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  233.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  234.   Name=&quot;Table Classic 4&quot;/&gt;
  235.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  236.   Name=&quot;Table Colorful 1&quot;/&gt;
  237.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  238.   Name=&quot;Table Colorful 2&quot;/&gt;
  239.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  240.   Name=&quot;Table Colorful 3&quot;/&gt;
  241.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  242.   Name=&quot;Table Columns 1&quot;/&gt;
  243.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  244.   Name=&quot;Table Columns 2&quot;/&gt;
  245.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  246.   Name=&quot;Table Columns 3&quot;/&gt;
  247.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  248.   Name=&quot;Table Columns 4&quot;/&gt;
  249.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  250.   Name=&quot;Table Columns 5&quot;/&gt;
  251.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  252.   Name=&quot;Table Grid 1&quot;/&gt;
  253.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  254.   Name=&quot;Table Grid 2&quot;/&gt;
  255.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  256.   Name=&quot;Table Grid 3&quot;/&gt;
  257.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  258.   Name=&quot;Table Grid 4&quot;/&gt;
  259.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  260.   Name=&quot;Table Grid 5&quot;/&gt;
  261.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  262.   Name=&quot;Table Grid 6&quot;/&gt;
  263.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  264.   Name=&quot;Table Grid 7&quot;/&gt;
  265.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  266.   Name=&quot;Table Grid 8&quot;/&gt;
  267.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  268.   Name=&quot;Table List 1&quot;/&gt;
  269.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  270.   Name=&quot;Table List 2&quot;/&gt;
  271.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  272.   Name=&quot;Table List 3&quot;/&gt;
  273.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  274.   Name=&quot;Table List 4&quot;/&gt;
  275.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  276.   Name=&quot;Table List 5&quot;/&gt;
  277.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  278.   Name=&quot;Table List 6&quot;/&gt;
  279.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  280.   Name=&quot;Table List 7&quot;/&gt;
  281.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  282.   Name=&quot;Table List 8&quot;/&gt;
  283.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  284.   Name=&quot;Table 3D effects 1&quot;/&gt;
  285.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  286.   Name=&quot;Table 3D effects 2&quot;/&gt;
  287.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  288.   Name=&quot;Table 3D effects 3&quot;/&gt;
  289.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  290.   Name=&quot;Table Contemporary&quot;/&gt;
  291.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  292.   Name=&quot;Table Elegant&quot;/&gt;
  293.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  294.   Name=&quot;Table Professional&quot;/&gt;
  295.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  296.   Name=&quot;Table Subtle 1&quot;/&gt;
  297.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  298.   Name=&quot;Table Subtle 2&quot;/&gt;
  299.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  300.   Name=&quot;Table Web 1&quot;/&gt;
  301.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  302.   Name=&quot;Table Web 2&quot;/&gt;
  303.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  304.   Name=&quot;Table Web 3&quot;/&gt;
  305.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  306.   Name=&quot;Balloon Text&quot;/&gt;
  307.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;39&quot; Name=&quot;Table Grid&quot;/&gt;
  308.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot;
  309.   Name=&quot;Table Theme&quot;/&gt;
  310.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; Name=&quot;Placeholder Text&quot;/&gt;
  311.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;1&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot; Name=&quot;No Spacing&quot;/&gt;
  312.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;60&quot; Name=&quot;Light Shading&quot;/&gt;
  313.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;61&quot; Name=&quot;Light List&quot;/&gt;
  314.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;62&quot; Name=&quot;Light Grid&quot;/&gt;
  315.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;63&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 1&quot;/&gt;
  316.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;64&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 2&quot;/&gt;
  317.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;65&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 1&quot;/&gt;
  318.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;66&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 2&quot;/&gt;
  319.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;67&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 1&quot;/&gt;
  320.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;68&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 2&quot;/&gt;
  321.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;69&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 3&quot;/&gt;
  322.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;70&quot; Name=&quot;Dark List&quot;/&gt;
  323.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;71&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Shading&quot;/&gt;
  324.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;72&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful List&quot;/&gt;
  325.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;73&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Grid&quot;/&gt;
  326.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;60&quot; Name=&quot;Light Shading Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  327.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;61&quot; Name=&quot;Light List Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  328.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;62&quot; Name=&quot;Light Grid Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  329.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;63&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 1 Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  330.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;64&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 2 Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  331.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;65&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 1 Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  332.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot; Name=&quot;Revision&quot;/&gt;
  333.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;34&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot;
  334.   Name=&quot;List Paragraph&quot;/&gt;
  335.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;29&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot; Name=&quot;Quote&quot;/&gt;
  336.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;30&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot;
  337.   Name=&quot;Intense Quote&quot;/&gt;
  338.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;66&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 2 Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  339.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;67&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 1 Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  340.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;68&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 2 Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  341.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;69&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 3 Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  342.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;70&quot; Name=&quot;Dark List Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  343.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;71&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Shading Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  344.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;72&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful List Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  345.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;73&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Grid Accent 1&quot;/&gt;
  346.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;60&quot; Name=&quot;Light Shading Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  347.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;61&quot; Name=&quot;Light List Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  348.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;62&quot; Name=&quot;Light Grid Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  349.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;63&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 1 Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  350.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;64&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 2 Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  351.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;65&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 1 Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  352.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;66&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 2 Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  353.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;67&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 1 Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  354.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;68&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 2 Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  355.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;69&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 3 Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  356.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;70&quot; Name=&quot;Dark List Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  357.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;71&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Shading Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  358.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;72&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful List Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  359.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;73&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Grid Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  360.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;60&quot; Name=&quot;Light Shading Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  361.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;61&quot; Name=&quot;Light List Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  362.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;62&quot; Name=&quot;Light Grid Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  363.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;63&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 1 Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  364.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;64&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 2 Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  365.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;65&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 1 Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  366.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;66&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 2 Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  367.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;67&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 1 Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  368.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;68&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 2 Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  369.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;69&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 3 Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  370.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;70&quot; Name=&quot;Dark List Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  371.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;71&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Shading Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  372.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;72&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful List Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  373.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;73&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Grid Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  374.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;60&quot; Name=&quot;Light Shading Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  375.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;61&quot; Name=&quot;Light List Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  376.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;62&quot; Name=&quot;Light Grid Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  377.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;63&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 1 Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  378.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;64&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 2 Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  379.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;65&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 1 Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  380.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;66&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 2 Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  381.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;67&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 1 Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  382.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;68&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 2 Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  383.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;69&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 3 Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  384.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;70&quot; Name=&quot;Dark List Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  385.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;71&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Shading Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  386.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;72&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful List Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  387.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;73&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Grid Accent 4&quot;/&gt;
  388.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;60&quot; Name=&quot;Light Shading Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  389.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;61&quot; Name=&quot;Light List Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  390.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;62&quot; Name=&quot;Light Grid Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  391.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;63&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 1 Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  392.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;64&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 2 Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  393.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;65&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 1 Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  394.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;66&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 2 Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  395.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;67&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 1 Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  396.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;68&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 2 Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  397.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;69&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 3 Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  398.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;70&quot; Name=&quot;Dark List Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  399.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;71&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Shading Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  400.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;72&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful List Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  401.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;73&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Grid Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
  402.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;60&quot; Name=&quot;Light Shading Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  403.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;61&quot; Name=&quot;Light List Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  404.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;62&quot; Name=&quot;Light Grid Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  405.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;63&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 1 Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  406.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;64&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Shading 2 Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  407.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;65&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 1 Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  408.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;66&quot; Name=&quot;Medium List 2 Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  409.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;67&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 1 Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  410.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;68&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 2 Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  411.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;69&quot; Name=&quot;Medium Grid 3 Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  412.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;70&quot; Name=&quot;Dark List Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  413.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;71&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Shading Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  414.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;72&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful List Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  415.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;73&quot; Name=&quot;Colorful Grid Accent 6&quot;/&gt;
  416.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;19&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot;
  417.   Name=&quot;Subtle Emphasis&quot;/&gt;
  418.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;21&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot;
  419.   Name=&quot;Intense Emphasis&quot;/&gt;
  420.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;31&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot;
  421.   Name=&quot;Subtle Reference&quot;/&gt;
  422.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;32&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot;
  423.   Name=&quot;Intense Reference&quot;/&gt;
  424.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;33&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot; Name=&quot;Book Title&quot;/&gt;
  425.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;37&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot;
  426.   UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot; Name=&quot;Bibliography&quot;/&gt;
  427.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;39&quot; SemiHidden=&quot;true&quot;
  428.   UnhideWhenUsed=&quot;true&quot; QFormat=&quot;true&quot; Name=&quot;TOC Heading&quot;/&gt;
  429.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;41&quot; Name=&quot;Plain Table 1&quot;/&gt;
  430.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;42&quot; Name=&quot;Plain Table 2&quot;/&gt;
  431.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;43&quot; Name=&quot;Plain Table 3&quot;/&gt;
  432.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;44&quot; Name=&quot;Plain Table 4&quot;/&gt;
  433.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;45&quot; Name=&quot;Plain Table 5&quot;/&gt;
  434.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;40&quot; Name=&quot;Grid Table Light&quot;/&gt;
  435.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;46&quot; Name=&quot;Grid Table 1 Light&quot;/&gt;
  436.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;47&quot; Name=&quot;Grid Table 2&quot;/&gt;
  437.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;48&quot; Name=&quot;Grid Table 3&quot;/&gt;
  438.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;49&quot; Name=&quot;Grid Table 4&quot;/&gt;
  439.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;50&quot; Name=&quot;Grid Table 5 Dark&quot;/&gt;
  440.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;51&quot; Name=&quot;Grid Table 6 Colorful&quot;/&gt;
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  525.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;51&quot;
  526.   Name=&quot;List Table 6 Colorful Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  527.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;52&quot;
  528.   Name=&quot;List Table 7 Colorful Accent 2&quot;/&gt;
  529.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;46&quot;
  530.   Name=&quot;List Table 1 Light Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  531.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;47&quot; Name=&quot;List Table 2 Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
  532.  &lt;w:LsdException Locked=&quot;false&quot; Priority=&quot;48&quot; Name=&quot;List Table 3 Accent 3&quot;/&gt;
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  556.   Name=&quot;List Table 6 Colorful Accent 5&quot;/&gt;
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  600.  
