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Mind Scans to Map Decision Making Mechanics

Posted by michael on from the chocolate-strawberry-vanilla dept.

rrangel writes "Newsweek is running an article on the fMRI, which tracks brain function by measuring blood flow, and using it for watching the mechanics of economics and choice. Best quote on economic choice: '... there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus.' H. Hefner has known that all along."

38 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. ..there is no quantity of juice sufficient.. by burgburgburg · · Score: 4, Funny
    there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus.

    Why can't wives understand that?

    1. Re:..there is no quantity of juice sufficient.. by murraythegreat · · Score: 5, Funny

      very few wives have MRI scanners

      --
      See your sig here
    2. Re:..there is no quantity of juice sufficient.. by Paulrothrock · · Score: 3, Funny
      Yes. And because they can read minds, they think you can, too.

      What do you mean I should have alphabetized the cleaning supplies???

      --
      I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
    3. Re:..there is no quantity of juice sufficient.. by Eccles · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Incidentally, this is why it is a wise dating technique, when sitting down at a restaurant, to try to choose the seat that faces the wall, not the one that allows you to ogle the other women...

      --
      Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
  2. Humans are lucky... by mangu · · Score: 5, Funny
    '... there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus.'


    We don't need that the female be in estrus.

    1. Re:Humans are lucky... by orthogonal · · Score: 4, Informative

      We [humans] don't need that the female be in estrus.

      And with good reason: human females, almost uniquely among animals, conceal when they're fertile.

      In fact, they conceal it so well, the women themselves don't know when they are fertile. At least not consciously: human females do show preferences for different types of males depending on whether or not they're fertile. Fortunately or not, depending on whether you're looking to have offspring or just consequence-free sex, human females will tend to prefer the more rotund and nerdy Slashdot-type male when she's not fertile, and very masculine hunks when she is fertile.

      (Unlike fertility, there are somewhat obvious signs of how masculine a human male is: higher testosterone produces both dominant behavior and a thinner, more "cut" physical appearance, especially about the face. Female humans may not be able to consciously articulate why some males seem more masculine than others, but unconscious parts of their minds, adapted by evolution, can spot those signs.)

      And rather than just be fertile at certain times of the year, human females are fertile all year 'round. This is not in order to allow greater numbers of offspring to be produced, because in our natural hunting and gathering condition, a human female can only support about one offspring every four years. Until the beginnings of agriculture (until recently thought to be about 10,00 years ago, recently pushed back to about 23,000 years ago), natural fertility suppression caused by breast-feeding and, if that failed, infanticide, suppressed additional offspring.

      So why be fertile all the time? Well, if a female is fertile all the time, the male must be interested in sex all the time, as the parent poster pointed out, because he never knows when sex will result in progeny. The male may not consciously want offspring; he just wants sex, as those males not wanting sex never had offspring to pass that lack of desire on to. So continual male desire for sex is promoted by the sax evolutionary strategies that also promote non-seasonal but concealed female fertility.

      What's the benefit to the female of the male's unrelenting interest in sex? The male's desire for sex keeps him around continuously -- and that aids, not the female, but the offspring. The male will barter for sex by giving the female and her offspring the highly concentrated protein and fat in the meat that the male hunts. By concealing ovulation, the male never knows when he can safely forego the sex, keeping the nutritious meat for himself until the female is fertile and sex will result in the male's progeny.

      But there's even more to it: because fertility is concealed, the male cannot safely allow other males to copulate with "his" female -- as those other males might win the lottery of the female's fertile days. So concealed fertility also promotes pair bonding.

      But if the female does manage to sneak off and copulate with another male, she can get meat from that other male for herself and her offspring -- giving her an incentive to "cheat". So the same pair bonding that cements a male to "his" female also leads, inevitably, to jealousy, fratricide between males, and even male violence toward his mate, to "keep her in line".

      And once again, concealed fertility aids the female -- since the male can never be sure when the female conceives, he can never be sure that a particular child is his; he must take his chances and support all "his" mate's offspring on the hope they are his. (And yet another evolutionary adaptation comes into play, the tendency of newborns to resemble their fathers more than their mothers, to forestall their murder by a father unconvinced of his paternity.)

      Which brings us back to the female preference, when fertile, for masculine men. Because that's only one side of the coin: when not fertile, the female actually prefers less masculine men. Now if it's preferable have offspring with a masculine man

      --
      Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
    2. Re:Humans are lucky... by electroniceric · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I hate to be contentious, but could you cite some sources on this?

