CES, the largest tech event of the year, is no stranger to the extremely cool, strange, repetitive or revolutionary when it comes to technology. Although the show boasts thousands of different types of technologies and products, certain themes and trends are pervasive throughout the week.

After putting in about 18.5 miles in less than 3 days, I reflected on the few days of sensory overload and everything I had experienced. Many of the conversations I had during the conference revolved around personalized health, connected vehicle ecosystems, smart cities and artificial intelligence (AI). While there were more than a few companies exhibiting at the show attempting to be the next Peloton or claiming their ear pods rival Apples Air Pods, I was grateful to not have to endure too many of those conversations.

With 5G rolling out and the IoT industry maturing, smart cities are the inevitable next move to take advantage of all IoT has to offer. At CES, there was no shortage of smart city concepts to experience. From miniature models that included autonomous cars and helicopters to vehicles that deliver groceries, companies have invested a lot of time and money into building the next generation of automation for our every day lives. The one concept that CES really drove home was that the future of tech is all connected. Smart cities dont exist without AI or without connected things and autonomous vehicles.

As our infrastructure ages, it becomes all too important for tech companies and their partners to understand how to build, secure and launch a connected future. Smart cities will rely on IoT sensors to understand water and energy consumption, traffic patterns and more. How we understand, control and initiate change based on the data collected in these smart cities will have a direct reflection on whether or not smart cities can be both a sustainable and practical way of life.

Toyota brought to life their proposed prototype Woven City at the conference this year. The concept Toyota used for their booth was inspiring. With a circular fabric set up to display live-action examples of how the city of the future will work, Toyota immersed visitors in their Woven City through sound, video and a 360-degree experience.

The city will be built as a fully connected ecosystem powered by hydrogen fuel cells at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan by 2021. This smart city is being hailed as a living laboratory where residents and researchers will utilize the from-scratch infrastructure to test and develop numerous technologies including robotics, smart homes and autonomy. Toyota is only one of several companies taking a techno-utopian approach to their plans for the city of the future.

According to the Danish architect behind the city, Bjarke Ingels, connected, autonomous, emission-free and shared mobility solutions are bound to unleash a world of opportunities for new forms of urban life. With the breadth of technologies and industries that we have been able to access and collaborate with from the Toyota ecosystem of companies, we believe we have a unique opportunity to explore new forms of urbanity with the Woven City that could pave new paths for other cities to explore.

As Toyota takes a step into the future, so too do other tech companies. Sprint, for example, will be utilizing their True Mobile 5G and Curiosity IoT in areas across the United States, including Greeneville, SC and Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ.

The combination of Sprint Curiosity IoT with advanced network deployment has set the stage for building a truly smart city. Sprint and their partners are developing and deploying connected vehicles, autonomous services/machines and other smart technologies in conditions that reflect what future smart cities will look like. This allows researchers and developers to operate, navigate and react in real-time with real-world scenarios preparing us for the city of the future.

One of, if not the biggest, draw of CES is the automotive section. Everything from flying taxis to augmented reality cars and the latest models are on display at the event. I had the great pleasure of speaking with several experts in the autonomous industry including Blackberry and RTI.

During CES, Blackberry announced two partnerships including the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and an autonomous vehicle platform that will integrate BlackBerry QNXs real-time operating system with Renovos intelligent automotive data platform. Renovo and QNX are jointly developing safety-critical data management tools for connected and autonomous vehicles with the plan to scale safety systems in new cars. Currently, Blackberrys QNX is already in 150 million cars on the road today.

I spoke with Kaivan Karimi, Senior Vice President and Co-Head of BlackBerry Technology Solutions about the importance of native and secure technology and data collection in our connected and autonomous vehicles. With technology now embedded in cars before they hit the lots, Karimi expressed how vehicles are becoming a vital component of the infrastructure of smart cities.

As we put the groundwork in now for how cities will look in the future, he also noted the importance of building infrastructure based on the data that these vehicles are collecting from Renovos data management system and AI pipeline. Blackberrys focus on safe and secure technology combined with Renovos data capabilities is only one example of how partnerships between private companies, the government, public entities and citizens of the world are necessary for being able to manage connected car data in a safe, secure and private way.

In addition to Blackberry, Real-Time Innovations (RTI), an IIoT connectivity company, is working on the future of autonomous driving.

Bob Leigh, Senior Market Development Director, Autonomous Systems at RTI shared with me that RTI believes that the advancement of autonomous driving will be transformative to industry and society. Right now, automotive and tech companies are grappling with the complexity of the new technology, how to bring it to market, and what business models will ultimately be successful. At CES this year, we saw [that the industry] is much more specific in how they are tackling the challenge; differentiating their technology between advanced ADAS, Level 2+ and Level 4 Autonomy levels. We think this is a sign of the maturing market and the industry as a whole becoming more confident in how they will deliver their first commercial products. At CES 2020 it was clear the exact future of autonomous cars may still be unclear, but there was much more confidence in the path to making this technology real.

Human behavior is a peculiar thing. Whether its a daily skincare routine, morning yoga or meditation, we are creatures of habit. Technology is advancing the way we personalize our health in those habits. Any marketer will tell you that human connection is the number one way to convince users to buy. If you can find a way to meet consumers where they are and solve their pain points, buyers will be more likely to choose your product. A companys ethos as well as how it approaches customer satisfaction is of utmost importance as we saturate the market with new solutions, cool tech and products.

