A study published in Frontiers in Neuroscience takes a look inside the brains of professional comedians and compares them with less humorous humans. They attempt to home in on the seat of creative humor and ask what it can tell us about creativity.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles recently undertook a rather ambitious project: they set out to spy on the neural correlates of creating a joke.

The study was led by a USC doctoral student, Ori Amir, and Irving Biederman, a professor of psychology and computer science.

Creativity is a muddy area of research; it is nebulous and ethereal by its very nature. However, regardless of these difficulties (and perhaps because of them), many researchers have set their sights on unpicking the processes that underly creativity.

Earlier studies have taken images of the brain as it writes poetry, improvises jazz, and draws pictures, but humor offers a unique avenue to understanding the creative process.

Humor has a clear beginning, middle, and end, and it also takes place over a relatively short space of time - which is convenient for brain imaging. Additionally, the end product is easy to assess; Biederman need only ask: "Does it make you laugh?" It's much simpler than rating the quality of a doodle, haiku, or musical jam.

The study enrolled professional and amateur comedians, as well as a control group of non-comedians.

Each participant viewed a cartoon from the New Yorker without any text and were asked to come up with their own accompanying captions. They wrote two versions of text - one mundane and one funny.

As this task was completed, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Afterward, a panel assessed each caption for its humor level.

Once the data from the fMRI scans had been analyzed, two sections of the brain were shown to be particularly busy during the creation of humorous comments:

Interestingly, the activation in these particular regions was different depending on the level of comedic expertise. As Amir explains: "What we found is that the more experienced someone is at doing comedy, the more activation we saw in the temporal lobe."

The temporal lobe receives sensory information and plays a pivotal role in understanding speech and imagery. It also appears to be the region where semantic and abstract information converges with remote associations.

Conversely, non-comedians and amateur comedians saw less activity in the temporal lobe and more activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area that deals with executive functions such as complex planning and decision-making.

"The professional improv comedians let their free associations give them solutions. The more experience you have doing comedy, the less you need to engage in the top-down control and the more you rely on your spontaneous associations."

Ori Amir

Amir and Biederman also found that the independent funniness ratings were highest for captions created when there was more activity in the temporal regions of the brain.

In other studies investigating the neural activity that underpins humor, the medial prefrontal cortex often makes an appearance. Amir says: "The question is, what does it do exactly? It seems like it's not the source of creativity, but rather the cognitive control top-down director of the creative process. The creativity itself appears to occur elsewhere depending on the creative task."

The current study adds a new layer to previous research conducted at Biederman's Image Understanding Laboratory. His earlier work looking at the cortical basis of high-level visual recognition found that the same regions in the temporal lobe were activated. Humor and the appreciation of a beautiful vista both appear to use similar parts of the brain.

Biederman also notes that the activation, and therefore pleasure, associated with any experience diminishes with each repetition. This, he theorizes, is why humans tend to be "infovores," eternally driven to find new experiences, forever craving new information (and jokes).

Learn more about the neuroscience of creativity.

Link:
The neuroscience of humor investigated - Medical News Today

By Elena Blanco-Surez

One of the most common metaphors in neuroscience is that the brain is like a computer. Yet this comparison fails to illustrate how complex our brains are. The brain, like a computer, receives information and analyzes it. However, there are substantial differences in the way a computer or a brain manages information as well as how and from where it receives the inputs, among many other reasons that render the analogy inaccurate.

Next level

Eric Jonas from UC Berkeley and Konrad Kording from Northwestern University in Chicago took this metaphor a step further in an amusing though slightly disheartening article in PLOS Computational Biology, alluringly titled Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor? Their intention was to confront the possibility that current neuroscience techniques might not be the best to decipher the workings of the brain. To do this they analyzed a microprocessor as if it were a brain. They collected data using standard neuroscience tools to see whether they could infer the way the machine processes information, just like neuroscientists analyze large datasets to untangle brain mechanisms.

They used three video games, well known to all the 80s kids reading: Donkey Kong, Space Invaders and Pitfall. Each of these video games represented a different behavioral output from the microprocessor. For the biological equivalent, think of a C. elegans (the microprocessor) and different behavioral phenotypes (the three video games). Although they acknowledge the limitations of comparing a microprocessor to a living organisms brain, the authors argue that there are enough similarities to justify the study: both a brain and a microprocessor consist of interconnections of smaller units that can be differentiated and studied individually. They compare the build of the microprocessor to that of a brain, where we find circuits, subdivided into microcircuits, comprised of neurons that make connections through their synapses. Of course, the microprocessor is simpler than a brain in many ways.