      One of the things that drives me nuts about evolutionary biology is the constant invocation of "when we were cave men", the supposed activities that humans undertook, and the supposed division of these roles. I would be hard pressed to believe that the minimal fossil and other records that exist over the time spans can give the kind of details necessary to validate this explanation. If I'm incorrect, please point me to these records, and I'll happily reconsider this assertion.

      AFAICT, the whole business of evolutionary biology is to create a logical explanation for various perceptions about human behavior. For example, you are building a logical framework for your perception that dudes like sex more than chicks. But there are scarcely even clear records now that indicate whether on average men or women "want sex more" (or whether the mean is a properly representative statistic). A thorough explanation must obviously consider the role of reporting of desire, and to do this you must consider the long-term socialization of women to be less direct about their sexuality (which is well documented). Doesn't that go a long way in modifying or obscuring any biological phenomena that might exist? And what about the tremendously varying levels of sexual desire observed among men as well as among women (e.g., Match.com thought this important enough to include in their personality profile test for matches).

      I see the researchers in the article undertaking much of this same assumption:
      By manipulating the odds of getting the drink and the size of the drink, he has shown that the rate at which these neurons fire is proportionate to the expected utility of the juice payoff. The implication is electrifying, especially to economists: an abstract, mathematically derived formula appears to be literally hard-wired into the primate brain.

      Leaving aside the brilliance of being able to detect a single neuron firing, he made a plot of how often the neuron fired versus some external parameter that he then varied. Great science. He then inferred a mathemetical relationship governing the relationship between the parameter and the firing of the neuron and presumably fit that plot to estimate how well the data were represented by the equation he chose. Also well done science. But to then claim that the logical conclusion is that this relationship is "hard wired" into the monkey's brain is wildly speculative, sort of like measuring the probability that I will ride my bike today versus the dollars I could make doing it, and concluding that I have an economic equation hard-wired into my brain. This negates both free will and any subtlety. What if I just don't feel like riding today?

      The brain scanning stuff is obviously a young field, so it's understandable that people want to advance theories to explain all this new stuff they're seeing, but it'd be nice to see a clearer representation of what the research says and what the research think might explain it.
    3. Re:Humans are lucky... by b-baggins · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Which, of course explains completely why so many men stay faithful to their wives after child-bearing years even though the men are still virile.

      It also completely explains why men remain faithful to barren women.

      This load of crap is nothing more than the ranting of some social evolutionist who believes that humans are driven by nothing more than instinct and so tries to come up with some biological mechanism to explain why human men marry human women.

      --
      You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
    4. Re:Humans are lucky... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually it was a well thought out and a well written post. You are the one who is ranting a load of crap. You find the theory repellent so you attack it and the poster rather than argue against it. Not surprising as this is /. after all.

      Steven Pinker discusses similar problems in his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Suggesting that nature can be an important factor (even if only a little) gets you labelled a extremist nutter. Yet those who say mans instincts are unimportant are considered moderate and acceptable. Robert Winston in his BBC programme also had to deal with similar attacks after his show aired.

      It is clear, to me at least, that a large portion of human behaviour has an instinctive aspect to it. Some reinforced by culture and others reigned in by the same. No one is denying upbringing and culture have an affect on how someone behaves or that people are unable to contain the animal within. (Which I presume is your beef with the post). Just that human evolution has also provided some instinct mechanisms that also affect how someone behaves. I don't recall the 'crap' spouting poster suggesting otherwise.

  3. Two things... by ifwm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First, why do researchers assume that blood flow and glucose use equals proof of thought patterns? Now, there may be a correlation, but as my research methods professor loved to say "correlation does not equal causation"

    Second, juice may not get him. but cocaine will. I saw a study that showed a monkey will give up everything, including food and sex, for cocaine.

    1. Re:Two things... by glueball · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The BOLD theory, that's why. Blood Oxygenation Level Detection. You are not measuring glucose directly, you are measuring a spin-able for of hemoglobin that is in the state of giving up oxygen. Oxygen is thought to be used in glucose metabolism. Metabolism is thought to be a sign of life. FMRI measures the amount of hemoglobin. The interesting data comes from measuring *changes* in the amount of hemoglobin utilization.