  601. &lt;br /&gt;
  602. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  603. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPaCiAvYwoGTFozLi0WcLa427u7BkkmNA7Gq6j2Xv-3w0i-In1ynb3nFiDoWEE4mCfUOCagJL66faou-dfdWiNZrAPHdLwnxsPG2vcLfDU9Ei1oP4r780a8lpY-8P3rNoucmHljho2zUw/s1600/hqdefault.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;148&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPaCiAvYwoGTFozLi0WcLa427u7BkkmNA7Gq6j2Xv-3w0i-In1ynb3nFiDoWEE4mCfUOCagJL66faou-dfdWiNZrAPHdLwnxsPG2vcLfDU9Ei1oP4r780a8lpY-8P3rNoucmHljho2zUw/s320/hqdefault.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  604. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Hermione Gingold and Maurice Chevalier in &lt;i&gt;Gigi&lt;/i&gt; (1958)&lt;br /&gt;
  605. sing &quot;I Remember It Well&quot;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  606. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  607. When Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sISWPzEqHLQ&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;reminisce about their younger days&lt;/a&gt; in the musical &lt;i&gt;Gigi&lt;/i&gt;, it is clear that despite Chevalier&#39;s insistence that he remembers it well, their memories differ considerably
  608. in detail and precision.&amp;nbsp; &lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Such variation in how precisely we can remember previous events is not only an affliction of older adults: we are all used to the vagaries of our memories, with some events remembered with crystal clarity and others recalled only indistinctly.&lt;br /&gt;
  609. &lt;br /&gt;
  610. Studies of
  611. human memory often focus on how we remember some experiences but forget
  612. others, distinguishing only between ‘successful’ and ‘unsuccessful’ memory. However,
  613. as Chevalier and Gingold demonstrate, our memory for successfully remembered events
  614. can vary widely in quality, differing in the kinds of detail we can remember
  615. and how precise our memory for those details is. In addition to these
  616. ‘objective’ measures of how well we remember, our memory for an event can also subjectively
  617. &lt;i style=&quot;mso-bidi-font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;feel&lt;/i&gt; more or less vivid to us based
  618. on our conscious experience of reliving the episode, regardless of how accurate
  619. our memory actually is. To date, there has been limited understanding of how such
  620. substantial differences in memory accuracy and experience occur. &lt;br /&gt;
  621. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  622. &lt;br /&gt;
  623. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  624. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  625. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiciUduOWKesFOIjINKpq0HbLagbufI5OnV222HHhaSy1i0rJ464TRdQ7xqquM2US9dneBlHRc7R_-MB0imT3qTWRE2cOT9EcS_42UuIUjVbCQloU8Bd8iaERFvYpwqfTue-S9h2DVK8qA/s1600/Cn4TTruXYAAywTx.jpg+orig.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;168&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiciUduOWKesFOIjINKpq0HbLagbufI5OnV222HHhaSy1i0rJ464TRdQ7xqquM2US9dneBlHRc7R_-MB0imT3qTWRE2cOT9EcS_42UuIUjVbCQloU8Bd8iaERFvYpwqfTue-S9h2DVK8qA/s200/Cn4TTruXYAAywTx.jpg+orig.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  626. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Example study display of 3 objects&lt;br /&gt;
  627. presented on a background picture&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  628. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  629. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  630. In our &lt;a href=&quot;https://elifesciences.org/content/5/e18260&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;new paper&lt;/a&gt; published in &lt;i&gt;eLife&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/F_R_Richter&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Franka Richter&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/rosecooper03&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Rose Cooper&lt;/a&gt; developed a novel behavioural
  631. task that enables a measure of the likelihood that a memory will be remembered to
  632. be separated from measures of both the quality of that memory and the vividness
  633. with which it is experienced. In the task, participants studied visual displays
  634. each consisting of several different everyday objects presented on a background picture of a landscape
  635. or building. The objects varied in three characteristics: their colour (on a
  636. continuous spectrum), orientation (how they were rotated around 360 degrees),
  637. and their location on the background picture.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
  638. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  639. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  640. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  641. We tested participants’ memory
  642. for these characteristics by asking them to recreate the colour, orientation,
  643. and location of the objects using dials to change the appearance of the object
  644. in a continuous manner (see video below). By testing how precisely participants were able to
  645. recreate these three characteristics of the objects from memory, we were able
  646. to tease apart the likelihood of remembering from the quality of memory. Before
  647. we asked participants to recreate the objects, we also presented them only with
  648. the background picture and asked them to remember the objects that were
  649. presented on this background and rate how vividly they perceived their memory of
  650. the objects to be. By asking them to rate the vividness of their memory on a
  651. slider from “not vivid” to “very vivid” we obtained a record of how rich the
  652. memory felt to participants. &lt;/div&gt;
  653. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  654. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  655. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  656. &lt;iframe allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;YOUTUBE-iframe-video&quot; data-thumbnail-src=&quot;https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4_HM00ze60U/0.jpg&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/4_HM00ze60U?feature=player_embedded&quot; width=&quot;320&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  657. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  658. &lt;br /&gt;
  659. In the current study, we discovered that specific brain
  660. mechanisms underlie these three distinct aspects of memory using a brain
  661. imaging technique known as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;functional magnetic resonance imaging&lt;/a&gt; (fMRI). The
  662. results of our study demonstrated that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;hippocampus&lt;/a&gt;, a brain region widely
  663. associated with memory retrieval, responded to successfully remembering (in
  664. contrast to forgetting) an event, regardless of its quality. That is, the hippocampus
  665. indicated whether an object characteristic was remembered no matter how vague this
  666. memory was.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;In contrast, a region towards
  667. the back of the brain known as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_gyrus&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;angular gyrus&lt;/a&gt; tracked the precision of the
  668. memory that was recalled, such that activity in this region increased with how
  669. close participants were to the correct object location, orientation degree, and
  670. colour shade.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;Lastly, a third region,
  671. the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precuneus&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;precuneus&lt;/a&gt;, which has been associated with imagination and experiencing
  672. memories from a first person perspective, showed activity that was specific to
  673. the vividness with which participants experienced their memories.&lt;br /&gt;
  674. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  675. &lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  676. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcvWeDFabDD_9Cnuak6V7dM-Ysh9DjAwQqUyGiMQ_msoZOqKDUPsMgg4xe-e3k-ZPz5RbIkzncWa-aosqSDB81pBK4P5F2FL1H9LVcNtrPmwAY-IoFH90VFHqquQCjbgG6wamHMFKHRM/s1600/ScreenHunter_47+Oct.+20+11.19.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;141&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcvWeDFabDD_9Cnuak6V7dM-Ysh9DjAwQqUyGiMQ_msoZOqKDUPsMgg4xe-e3k-ZPz5RbIkzncWa-aosqSDB81pBK4P5F2FL1H9LVcNtrPmwAY-IoFH90VFHqquQCjbgG6wamHMFKHRM/s400/ScreenHunter_47+Oct.+20+11.19.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  677. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Distinct brain regions support different aspects of remembering&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  678. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  679. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  680. &lt;br /&gt;
  681. Teasing apart these properties of memory in the brain
  682. provides a novel approach that could be used to examine and possibly detect
  683. subtle early memory differences associated with neurological disorders that
  684. previous methods might not have been able to capture. For example, while it has
  685. been long known that damage to one of the areas mentioned above, the
  686. hippocampus, can cause severe memory problems, studies of patients with damage
  687. to more posterior (towards the back) areas of the brain have suggested that these
  688. regions are involved in more subtle aspects of memory, such as quality or
  689. detail. For instance, people who suffer strokes or brain tumours located towards the
  690. back of the brain are typically not amnesic, but their memories can &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18160649&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;lack detail and richness&lt;/a&gt;, and they may report &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19542474&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;low confidence in their memories&lt;/a&gt;, perhaps indicating a reduction in the precision or vividness of
  691. memory representations.&lt;/div&gt;
  692. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  693. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  694. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  695. &lt;/div&gt;
  696. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  697. Similarly,
  698. people with &lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;mso-ansi-language: EN-US;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22265212&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;posterior cortical atrophy&lt;/a&gt; (a possible variant of Alzheimer’s disease associated with progressive
  699. degeneration of posterior brain areas) can exhibit difficulties with visual processing earlier in the progression of the disease than memory deficits can
  700. be detected, which
  701. could affect the quality of patients’ memory representations even if the
  702. ability to successfully remember the gist of an event remains. Using a
  703. variation of the task described above might help to characterise and detect these
  704. potential deficits earlier than traditional tests, providing earlier access to
  705. treatment for such individuals. &lt;/span&gt;Moreover, combining the fMRI data with
  706. newly developed &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25170153&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;brain stimulation techniques&lt;/a&gt; might
  707. facilitate therapeutic interventions to target specific problems with memory
  708. retrieval in these populations. &lt;/div&gt;
  709. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  710. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  711. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  712. &lt;/div&gt;
  713. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  714. &lt;u&gt;Reference&lt;/u&gt;:&lt;br /&gt;
