.

Neuro-Insight, a neuro-marketing company, examinedcontent from four major publishersCond Nast, Forbes, Time Inc., and The Atlanticand found that test subjects were 16 percentmore likely to find web postsrelevant or engaging than similar content in social feeds.Tounderstand how readersrelated to different types of content, Neuro-Insight connected 100 people with neuro-mapping technology and showed themvideos inaFacebook newsfeed or a publishers website.

Along with being more personally relevant, publishers websites might be more memorablethey had a 19 percent greater impact on the rational left side of the brain, and an 8 percent greater impact on the emotional right side of the brain, the study found. Memories of video ads were also more detailed on the websites, with 8 in 10performing better than in a social feed.

The results shouldbe welcome news for publishers, which continue to struggleto monetize contenton mobile and social platforms. Some estimates saymajor tech players like Google and Facebook get as much as 85 cents for every new digital dollar spent on advertising.

What weve always understood is that there is strong engagement, said Caryn Klein, Time Inc.s vp of research and insights. But how is that halo to an advertisers message? Thats always been a question. We know there is high engagement, but what were seeing here is that when you go into what the brain is doing, were proving here that there is a lot more resonance of the message from a memory standpoint.

Teads chief marketing officer Rebecca Mahony said the goal was to give publishers a better view of how effective their ads really are.

Time Inc. is increasingly betting on the future of video. The company saw a 150 percent growth in video starts from 2015 to 2016for a total of 4.6 billionaccording to its fourth-quarterearnings.

The study, commissioned by Teads, anonline video advertising firm, featured 15-second ads abouteverythingfrom tech and CPG to fashionand food. Teads chief marketing officer Rebecca Mahony said the goal was to givepublishers a better view of how effective their ads really are. She said in-depth, long-form storiesalso make a reader more invested, which in turn helpsthem recalladsbetter than when theyre passively scrolling.

Certain brands also perform better than others across platforms. For example, health food, coffee and hospitality brands advertising on publishers sites had a big impact onthe detail-oriented left-side of the brain. However, ecommerce and consumer electronics brands resonated withthe right side of the brain. An interesting caveat:hospitality brands and ads for TV programsfaredbest on Facebook.

Advertising can drive a skew, said Matt Engstrom, Teads director of content and insights. It either impacts the detailed left side of the brain more stronglyor the right side of the brain more strongly. And when that sort of imbalance aligns with the reaction of the content on the brain, that makes the advertising more likely to be impactful.

Continued here:
This Neuroscience Study Says Ads Are More Effective on Publishers' Websites Than Social News Feeds - FishbowlDC (blog)

When it comes to music and the human brain, Daniel Levitin's expertise is hard to top. The musician, professor, and neuroscientist quite literally wrote the book on the topic when he penned the 2006 bestseller This is Your Brain On Music. His most recent book The Organized Mind furthers his exploration into our brains with a focus on how information overload is affecting cognition and what we can do it about it.

Over the last two years, he's been working with smart speaker maker Sonos on new research into how music affects people's minds and behavior at home. As part of its new marketing campaign centered around what the company regrettably diagnoses as "the silent home"the relative dearth of music being played out loud as families stare into their phones or tune into NetflixSonos enlisted Levitin to help design a new survey of people's listening habits at home. We sat down with Levitin at Sonos's Boston offices last week for a conversation about science, music, the brain, and how to stay sane in the age of Trump and Twitter.

Youve been working on some new research into music and people's lives at home. What are some of the most interesting or unexpected things you've learned about how musicor the lack thereof that affects our lives at home?

Levitin: I think one of the most interesting things is the number of people who really don't have music playing in their homes. Its quite striking across the nine countries we surveyed. Something as simple as entertaining friends and family: 84% of people in Sweden, 83% of people in the U.K., 79% of people in the U.S. don't play music when they have friends over. That just seemed surprising and weird to me. I'm of the Boomer generation, so music was just something that you did and it's the way that you related to other people, and even the generation behind me. These are people from all age brackets. It's not just the digital natives who aren't playing music. Nobody is.

Other activities like cooking dinner, doing the dishes, relaxing in the evening and weekend. In Denmark, 69% of people and in France 82% of people did not listen to music to relax for the evening or the weekend. That was one thing that was surprising. The other is the yearning that people have for more contact, juxtaposed with the amount of time they spend in their own isolated, digital words. 86% want to spend more time doing activities in person with others. It's as though two wheels are in a rut and they can't figure out how to get back on the road that they used to be on. We've got to encourage people to take screen-time breaks and to establish shared spaces in the home where they can enjoy communal activities.

These days, its pretty common to go out to a restaurant and see an entire family staring into their phones. What are some of the effects of this isolation and, based on the research you've done and seen, what might the impact be of changing these habits?