Neutrogena relaunched its NEUTROGENA Skin360 app this year to democratize skin health information. I spoke with the team, including Global Communications Lead of Beauty and Baby at Johnson & Johnson, Michelle Dionne, who explained and walked me through the app. Skin360 utilizes advanced skin imaging, behavior coaching and artificial intelligence to empower consumers with actionable, personalized steps to help achieve their skin health goals.

The original app that launched in 2018 required a skin scanning tool. So why did they relaunch in 2019? The team at Neutrogena put their customers first. They took into consideration valuable insight from consumers who sought personalized recommendations, science-backed information, expert opinions, skincare product tracking and how routine care affects our facial skin health over time.

The team also added the Neutrogena AI Assistant (NAIA). NAIA is a personal skincare coach that builds a relationship with each user through in-app and text messaging. NAIA uses AI and behavior change techniques to determine each individuals skincare personality, what their current approach to care is and their current routine. Once youve added your information to the app and complete a 180-degree selfie analysis, the app will give you a score for wrinkles, fine lines, dark under-eye circles, dark spots and smoothness.

NAIA then helps users identify and build a personal 8-week skincare goal and routine based on the skin scores and a self-assessment of sleep, exercise, stress levels, external factors, etc. that is monitored and supported through coaching. This allows users to personalize their routine and place importance on various skin attributes such as moisture and tone.

In addition to continuing to accept user feedback and iterate on their app and AI technology,Neutrogena is combining their 360 app with MaskiD, a micro 3D printed facemask that is custom to face shape and structure, formulated with concern-specific ingredients on different areas of your face. Although they wont be available until later this year, be on the lookout for these masks as they will be both personalized and affordable. Side note: Ive used the app several times already since being introduced to it last week.

This year at CES, Panasonic also took into consideration how consumers are placing increased attention on their physical and mental health states with the launch of their Human Insight Technology.

With Panasonics human insight technology, users are provided with data to make recommendations to improve an individuals experience in the home.

Human insight technology uses non-invasive sensors and imaging to capture and interpret data based on human habits and behaviors. Panasonic demonstrated this technology through an interactive yoga studio. Through analysis of physical stress data, Pansonic was able to design products and environments optimized for typical human movements and physiology. At CES, participants can see human insight technology in action through an interactive yoga studio using the Yoga Synchro Visualizer.

Your face and body are scanned, and the technology prompts you to follow commands. The cameras and sensors recognize human motion and provide users with multiple scores including a pose, fatigue, stability, flow and stress. The best part? Youre able to see the physical representation of the changes taking place in your body while performing your yoga routine.

Among the flooded convention center floors and wave of beautiful displays, youre more likely than not to have run into companies that are incorporating AI assistants and technology into their products in some way. The smart home industry, in particular, is embedding AI into their ecosystems.

For example, Sharp has a vision of People-Oriented IoT according to Executive Vice President and Head of AIoT Business Strategy Office, Bob Ishida. With over 150 products in 10 categories, Sharp is rolling out products that meet lifestyle and culture needs. Sharp is only one of many companies that showcased AIoT and 8K solutions that will explore new possibilities for computers to offer innovative experiences to both business users and individual consumers around the world.

LG is another example of a company using AI to improve the home ecosystem. Revealed in 2019, LGThinQ artificial intelligence was on full display. LGs slogan for AI: anywhere is home. From kitchen appliances to washing machines and personal wardrobes, all of LGs appliances are using AI as a consumer experience. Washers are learning how users like certain types of clothing washed and air conditioners are adjusting automatically to your comfortability settings.

As I walked the convention floor with little spare time, I was curious about the prevalence of IoT at CES. Although I had to explain more than a handful of times what IoT is and how it works (simple explanation of IoT), even those that didnt know it by name were utilizing some element or elements tied deeply to the IoT industry.

From sensors to AI, 5G and the future of mobility, CES 2020 made a few things clear: partnerships are necessary for how we will build a connected future; personalized wellness is becoming a need to have instead of a nice to have and AI is becoming less of a buzzword and more of an actuality.

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CES2020: The Rise of AI and Personalized Wellness - IoT For All

Human Behavior

First was the genome. Now, its time for the screenome – ZME Science

January 17, 2020 medical

All of us have a human genome, which is basically a composite of our genes. But we also have a screenome, a composite of our digital lives, according to a group of researchers from the United States. Their goal is to make sense of how the screens in our lives are affecting us.

A decade ago, the Human Genome Project worked to identify and map all of the genes of the human genome. In a nod to their research, academics Byron Reeves, Thomas Robinson and Nilam Ram created the concept of the screenome to describe the entity formed by all the digital activity individuals subject themselves to.

The three argued that everything we know about the effects of media use on individuals and societies could be incomplete, irrelevant or wrong. We are all doing more online and as this expanding form of behavior is digitalized, it is open to all forms of manipulation, they said.

In a comment article in the latest edition of the journal Nature, the authors argued that a large-scale analysis of detailed recordings of digital life could provide far greater insights than simply measuring screen time. Americans now spend over half of their day interacting with digital media.

The academics said most of the thousands of studies investigating the effects of media over the past decade used peoples estimates of the amount of time they spend engaging with technologies or broadly categorized platforms such as smartphone, social media or entertainment media.

Nevertheless, the range of content has become too broad, patterns of consumption too fragmented, information diets too idiosyncratic, experiences too interactive, and devices too mobile, for such simplistic characterization. Technologies now available can allow researchers to record digital life in exquisite detail, they said.

Digital life is life these days. As we spend more of our life on our devices, so more of our life is expressed through these screens. This gives us a tremendous opportunity to learn about all aspects of human behaviour, said Robinson to the Australian Financial Review.

