Slashdot Mirror
Brain Scans Can Detect Who Has Better Skills, Research Says (wsj.com)
To gain new insight into how highly specialized workers learn skills or react to stressful situations, researchers are leveraging advanced scanning technologies to look at what's happening inside the brain. From a report: In the latest findings, a team of researchers studied surgeons as they performed surgical simulations and found they could identify novice from experienced surgeons by analyzing brain scans taken as the physicians worked [The story could be paywalled]. The researchers, who described their findings Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, said that the part of the brain involved in planning complex behaviors was more active in the novices. Skilled surgeons had more activity in the motor cortex, which is important for movement. The researchers, who developed a machine-learning system to analyze the scans, also showed that training resulted in a shift toward higher activity in the motor cortex. In total, the brains of roughly 30 surgeons and trainees were monitored while they performed pattern-cutting tasks that are part of professional tests for certifications. The brain-data metrics were more accurate than current professional tests used to assess the same manual skills, according to the study.
It can be both. For example, learning Windows support gives you muscle memory for Ctrl+Alt+Del
Table-ized A.I.
This is like deciding if someone was rich by looking at how many lights you saw in their entire country by looking at the planet at night from space. With no knowledge of nation borders.
You can certainly draw a correlation - but not really a good conclusion on any individual.
Brain scans aren't reading the content of neurons. They're not even really reading activations or activity for certain, given the lack of real certainty on the full mechanics of brain activity. All they're reading is the heat and relative traffic areas of an unlabelled part of the brain, and saying that this is what has happened in other cases. Again - like watching blobs of house lights from space.
There's other studies that show that experts in a field actually activate LESS than non-experts on a subject - especially genius-level studies, because they tend to find the same answers with less mental work and stress or second-thoughts.
Avoid trying to base how you want to live your life on studies like these ones in particular. Or at least focus more on the base ideas, and less on trying to imitate the particulars here.
Ryan Fenton
Could well be both. Muscle memory isn't terribly useful if your conscious decision making is wrong about which memories should be used. Similarly, knowing what to do is of limited value if you're not capable of doing it.
Here it sounds like the experienced surgeons rely more on muscle memory, whereas the novices need to do more active thinking. If you're trying to assess how ready someone is, you'd probably want to go with the person who's working from muscle memory more, all else being equal.
I think it would be really interesting to do similar types of brain scans of musicians while having them play music in different ways or asking them to improvise as part of a group.
An increase in the diagnoses of brain cancer in surgeons has been reported.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
The summary says, "The brain-data metrics were more accurate than current professional tests used to assess the same manual skills, according to the study." How was "more accurate" measured? You'd have to have an objective way of judging level of skill for a given task. A senior surgeon might have rote memorized the wrong action. How was that assessed? This makes sense if it is just looking for years of practice and not necessarily skill of practice.
Especially for ones that need training and experience. Doing the same precision movements over and over again will leave some signatures in the motor-cortex. Whether this has any impact on non-physical skills remains to be seen.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Because that would be friggen *AMAZING*....
You could figure out who knows their shit from who doesn't without all the expense of a probationary period.
This would make an awesome bullshit filter on interviews.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
How will you tell my awesome coding skills from my awesome bullshitting skills?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Right here.[NSFW]
Have gnu, will travel.
You know, like numchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills!
I'm sure such scans will soon be declared racist and banned from being used in the hiring process unless it can be shown to select the "correct" mix of races from the applicant pool. There is considerable evidence of certain races being differentiated on skills due to having evolved in different environments. This is no different than having dark skin and sickle cell trait being advantageous in an environment that has lots of sun and malaria, or having light skin and lactose tolerance in an environment with lots of snow and cattle.
These traits are more than physical, they are also mental. A race of humans that lived in an environment where an ability to communicate meant the difference between making a deal and going home hungry can over many generations lead to a race of people that have much better communication skills. A race of people that sailed at sea will lead to people with a mental capacity that is good at tying knots (eye-hand coordination), spacial orientation (reading maps and stars), a strong sense of hierarchy and teamwork (as it takes a crew to man a ship effectively), among other traits. This, again, also means physical differences like good buoyancy and lung capacity for swimming.
We see these different traits among races in sports. If you are looking for good swimmers and hockey player then you are likely going to find them among Asians and Europeans because they have genetics that adapt them to the cold and wet. When it comes to runners and jumpers then you'll find them to be mostly of African ancestry, because they lived and died on their ability to take down animals that can run and jump. Therefore it seems apparent that these traits extend beyond the physical to the mental, as mental capacities have their own survival advantages, and will select out over time. I expect these brain scan to reveal this in a way that cannot be denied but will be denied regardless. The only way to deny this is to not run the test.
You think I'm not serious about this? We've seen this already in entrance exams for city fire and police departments. When the testing revealed that those of European ancestry were consistently scoring higher than those of African ancestry the test scores were declared "invalid" and the city had to take people based on race over their ability to perform the job. I'm sure I'll be called a racist anyway for even pointing this out but I don't care, facts don't care about your feelings. I'm also not saying that all African Americans are unfit to be firefighters or police officers, only that with the testing given the European Americans consistently scored higher on average and therefore more European Americans were selected than African Americans. I expect this brain scan system to show similar trends.
Actually "looking" at the development of "muscle memory."
E Proelio Veritas.
But can it measure the Dunning–Kruger effect?
I get _paid_ to code.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Simply drug the neckbeards ;-)
Table-ized A.I.
From my reading of TFS, the headline is wrong, as usual. They measured brainwaves during a skill test, and found a pattern correlated with years of experience. The traditional method of actually checking the result of that skill test is not as good at predicting years of experience, since years of experience is not necessarily correlated to skill.