  715. &lt;a href=&quot;https://elifesciences.org/content/5/e18260&quot;&gt;Richter, F.R.*, Cooper, R.A.*, Bays, P., &amp;amp; Simons, J.S. (2016). Distinct neural mechanisms underlie the success, precision, and vividness of episodic memory. &lt;i&gt;eLife, 5&lt;/i&gt;, e18260. (* joint first-authors)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  716. </description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2016/10/i-remember-it-well.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPaCiAvYwoGTFozLi0WcLa427u7BkkmNA7Gq6j2Xv-3w0i-In1ynb3nFiDoWEE4mCfUOCagJL66faou-dfdWiNZrAPHdLwnxsPG2vcLfDU9Ei1oP4r780a8lpY-8P3rNoucmHljho2zUw/s72-c/hqdefault.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-1066300043383907061</guid><pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2014 10:03:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:15:12.876+01:00</atom:updated><title>Journalists&#39; guide to fMRI papers</title><description>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  717. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnyvvIYeb5GDJJT0bIE0zKAVsdC3ooXIdwFIG6vcFyRsjT9gzhWlfTQdWGnGl7zKrXvrPz_RKQ9a1ju-BTNQ_47R6DAMeO0E76lCcmCPgp7N_5gwGQD9bwthrKdZKQHXBMTHrWzlM11nA/s1600/fmri.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnyvvIYeb5GDJJT0bIE0zKAVsdC3ooXIdwFIG6vcFyRsjT9gzhWlfTQdWGnGl7zKrXvrPz_RKQ9a1ju-BTNQ_47R6DAMeO0E76lCcmCPgp7N_5gwGQD9bwthrKdZKQHXBMTHrWzlM11nA/s1600/fmri.jpg&quot; width=&quot;150&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  718. Printable version of the guide can be downloaded from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.memlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk/pubs/fMRI_guide.pdf&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;[here]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
  719. &lt;br /&gt;
  720. This brief guide is written for journalists and others who may not consider themselves fMRI experts, but would appreciate some advice about how to read an fMRI paper with an appropriate degree of informed skepticism.&amp;nbsp; It is not meant to be prescriptive (or indeed exhaustive), but a few ideas of what to look for will hopefully benefit those wanting to report fMRI papers accurately in the media, as well as people who might simply wish to know how much they can reliably interpret from articles they read.&lt;br /&gt;
  721. &lt;br /&gt;
  722. Like all science, fMRI is constantly evolving, so it is difficult to establish absolute standards that will be agreed by everybody.&amp;nbsp; However, here are some pointers about common problems to look out for:&lt;br /&gt;
  723. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  724. &lt;ul&gt;
  725. &lt;li&gt;&lt;u&gt;The &quot;neural correlates of x&quot;&lt;/u&gt;.&amp;nbsp; It&#39;s not surprising that a particular cognitive function lights up in the brain somewhere - what else would you expect?&amp;nbsp; Do the results tell us something new about how the brain works, or what cognitive processes might underlie the mental function of interest?&amp;nbsp; Likewise, anything we do changes the brain, so a simple activity difference due to some intervention is not in itself interesting.&amp;nbsp; Does the pattern of brain activity tell us something about &lt;i&gt;how &lt;/i&gt;the intervention might work?&lt;/li&gt;
  726. &lt;/ul&gt;
  727. &lt;br /&gt;
  728. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  729. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fmri.png&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fmri.png&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; width=&quot;219&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  730. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/1453&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;xkcd: fMRI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  731. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  732. &lt;ul&gt;
  733. &lt;li&gt;&lt;u&gt;The problem of &quot;reverse inference&quot;&lt;/u&gt;.&amp;nbsp; If an fMRI paper links activity in one region with a single mental function, ask whether such a specific link is justified, as many brain regions are involved in multiple psychological processes and there is rarely a one-to-one mapping between activity in any brain region and a single mental state.&amp;nbsp; The NeuroSynth web site (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurosynth.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.neurosynth.org&lt;/a&gt;) can be used to find out what functions are associated with any given brain region in the published literature.&lt;/li&gt;
  734. &lt;/ul&gt;
  735. &lt;br /&gt;
  736. &lt;blockquote class=&quot;tr_bq&quot;&gt;
  737. &lt;i&gt;Case study: A NY Times op-ed suggested that we literally love our cell phones, based on a task in which participants viewed their phones, eliciting fMRI activity in the insular cortex, &quot;which is associated with feelings of love and compassion.&quot;&amp;nbsp; But the insular cortex is active in as many as one third of all brain imaging studies, and is more often associated with negative than positive emotions.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  738. &lt;br /&gt;
  739. &lt;ul&gt;
  740. &lt;li&gt;&lt;u&gt;Inappropriate significance thresholds&lt;/u&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Is a statistical threshold used that corrects for the number of tests performed (e.g., p &amp;lt; 0.05 corrected), or at the very least a conventional uncorrected threshold (e.g., p &amp;lt; 0.001)?&amp;nbsp; An uncorrected analysis may contain false positive errors (activity that appears merely due to chance), and an unconventional threshold may have been selected to reveal only the activity the authors want you to see.&lt;/li&gt;
  741. &lt;/ul&gt;
  742. &lt;br /&gt;
  743. &lt;ul&gt;
  744. &lt;li&gt;&lt;u&gt;Regions of interest (ROIs)&lt;/u&gt;.&amp;nbsp; If a ROI approach has been used (correcting for the number of voxels in specific regions, rather than the whole brain), it is essential the ROIs were selected independently of the analysis, which usually means based on the results of previous studies, or a different scan in the same experiment.&amp;nbsp; Refer to the Introduction and whether the ROIs chosen seem plausible, or might they perhaps have been determined after the results were known but are presented as if they were a priori?&lt;/li&gt;
  745. &lt;/ul&gt;
  746. &lt;br /&gt;
  747. &lt;ul&gt;
  748. &lt;li&gt;&lt;u&gt;Importance of control group&lt;/u&gt;.&amp;nbsp; If the study compares two groups of subjects, or investigates an intervention, has an appropriate control group been chosen?&amp;nbsp; Are control subjects matched on relevant variables (age, gender, etc)?&amp;nbsp; In a treatment study, does the control group undergo the same testing schedule without the intervention?&amp;nbsp; If not, the results may be uninterpretable.&lt;/li&gt;
  749. &lt;/ul&gt;
  750. &lt;br /&gt;
  751. &lt;blockquote class=&quot;tr_bq&quot;&gt;
  752. &lt;i&gt;Case study: An fMRI study of children with dyslexia reported that after language training, activity in brain areas associated with language became more similar to that of typical-reading children.&amp;nbsp; However, a control group who did not undergo the training was not included, meaning that brain activity might have changed over time anyway as a natural consequence of development&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  753. &lt;br /&gt;
  754. &lt;ul&gt;
  755. &lt;li&gt;&lt;u&gt;How many subjects are involved?&lt;/u&gt;&amp;nbsp; There&#39;s no perfect number, but anything less than 15-20 and you should ask serious questions about reliability of the results for most designs (although some studies in domains like perception that collect lots of data for each subject can use fewer).&amp;nbsp; Were any subjects excluded after the data were collected - if so, why?&amp;nbsp; If there are different conditions in the experiment, was their order counterbalanced to avoid possible order effects (e.g., due to fatigue or practice-related improvements)?&lt;/li&gt;
  756. &lt;/ul&gt;
  757. &lt;br /&gt;
  758. &lt;ul&gt;
  759. &lt;li&gt;&lt;u&gt;Is there an interaction?&lt;/u&gt;&amp;nbsp; Sometimes, authors observe that activity is present in one comparison and absent in another comparison, and erroneously conclude that there is a difference between the two effects.&amp;nbsp; Similar conclusions might be drawn from seeing some activity in patients, but not controls (or vice versa). Such claims must be supported by a direct statistical comparison of the two effects (e.g., an interaction contrast), otherwise only limited inferences can be drawn.&lt;/li&gt;
  760. &lt;/ul&gt;
  761. &lt;br /&gt;
  762. &lt;blockquote class=&quot;tr_bq&quot;&gt;
  763. &lt;i&gt;Case study: A study observed activity that was significant in the left hemisphere (p &amp;lt; 0.05), and not significant in the right hemisphere (p &amp;gt; 0.05), and concluded that their task specifically involves the left hemisphere.&amp;nbsp; However, the right hemisphere effect may have just missed the threshold for significance (e.g., p = 0.06), in which case the difference between the two effects would be tiny and the claims of specificity unwarranted.&amp;nbsp; An interaction contrast (e.g., is the left hemisphere effect significantly greater than the right hemisphere effect?) is necessary.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  764. &lt;br /&gt;
  765. &lt;ul&gt;
  766. &lt;li&gt;&lt;u&gt;What does fMRI measure?&lt;/u&gt;&amp;nbsp; Although fMRI signal is related to neural activity, exactly how is unresolved.&amp;nbsp; Be careful of claims from fMRI data about what individual neurons might be doing.&amp;nbsp; Avoid calling a behaviour &quot;hard wired&quot; on the basis of fMRI data and, because such data are correlational, avoid writing that a region &quot;causes&quot; or is &quot;necessary&quot; for a process.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/li&gt;
  767. &lt;/ul&gt;
  768. &lt;br /&gt;
  769. &lt;ul&gt;
  770. &lt;li&gt;&lt;u&gt;&quot;Mind reading&quot; and decoding&lt;/u&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Various statistical approaches are being increasingly used to evaluate the amount of information contained in fMRI data.&amp;nbsp; For example, it can be possible to determine from patterns of fMRI activity the category of object a participant is viewing.&amp;nbsp; Although these studies provide useful information about the type of information being represented, they do not constitute &quot;mind reading&quot; in the way it is generally understood.&amp;nbsp; Using that and similar terms can cause substantial confusion.&lt;/li&gt;
  771. &lt;/ul&gt;
  772. &lt;br /&gt;
  773. Despite the seductive allure of blobs on brains, no single fMRI study provides the final &quot;answer&quot; to anything in isolation, so be very skeptical of bold claims in journal articles or press releases.&amp;nbsp; Are the results described fully and accurately, mentioning limitations and caveats, or are authors selective in what they focus on?&amp;nbsp; Can their claims be justified based on the data?&amp;nbsp; Ask whether you would have drawn the same conclusions based on the results.&amp;nbsp; Include appropriate caveats in your reporting, and resist the inclusion of hype or exaggeration.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
  774. &lt;br /&gt;
  775. Try to obtain a quote from an independent expert before running with unverified assessments of a study&#39;s importance from the authors themselves or their university press releases.&amp;nbsp; Open availability of the data can help with independently verifying the findings.&lt;br /&gt;
  776. &lt;br /&gt;
  777. Many fMRI scientists will be happy to answer questions or fact check copy if it would be helpful.&amp;nbsp; Do ask!&lt;br /&gt;
  778. &lt;br /&gt;
  779. The list maintained by Micah Allen (@neuroconscience) includes a number of fMRI experts:&lt;br /&gt;
  780. &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/neuroconscience/lists/cogneuro/members&quot;&gt;http://twitter.com/neuroconscience/lists/cogneuro/members&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  781. &lt;br /&gt;
  782. &lt;br /&gt;
  783. Created by: Jon Simons (@js_simons), Russ Poldrack (@russpoldrack), Ed Yong (@edyong209), with helpful contributions from Jonathan Peelle (@jpeelle), Dan Lurie (@danjlurie), Michael Waskom (@michaelwaskom), Beau Sievers (@beausievers), and others.&lt;br /&gt;
  784. &lt;br /&gt;
  785. Please leave comments and suggestions for improvements below (bearing in mind the guide&#39;s intended audience)&lt;br /&gt;
  786. &lt;br /&gt;