Tracking our digital life has become much easier. Instead of using a range of devices for different things, applications have been consolidated into smartphones and other mobile devices. At the same time, there are now tools available to see what people are doing on their screens.

The researchers are using so-called screenomics technologies to observe and understand our digital lives, minute by minute. The result of their initial work is a call for the Human Screenome Project, a collection of large-scale data that will inform knowledge of and solutions to a wide variety of social issues.

Screenomics emerges from the development of systems for capturing and recording the details of individuals digital experiences, said Ram to Penn News. The system includes software that collects screenshots every five seconds on smartphones and laptop computers, extracts text and images, and allows analysis of the timing, content, function and context of digital life.

In their article in Nature, the researchers outlined the possibilities of the technology. Over 600 participants have so far consented to use screenomics software on laptops and Android smartphones that were linked to the researchers secure computational infrastructure.

Participants then went about their daily lives while the system unobtrusively recorded their device use. In their initial analyses of these data, the researchers found that participants quickly changed tasks, approximately every 19 seconds on a laptop, and every 10 seconds on a smartphone.

All the information collected includes indicators of health and well-being and can be shared with larger interdisciplinary projects. Reeves, Robinson and Ram suggested that researchers wishing to study digital life could even create a repository that everyone can contribute to and use.

That type of large interdisciplinary project they call for would have far-reaching benefits for all areas of life touched by digital technology. In the future, it might be possible for various apps to interact with an individuals screenome and to deliver interventions that alter how people think, learn, feel and behave, said Ram.

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First was the genome. Now, its time for the screenome - ZME Science

Human Behavior

Study Reveals Mens Favorite Size And Shape Of Womens Breast – BroBible

January 17, 2020 medical

Womens breasts are kind of like pizza, even when its bad, its still great. But is there one type of female breast that is more appealing to men everywhere? According to a scientific study, men have a favorite size and shape of boobs.

A team of European researchers embarked on the scientific voyage to find out what kinds of boobies men lust after the most. Not all heroes wear capes. Scientists from Pragues Charles University released a scientific study titled Mens preferences for womens breast size and shape in four cultures that was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

The study involved 267 men from four different countries: Brazil, Cameroon, the Czech Republic, and Namibia. The men were asked about their preferences in womens breasts with photos of different funbags. Do you ever get asked about your boob preferences? No. You get calls asking you if you want an extended warranty on your air fryer.

There are beautiful breasts of all different sizes and shapes, from saggy to perky to tiny ta-tas to plump jugs. According to the results from the story, bigger is not always better, and the reason is because of our biological intuition to find the best partner to reproduce with.

A 2004 study found that men found women with large breasts and narrow waists the most attractive because those characteristics indicate high reproductive potential in women. Males supposedly pay attention to these features because they serve as cues to fecundity and health, according to the study.

According to the researchers, males are hypothesized to prefer breast morphology that indicates both high potential and residual fertility. Scientists cited studies that women with larger breasts tend to have higher estrogen levels.

In contrast, we found systematic directional preferences for firm breasts across all four samples. Scientists hypothesized that firmness of perky breasts could also indicate fertility as breasts become saggier with age when women also become less fertile.

Individual preferences for breast size were variable, but the majority of raters preferred medium-sized, followed by large-sized breasts, the study stated. In contrast, we found systematic directional preferences for firm breasts across all four samples.

Of the men who were surveyed, they preferred medium-sized breasts that were perkier. Larger breasts were the second-favorite breasticles, and smaller breasts were the least desired.

So there you have it, having a huge rack like Salma Hayek or Katy Perry, isnt the favorite breast type of men (According to the study).

[TheSun]

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Study Reveals Mens Favorite Size And Shape Of Womens Breast - BroBible

Human Behavior

App uses voice-based AI to track wellbeing of mental health patients – E&T Magazine

January 17, 2020 medical

Researchers in the US have found that an interactive voice application, which uses artificial intelligence, is an effective way to monitor the wellbeing of patients being treated for serious mental illness.

A University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) study followed 47 patients for up to 14 months using an application called MyCoachConnect. All of the patients taking part in the study were being treated by physicians for some serious mental health illnesses, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depressive disorder.

For the study, participants called a toll-free number one or two times a week and answered three open-ended questions when prompted by a computer-generated voice. These included: "How have you been over the past few days?", "Whats been troubling or challenging you over the past few days?", and "Whats been particularly good or positive?".

The MyCoachConnect app was designed to collect personalised patient responses, explained Dr Armen Arevian, director of the Innovation Lab at UCLA's Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. More specifically, the AI was trained to use an individuals own words to provide them with a personalised analysis.

The application focused primarily on the choice of words the patients used in their responses and how their responses change over time, with less emphasis placed on audible factors such as tone of voice.

The analysis of the data, conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Signal Analysis & Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL) at the University of Southern California (USC), found that the applications analysis was as accurate at monitoring patients mental states as their treating physicians.

The way people answer questions and the way they change their answers over time is unique to each patient, Arevian said. We were looking at a person as a person and not as a diagnosis.

For the study, the patients made calls from a mobile phone, landline, or payphone and were asked to speak for two to three minutes for each question.

Technology doesnt have to be complicated, Arevian added. In this study, patients didnt need a smartphone or even a phone at all. It could be simple and low tech on the patient end and high tech on the backend.

The team hope that AI that can analyse data collected from apps such as MyCoachConnect will enable more proactive and personalised care. For example, the app may help improve treatment by intervening early when someone is experiencing more symptoms.