Levitin: The research on this is still in its infancy, of course. It's a somewhat new phenomenon, and so any data that we can get is helpful. I think that related to this, we've learned recently that kids who don't interact regularly with their parents but are instead put in front of educational or instructional television don't learn language properly. Language learning has to be interactive. It can't be just passive, receptive. I think we're also seeing that increasingly digital natives are reporting that they've got shorter attention spans than non-digital natives. Colleagues of mine at other universities who teach these large classes or even seminars say that in the last few years, a whole new breed of students come up to them during their office hours in the first week of class, say, "Professor, I have to read 20 pages tonight? I don't know how I'm going to do that. That's too much." They are accustomed to being constantly distracted and we know from neurochemical studies, people get addicted to that distraction.

Your book, The Organized Mind, deals with this quite a bit: the information overload and how our digital lives might be affecting our brains. What is your advice for people in the workplace? How do you deal with this deluge of information when youre trying to be productive?

Levitin: One piece of advice I have is based on our modern understanding of the different attentional modes of the brain. There's the mind wandering mode, the idea that the brain has this whole separate mode of existing where you're not in control of your thoughts and they're loosely connected from one to the next. Often, I think that when we're at our desks at work or if we're out in the field doing work, after a certain amount of time, we feel our attention flagging. The modern reaction when that happens is to double down. Maybe have another cup of coffee and keep pushing through.

In reality, your brain is telling you that it needs a break. Taking a break and getting yourself into this mind wandering mode by giving into it for 15 minutes at a time every couple of hours or so, you effectively hit the reset button in the brain, restoring some neurochemicals that had been depleted through focused activity. There are a lot of different ways to get into this mind wandering mode. One of them is listening to music. Another is going for a walk in nature. Listening to nature sounds. Looking at art, reading literature. Not reading Facebook posts. Literature has this special quality that it invites you to let your mind wander. I think that's part of the answer. Going off and searching the Web for your 15-minute break is not a break.

Weve grappled with information overload for years now, but in our new political climate, there's a certain intensity and anxiety thats now tied to a lot of the stuff that people are seeing online everyday. How do you think this might be affecting people's mental health? And what should we do about it?

Levitin: My reading of the research is that we really are, as a society working harder than before, but we're not working as efficiently. We feel overloaded by the onslaught of information, and so I think that creates the conditions in which things like fake news and alternative truth can exist because we just throw up our hands and say, "I can't deal. It's somebody else's job to deal with this, not mine." I don't mean to get on a soapbox, but I think that's when we begin to see democracy falter, when people don't want to get involved.

I think that we need to recover some sense of community and engagement with one another and with our towns and our neighbors that only comes from face-to-face interaction, not from retreating into our own digital devices. As President Obama said in his exit speech, democracy is not easy and is not free. You have to work for it. I think that work is putting our minds in a state where we can evaluate claims and information and stories as they come by. Evaluate them for ourselves or in discussion with other people. Start talking to people who disagree with us, which has become unfashionable. I don't mean yelling at people who disagree with you. Just talking.

I've had a couple of interesting conversations just in the last few months with people who I disagreed with strongly about a number of political issues, and the conversations were productive because we saw from each other's point of view how we came to hold those beliefs and discovered that we had really a lot more in common than we had differences. We were able to agree on the facts. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously quipped, you're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts. We agreed on the facts, but our opinions about how to address the problems, we had different views about what would be effective, but we wanted to end up in the same place where people were happy and prosperous and safe. I think that creating shared spaces in the home and shared moments in the home, if music can be part of that or talk radio or just art, some kind of discussion, I think that that's the antidote to all of this.

It seems like its partially a matter of people reconfiguring that balance between their digital lives and the time they're actually spending face to face. I assume those conversations you refer to werent on Twitter or Facebook.

Levitin: One of them was in person. One of them was on the phone. It was 45 minutes long and we talked about a lot of things. This is somebody who is polar opposite of me politically and is quite in the public eye and his opinions are very well known, but I was astonished that we agreed on far more than we disagreed on. I ended up admiring him for his stance for coming to the conclusions he came to, even though I still don't agree, but I can see how he got there.

This is the conversation that Republicans and Democrats aren't having anymore. I never thought I'd look back nostalgically at the Johnson presidency, but in the Johnson days, the two parties worked things out. They did that pretty much through more or less through the next couple of administrations. The polarization is a problem, and I think that the digital age has only put a hyper focus on polarization because of the echo chamber that you've covered already in your magazine.

You wrote This Is Your Brain On Music in 2006, so it was pre-iPhone, pre-Spotify. It seems like music is more pervasive in peoples lives than ever. How has musicboth as an industry and in terms of our relationship with itchanged in the last decade or so?

Levitin: I think we're living in a golden age of music, as we're living in a golden age of TV. There's a lot of creative people engaged in it. The barriers to entry are much lower than they used to be. Anybody with a laptop and a $200 mic can make something that sounds as good as most of the Rolling Stones records that were made in professional studios. That's great. The problem, of course, is that we haven't figured out how to monetize it. As Keith Richards said, for a period of time you could make recordings for a living and you could make a good living at it, but those days are gone until we figure something out. We're living in a world now where a lot of artists have to have day jobs. I would like to live in a world where "artist" is a job and a person can earn a living doing that. I don't want Bono to be writing songs in his spare time after a day of heavy labor making sandwiches. I want him to be able to devote himself to it.