  787. Updated Dec 2014. </description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2014/12/journalists-guide-to-fmri-papers.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnyvvIYeb5GDJJT0bIE0zKAVsdC3ooXIdwFIG6vcFyRsjT9gzhWlfTQdWGnGl7zKrXvrPz_RKQ9a1ju-BTNQ_47R6DAMeO0E76lCcmCPgp7N_5gwGQD9bwthrKdZKQHXBMTHrWzlM11nA/s72-c/fmri.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-18269870859117078</guid><pubDate>Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:27:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:15:35.564+01:00</atom:updated><title>(Appropriately powered) replication&#39;s what you need</title><description>&lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  788. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  789. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAP_FeO87BhPAZ5YsuK3EU-U9sdNzIWA39-cl_sjMHl7-xcILRzGa5T7Khd56gjWj-IYt0kMumIyOY25zdHB2C_8I4mOvE4cVeUsFiMP3Dhmfb1R_-O9QJPw6uz6-g5c-LRmEGCD3LqmE/s1600/Power.png&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAP_FeO87BhPAZ5YsuK3EU-U9sdNzIWA39-cl_sjMHl7-xcILRzGa5T7Khd56gjWj-IYt0kMumIyOY25zdHB2C_8I4mOvE4cVeUsFiMP3Dhmfb1R_-O9QJPw6uz6-g5c-LRmEGCD3LqmE/s320/Power.png&quot; width=&quot;206&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  790. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: xx-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;helvetica&amp;quot; , sans-serif;&quot;&gt;Thanks to Mark Stokes for picture&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  791. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  792. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;sans-serif&amp;quot;;&quot;&gt;There has been some
  793. truly excellent coverage this morning of the very important paper published
  794. today by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bris.ac.uk/social-community-medicine/people/katherine-s-button/index.html&quot;&gt;Kate Button&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bristol.ac.uk/expsych/people/marcus-r-munafo/index.html&quot;&gt;Marcus Munafo&lt;/a&gt; and colleagues in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nrn3475.html&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Nature Reviews Neuroscience&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, entitled “Power failure: why small sample size undermines the
  795. reliability of neuroscience”.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  796. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  797. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  798. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  799. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;sans-serif&amp;quot;;&quot;&gt;
  800. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/10/neuroscience-cannae-do-it-capn-it-doesnt-have-the-power/?preview=true&quot;&gt;Ed Yong&lt;/a&gt; has
  801. written a fantastic piece on the issues raised by the realisation that insufficient
  802. statistical power plagues much neuroscience research, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/serious-power-failure-threatens-entire.html&quot;&gt;Christian Jarrett&lt;/a&gt; has
  803. an equally good article on the implications of these issues for the field.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  804. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  805. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  806. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  807. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;sans-serif&amp;quot;;&quot;&gt;As I commented in Ed
  808. Yong’s article, I think this is a landmark paper.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;It&#39;s very good to see these issues receiving
  809. exposure in such a widely-read and highly-respected journal - I think it says a
  810. lot for the willingness of the neuroscience field to consider and hopefully
  811. tackle these problems, which are being identified in so many branches of
  812. science.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  813. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  814. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  815. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  816. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;sans-serif&amp;quot;;&quot;&gt;I really like the
  817. section of the paper focusing on the fact that the issues of power failure are
  818. a particular problem for replication attempts, which I think is a point not
  819. many people are conscious of.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;You&#39;ll
  820. often see an experiment&#39;s sample size justified on the basis of an argument
  821. like &quot;well, that number is what&#39;s used in previous studies&quot;. &lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;Button et al demonstrate that such a
  822. justification is unlikely to be sufficient.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;
  823. &lt;/span&gt;To be adequately powered, replications need a larger sample size than
  824. the original study they’re seeking to replicate.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;There are very few replication studies in the
  825. literature that fulfil this criterion.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  826. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  827. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  828. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  829. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;sans-serif&amp;quot;;&quot;&gt;I feel deep down that
  830. greater emphasis on replication is the answer to a lot of the current issues
  831. facing the field, but the points raised by Button et al are key issues that researchers
  832. in the field need to take account of.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  833. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  834. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  835. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  836. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;sans-serif&amp;quot;;&quot;&gt;The good thing is that I
  837. think the field is taking notice of papers such as this one, and is making
  838. progress towards developing more robust methodological principles.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; Button et al.&#39;s &lt;/span&gt;paper, like the recent &lt;i&gt;Nature
  839. Neuroscience&lt;/i&gt; papers by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19396166&quot;&gt;Kriegeskorte et al&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21878926&quot;&gt;Nieuwenhuis et al&lt;/a&gt;, plus the
  840. recent moves by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/initiative-on-research-replication.html&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Psychological Science&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;i&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23347556&quot;&gt;Cortex&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, and other journals to promote the use of
  841. more reliable methodology, are all excellent contributions to that progress.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;I think it&#39;s a sign of a healthy, thriving
  842. scientific discipline that these methods developments are being published in
  843. such prominent flagship journals.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;It
  844. gives me confidence about the future of the field.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  845. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  846. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;helvetica&amp;quot; , sans-serif;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  847. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;helvetica&amp;quot; , sans-serif;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;Update &lt;/b&gt;10/4/13, 3pm: I&#39;m grateful to Paul Fletcher for highlighting that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158213000090&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;NeuroImage: Clinical&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt; has created a new section to help address concerns about the lack of replication in clinical neuroimaging.&amp;nbsp; Very happy to publicise any other similar moves to improve things.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  848. &lt;br /&gt;
  849. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;helvetica&amp;quot; , sans-serif;&quot;&gt;References:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  850. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;&quot;&gt;
  851. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;helvetica&amp;quot; , sans-serif;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  852. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;helvetica&amp;quot; , sans-serif;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Nature+Reviews+Neuroscience&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1038%2Fnrn3475&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=Power+failure%3A+why+small+sample+size+undermines+the+reliability+of+neuroscience&amp;amp;rft.issn=1471-003X&amp;amp;rft.date=2013&amp;amp;rft.volume=&amp;amp;rft.issue=&amp;amp;rft.spage=&amp;amp;rft.epage=&amp;amp;rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Fdoifinder%2F10.1038%2Fnrn3475&amp;amp;rft.au=Button%2C+K.&amp;amp;rft.au=Ioannidis%2C+J.&amp;amp;rft.au=Mokrysz%2C+C.&amp;amp;rft.au=Nosek%2C+B.&amp;amp;rft.au=Flint%2C+J.&amp;amp;rft.au=Robinson%2C+E.&amp;amp;rft.au=Munaf%C3%B2%2C+M.&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Button, K., Ioannidis, J., Mokrysz, C., Nosek, B., Flint, J., Robinson, E., &amp;amp; Munafò, M. (2013). Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Nature Reviews Neuroscience&lt;/span&gt; DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nrn3475&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;10.1038/nrn3475&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  853. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;helvetica&amp;quot; , sans-serif;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Cortex&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1016%2Fj.cortex.2012.12.016&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=Registered+Reports%3A+A+new+publishing+initiative+at%C2%A0Cortex&amp;amp;rft.issn=00109452&amp;amp;rft.date=2013&amp;amp;rft.volume=49&amp;amp;rft.issue=3&amp;amp;rft.spage=609&amp;amp;rft.epage=610&amp;amp;rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0010945212003735&amp;amp;rft.au=Chambers%2C+C.&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Chambers, C. (2013). Registered Reports: A new publishing initiative at Cortex &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Cortex, 49&lt;/span&gt; (3), 609-610 DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2012.12.016&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.cortex.2012.12.016&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  854. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;helvetica&amp;quot; , sans-serif;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Nature+Neuroscience&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1038%2Fnn.2303&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=Circular+analysis+in+systems+neuroscience%3A+the+dangers+of+double+dipping&amp;amp;rft.issn=1097-6256&amp;amp;rft.date=2009&amp;amp;rft.volume=12&amp;amp;rft.issue=5&amp;amp;rft.spage=535&amp;amp;rft.epage=540&amp;amp;rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Fdoifinder%2F10.1038%2Fnn.2303&amp;amp;rft.au=Kriegeskorte%2C+N.&amp;amp;rft.au=Simmons%2C+W.&amp;amp;rft.au=Bellgowan%2C+P.&amp;amp;rft.au=Baker%2C+C.&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Kriegeskorte, N., Simmons, W., Bellgowan, P., &amp;amp; Baker, C. (2009). Circular analysis in systems neuroscience: the dangers of double dipping &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Nature Neuroscience, 12&lt;/span&gt; (5), 535-540 DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.2303&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;10.1038/nn.2303&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  855. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: &amp;quot;arial&amp;quot; , &amp;quot;helvetica&amp;quot; , sans-serif;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Nature+Neuroscience&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1038%2Fnn.2886&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=Erroneous+analyses+of+interactions+in+neuroscience%3A+a+problem+of+significance&amp;amp;rft.issn=1097-6256&amp;amp;rft.date=2011&amp;amp;rft.volume=14&amp;amp;rft.issue=9&amp;amp;rft.spage=1105&amp;amp;rft.epage=1107&amp;amp;rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Fdoifinder%2F10.1038%2Fnn.2886&amp;amp;rft.au=Nieuwenhuis%2C+S.&amp;amp;rft.au=Forstmann%2C+B.&amp;amp;rft.au=Wagenmakers%2C+E.&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Nieuwenhuis, S., Forstmann, B., &amp;amp; Wagenmakers, E. (2011). Erroneous analyses of interactions in neuroscience: a problem of significance &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Nature Neuroscience, 14&lt;/span&gt; (9), 1105-1107 DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.2886&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;10.1038/nn.2886&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  856.  