Artificial intelligence allowed us to illuminate the various clinically meaningful dimensions of language use and vocal patterns of the patients over time and personalised at each individual level, said Dr Shri Narayanan, the director of SAIL at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

Arevian added that some of the participants interviewed after the study ended, and said they found the system easy and enjoyable to use.

They said speaking to a computer-generated voice allowed them to speak more freely, he said. It also helped them feel less lonely because they knew that someone would be listening to it, and to them, that meant that someone cared.

MyCoachConnect was developed and hosted on the Chorus platform, which was developed by Arevian at UCLA and allows people to visually create mobile and other computer applications without computer programming in as little as a few minutes.

Last November, a team of US researchers suggested that machine learning systems could assist doctors in monitoring the mental health of patients through speech-based tests.

Also, back in July 2019, computer scientists at the University of Alberta developed AI algorithms that can detect and identify depression through vocal cues.

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App uses voice-based AI to track wellbeing of mental health patients - E&T Magazine

Human Behavior

Eight Management Ideas to Embrace in the 2020s – MIT Sloan

January 17, 2020 medical

Our experts reveal where leaders should focus their efforts in 2020 and beyond.

At the beginning of a new year (and a new decade), its natural to wonder whats ahead. As technology and society continue to rapidly transform, it can also be overwhelming for managers and organizations to think about what to tackle next.

With that in mind, we turned to recent authors at MIT Sloan Management Review and asked them: As we enter the 2020s, what is one critical area where leaders and organizations should focus their efforts? The research and diverse expertise of our surveyed experts provides useful insights into the specific skills, investments, and processes that will help companies compete, thrive, and provide value for stakeholders in the years to come.

Create more agile cultures that enable speed, efficiency, and high employee engagement in work. This will require very different conceptions of culture away from broad characterizations to recognizing that culture is experienced locally in networks, is variable throughout organizations in ways that can be both positive and negative, and is not effectively shaped by traditional top-down communication or cascading change processes today.

We are finding in my consortium that far more effective approaches to cultural change can be enacted through networks by targeting different kinds of opinion leaders, cocreating desired future states, and more active targeting of points where misalignment in values or priorities exists.

Rob Cross, coauthor of A Noble Purpose Alone Wont Transform Your Company

The issue that will dominate the 2020s is climate change. All leaders will need to develop strategies for aggressively managing their carbon footprints; working with their value chains to slash energy, emissions, and waste; supporting pro-climate policies at global, state, and local levels; and communicating their progress and approach to employees, customers, investors, and many more. Well need innovation across many sectors to shift our economy to clean technologies quickly.

Andrew Winston, MIT SMR columnist and author of Should Businesses Stop Flying to Fight Climate Change?

By ignoring our feelings at work, we overlook important data and risk preventable mistakes. We send emails that cause unnecessary anxiety, we fail to make work meaningful, and we are more likely to burn out.

Embracing emotions at work means learning how to give more useful, less hurtful feedback (make it specific and actionable), help remote workers feel a sense of belonging (set up virtual social time), and better communicate important decisions (explain your reasoning and host a Q&A).

And for those skeptical about the ROI on doing all this? At Humu, a company that uses behavioral science to make work better (where I lead content), we find that employees who are nudged on themes related to meaning, trust, and empowerment become much happier and almost 10% more productive. Its time we learn how to bring emotion into the workplace without letting it run wild.

Liz Fosslien, coauthor of How to Create Belonging for Remote Workers

Managers at all levels need to have a good understanding of how AI will augment and enhance the work they are doing. AI has the potential to make virtually all jobs more efficient and more satisfying by automating tedious tasks, processing large amounts of data, predicting human behavior, and producing work that a human can review and approve. Once managers understand this potential, they can encourage their team members to experiment with new ways of doing things.

For example, today in customer service you will see human agents handling complex conversations with consumers while AI assists them seamlessly in the background. Over time, the AI becomes smarter and suggests responses to customers questions. Agents train the AI, and AI-powered bots support agents by automating tedious tasks. This improves agent productivity and satisfaction while dramatically improving the customer experience.

P.V. Kannan, coauthor of The Future of Customer Service Is AI-Human Collaboration

The single most important thing leaders and organizations must do going forward is investing to make their customers more valuable. If you take customer lifetime seriously, the strategic challenge isnt how best or how frequently to shear the sheep; its how we invest in our customers and clients so that they become measurably more valuable in their own eyes and ours.

Michael Schrage, author of Dont Let Metrics Critics Undermine Your Business

In the U.S., our understanding of demographic differences especially as they relate to race and gender has become at once more salient and difficult to talk about. People generally approach discussions of such differences with caution at best, brazen ignorance at worst, but most often, silence. This tactic in 2020, however, will likely prove unsuitable due to the changing nature of our workplaces.

To move past our collective notion that race and gender are third-rail topics that should be sidestepped or avoided, a new approach is needed. This approach should be centered on acknowledging differences and notably, acknowledging that each of us has more to learn about what specific differences mean across our work contexts, life roles, and social structures.

One place to start is the new terminology developed to reflect the reality many live. Consider, for instance, they as a singular pronoun, or the term cisgender, and the distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity. A second place is to explore your and others experiences of marginalization, harassment, and privilege. By adopting a learning approach to understanding individual and group differences, each of us can gain valuable insight into myriad, distinct facets of social life.