      One can see motor movements in the brain. I tell you to move your finger (or think about moving your finger ) and I can see in the brain the area that: hears me say "move your finger" then the language area that interprets "move your finger" and the pre-motor area firing, then the motor area firing.

      There are a million tests that can be given in the MR scanner. Some of them can be really funny.

      Examples on request.

    2. Re:Two things... by Life2Short · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What if you had to figure out how a computer worked just by looking at how much electricity was being consumed by the various components? You would know something about the various components involved with specific tasks, but you wouldn't understand what was going on in the components themselves or how they work. Some are processing, some are storing, some are pathways, etc. I think this was the point of the original post. fMRI can tell us about what areas might be active, but we still have a long way to go to figure out how the brain works in detail.

    3. Re:Two things... by Dr_Emory · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is an excellent point, and one of the most challenging problems with fMRI and other "functional neuroimaging" methods. BOLD-fMRI (Blood Oxygen Level Dependent) relies on the fact that oxyhemoglobin is dimagnetic and deoxyhemoglobin is paramagnetic (a very interesting fact that was discovered in the 1950s by no other than Linus Pauling . . .), which means that oxygenated blood can be made to look "brighter" using certain MRI techniqies. The theoretical steps from neuronal activity to BOLD signal are this:

      1. Neurons fire
      2. Transient decrease of blood oxygen in that area due to increased use
      3. Compensatory regional increase in blood flow causes increase in blood oxygen.
      4. Miracle occurs / Change in concentration in oxygen imaged with MRI and bright "blobs" superimposed over structural image.

      Many problems with this technique, and many assumptions that must be made. Just a few:
      1. We assume that there is a consistent time course to these steps. During image processing, the blood oxygen vs. time curve is usually assumed to follow a particular theoretical model all over the brain. Problem is, maybe the compensatory increase in oxygenation is much slower in some areas of the brain than it is in others.
      2. We have very little idea what it means that we see increased or decreased "activity" in an area, particularly when comparing normal and diseased conditions. Perhaps some areas of the brain are "always on" and there is no clear contrast between that condition and a "working" condition, therefore they NEVER appear to be activated by fMRI. Maybe the area of increased activity represents a "downstream effect" of activity in another area? Does increased activity suggest better function (e.g. more blood = gasoline to the engine = higher speed) or worse (less efficient engine = more gasoline to engine = same speed at higher cost).

      Despite these problems, fMRI is damn cool because you really can "see someone think", which is a relatively new scientific development. The technology will get better, and eventually we'll get closer to the actual neurons, in terms of taking pictures of real neuronal activation instead of a blood oxygen proxy four or five physiological steps away. Anyhow, cool stuff.

    4. Re:Two things... by glueball · · Score: 5, Interesting

      First I met someone at a FMRI scanner. It turns out that she became my wife.

      Second test: Stroop. Never seen so many smart people get so frustrated. A word is presented: "RED" It is written in green ink. What color is the ink? Then, just as you get the hang of it, what is the word?

      Third: Nicotine addictions. Drop a bolus of nicotine into a willing research subject. I've heard "That's better than sex" to "Ohhhhhhh" to "I think I wet myself"

      More later.

  4. Rationality and expected value by PornMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not sure that monkeys know the difference, but when I consider chance in a wagering-like fashion, I tend to consider whether or not something will really change my life for more than just the short-term.

    Dropping $20 on an array of Mega Millions tickets is mathematically irrational, but with or without that $20, my life for the next two weeks will be about the same. If I were to win, however, even the second-best prize, it would enable me to purchase a nice house.

    When it's a matter of playing a game where the expected value of my dollar is $0.95, but I'm more likely to win $2 or $3, why bother? But even if the expected value of my dollar is $0.75 or less with a prize of many million and many over $100k, despite the miniscule chances of winning, it would change my life.

    Of course, if I had an expected value of $1.05 for my dollar, I'm smart enough to play consistently even if my dollar only wins a little at a time.

    -PM

    --
    500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
    1. Re:Rationality and expected value by makomk · · Score: 3, Interesting
      In game theory, there's one model that states that people choose based on the expected value to them of the outcome. Losing $1 doesn't have much effect on you, but the value to you of winning $1million is huge, so it makes semse to gamble.

      This isn't strictly relevant, but has anyone figured out why most people get the probablities wrong in Don't Get The Goat (no relation to goatse). Even intelligent people often get it wrong. I remember spending ages trying to explain it to an intelligent person with good maths skills - and they still didn't understand.