  857. &lt;br /&gt;
  858. &lt;br /&gt;</description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2013/04/appropriately-powered-replications-what.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAP_FeO87BhPAZ5YsuK3EU-U9sdNzIWA39-cl_sjMHl7-xcILRzGa5T7Khd56gjWj-IYt0kMumIyOY25zdHB2C_8I4mOvE4cVeUsFiMP3Dhmfb1R_-O9QJPw6uz6-g5c-LRmEGCD3LqmE/s72-c/Power.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>6</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-2382879933729722533</guid><pubDate>Wed, 30 May 2012 14:10:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:15:46.555+01:00</atom:updated><title>Forget the hype: how close are we to a &#39;forgetting pill&#39;?</title><description>&lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  859. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  860. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaTE0U2d1pyVCMhzpO5Q6CujIxRGmehW6V9D2xmQIpr7K2wWHegE3IgL2RoNB-fAZrWUFbgmo3BuPsAJZd5ad5wwbuCPjiKhOL1LajVWsl_qaqugFiNSN3DZ1R57fzrK_DgZ0VD7n3bg0/s1600/Men_in_Black.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaTE0U2d1pyVCMhzpO5Q6CujIxRGmehW6V9D2xmQIpr7K2wWHegE3IgL2RoNB-fAZrWUFbgmo3BuPsAJZd5ad5wwbuCPjiKhOL1LajVWsl_qaqugFiNSN3DZ1R57fzrK_DgZ0VD7n3bg0/s1600/Men_in_Black.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  861. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: xx-small;&quot;&gt;The neuralyzer from &lt;i&gt;Men in Black&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  862. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  863. I&#39;ve been a little disconcerted by
  864. the recent appearance in the popular science press of a number of articles
  865. seeming to claim that we&#39;re just around the corner from being able to erase
  866. painful or traumatic memories.&amp;nbsp; For example:&lt;/div&gt;
  867. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  868. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  869. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  870. Wired: &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/02/ff_forgettingpill/&quot;&gt;The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt; by Jonah Lehrer&lt;/div&gt;
  871. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;line-height: 50%;&quot;&gt;
  872. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  873. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  874. Scientific American: &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=erasing-painful-memories&quot;&gt;Erasing Painful Memories: Drug and Behavioral Therapies Will Help Us Forget Toxic Thoughts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt; by Jerry Adler&lt;/div&gt;
  875. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  876. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  877. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  878. The articles are beautifully
  879. written, full of interesting and thought-provoking questions, and obviously the
  880. product of a great deal of work.&amp;nbsp; I think
  881. good science writing is really important and greatly value the work that writers
  882. like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jonahlehrer.com/&quot;&gt;Jonah Lehrer&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2007/12/01/a-big-dose-of-skepticism.html&quot;&gt;Jerry Adler&lt;/a&gt; do. However, I can&#39;t understand how these very
  883. clever, usually marvellous writers make the huge leap in this instance from the
  884. (albeit in themselves fascinating) findings in animal models to the putative selective
  885. erasure of the complex, multidimensional, highly interconnected ensemble of
  886. neural representations that constitutes a single human autobiographical memory.&lt;/div&gt;
  887. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  888. &lt;br /&gt;
  889. This matters because many thousands
  890. of people suffer enormous anguish every day with the dreadful effects of
  891. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptsd&quot;&gt;post-traumatic stress&lt;/a&gt; or related conditions, and may have their hopes raised
  892. that a &quot;forgetting pill&quot; is just around the corner.&amp;nbsp; It seems to me that this hype isn&#39;t justified
  893. based on current knowledge, although as this isn’t my area of specialist
  894. expertise, maybe I’m missing something.&amp;nbsp;
  895. I had an interesting email conversation with Jonah Lehrer in which he was characteristically open to a number of my (hopefully constructive) criticisms.&amp;nbsp; However, to find out whether I might have misunderstood the science, I asked someone who &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; an expert in this
  896. area, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/directory/profile.php?alm46&quot;&gt;Dr Amy Milton&lt;/a&gt; from the University of Cambridge, to set things straight.&amp;nbsp; Here’s her view:&lt;/div&gt;
  897. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  898. &lt;/div&gt;
  899. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  900. &lt;br /&gt;
  901. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  902. &lt;br /&gt;
  903. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  904. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCpgVyk92lVSjjzaJIGI2tv8Xyh5bDoB8dmt59fmy175J66Da5yzD5xEg0p_2QIFPhrTTZwymjrwUle_a2OFajYSFc_04XRD9KqW71R_obAmVE7vGsb0yeOLpludsZldcsJ7mlIE0lIqs/s1600/amy.jpeg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCpgVyk92lVSjjzaJIGI2tv8Xyh5bDoB8dmt59fmy175J66Da5yzD5xEg0p_2QIFPhrTTZwymjrwUle_a2OFajYSFc_04XRD9KqW71R_obAmVE7vGsb0yeOLpludsZldcsJ7mlIE0lIqs/s200/amy.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;158&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  905. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: xx-small;&quot;&gt;Dr Amy Milton&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  906. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  907. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  908. When I describe &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/directory/profile.php?alm46&quot;&gt;my research&lt;/a&gt;
  909. to anyone, the conversation invariably ends up leading to the film, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Sunshine_of_the_Spotless_Mind&quot;&gt;“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”&lt;/a&gt;. My research – focused on the neurochemical
  910. mechanisms by which memories persist in the brain and can be modified after
  911. their initial storage – has been developed not only to understand fundamentally
  912. how memory works, but also with the intention to translate this understanding
  913. into new forms of treatment for psychiatric disorders like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptsd&quot;&gt;post-traumatic stress disorder&lt;/a&gt; (PTSD) and drug addiction. The hypothesis itself is simple: we
  914. know that maladaptive memories (cue-fear memories in PTSD, cue-drug memories in
  915. addiction) contribute to the persistence of these disorders, and enhance the
  916. risk of relapse following a symptom-free period. So, if we can weaken or erase these
  917. maladaptive memories, can we reduce the risk of relapse? This type of
  918. pharmaceutically-enhanced behavioural therapy has the potential to
  919. revolutionise treatment of psychiatric disorders, and it is often reported
  920. excitedly by the media in terms of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/02/ff_forgettingpill/all/1&quot;&gt;‘forgetting pills’&lt;/a&gt;.
  921. But to what extent is the hype supported by the research?&lt;/div&gt;
  922. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  923. &lt;br /&gt;
  924. The
  925. first point to consider is that memory is not a single entity; even putting
  926. aside the differences between short- and long-term memory, long-term memory can
  927. itself be subdivided. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicit_memory&quot;&gt;‘Explicit’ or ‘declarative’ memories&lt;/a&gt;, such as for events
  928. (episodic) and facts (semantic) are consciously remembered and their content
  929. can be articulated, unlike &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_memory&quot;&gt;‘implicit’ or ‘non-declarative’ memories&lt;/a&gt;, such as emotional
  930. or procedural memories, which cannot. Of course, for any single event, an
  931. individual might form multiple memories; for example, an episodic memory of
  932. having a car accident, and an implicit emotional memory that leads to fear of getting
  933. into a car. The fact that memories form independently, depending upon different
  934. brain structures, may also mean that they can be modified independently. Thus,
  935. a ‘forgetting pill’ would not necessarily cause amnesia for all memories of an
  936. experience.&lt;br /&gt;
  937. &lt;br /&gt;
  938. Secondly, it is
  939. important to consider whether our putative ‘forgetting pill’ would be designed
  940. to prevent the initial storage of the memory in the brain (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation&quot;&gt;the ‘consolidation’ process&lt;/a&gt;) or its persistence: this is likely to be achieved through targeting
  941. the process of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation#Reconsolidation&quot;&gt;‘reconsolidation’&lt;/a&gt;. Briefly, when a memory is recalled under
  942. certain behavioural conditions (‘reactivated’), it returns to a state where it
  943. can be updated before restabilising in its new form, overwriting the original
  944. memory. Thus, by giving amnestic agents at reactivation, it may be possible to
  945. weaken or erase old, well-established memories. Though there has been work
  946. investigating whether disrupting memory consolidation might be used to treat
  947. PTSD, these types of treatment are faced with the difficult task of racing the closing
  948. ‘consolidation window’. Memories take only a few hours to form within the
  949. brain, and are fully consolidated within 24 hours; thus, a ‘forgetting pill’
  950. that aimed to block the consolidation of cue-fear memories in PTSD would have
  951. to be taken shortly after a traumatic event. This raises both practical and
  952. ethical issues, particularly as the individual may be undergoing other medical
  953. treatment, and would have to give informed consent in an acutely traumatised
  954. state. Targeting reconsolidation may avoid these issues; as even old,
  955. well-established memories can have their reconsolidation disrupted, this means
  956. that the patient can be referred for treatment only if they go on to develop
  957. the disorder (and not all individuals exposed to a traumatic event do develop
  958. PTSD). Therapies based on the disruption of reconsolidation would also
  959. potentially allow treatment of disorders like drug addiction, which have a less
  960. clearly defined onset than many PTSD cases. &lt;/div&gt;
  961. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  962. &lt;br /&gt;
  963. Many studies using animal models of both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21736888&quot;&gt;PTSD&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22285426&quot;&gt;drug addiction&lt;/a&gt;
  964. have shown that it is possible to disrupt the reconsolidation of both cue-fear
  965. and cue-drug memories, and so to reduce anxiety and relapse risk respectively. &amp;nbsp;However, while emotional memories can be
  966. readily assessed in animals, it is more difficult to assess episodic-like
  967. memories. Declarative memory can be more easily assessed in human studies, such
  968. as those conducted with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17588604&quot;&gt;PTSD patients&lt;/a&gt;.
  969. However, although these studies appear to have disrupted the reconsolidation of
  970. the emotional cue-fear memory, the effects on the declarative memory of the
  971. trauma were not reported. A study
  972. conducted with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19219038&quot;&gt;healthy individuals who had been trained to fear spider pictures&lt;/a&gt;
  973. may be informative, however. When the spider-fear memory was retrieved in
  974. conjunction with the amnestic agent (the non-selective beta-blocker, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propranolol&quot;&gt;propranolol&lt;/a&gt;), the subjects showed a reduction in
  975. physiological anxiety measures, but still maintained the declarative knowledge
  976. that the spider picture had previously been paired with an aversive shock.