Morela Hernandez, MIT SMR columnist and coauthor of How Algorithms Can Diversify the Startup Pool

In todays fast-paced, technology-facilitated world with increasing emphasis on AI, its important to prevent a potential slide toward the devaluation of the human interface. This is a pitfall that might be particularly relevant for businesses that integrate advanced technologies with enthusiasm at the expense of investment in the human capital but recent research suggests they do so at their peril.

Business leaders who invest in their employees while keeping pace with technological adoption will see their businesses thrive. Activities and tasks performed by employees continue to evolve toward higher value added and skill levels. In a technology-driven world, human capital will become more rather than less critical in driving superior business performance.

Sharmila C. Chatterjee, coauthor of How AI Is Helping Companies Break Silos

A recent MIT SMR-BCG survey of thousands of companies globally shows that AI investments and applications are now widespread, but only 30% currently generate value. To succeed, leaders will need to focus on the larger strategic goal of building algorithmically powered organizations that can compete on the rate of learning in a rapidly shifting business environment.

In order to achieve these goals, companies will need to reconceive as synergistic combinations of algorithms and people and effectively partition tasks between those where humans, machines, or combinations of the two are the most advantageous. They also need to take measures to create rapid, autonomous learning loops for technology-driven tasks and think critically about algorithmic governance and ethics to ensure both effectiveness and social acceptability. The companies that win the 2020s will be hybrid extended learning organizations (HELOs), and 2020 will be the year where pioneers begin to establish the blueprint for these in earnest.

Martin Reeves, coauthor of Fighting the Gravity of Average Performance

Ally MacDonald (@allymacdonald) is senior associate editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

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Eight Management Ideas to Embrace in the 2020s - MIT Sloan

Human Behavior

Joe Budden Defends Kevin Hart Cheating Comments Against ‘The Real’ – The Source

January 17, 2020 medical

A lot of conversation has been surrounding Kevin Harts Netflix documentary, Dont F This Up, since its release on December 26th. The docu-series gives fans a closer look at what happened during the comedians cheating scandal and the controversy surrounding his choice to not host the Oscars.

Recently, the ladies of The Real sat down to talk about comments made by Joe Budden after sharing that he understands the choices of Kevin Hart behind the cheating scandal. On an episode of The Joe Budden Podcast, Joe says, Sometimes your not home but 10 seconds in the day, for however many days, and I as a man can understand how that can be difficult. Whelp, that wasnt a good enough reason for the ladies of The Real because they wasted no time in sharing their opinions on the Pump It Up rappers thoughts.

I think its hysterical, just the part of him saying You know how hard he works? Does the working affect his integrity, his moral standing, his moral compass? I dont think it does, says a laughing Adrienne Bailon-Houghton after being asked how she felt about Buddens comments regarding the situation.

In the latest episode of The Joe Budden Podcast, Joe responds to the comments that the ladies made on the show and chose to clarify his words by saying The art of understanding is not the same as condoning or agreeing, Joe began. I get that some people in the world dont know what words mean. But by the context of the English language, we dont need a big debate about this. Understanding something is not co-signing it, condoning something, or agreeing with something. Thats not something Joe made up.

To end his comments on the matter, Joe concludes, So no, it is not okay to cheat. It is not okay for Kevin Hart to cheat. Ladies ofThe Real, that was never said here, and I hate when were just presented a certain way when were in this new age of just clip floatin so we only go by the clip. I said a whole lot more than what was displayed here. We do not condone cheating, however, Im not part of the society that is looking to kill actually understanding human behavior and psychology.

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Joe Budden Defends Kevin Hart Cheating Comments Against 'The Real' - The Source

Neuroscience

The Neuroscience of Behavior: Five Famous Cases – Psychology Today

January 17, 2020 medical

Considering everything, it seems we are dealing here with a special illness There are certainly more psychiatric illnesses than are listed in our textbooks. Alois Alzheimer

Once thought to be the product of demonic possession, immorality, or imbalanced humors, we now know that psychiatric symptoms are often caused by changes in the brain. Read on to learn about the people who helped us understand the brain as the driving force behind our behaviors.

Artist renditions estimating the rod path through Phineas Gage's brain.

Source: By Henry Jacob Bigelow; Ratiu et al.

Phineas Gage

In 1848, John Harlow first described the case of a 25-year-old railroad foreman named Phineas Gage. Gage was a "temperate" man: hardworking, polite, and well-liked by all those around him. One day, Gage was struck through the skull by an iron rod launched in an accidental explosion. The rod traveled through the prefrontal cortex of his brain. Remarkably, he survived with no deficits in his motor functionor memory. However, his family and friends noticed major changes in his personality. He became impatient, unreliable, vulgar, and was even described as developing the "animal passions of a strong man." This was the first glimpse into the important role of the prefrontal cortex in personality and social behavior.

Louis Victor Leborgne

Pierre Broca first published thecase of 50-year-old Louis Victor Leborgne in 1861. Despite normal intelligence, Leborgne inexplicably lost the ability to speak. His nickname was Tan, after thisbecame the only word he ever uttered. He was otherwise unaffected and seemed to follow directions and understand others without difficulty. After he died, Broca examined his brain, finding an abnormal area of brain tissue only in the left anterior frontal lobe. This suggested that the left and right sides of the brain were not always symmetric in their functions, as previously thought. Broca later went on to describe several other similar cases, cementing the role of the left anterior frontal lobe (now called Brocas area) as a crucial region for producing(but not understanding)language.

Auguste Deter, 1901.

Source: Unknown, Public Domain.