Using neuroscience protocols to study a microprocessor

They used established protocols to analyze diverse features of the microprocessor MOS6502, a model that is very well understood. Using the approach presented in one of their previous papers, they were able to identify types of transistors within the microprocessor and the connections between them, similar to the study of connectomics in the brain. In the microprocessor they only found one type of transistor, making it far simpler than a brain. However, it was impossible to infer the operation of the microprocessor by just looking at the connectomics. In neuroscience this is even more complicated, since type of cell, synapses, channels and neurotransmitters have to be integrated into the whole picture. The authors stated the importance of the study of connectomics, but emphasized the lack of algorithms to determine the functions of the brain regions assessed, hence the difficulty of understanding the brain through the sole analysis of connections.

They also studied the effect of game performance when they removed one or more transistors from the microprocessor. This is similar to what we do in the lab, when a gene is knocked out to study the effects. They identified the contribution of each transistor to each video game considered, but they could not generalize to the rest of the games without further analysis. According to the authors, these results relate to neuroscience in that it is unlikely that a certain behavior would be triggered without the interaction of different brain circuits/regions.

Throughout the paper, they looked into other aspects of the transistors: tuning, correlations, local field potentials, functional connectivity, spatio-temporal activity, and how they differed depending on the game that was being played. With every set of experiments they concluded that, although interesting and necessary data were drawn, no individual dataset provided a full understanding of how the MOS6502 processes information.

Better approaches for better conclusions

It has to be taken into account that this study of the microprocessor is a lot cleaner than actual neuroscience. We cannot forget brain plasticity and the capability of the brain to repair circuits or compensate for lesions and other impairments. MOS6502 cannot compensate for what the researchers were doing to it, rendering the data much cleaner and clearer than that from neuroscience experiments in vivo.

The authors found their data unsatisfactory, as it did not lead to conclusions that accurately explained the function and structure of the microprocessor as they know it. If they had made assumptions about the microprocessor based in the results herein, these might have been erroneous or misleading. This is why they advise caution at interpreting small data sets. The authors insist that better experiments would have helped them to understand the microprocessor. However, what we can learn from this interesting publication is that, although neuroscience is nowadays producing valuable data to understand how our brain is connected, we still fall short of integrating this information at the high level of complexity of the living organism. And per their suggestion, neuroscience might need a better neuroinformatics approach as well as more refined methods for analyzing data to reach reliable and truthful conclusions.

So, can neuroscientists really understand a microprocessor? Jonas and Kording believe we just need different methods to do so, and that testing these methods in a microprocessor could provide certain validation. But perhaps this study should not be considered as confirmation or rebuttal of the value of neuroscience to understand microprocessors, or even as measurement of the worth of current neuroscientific methods. This study offers additional evidence that brains are not computers. We definitely need a better metaphor.

References:

JonasE, KordingKP (2017)Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?. PLOS Computational Biology 13(1): e1005268. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268

Eric Jonas, and Konrad Kording, Automatic Discovery of Cell Types and Microcircuitry from Neural Connectomics, eLife, 4 (2015), e04250

Image creditElena Blanco-Surez

Any views expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of PLOS.

Elena Blanco-Surez is a postdoc in the molecular neurobiology lab of Nicola Allen, at the Salk Institute in San Diego. She studies novel astrocyte-secreted factors involved in synaptogenesis during development.

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Can neuroscience explain a computer? (by Elena Blanco-Surez) - PLoS Blogs (blog)

Nobody wants to lose cognitive function, especially when so much of business--and life in general--depends on being "on top of it" to stay ahead of the competition. But statistically speaking, the reality is, you have to fight to stay sharp. Doing Sudoku and crossword puzzles isn't going to hurt. But as heard in Is Age Nothing But a Mindset? with Kerri Miller, a neuroscientist and social psychologist both agree there's a better, broader approach.

According to Alexandra Touroutoglou, instructor of neurology at Harvard, researchers studied brain scans of so-called "superagers," who perform as well on word memory tests in their 60s and 70s as individuals in their 20s. The scans revealed that the areas of the brain related to motivation and emotion are thicker in superagers, meaning that there likely is a connection between the motivation we get from emotional experiences and the brain's ability to compensate for the atrophy that naturally occurs.