  977. Thus, in these studies, it seems that only the reconsolidation of the emotional
  978. memory, not the declarative memory, was disrupted. This is not to say that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7067958908136086797&quot; name=&quot;_GoBack&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;episodic memory does not reconsolidate, only that its
  979. reconsolidation was not affected using this procedure. Of course, this may not
  980. matter; from a therapeutic perspective, it may be that weakening the
  981. maladaptive emotional memories that contribute to PTSD and addiction is
  982. sufficient to allow the patient to live a normal life and, indeed, may leave
  983. the patient population in a state similar to those who do not go on to develop
  984. the disorders despite similar experiences.&lt;/div&gt;
  985. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  986. &lt;br /&gt;
  987. In
  988. my opinion, memory-disrupting treatments have real potential to enhance
  989. clinical outcomes when administered alongside carefully tailored behavioural
  990. therapy. There is strong evidence that pharmaceutical treatment, given with memory
  991. reactivation, can disrupt the maladaptive emotional memory that contributes to
  992. persistent anxiety in PTSD patient populations. There is encouraging evidence
  993. from animal models of drug addiction that similar sorts of combined behavioural
  994. and pharmaceutical therapy could be used to disrupt cue-drug memories, reducing
  995. the risk of relapse in the long term. It is also safe to say that &lt;a href=&quot;http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/reconstructive-memory-confabulating-the-past-simulating-the-future/&quot;&gt;episodic memories can be interfered with at memory retrieval&lt;/a&gt;, suggesting that they do reconsolidate,
  996. but to date there is little evidence that these event memories can be ‘erased’
  997. in a human population. So, the answer to how close we are to a ‘forgetting
  998. pill’: ultimately, it depends upon what you are trying to forget.&lt;br /&gt;
  999. &lt;br /&gt;
  1000. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;References&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1001. &lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Journal+of+psychiatric+research&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F17588604&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=Effect+of+post-retrieval+propranolol+on+psychophysiologic+responding+during+subsequent+script-driven+traumatic+imagery+in+post-traumatic+stress+disorder.&amp;amp;rft.issn=0022-3956&amp;amp;rft.date=2008&amp;amp;rft.volume=42&amp;amp;rft.issue=6&amp;amp;rft.spage=503&amp;amp;rft.epage=6&amp;amp;rft.artnum=&amp;amp;rft.au=Brunet+A&amp;amp;rft.au=Orr+SP&amp;amp;rft.au=Tremblay+J&amp;amp;rft.au=Robertson+K&amp;amp;rft.au=Nader+K&amp;amp;rft.au=Pitman+RK&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Brunet A, Orr SP, Tremblay J, Robertson K, Nader K, &amp;amp; Pitman RK (2008). Effect of post-retrieval propranolol on psychophysiologic responding during subsequent script-driven traumatic imagery in post-traumatic stress disorder. &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Journal of psychiatric research, 42&lt;/span&gt; (6), 503-6 PMID: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17588604&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;17588604&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  1002. &lt;br /&gt;
  1003. &lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Nature+Neuroscience&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F19219038&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=Beyond+extinction%3A+erasing+human+fear+responses+and+preventing+the+return+of+fear.&amp;amp;rft.issn=1097-6256&amp;amp;rft.date=2009&amp;amp;rft.volume=12&amp;amp;rft.issue=3&amp;amp;rft.spage=256&amp;amp;rft.epage=8&amp;amp;rft.artnum=&amp;amp;rft.au=Kindt+M&amp;amp;rft.au=Soeter+M&amp;amp;rft.au=Vervliet+B&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Kindt M, Soeter M, &amp;amp; Vervliet B (2009). Beyond extinction: erasing human fear responses and preventing the return of fear. &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Nature Neuroscience, 12&lt;/span&gt; (3), 256-8 PMID: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19219038&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;19219038&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  1004. &lt;br /&gt;
  1005. &lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Neuroscience+and+biobehavioral+reviews&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F22285426&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=The+persistence+of+maladaptive+memory%3A+addiction%2C+drug+memories+and+anti-relapse+treatments.&amp;amp;rft.issn=0149-7634&amp;amp;rft.date=2012&amp;amp;rft.volume=36&amp;amp;rft.issue=4&amp;amp;rft.spage=1119&amp;amp;rft.epage=39&amp;amp;rft.artnum=&amp;amp;rft.au=Milton+AL&amp;amp;rft.au=Everitt+BJ&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Milton AL, &amp;amp; Everitt BJ (2012). The persistence of maladaptive memory: addiction, drug memories and anti-relapse treatments. &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 36&lt;/span&gt; (4), 1119-39 PMID: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22285426&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;22285426&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  1006. &lt;br /&gt;
  1007. &lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Neuropharmacology&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F21736888&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=Pharmacological+treatment+of+PTSD+-+established+and+new+approaches.&amp;amp;rft.issn=0028-3908&amp;amp;rft.date=2012&amp;amp;rft.volume=62&amp;amp;rft.issue=2&amp;amp;rft.spage=617&amp;amp;rft.epage=27&amp;amp;rft.artnum=&amp;amp;rft.au=Steckler+T&amp;amp;rft.au=Risbrough+V&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Steckler T, &amp;amp; Risbrough V (2012). Pharmacological treatment of PTSD - established and new approaches. &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Neuropharmacology, 62&lt;/span&gt; (2), 617-27 PMID: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21736888&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;21736888&lt;/a&gt;
  1008. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1009. </description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2012/05/forget-hype-how-close-are-we-to.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaTE0U2d1pyVCMhzpO5Q6CujIxRGmehW6V9D2xmQIpr7K2wWHegE3IgL2RoNB-fAZrWUFbgmo3BuPsAJZd5ad5wwbuCPjiKhOL1LajVWsl_qaqugFiNSN3DZ1R57fzrK_DgZ0VD7n3bg0/s72-c/Men_in_Black.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>9</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-849650234794734477</guid><pubDate>Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:48:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:15:57.054+01:00</atom:updated><title>Elements of episodic memory</title><description>&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1010. &lt;/div&gt;
  1011. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: right;&quot;&gt;
  1012. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLx0r9fnUMkOufYHTDxpv0HoAoYPRKeFw0OWF1G7erlxfJSU0rsLJhNxks0DfV40InlxohdC4xIY0zzn_XAfy5xkT0GQvSceCM3YUuzYKyw2vOXCU_xqc3S1RMqSfTnLkpMcM2ftJvebQ/s1600/wod_brain-1.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLx0r9fnUMkOufYHTDxpv0HoAoYPRKeFw0OWF1G7erlxfJSU0rsLJhNxks0DfV40InlxohdC4xIY0zzn_XAfy5xkT0GQvSceCM3YUuzYKyw2vOXCU_xqc3S1RMqSfTnLkpMcM2ftJvebQ/s200/wod_brain-1.jpg&quot; width=&quot;199&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1013. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1014. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Keen students of memory
  1015. will recognise that the title of this post is an homage to the seminal book of
  1016. the same title by the great memory researcher, &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.baycrest.org/etulving&quot;&gt;Endel Tulving&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; To my mind, Tulving’s &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0198521251&quot;&gt;Elements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt; is one of the
  1017. finest books that has been written about memory, along with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James&quot;&gt;William James&lt;/a&gt;’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0486203816&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Principles of Psychology&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Edsweb/lab.html&quot;&gt;Dan Schacter&lt;/a&gt;’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0465075525&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Searching for Memory&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. (It’s quite possible
  1018. that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charlesfernyhough.com/&quot;&gt;Charles Fernyhough&lt;/a&gt;’s forthcoming &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/184668448X&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Pieces of Light&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt; may soon join that
  1019. list).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1020. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1021. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1022. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1023. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;In Tulving’s book, he describes
  1024. how episodic memories of experienced events are unlikely to be stored as fixed,
  1025. separate, discrete “memory traces”, but rather as “bundles” of features.&amp;nbsp; It makes sense, given the enormous number of
  1026. events we may have to remember over a lifetime, that our brains would have
  1027. evolved a more efficient strategy than simply storing each event separately, as
  1028. a bound trace comprising all its different components.&amp;nbsp; The redundancy would be huge. &amp;nbsp;Instead, it appears that we store single representations
  1029. of features distributed around the brain which are then shared between different
  1030. event memories via associative networks. Tulving acknowledges that “we have no
  1031. idea about the number and identity of features that the human mind or its
  1032. memory system has at its disposal” (p. 161).&amp;nbsp;
  1033. However, he speculates that “the features of the mind correspond to
  1034. discriminable differences in our perceptual environment and to the categories
  1035. and the concepts that the language we use imposes on the world.” (ibid)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1036. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;
  1037.  
  1038.  
  1039.  
  1040. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1041. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1042. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1043. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Tulving’s conception of
  1044. memories as comprising associations between visual, auditory, and other sensory
  1045. features of events, as well as representations of thoughts and feelings we may
  1046. have had when experiencing them, has been hugely influential.&amp;nbsp; Among the many reasons for this has been its
  1047. ability to explain aspects of forgetting.&amp;nbsp;
  1048. One of the principal causes of forgetting from episodic memory appears
  1049. to be similarity between the features comprising different events.&amp;nbsp; Our memories are very susceptible to
  1050. interference, either from previously-encoded events (so-called “proactive”
  1051. interference) or from subsequent events disrupting earlier memories (“retroactive”
  1052. interference).&amp;nbsp; The extent to which this
  1053. interference leads us to confuse different events depends, in large part, on how
  1054. much the features of those events overlap, or are similar.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1055. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1056. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1057. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1058. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;A simple but striking
  1059. way in which this can be demonstrated is the “release from proactive
  1060. interference” effect, described by Delos Wickens.&amp;nbsp; If participants are asked to remember a
  1061. string of consonants, their memory diminishes as the list grows longer because
  1062. of interference between the items.&amp;nbsp;
  1063. However, if the task involves remembering consonants for the first few
  1064. trials and then switches to numbers, memory performance reverts to almost
  1065. perfect levels.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1066. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1067. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1068. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  1069. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir6i2NbLoJS6EfqH-I1ZS75je-gh2ewqokabcBrwfM7ZSxYQ9iuBN-V9mmzgy8_SnyZTh_851ELwiU8avkVl9-8td_4rcj7Fijznc0OtJkxG_LKc8DSRphEcf2zvr7mQWgu0P3zkUe_AY/s1600/releasePI.png&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;185&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir6i2NbLoJS6EfqH-I1ZS75je-gh2ewqokabcBrwfM7ZSxYQ9iuBN-V9mmzgy8_SnyZTh_851ELwiU8avkVl9-8td_4rcj7Fijznc0OtJkxG_LKc8DSRphEcf2zvr7mQWgu0P3zkUe_AY/s200/releasePI.png&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1070. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;The release from proactive interference effect&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1071. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  1072. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1073. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;The release from
  1074. proactive interference effect can be generalised to many other sensory features
  1075. of events, and even to more abstract features such as meaning.&amp;nbsp; For example, a similar effect is observed if
  1076. the first few trials comprise vegetables and then the stimuli switch to fruit (e.g.,
  1077. “spinach”, “beans”, “potato”, “orange”, ...)&amp;nbsp;
  1078. A more recent experiment even found that the effect could be generalised
  1079. to TV news bulletins.&amp;nbsp; Gunter and
  1080. colleagues asked participants to watch a series of TV news items before asking
  1081. them to recall the content of the stories they had just watched.&amp;nbsp; If the news stories all related to home news
  1082. or all to foreign news, the typical effect of proactive interference was
  1083. observed.&amp;nbsp; However, if the fourth news item
  1084. was a different topic to the others (home news followed by world affairs, for
  1085. example), release from proactive interference occurred (shown by the dashed line in the figure to the right).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1086. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1087. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1088. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1089. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Despite the prevalence