Auguste Deter

Psychiatrist and neuropathologist Aloysius Alzheimer described the case of Auguste Deter, a 56-year-old woman who passed away in 1906 after she developed strange behaviors, hallucinations, and memory loss. When Alzheimer looked at her brain under the microscope, he described amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles that we now know are a hallmark of the disease that bears his name. This significant discovery was the first time that a biological molecule such as a protein was linked to a psychiatric illness.

In 1933, Spafford Ackerly described the case of "JP who, beginning at a very young age, would do crude things like defecate in other's belongings, expose himself, and masturbate in front of other children at school. These behaviors worsened as he aged, leading to his arrest as a teenager. He was examined by Ackerly who found that the boy had a large cyst, likely present from birth, that caused severe damage to his prefrontal cortices. Like the case of Phineas Gage, JP helped us understand the crucial role that the prefrontal cortex plays in judgement, decision making, social behaviors and personality.

HM (Henry Gustav Molaison)

HM was a 29-year-old man who underwent an experimental surgery by William Beecher Scovillein 1953 to remove his medial temporal lobes (including the hippocampus and amygdala on both sides). The hope was that the surgery would control his severe epilepsy, and it did seem to help. But with that improvement came a very unexpected side effect: HM completely lost the ability to form certain kinds of new memories. While he was still able to form new implicit or procedural memories (like tying shoes or playing the piano), he was no longer able to form new semantic or declarative memories (like someones name or major life events). This taught us that memories were localized to a specific brain region, not distributed throughout the whole brain as previously thought.

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The Neuroscience of Behavior: Five Famous Cases - Psychology Today

Neuroscience

Microglia: a new brain target for depression and Alzheimer’s? – STAT – STAT

January 17, 2020 medical

More than a decade ago, I was diagnosed with a string of autoimmune diseases, one after another, including a bone marrow disorder, thyroiditis, and then Guillain-Barr syndrome, which left me paralyzed while raising two young children.

I recovered from Guillain-Barr only to relapse, becoming paralyzed again. My immune system was repeatedly and mistakenly attacking my body, causing the nerves in my arms, legs, and those I needed to swallow to stop communicating with my brain, leaving me confined to and raising my children from bed.

As I slowly began to recover and learn to walk again, I noticed that along with residual physical losses I had experienced shifts in my mood and clarity of mind. Although Id always been an optimistic person, I felt a bleak unshakable dread, which didnt feel like the old me.

I also noticed cognitive glitches. Names, words, and facts were hard to bring to mind. I can still recall cutting up slices of watermelon, putting them in a bowl, and staring down at them thinking, What is this again? I knew the word but couldnt remember it. I covered my lapse by bringing the bowl to the table and waiting for my children to call out, Yay! Watermelon! And I thought, Yes. Of course. Watermelon.

As a science journalist whose niche spans neuroscience, immunology, and human emotion, I knew at the time that it didnt make scientific sense that inflammation in the body could be connected to much less cause illness in the brain. At that time, scientific dogma held that the brain was the only organ in the body not ruled by the immune system. The brain was considered to be immune privileged.

That began to change in the early 2010s. As neuroscience and immunology started to merge, they began dismantling that century-old tenet. Scientists pivoted away from believing that the brain and body function as church and state entities, and developed an entirely new brain-body paradigm which acknowledges that the brain is also governed by the immune system.

Much of the revelatory science fueling this reversal in how we see brain health was due to a radically new understanding of tiny cells called microglia. In healthy brains, microglia act as humble housekeepers, removing dead cells and bathing neurons in protective factors. A new understanding of these cells tells us that when they go rogue, they destroy synapses and cause inflammation in the brain.

In 2012, Beth Stevens, a young researcher at Childrens Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and her then-postdoc, Dori Schafer, discovered that microglia also determine synaptic health, for good or ill, from cradle to grave a discovery for which Stevens was named a 2015 MacArthur genius award winner. They showed that these cells, which scientists had ignored since they were first noted in the 1920s, were actually powerful immune cells.

But just as the bodys immune system can rev into overdrive, causing inflammation and devastating physical symptoms, microglia can also become overexcited. When that happens, they can generate too much synaptic pruning, neuroinflammation, and symptoms of cognitive, mood, and behavioral disorders, from depression to Alzheimers disease.

This revelation, while scary to contemplate if you are a patient like me, is also the springboard for promise with a newly emerging and innovative set of tools that may help intervene in mental health disorders by treating the brains immune pathways much as we treat immune disorders of the body.

It turns out that people who have high levels of chronic inflammation, as measured by simple blood tests, also have higher levels of microglial activation in the brain, a keen and worrisome indicator that too many synapses are being lost.

This month, four hospitals from the National Network of Depression Centers the Mayo Clinic, University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Emory University are wrapping up a clinical trial known as the Bio-K Study. It is investigating whether measuring individuals levels of inflammation and other related biomarkers can predict if infusions of ketamine (the K in the study name) will ease their depression. Originally used as an anesthetic, ketamine has been shown to have powerful antidepressant effects, and appears to work as an anti-inflammatory in the brain.

The Bio-K study is fueled by recent discoveries that individual differences in patients physical health can affect how well a treatment for depression helps the brain repair itself. Of particular interest is how inflammation, which can signal microglia to become overactive and destroy synapses in areas of the brain related to symptoms of depression and bipolar disorder, might limit someones response to treatment.

The Bio-K investigators are measuring participants levels of chronic inflammation before they receive ketamine infusions. After the infusions, blood samples are checked again to determine if changes in biomarkers are associated with improved outcomes.

If the findings are positive, it will help clinicians determine if inflammation is associated with patients positive, neutral, or negative responses to treatment, and may help them predict which treatments are best for which patients.