    2. Re:Rationality and expected value by glyph42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Dropping $20 into a nice, juicy retirement savings plan every two weeks is guaranteed to change your life. Take your lottery tickets, and whatever other impulse purchases you can identify, and divert the money into savings. Why bother gambling? You'll thank yourself many times over when you're older.

      --
      Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
  5. Insufficient juice by kahei · · Score: 5, Funny

    there is no quantity of juice sufficient

    Oh really? I bet they only tried 'reasonable' amounts of juice. They can't be sure unless they try an infinite amount of juice -- or rather, an amount of juice so unfeasibly preposterously gigantic that the monkey is simply nable to comprehend it, so that changes in the juice quantity no longer have any effect. When they use that much juice, I'll take remarks like the above seriously

    Disclaimer: I am only writing this because I am thirsty and like thinking about juice.

    --
    Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
  6. what advertisers won't do by millahtime · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK, so say they find out how the brain works in this way. Who is going to use it, advertisers. If they could use drungs or subliminal things they would. Now what, my girlfriend will want to shop more. Now, they will get me to buy more useless things.

    Someone please tell me how this is going to help me?

    --
    Evolution or ID?
  7. Ask my ex-wives by bmiller949 · · Score: 4, Funny

    According to the them, science has it wrong. They should be scanning my posterior instead of my head. Since I married them, I would agree.

    --
    <sig>no sig</sig>
  8. origin of war by ch-chuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    now imagine TWO male monkeys who can't look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus.

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
  9. fMRI by bcaffo · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's great to see fMRI getting some press, but the article fails to mention some of the important limitations of the technology. The magnitude of the signal is only 1-5% over the noise and comparisons need to be made at thousands of locations. Also only very simple tasks can reasonably be studied. Regardless, the technology has great promise in medical applications. I am currently invovled in a a study where fMRI is accurately distinguishing between patients who are at high risk for AD and controls. As an additional plug, I think quantitative neurology is great area for CS, Math etc types to get involved in.

  10. Perils of an incomplete model by Alien54 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    of course, the dynamics of the situation involve the potential payoffs of interacting with human society.

    The only category of people who consistently play as game theory dictates, offering the minimum possible amount, are those who don't take into account the feelings of the other player. They are autistics.

    Note that humans are thus called irrational, when in fact the game theory models is deficient, leaving out all of the factors that normal people use when making human decisions.

    maybe they should have used MS marketing droids

    :P

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  11. Cheaper version of this research by rel4x · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can do this research for about $0.
    How many people here enjoy Hustler or Playboy?
    ok, now how many enjoy "Big juice box weekly"?
    What if they added more juice?
    even more?
    Case closed.

    --

    Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
  12. 'there is no quantity of juice sufficient' by oliverthered · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What even if the monkey hasn't had anything to drink for the past week (well maybe day or two, I don't tnik it could do anything after a week).

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  13. What to do with this info! by rel4x · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oo! I've thought of what to do with this information. We can start using sex to sell things, like juice! I wonder why no one has thought of it before!

    --

    Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
  14. Trust? by MisanthropicProgram · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "If we knew what creates trust and could intervene to encourage it, we could do a lot of good for the world," says Camerer.

    No, it would be used to get people to "trust" a corp. or Government, so that they buy more shit or follow mindlessly the politicians. Because, only the corps or gov'ts would have the money to afford such a procedure.

  15. I'm doing just fine... by cpthowdy · · Score: 3, Funny

    with my "Jump To Conclusions" mat. Good enough for all of life's decisions!

  16. Consciousness Theory by fishing · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anyone interested in theories of consciousness and how they might relate to artificial neural networks, you may want to check out "Radiant Cool" by Dan Lloyd.
    In this book he uses multi-dimensional scaling analysis of fMRI scans to predict past and future states of the same brain, as well as doing the same thing with artificial networks.
    It then uses the evidence from this research to propose what (to me, at least) is the first really solid explanation for what consciousness may actually "be".
    The book is written in 2 parts... the first one is a detective novel where the main character is a Phenomenologist and in the process of solving a murder finds a theory of consciousness. The 2nd part of the book is a factual appendix describing the work.
    Awesome stuff, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in neural nets and AI.