Accepting that emotion-based motivation supports continued learning and, therefore, maintains a young brain, the obvious next question then becomes, "Okay, well, then, what can I do to experience in an emotional way and increase the motivation I have to keep finding out more?"

Ellen Langer, social psychologist at Harvard and founder of the Langer Mindfulness Institute, thinks one key is being mindful. She asserts that this is crucial given how the absolutes taught in schools cause people to believe they "know" and that, therefore, there's no reason to continue active noticing (engagement).

"By actively noticing," Langer says, "you come to see that the things you thought you knew, you don't know as well as you thought. And that keeps you ever curious. It makes the world exciting. So this active noticing leads to engagement. And what we've found over 40 years of research is [that], the more mindful people are, the longer they live, the healthier they are, the happier they are. It affects virtually everything."

Langer notes just some of what studies have discovered about the incredible power of thought over bodily processes, too. Blood sugar follows perceived time rather than actual time. Maids who were told their work was exercise later showed improvements in weight, blood pressure, BMI and other metrics, even though their workload didn't change. And individuals in nursing homes who are given mindful choices have been shown to live longer than those who are not.

In other words, mindset matters for the mind. "People assume when they get older they're going to start forgetting," Langer says. "Young people also forget. [But] when a young person forgets, they just go on with whatever they're doing. They don't stop and say, 'Oh, my goodness! Am I becoming demented?'...If you start thinking your memory is going, then you're talking to yourself, confuting against yourself, rather than learning whatever the situation demands."

Scientists know the brain needs some challenge to stay "fit". But according to Langer, judging yourself through challenges doesn't do you any favors, and there's not really any magic formula to what's challenging and what's not.

"The reason that people that people [who] do the 'hard stuff' do well is because they tend not to be evaluative," Langer says. "You know, you don't get the answer, you try another way, rather than, you don't get the answer, that means you're stupid or losing your cognitive abilities and so on and you give up. So all tasks are potentially interesting. It all depends on the way we engage them...Rather than look for [whether it's 'hard' or 'difficult'], I think that it should be personally challenging."

Nature says the brain won't stay absolutely perfect as you get older. But by simply being mindful, taking a positive attitude and breaking out of what's easy with what personally challenges you, you'll likely have experiences that are more emotionally rich. Those experiences will keep your flame of curiosity burning and keep your brain healthily engaged. Don't judge yourself. Just be aware and keep trying. Your brain will thank you.

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Here's How to Keep Your Brain Young, According to Neuroscience and Psychology - Inc.com

A father and husband strangles his wife and drops her out of a window in a staged suicide. Most people would view this act as cold-blooded murderbut might it be the tragic result of an untreated brain cyst? Such a possibility frames The Brain Defense, Chicago author Kevin Davis's true-crime book, which explores the emerging role of brain science in the criminal justice system.

The above story is that of Herbert Weinstein, a well-to-do retiree with no criminal record who in 1991 admitted to killing his wife. Expert witnesses claimed that an orange-size subarachnoid cyst (nicknamed Spyder Cystkopf) pressing on Weinstein's brain's frontal lobe (the center for judgment and impulse control) motivated his uncharacteristic act of violence. This controversial defense became a hallmark of his trial, which was the first U.S. case where a judge allowed a brain scan to be admitted as exculpatory evidence, ushering in a new precedent for using brain imagery to contextualize criminal behavior.

Weinstein's case is just the tip of the iceberg. From Phineas Gagea 19th-century man who suffered personality changes after a rod was driven completely through his head, severing his frontal lobeto David Alonsoa loving father who anomalously attacked his wife and daughter after a head injuryThe Brain Defense probes the sundry crimes, cases, and punishments of brain-injured individuals.

"People who commit crimes need to be held accountable for their actions," Davis says. "So you get to a crossroads: This person committed a crime. What's their mental state? I was following my curiositythe connection between our brains, our behavior, and how that affects personality. I began to question the legal implications of whether or not someone who's injured is responsible for what they do. That's the driving question behind the book."

Davis is no stranger to crime writing. As a young newspaper reporter in Florida, he was assigned the crime beat and was immediately attracted to the social undertones and storytelling potential of crime. From there, he wrote his first book, The Wrong Man, published in 1996.