At Emory University School of Medicine, researchers have found that inflammation is linked to weakened reward circuits in depression and they can predict which patients neural circuits are going dark by measuring their level of inflammation via a simple blood draw. Also underway at Emory are clinical trials looking at the viability of using the same anti-inflammatories employed to treat autoimmune disease, such as infliximab, to treat depression. The hope is that by getting overexcited microglia to back off, important regions of the brain will be able to communicate again.

This new understanding of the working of the immune system in the brain is also leading to a clearer understanding of which oral antidepressant will work best in which patient. It turns out that for individuals who test positive for chronic inflammation, bupropion (Wellbutrin) may work better than drugs like escitalopram (Lexapro).

Immunotherapy also appears to show promise in treating Alzheimers disease. Last spring, news broke that Enbrel, Pfizers powerhouse anti-inflammatory drug for rheumatoid arthritis, appeared to help prevent Alzheimers disease. In data collected by a computer analysis of over 250,000 insurance claims, the drug reduced the risk of Alzheimers disease by 64% in patients who took it.

Others have picked up this research thread, and a number of labs are targeting the ways microglia express genes that increase the risk of Alzheimers. Piggybacking on work by an international team of researchers who identified a genetic mutation that seems to protect people from developing Alzheimers disease, Alector, an early-stage biotech company, identified a drug candidate called AL014 that shifts microglial gene expression in ways that prompt microglia to turn from the dark side to the light and begin clearing the brain of unwanted toxins. In theory, that may help stave off the onset of Alzheimers.

Why mental health disorders can be so difficult to treat in some people and not others is a mystery. The idea that microglia-led inflammation triggered by a combination of genes and environmental factors from emotional trauma to toxins can slowly brew within the brain throughout an individuals lifetime offers a clue to that enigma.

When microglia go haywire, they destroy synapses and neural connections in the brain that affect mood and behavior. There can be many consequences: overreaction to small problems, a dearth of joy, entrenched depression, pernicious anxiety, forgetfulness, lost memories. No two individuals brains are the same.

Over time, many small changes in neurocircuitry wrought by inflammation-led microglia can cause individuals to feel and behave very differently from the persons they once were or the ones they hoped to become.

Although the excessive forgetfulness I experienced in my post-paralysis years no longer plagues me, its been replaced by the kind of age-related glitches we all face. Having once struggled to add simple numbers and recall familiar words, Im eager to avoid going through that again. So Im keeping an eye out for where these trials lead, bearing in mind the first rule of medicine: We must first be sure to do no harm, and proceed with an abundance of caution.

As I get older, will I be brave enough to try an anti-inflammatory to help calm down the microglia that govern the 3-pound jelly universe that is my brain? I have a little time to decide. But not too much.

Donna Jackson Nakazawa is a science journalist and author of six books, including The Angel and The Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell That Changed the Course of Medicine (Random House/Ballantine, January 2020).

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Neuroscience

How Alcohol Addiction and Abstinence Remodel the Brain – Technology Networks

January 17, 2020 medical

Employing advanced technologies that allow whole brain imaging at single-cell resolution, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that in an alcohol-dependent mouse model, the rodent brain's functional architecture is substantially remodeled. But when deprived of alcohol, the mice displayed increased coordinated brain activity and reduced modularity compared to nondrinker or casual drinker mice.

The findings, published in the January 14, 2020 online issue of PNAS, also identified several previously unsuspected regions of the brain relevant to alcohol consumption, providing new research targets for better understanding and treatment of alcohol dependence in humans.

"The neuroscience of addiction has made tremendous progress, but the focus has always been on a limited number of brain circuits and neurotransmitters, primarily dopaminergic neurons, the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex," said senior author Olivier George, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

"Research groups have been fighting for years about whether 'their' brain circuit is the key to addiction. Our results confirm these regions are important, but the fact that we see such a massive remodeling of the functional brain architecture was a real shock. It's like studying the solar system and then discovering that there is an entire universe behind it. It shows that if you really want to understand the neurobiological mechanisms leading to addiction, you can't just look at a handful of brain regions, you need to look at the entire brain, you need to take a step back and consider the whole organ."

George said the findings further undermine the idea that addiction is simply a psychological condition or consequence of lifestyle. "You would be surprised at how prevalent this view remains," he said. "The brain-wide remodeling of the functional architecture observed here is not 'normal.' It is not observed in a nave animal. It is not observed in an animal that drinks recreationally. It is only observed in animals with a history of alcohol dependence and it is massive. Such a decrease in brain modularity has been observed in numerous brain disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury and seizure disorders."

Brain modularity is the theory that there are functionally specialized regions in the brain responsible for different, specific cognitive processes. For example, the frontal lobes of the human brain are involved in executive functions, such as reasoning and planning, while the fusiform face area located in the lower rear of the brain is involved in recognizing faces.

Reduced modularity, said George, likely interferes with "normal neuronal activity and information processing and contributes to cognitive impairment, emotional distress and intense craving observed in mice during abstinence from alcohol."

Due to the format of the testing, George said it was not clear if the reduced modularity was permanent. "So far, we only know that it lasts at least one week into abstinence. We have not tested longer durations of abstinence, but it's one of our goals."

George and colleagues used multiple new and emerging imaging technologies to create their whole-brain atlas of mouse brains, capable of being viewed at the level of single cells. The result was a first, they said, providing unprecedented data and insights.