  1090. of such interference effects, typically we’re actually quite good at
  1091. discriminating similar events from one another.&amp;nbsp;
  1092. Even when tasks are specifically designed to manipulate the extent to which
  1093. the features of different events may overlap, people are often able to remember
  1094. each experience pretty well, without getting them confused.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1095. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1096. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1097. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1098. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1099. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1100. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1101. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1102. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7tD0QY_FlUXsOn56J8rgFrgnE7OWTiknsSc-5Vj9cJEhyphenhyphenCBKFf2Mn_mSEQMrV-gfKa7Iakjc8wTz6nfyG4YgCwU-VuIviQSS90PSprVgXUJU1ssWMZE9JQqgB5cRdJ5N-yLns8KX_bEg/s1600/ScreenHunter_01+Jan.+11+11.44.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;156&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7tD0QY_FlUXsOn56J8rgFrgnE7OWTiknsSc-5Vj9cJEhyphenhyphenCBKFf2Mn_mSEQMrV-gfKa7Iakjc8wTz6nfyG4YgCwU-VuIviQSS90PSprVgXUJU1ssWMZE9JQqgB5cRdJ5N-yLns8KX_bEg/s200/ScreenHunter_01+Jan.+11+11.44.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;It is this fascinating ability that we are exploring with our online
  1103. memory experiment, in collaboration with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/memorystudy&quot;&gt;Guardian&lt;/a&gt;, which we have launched
  1104. this week.&amp;nbsp; We are hoping that thousands
  1105. of people will take part, and make this the biggest memory experiment ever.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1106. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1107. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1108. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1109. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Anybody can participate
  1110. by clicking &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/memorystudy&quot;&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/memorystudy&lt;/a&gt; to go to the Guardian
  1111. experiment website and test their memory abilities for free from the comfort of
  1112. their own homes.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1113. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1114. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1115. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1116. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Please do take part!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1117. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1118. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1119. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1120. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;When the data are in, I’ll
  1121. report back on what exactly the experiment was about, and what we found.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1122. &lt;br /&gt;
  1123. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1124. &lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Journal+of+Experimental+Psychology%3A+Human+Learning+%26+Memory&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1037%2F0278-7393.7.6.480&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=Proactive+interference+effects+with+television+news+items%3A+Further+evidence.&amp;amp;rft.issn=0096-1515&amp;amp;rft.date=1981&amp;amp;rft.volume=7&amp;amp;rft.issue=6&amp;amp;rft.spage=480&amp;amp;rft.epage=487&amp;amp;rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent.apa.org%2Fjournals%2Fxlm%2F7%2F6%2F480&amp;amp;rft.au=Gunter%2C+B.&amp;amp;rft.au=Berry%2C+C.&amp;amp;rft.au=Clifford%2C+B.&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Psychology%2CNeuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience%2C+Cognitive+Psychology&quot;&gt;Gunter, B., Berry, C., &amp;amp; Clifford, B. (1981). Proactive interference effects with television news items: Further evidence. &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning &amp;amp; Memory, 7&lt;/span&gt; (6), 480-487 DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.7.6.480&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;10.1037/0278-7393.7.6.480&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  1125. &lt;br /&gt;
  1126. &lt;br /&gt;
  1127. &lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=Journal+of+Verbal+Learning+and+Verbal+Behavior&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1016%2FS0022-5371%2863%2980045-6&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=Proactive+inhibition+and+item+similarity+in+short-term+memory&amp;amp;rft.issn=00225371&amp;amp;rft.date=1963&amp;amp;rft.volume=2&amp;amp;rft.issue=5-6&amp;amp;rft.spage=440&amp;amp;rft.epage=445&amp;amp;rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0022537163800456&amp;amp;rft.au=WICKENS%2C+D.&amp;amp;rft.au=BORN%2C+D.&amp;amp;rft.au=ALLEN%2C+C.&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience%2CCognitive+Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Wickens, D., Born, D., &amp;amp; Allen, C. (1963). Proactive inhibition and item similarity in short-term memory &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 2&lt;/span&gt; (5-6), 440-445 DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371%2863%2980045-6&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;10.1016/S0022-5371(63)80045-6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2012/01/elements-of-episodic-memory.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLx0r9fnUMkOufYHTDxpv0HoAoYPRKeFw0OWF1G7erlxfJSU0rsLJhNxks0DfV40InlxohdC4xIY0zzn_XAfy5xkT0GQvSceCM3YUuzYKyw2vOXCU_xqc3S1RMqSfTnLkpMcM2ftJvebQ/s72-c/wod_brain-1.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-5521955346128085339</guid><pubDate>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:07:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:16:17.430+01:00</atom:updated><title>Why Jon Driver was an inspiration to me</title><description>&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1128. &lt;/div&gt;
  1129. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1130. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisgtvOg8PVTLyDzXhriehPIIm-mNdfLFo6OlSe67h1VTwngjIgCouVnjQ9mJ-0IHrjdk1meGVFIqGZg3e8nLqQq5nC8OmG1VBK6fWStti8AlTXkJN4M6wz5qtyJn1BH2ojbxyz5OS3UsE/s1600/jondriver.jpeg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisgtvOg8PVTLyDzXhriehPIIm-mNdfLFo6OlSe67h1VTwngjIgCouVnjQ9mJ-0IHrjdk1meGVFIqGZg3e8nLqQq5nC8OmG1VBK6fWStti8AlTXkJN4M6wz5qtyJn1BH2ojbxyz5OS3UsE/s200/jondriver.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Jon Driver studied Experimental
  1131. Psychology at Oxford before taking up a University Lectureship at Cambridge.&amp;nbsp; Within eight years of obtaining his DPhil
  1132. doctoral degree he was a Professor at Birkbeck, and from 1998 a Professor at
  1133. the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN), one of the world’s leading centres
  1134. of research into the brain basis of cognition.&amp;nbsp;
  1135. He was Director of the ICN from 2004-2009, before being one of a small
  1136. handful of researchers from all across the sciences to be selected for a prestigious
  1137. Royal Society Anniversary Research Professorship in 2009.&amp;nbsp; He died this week, tragically young at the
  1138. age of 49, leaving a young family.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1139. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1140. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1141. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1142. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;I never worked with Jon
  1143. directly, and wouldn’t say that I knew him particularly well.&amp;nbsp; More comprehensive and better informed
  1144. assessments of his life and career will no doubt be found elsewhere.&amp;nbsp; However, the times I did spend with Jon were
  1145. sufficient to leave a lasting impression on me, which is what I wanted to
  1146. reflect on in these brief thoughts.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1147. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;
  1148.  
  1149.  
  1150.  
  1151. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1152. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1153. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1154. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;First of all, he was an
  1155. exceptional scientist and an inspirational research leader.&amp;nbsp; He published somewhere approaching 300 papers
  1156. in all, including eight in &lt;i&gt;Nature &lt;/i&gt;and &lt;i&gt;Science &lt;/i&gt;during the first decade of his
  1157. career alone.&amp;nbsp; Much of his work,
  1158. particularly in those early years, was enormously influential, comprising the
  1159. building blocks on which fields such as visual attention, neglect, and
  1160. multisensory integration now stand.&amp;nbsp; It
  1161. was also often highly innovative, taking previously established ideas and
  1162. turning them on their head with ingeniously designed experiments.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1163. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1164. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1165. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1166. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Here’s just one example
  1167. of this that sticks with me as a non-expert in the field (apologies if real
  1168. experts think there are better examples).&amp;nbsp;
  1169. For a long time, it was thought that attention worked like a spotlight,
  1170. roving around the visual field and selecting regions of space that might be
  1171. worth processing further.&amp;nbsp; Evidence from
  1172. patients suffering from the disorder of visuospatial neglect was considered
  1173. strong evidence for this view.&amp;nbsp; Such
  1174. patients, who often have an injury to the right side of their brain, characteristically
  1175. fail to attend to the left side of space.&amp;nbsp;
  1176. For example, they may not notice an object placed to their left or, in
  1177. an example beloved of generations of undergraduates, may only eat the right
  1178. half of a plate of food.&amp;nbsp; Thus, the consensus
  1179. was that attention selects regions of space and attentional impairments are
  1180. likely to be spatial in nature.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1181. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1182. &lt;br /&gt;
  1183. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Jon’s insight (and, as
  1184. a non-expert, apologies if he may not have been alone in this) was that it’s surely
  1185. not that advantageous to attend to regions of space; what’s really useful is to
  1186. focus on the objects located in those regions.&amp;nbsp;
  1187. His brilliant way of demonstrating that was to take visual shapes that
  1188. had a clear principal axis (in other words, an obvious “right way up”) such as
  1189. those shown on the left of the figure below.&amp;nbsp; Because
  1190. the shapes differed on their left side, patients with neglect were unable to
  1191. judge whether they were the same or different.&amp;nbsp;
  1192. This was the standard finding, consistent with the idea of an impairment
  1193. attending to the left side of space.&amp;nbsp; Jon’s
  1194. brilliant innovation was to then present similar shapes tilted by 45 degrees (as on the right of the figure).&amp;nbsp; Now the shapes still differed
  1195. on their left side, but critically the difference was located on the right side
  1196. of the patient.&amp;nbsp; Strikingly, the patients
  1197. still failed to detect differences between the shapes, demonstrating that attention
  1198. must select objects and not just regions of space.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1199. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1200. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1201. &lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  1202. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9ClNqJSrBg6M6PrZaGBnV_IIWT8heE4fP7qBi9759zR53F5tPk-kwv3hyq27gSaKlO024IkVtCxcUS_OABvcUoJ0EacISA_EaMU6g_x67JfJwIcBz1wSK_LMi6QCaTRETOPyRir419As/s1600/ScreenHunter_01+Dec.+01+10.34.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;253&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9ClNqJSrBg6M6PrZaGBnV_IIWT8heE4fP7qBi9759zR53F5tPk-kwv3hyq27gSaKlO024IkVtCxcUS_OABvcUoJ0EacISA_EaMU6g_x67JfJwIcBz1wSK_LMi6QCaTRETOPyRir419As/s320/ScreenHunter_01+Dec.+01+10.34.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1203. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Examples of stimuli from Driver &amp;amp; Halligan (1991)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1204. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  1205. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1206. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1207. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1208. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;As inspirational as his
  1209. work was, the main influence Jon had on me was more personal.&amp;nbsp; I got to know him when I was the postdoc
  1210. representative on the ICN group leaders’ committee during the early part of his
  1211. Directorship, sometime around 2004.&amp;nbsp; He
  1212. was, to me at least, a slightly intimidating figure, even amongst the other scientific
  1213. giants who made up the group leaders at that time.&amp;nbsp; He tended to speak in quite short, decisive
  1214. tones during committee meetings, sometimes cutting people off if he disagreed with them, and
  1215. often failing to hide his displeasure at discussions that went on beyond what
  1216. he considered justified.&amp;nbsp; He had something
  1217. of a reputation as single-minded, determined, driving his people hard, and not
  1218. suffering fools gladly.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1219. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1220. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1221. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1222. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1223. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1224. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1225. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1226. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Thus, I was relatively
  1227. surprised when he and I spent quite a bit of time together early in his
  1228. Directorship on an in-depth consultation of the junior research staff at the
  1229. ICN.&amp;nbsp; Jon was very keen to find out what
  1230. these individuals, who in many departments can feel rather undervalued and
  1231. ignored, thought and felt about the way the place was run.&amp;nbsp; He worked hard and spent considerable time
  1232. finding ways to encourage the researchers to disclose the issues that bothered