  17. love-hate relationship of Science and Media by abde · · Score: 5, Interesting

    articles like this are especially frustrating to MRI physics geeks like me, because there's a delicate balance bwteen wanting the media to help promote science, and watching helplessly as they mangle it into pure science fiction. The BOLD effect by which fMRI observes brain activity is orders of magnitude removed from the sensitivity of indivdual neuron measurements, and as other commentators have pointed out there's a real limit on what you can expect to understand about human thought processes using that tool.

    I've actually started a blog devoted to megnetoic resonance imaging (http://refscan.blogspot.com/ and would like to invite anyone else interested in MRI to visit and comment. Our patron Saint is Magneto :)

    --
    Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
  18. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  19. Now thats what I call a magnet by slimak · · Score: 3, Informative
    On a related note, check out the 9.4 T (9.4 T link off to side) scanner at UIC. AFAIK it is the largest (in sense of the static -- B0 -- field) system that is capable of imaging a human. Other stronger magnets exist (such as 14 T), but they have much smaller bores that limit the size of the object being imaged to about the size of a mouse. I believe that they have this beast up at field now and are currently building the gradients for it.

    Should be interesting to see what its capable of, and if anyone is willing to go inside (considering the strength)!

  20. Nothing to see here... by nine-times · · Score: 4, Informative
    This is yet another case of scientists "discovering" what philosophers had known thousands of years ago. A quote from the article:

    "the Platonic metaphor of the mind as a charioteer driving twin horses of reason and emotion is on the right track--except that cognition is a smart pony, and emotion a big elephant."

    The only thing is, this is basically what the Platonic metaphor says- reason is a weak little horse that doesn't do much of anything, and passion is a wild, kicking, biting stallion that moves the whole thing wherever it wants. The pony/elephant distinction doesn't add anything to the metaphor. Don't get me wrong- the technology is neat and all, and the article might have been worth it for news on technology. But 'humans are irrational'? Is that really news to anyone?

  21. I'm Not As Much Of A Man As A Monkey by bfg9000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female

    Don't offer juice, offer a chance for a First Post modded up to +5, Insightful. Trust me, I have to beat the women off with a stick to get to my keyboard in time. Slashdot is my juice and I'm swimming in an ocean of it, baby.

    --

    I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."

  22. Re:Women don't know when they're fertile? BS by orthogonal · · Score: 4, Informative

    I certainly don't need a lab test to know when my period is coming. Just because women apparently conceal from you when they're menstruating that doesn't mean that we don't know.

    Yes, but ovulation is not menstruation (getting one's "period"). Ovulation occurs about fourteen days before menstruation, and the period of fertility is some period of time a up to five days before ovulation and one to two days after ("fertile" days can occur before actual ovulation because sperm can live inside a woman for up to a week).

    While menstruation pretty reliably occurs fourteen days after ovulation, the time between menstruation and the next ovulation tends to vary much more.

    So while your menstruation is pretty obvious, it gives you little idea of when you'll next be fertile.

    And while some women feel a characteristic pain when ovulation occurs ("Mittelschmerz", German for "middle pain"), because of the varying time between menstruation and ovulation and the ability of sperm to live inside the women, it's entirely possible even for that minority of women who experience Mittelschmerz to become pregnant from sex after menstruation but before ovulation and the warning pain of Mittelschmerz.

    You do know what the technical medical term for a woman who relies on the "rhythm method" of contraception is?

    "Mother".

    --
    Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
  23. Hey smart guy by Illserve · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Try running this experiment on people who haven't had anything to drink for 12 hours and see how it turns out :)

    Yet another beautiful experiment runs headlong into the brutal facts.

  24. Jonathan Edwards by technoCon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Though most folks recall Jonathan Edwards once preaching of spiders dangling over the maw of hell, his most significant writing was philosophical particularly on the topic of Free Will.

    Jonathan Edwards said that Free Will consists of the mind choosing that which it finds most pleasing or agreeable based on what it knows at that moment. I think considerations like this drove Soren Kierkegaard mad choosing to make himself miserable because it pleased him to exercize his will so.

    It would be interesting to know what this continent's most thoughtful Calvinist would think about these experiments. I think he'd be pleased, but he might differ on the interpretations of the findings.

  25. Research vs. Common Sense by bubba_ry · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Y'know, the one thing that I could never understand about research of this type (trying to figure out what a consumer/person wants) is that the same people performing the research are consumers themselves. If they all just sat down and discussed their buying wants and habits, they'd have a huge body of work to publish from. I guess this is just further proof of my belief that man will always look to the outside to try to understand himself.