"This new approach allows us to explore an entirely new universe. It can answer so many questions. What I am most interested in now is figuring out how early these brain changes start and how long do they last for. This would be critical to understanding when the switch to addiction happens and when does your brain come back to normal, if it ever does. We are also very interested in comparing the brain network of alcohol dependence with other drugs, such as cocaine, nicotine and methamphetamines."

The imaging approach cannot yet be used with human brains, which are far larger and more complex. "I don't think that it is possible to do it in humans now, the technology is just not there," said George. "But when I started doing this research 15 years ago, this technique didn't exist at all and I never ever imagined it would be possible, so who knows what the future will bring."

Reference: Kimbrough, A., Lurie, D. J., Collazo, A., Kreifeldt, M., Sidhu, H., Macedo, G. C., DEsposito, M., Contet, C., & George, O. (2020). Brain-wide functional architecture remodeling by alcohol dependence and abstinence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1909915117

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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How Alcohol Addiction and Abstinence Remodel the Brain - Technology Networks

Neuroscience

An algorithm that learns through rewards may show how our brain does too – MIT Technology Review

January 17, 2020 medical

In 1951, Marvin Minsky, then a student at Harvard, borrowed observations from animal behavior to try to design an intelligent machine. Drawing on the work of physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who famously used dogs to show how animals learn through punishments and rewards, Minsky created a computer that could continuously learn through similar reinforcement to solve a virtual maze.

At the time, neuroscientists had yet to figure out the mechanisms within the brain that allow animals to learn in this way. But Minsky was still able to loosely mimic the behavior, thereby advancing artificial intelligence. Several decades later, as reinforcement learning continued to mature, it in turn helped the field of neuroscience discover those mechanisms, feeding into a virtuous cycle of advancement between the two fields.

In a paper published in Nature today, DeepMind, Alphabets AI subsidiary, has once again used lessons from reinforcement learning to propose a new theory about the reward mechanisms within our brains. The hypothesis, supported by initial experimental findings, could not only improve our understanding of mental health and motivation. It could also validate the current direction of AI research toward building more human-like general intelligence.

At a high level, reinforcement learning follows the insight derived from Pavlovs dogs: its possible to teach an agent to master complex, novel tasks through only positive and negative feedback. An algorithm begins learning an assigned task by randomly predicting which action might earn it a reward. It then takes the action, observes the real reward, and adjusts its prediction based on the margin of error. Over millions or even billions of trials, the algorithms prediction errors converge to zero, at which point it knows precisely which actions to take to maximize its reward and so complete its task.

It turns out the brains reward system works in much the same waya discovery made in the 1990s, inspired by reinforcement-learning algorithms. When a human or animal is about to perform an action, its dopamine neurons make a prediction about the expected reward. Once the actual reward is received, they then fire off an amount of dopamine that corresponds to the prediction error. A better reward than expected triggers a strong dopamine release, while a worse reward than expected suppresses the chemicals production. The dopamine, in other words, serves as a correction signal, telling the neurons to adjust their predictions until they converge to reality. The phenomenon, known as reward prediction error, works much like a reinforcement-learning algorithm.

DeepMinds new paper builds on the tight connection between these natural and artificial learning mechanisms. In 2017, its researchers introduced an improved reinforcement-learning algorithm that has since unlocked increasingly impressive performance on various tasks. They now believe this new method could offer an even more precise explanation of how dopamine neurons work in the brain.

Specifically, the improved algorithm changes the way it predicts rewards. Whereas the old approach estimated rewards as a single numbermeant to equal the average expected outcomethe new approach represents them more accurately as a distribution. (Think for a moment about a slot machine: you can either win or lose following some distribution. But in no instance would you ever receive the average expected outcome.)

The modification lends itself to a new hypothesis: Do dopamine neurons also predict rewards in the same distributional way?

To test this theory, DeepMind partnered with a group at Harvard to observe dopamine neuron behavior in mice. They set the mice on a task and rewarded them based on the roll of dice, measuring the firing patterns of their dopamine neurons throughout. They found that every neuron released different amounts of dopamine, meaning they had all predicted different outcomes. While some were too optimistic, predicting higher rewards than actually received, others were more pessimistic, lowballing the reality. When the researchers mapped out the distribution of those predictions, it closely followed the distribution of the actual rewards. This data offers compelling evidence that the brain indeed uses distributional reward predictions to strengthen its learning algorithm.

DeepMind

This is a nice extension to the notion of dopamine coding of reward prediction error, wrote Wolfram Schultz, a pioneer in dopamine neuron behavior who wasnt involved in the study, in an email. It is amazing how this very simple dopamine response predictably follows intuitive patterns of basic biological learning processes that are now becoming a component of AI.

The study has implications for both AI and neuroscience. First, it validates distributional reinforcement learning as a promising path to more advanced AI capabilities. If the brain is using it, its probably a good idea, said Matt Botvinick, DeepMinds director of neuroscience research and one of the lead authors on the paper, during a press briefing. It tells us that this is a computational technique that can scale in real-world situations. Its going to fit well with other computational processes.

Second, it could offer an important update to one of the canonical theories in neuroscience about reward systems in the brain, which in turn could improve our understanding of everything from motivation to mental health. What might it mean, for example, to have pessimistic and optimistic dopamine neurons? If the brain selectively listened to only one or the other, could it lead to chemical imbalances and induce depression?

Fundamentally, by further decoding processes in the brain, the results also shed light on what creates human intelligence. It gives us a new perspective on what's going on in our brains during everyday life, Botvinick said.

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An algorithm that learns through rewards may show how our brain does too - MIT Technology Review