Much like his foray into crime writing, The Brain Defense's conception was fortuitous. After Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head during an assassination attempt in 2011, Davis became interested in how someone with an extreme traumatic brain injury could bounce back. He dove into the complex world of neuroscience, its intersection with the law, and the brain's effect on behavior. The book addresses the relevant ethical considerations that trail neuroscience into the legal sphere: For example, to what degree are offenders with brain damage culpable? How should treatment be weighed against punishment for such individuals?

The brain defense isn't without controversy. While science has proven that certain brain abnormalities link to aberrant behavior, how and to what extent are still up for debate. The value of brain scans in the courtroom is questionable: you can't point to a machine-made image as incontrovertible justification for criminal acts, Davis says. Instead, brain scans can be used to better understand the mind of the offender. In The Brain Defense, Davis cites a number of pioneering lawyers and scientists who use neuroscience not to excuse criminal behavior but to help offenders find the right place in criminal justice or rehabilitation systems. Yet some lawyers, scientists, and families of victims find this approach riskyafter all, if Weinstein committed one act of unpredictable violence, brain injury-induced or not, isn't it possible that he might do so again? A PET scan can't say.

That's in part why there are contextual factors to consider when evaluating someone's brain. Take Ronnie Cordell, a young man with a horrifically abusive upbringing who killed a homeless man. One can't ignore the fact that Cordell clearly never learned right from wrong and bore the emotional damage of lifelong stress and fear, Davis writes. Or consider Kris Parson, a veteran charged with domestic violence who suffered from PTSD, memory loss, and other disabling symptoms as a result of an untreated traumatic brain injury from a blast attack in Iraq. Here, his lawyers argued, was a person who needed treatment, not time in prison.

Davis also uses the cases of psychopaths, football players, alcoholics, and individuals throughout history to illustrate the manifold types and consequences of brain injury, emphasizing that there's no prototype for brain abnormalities and criminal behavior. Still, neuroscientists have a lot more work to do, and Davis says he'll continue to explore neuroscience and the law, perhaps in an upcoming book, he hints.

"The key to the brain defense is living in a world where we have compassion for each other," Davis says. "Right now, I don't feel that. We need to have people who are making our laws and running our country who have compassion. A system in which we seek to understand and not just blindly punish is going to depend on all of us. Compassion is not incompatible with people taking responsibility. People need to be held accountable for their actions, but to what extent?" v

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Is neuroscience a defense for criminal behavior? | Lit Feature ... - Chicago Reader

Johnny B. Delashaw, MD, resigned from his post as chair of the Seattle-based Swedish Neuroscience Institute on the Cherry Hill campus on March 1, 2017, amid a state health regulatory investigation into complaints filed against him, The Seattle Times reports.

Here are five things to know:

1. On Feb. 10, 2017, The Seattle Times published an investigative report into the spine and neurosurgery services at Providence Health & Services Swedish-Cherry Hill hospital. The report revealed the health system decided to overhaul Cherry Hill's neuroscience program to treat more high risk patients. The invasive brain and spine procedures generated around $500 million in net operating revenue in 2015 as well as saw higher Medicare reimbursement per inpatient visit than any other hospital of its size.

2. Dr. Delashaw joined the Cherry Hill team in 2013, brining in 661 inpatients cases resulting in more than $86 million in billed charges within his first 16 months. Medical staff reported concerns about Dr. Delashaw, citing he "created a culture of retribution, making it difficult to question his decisions," The Seattle Times reports. Other voiced concerns regarded patient care, inappropriate surgeries and little accountability.

3. After analyzing The Seattle Times report, the Department of Health decided to launch an investigation into two complaints filed against Dr. Delashaw in the past 12 months.

4. Dr. Delashaw's resignation comes about a week after Anthony Armada left his post as CEO of Seattle-based Swedish Health Services on Feb. 20, 2017.

5. Interim CEO Guy Hudson sent a memo to Swedish staff on March 2: "As a team, we are firmly committed to supporting our patients and caregivers and are focused on what is most important: safe, compassionate and high-quality care."

More articles on spine: Dr. Jason Lowenstein honored as top doctor 5 highlights Dr. Kalid Kurtom to lead medical mission trip to Jordan 3 spine surgeons & neurosurgeons on the move in February 2017

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Swedish-Cherry Hill neuroscience chair Dr. Johnny Delashaw steps down amid investigation 5 things to know - Becker's Orthopedic & Spine