I would say there's been a Balkanization of music sources in the way there's been a Balkanization of the media. When I was a kid, and maybe when you were a kid, you ran into the proverbial man in the street, woman, somebody you didn't know at a bus stop and you started talking about the news, you probably got your news from one of the same small handful of sources. You agreed what the news was, and you probably listened to music on one of the same two or three radio stations. Now there are thousands of places to get your news, thousands of places to get music, and so the common ground that we share is much less. Sure, there's still hit songs, but it's different. I see that changing. There's good and there's bad in that. The so-called long tail means that people can really fine tune their musical taste or their taste in books and independent films, find exactly what they love, but at the expense of the shared experience.

I don't think that there's any evidence that music is more pervasive. In fact, we found that 60% of people we surveyed said they listen to less music now than when they were younger. I don't know why that is, because there's more music available and it's free, but people don't make the time for it. It's not a priority the way it once was. I think that's a shame. I'm not thinking people should do nothing but listen to music, but as part of a balanced life that involves exercise and a good diet and nature and movies and ballet and literature and all the finer things.

Tell us a little bit about your own music consumption and how its evolved. How do you listen music now?

Levitin: I always fantasized in my twenties about buying a physical jukebox from a bar and restoring it. I had a nice collection of 45s. Now I have something even better: I have 20,000 songs on my hard disk and I just stick it in random. I got them in my car now and I have them in my backpack and I have them on my computer and at home, and that's most of my listening. I have 20,000 of my favorite songs. It's my own radio station. Anything that comes up, I'm going to like. I may not like it at that particular moment, depending on what I'm doing.

The second source is that friends who are making music send me advances of their stuff. Rodney Crowell, Paul Simon, people that I know who are actively working as songwriters and musicians will send me stuff. A friend of mine who manages Bob Dylan is just sending me the 36 CD boxset. It's supposed to be there when I get home tonight. I burn the CDs to my hard disk and then put them in the mix.

Then the third source is I stream. Once I got Sonos in the home, I found it easier to deal with things like Spotify and streaming radio and Apple Music. For one thing, they weren't playing out of these crappy little speakers in the computer. Typically, my wife and I will put one of the jazz stations when we're in the kitchen cooking and washing dishes and while we're eating. We hear a lot of good music that way.

How do you find the mental space to focus and be productive?

Levitin: I get more work done on airplanes than anywhere else. I wrote my last two books primarily on airplanes touring for the previous book. You've got the white noise of the engine. Somebody bringing you food.

Yeah, it's great. When I really need to focus, I tend to need to get away from the internet too. I turn off Wi-Fi. Sometimes I leave my phone at home to avoid the distractions.

Levitin: I do that once in a while and it's very refreshing. My wife and I hike a lot, because we're in California. So we'll go and we just won't bring the phones. We'll bring them in the car in case we have a breakdown or something, but when we're hiking, no phone and it's lovely.

Speaking of California, I just called an Uber because I have to get myself to the airport.

Read more:
The Neuroscience Of Music, Behavior, And Staying Sane In The Age ... - Fast Company

Shire missed in two key areas, but overall Q4 results and guidance met or beat views. (Kris Tripplaar/Sipa USA/Newscom)

Despite drugmaker Shire's (SHPG) lagging sales in oncology and neuroscience, the company topped Wall Street's Q4 views and delivered in-line 2017 guidance prompting the stock to pop early Thursday to a six-week high.

In the stock market today, though, Shire stock rose 2.6% to 178.70, after earlier rising as much as 4.8% to touch a high achieved Jan. 5. Shares got support this week at their 50-day moving average but remain below their 200-day average.

For Q4, Shire reported $3.8 billion in sales, up 124% and topping the consensus for $3.7 billion. The company also posted $3.37 in earnings pershare minus items, beating analysts' model for $3.27, RBC analyst Douglas Miehm wrote in a research report.

But neuroscience sales of $589 million missed views for $641 million, and $55 million in oncology sales lagged by $8 million, Miehm said. He has an outperform rating on Shire stock.

Shire guided to $14.5 billion to $14.8 billion in total 2017 product sales and $600 million to $700 million in royalties and other revenues. That indicates $15.25 billion in total 2017 revenue, which would be in line with broader views for $15.24 billion.

For 2017, the company also sees $14.60-$15.20EPS minus items. Analysts had seen $15-$15.40, Miehm wrote.

IBD'S TAKE: Fourth-quarter earnings season is rapidly coming to an end. Head to IBD's Biotech & Pharma Stock News page for a rundown of winning and losing stocks this quarter.

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Shire and Allergan continue to battle for market share with their treatments for dry eye. (Kris Tripplaar/Sipa USA/Newscom)

12/02/2016 Thanksgiving week saw Shire's Xiidra lose some ground to rival Allergan in the dry-eye market, RBC says.

12/02/2016 Thanksgiving week saw Shire's Xiidra lose some ground to rival...

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