  1233. them, and then took steps to address each of the concerns raised.&amp;nbsp; When I asked him why he was spending so much
  1234. time on this, he made a point that was very interesting to me.&amp;nbsp; He said that he believed everyone had the
  1235. potential for greatness in them, if they were only challenged hard enough and
  1236. then made to feel they had all the support and resources necessary to achieve.&amp;nbsp; Given that, as Director, he would only ever
  1237. benefit very indirectly from work that might be done by a postdoc in a research group other than his own, I was very struck by his determination on this issue.&amp;nbsp; I also know that when, some time after our
  1238. consultation initiative, junior researchers went to Jon with academic issues or
  1239. personal difficulties, he typically gave them considerable time and support in
  1240. helping them resolve their concerns.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1241. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1242. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1243. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1244. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;So Jon made an
  1245. impression on me in two ways: in his innovative and ingenious science, and in
  1246. his determination to see the greatness in others and to give them every
  1247. opportunity to achieve that greatness.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1248. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1249. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1250. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1251. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;He was an inspirational
  1252. figure and the field is significantly poorer for his passing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1253. </description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-jon-driver-was-inspiration-to-me.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisgtvOg8PVTLyDzXhriehPIIm-mNdfLFo6OlSe67h1VTwngjIgCouVnjQ9mJ-0IHrjdk1meGVFIqGZg3e8nLqQq5nC8OmG1VBK6fWStti8AlTXkJN4M6wz5qtyJn1BH2ojbxyz5OS3UsE/s72-c/jondriver.jpeg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-5022004288039264880</guid><pubDate>Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:06:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:16:27.250+01:00</atom:updated><title>The future of cognitive neuroscience</title><description>&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1254. &lt;/div&gt;
  1255. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1256. I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-there-cognitive-neuroscience-funding.html&quot;&gt;previously written&lt;/a&gt; about how I think that cognitive neuroscience as a scientific discipline (and I know that this is not a universally held view) has largely moved on from publishing studies demonstrating the neural correlates of “x”, where x might be behaviours as diverse as maternal love, urinating, or thinking about god.&amp;nbsp; There are still a few of these sorts of studies published each year, and because the public are, it seems, fascinated by stories about blobs on brains, the media portrayal of cognitive neuroscience tends to focus on such findings.&lt;/div&gt;
  1257. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1258. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1259. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  1260. &lt;/div&gt;
  1261. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  1262. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnyvvIYeb5GDJJT0bIE0zKAVsdC3ooXIdwFIG6vcFyRsjT9gzhWlfTQdWGnGl7zKrXvrPz_RKQ9a1ju-BTNQ_47R6DAMeO0E76lCcmCPgp7N_5gwGQD9bwthrKdZKQHXBMTHrWzlM11nA/s1600/fmri.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnyvvIYeb5GDJJT0bIE0zKAVsdC3ooXIdwFIG6vcFyRsjT9gzhWlfTQdWGnGl7zKrXvrPz_RKQ9a1ju-BTNQ_47R6DAMeO0E76lCcmCPgp7N_5gwGQD9bwthrKdZKQHXBMTHrWzlM11nA/s200/fmri.jpg&quot; width=&quot;150&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1263. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Some blobs on a brain&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1264. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  1265. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1266. This is all very entertaining if you like your science presented to you in a breakfast TV sofa sort of way.&amp;nbsp; However, the downside is that people who are not regular readers of the fMRI research literature think that the media portrayal of cognitive neuroscience is an accurate representation of the field.&amp;nbsp; In fact, I would argue, this is far from the case.&amp;nbsp; In my experience of working in cognitive neuroscience for the last decade or more, most researchers I have encountered are not interested in so-called “blobology”.&amp;nbsp; Instead, they work very hard each day carefully designing theoretically motivated experiments using cognitive neuroscience techniques to produce empirical data that can be used to differentiate between cognitive theories about how functions like memory, language, vision, attention, and so on, might operate.&lt;/div&gt;
  1267. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1268. &lt;/div&gt;
  1269. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1270. &lt;br /&gt;
  1271. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;However, the field of cognitive neuroscience is still relatively young.&amp;nbsp; As such, its accepted methodological and analytic conventions are still being worked out.&amp;nbsp; There are some statistical methods that have been used quite widely in the field, but which people are starting to identify as not being sufficiently rigorous for the kinds of interpretations that have been made.&amp;nbsp; The widespread use of these practices has happened mainly because new researchers have tended to learn fMRI methods informally through knowledge handed down by other researchers in the lab, who themselves will have learned from previous researchers, and so on, as there has been no standard textbook with a validated and generally accepted set of approved methods.&amp;nbsp; Recent articles highlighting issues such as that it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19396166&quot;&gt;usually inappropriate to use the same dataset for selection and selective analysis&lt;/a&gt;, and that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21878926&quot;&gt;interaction analyses are often conducted incorrectly&lt;/a&gt;, have served the very useful purpose of alerting neuroscience researchers to ways in which they might improve the rigour of their analytical methods.&lt;/div&gt;
  1272. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1273. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1274. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1275. As far as I’m concerned, these articles have been a thoroughly excellent contribution to the field, and a sign of a healthy, thriving scientific discipline that is willing to examine its core methods for possible weaknesses and, if they are found, to highlight them prominently.&amp;nbsp; While it might seem odd that a field would allow a paper that does little more than count statistical errors in other papers to be published in the field’s flagship journal, I think it is splendid.&amp;nbsp; Other fields should care as much about their time-honoured, adamantine practices.&lt;/div&gt;
  1276. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1277. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1278. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1279. It is a shame that some commentators see these articles as a sign that cognitive neuroscience is weak or inherently flawed or, as one prominent figure has described it, “the soft end of science... really just at the stamp-collecting stage. There aren&#39;t any real hypotheses, more just post hoc rationalisations.”&amp;nbsp; These commentators have a tendency to dismiss the field of cognitive neuroscience with the disdain they usually lavish on areas like homeopathy, chiropractics and other such mumbo jumbo.&amp;nbsp; I feel such views are narrow-minded, and reflect the personal prejudices of people who, if they really value science and wish to encourage those who seek to practice it with the most rigour they can, might like to reconsider their preconceptions.&lt;/div&gt;
  1280. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1281. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1282. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1283. I just today came across an article that, to me, is a prime example of the way in which cognitive neuroscience is constantly seeking to improve as an empirical discipline.&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irc.utexas.edu/poldrack.html&quot;&gt;Russ Poldrack&lt;/a&gt;, widely regarded as one the most sensible methodologists in the field, has a paper in press in the journal &lt;i&gt;NeuroImage&lt;/i&gt; entitled “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21856431&quot;&gt;The Future of fMRI in Cognitive Neuroscience&lt;/a&gt;”.&amp;nbsp; In the article, he outlines how over the next 20 years, the field needs to increase its methodological rigour, consistently use more robust methods for statistical inference, concentrate to a greater degree on identifying connectivity patterns across the brain rather than focusing on single regions, and make other improvements to the way in which theoretical inferences are drawn from neuroimaging data.&amp;nbsp; This is an important paper, and all cognitive neuroscientists should read it.&amp;nbsp; But I believe all commentators who are sceptical about cognitive neuroscience should also read it.&amp;nbsp; It may change their view.&lt;/div&gt;
  1284. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1285. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1286. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1287. As Poldrack concludes:&lt;/div&gt;
  1288. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1289. &lt;/div&gt;
  1290. &lt;blockquote&gt;
  1291. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1292. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;fMRI has advanced cognitive neuroscience research in a way that has been nothing short of revolutionary, though at the same time there are fundamental limits to the standard imaging approach that have not been widely appreciated. I am hopeful that 20 years from now, the history of fMRI in cognitive neuroscience will show that the field attacked this problem head on and developed new, robust methods for better understanding the relation between mental processes and brain function.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1293. &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  1294. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1295. &lt;/div&gt;
  1296. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;&quot;&gt;
  1297. I very much agree, and think that there is a good chance that Poldrack’s hope will be fulfilled.&lt;/div&gt;
  1298. &lt;br /&gt;
  1299. &lt;span style=&quot;float: left; padding: 5px;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchblogging.org/&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;ResearchBlogging.org&quot; src=&quot;http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png&quot; style=&quot;border: 0;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1300. &lt;span class=&quot;Z3988&quot; title=&quot;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;amp;rft.jtitle=NeuroImage&amp;amp;rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F21856431&amp;amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&amp;amp;rft.atitle=The+future+of+fMRI+in+cognitive+neuroscience.&amp;amp;rft.issn=1053-8119&amp;amp;rft.date=2011&amp;amp;rft.volume=&amp;amp;rft.issue=&amp;amp;rft.spage=&amp;amp;rft.epage=&amp;amp;rft.artnum=&amp;amp;rft.au=Poldrack+RA&amp;amp;rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Neuroscience&quot;&gt;Poldrack RA (2011). The future of fMRI in cognitive neuroscience. &lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;NeuroImage&lt;/span&gt; PMID: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21856431&quot; rev=&quot;review&quot;&gt;21856431&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1301. &lt;br /&gt;
  1302. &lt;br /&gt;
  1303. &lt;br /&gt;
  1304. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;(edited on 15/9/11 to include ResearchBlogging citation - thanks @deevybee!)&lt;/span&gt;</description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/09/future-of-cognitive-neuroscience.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnyvvIYeb5GDJJT0bIE0zKAVsdC3ooXIdwFIG6vcFyRsjT9gzhWlfTQdWGnGl7zKrXvrPz_RKQ9a1ju-BTNQ_47R6DAMeO0E76lCcmCPgp7N_5gwGQD9bwthrKdZKQHXBMTHrWzlM11nA/s72-c/fmri.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>11</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-2845999393353136885</guid><pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:26:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:16:36.461+01:00</atom:updated><title>Update on exercise and memory story</title><description>A few months ago, I wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/02/exercise-may-be-good-for-you-but-it.html&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; in response to a “pre-arranged” &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/01/25/1015950108.abstract?sid=c03a4c15-6cfe-4f50-bb8b-56daeac82cd0&quot;&gt;submission&lt;/a&gt; by Kirk Erickson and colleagues to &lt;i&gt;Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)&lt;/i&gt;, which purported to find evidence that moderate exercise leads to substantial improvements in memory.  The article in question received a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12325285&quot;&gt;great&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1352376/Dementia-Exercise-middle-age-improve-memory.html&quot;&gt;deal&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/31/study-older-adults-improve-memory-through-exercise/&quot;&gt;media&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/31/want-to-improve-your-memory-take-a-walk/&quot;&gt;attention&lt;/a&gt;, with big claims being made that older adults, who tend to be worried about declining memory abilities, might be able to hold off the effects of old age on memory with a simple exercise regime.&lt;br /&gt;
  1305. &lt;br /&gt;
  1306. Unfortunately, when the data were looked at more closely, it was clear that the picture was more complicated.  For one thing, although the experimental group that performed exercise for one year did show a 2.3% increase in memory score, a control group who did not perform the exercise showed a 3.7% increase over the same period.  In other words, the exercise group did not show any increase in memory performance relative to the control group.&lt;br /&gt;
  1307. &lt;br /&gt;
  1308. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;When I published this blog post, there was quite a bit of correspondence over Twitter, and Susan Krauss Whitbourne wrote a follow-up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201102/boosting-your-brain-s-potential-through-exercise&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that included an interesting interview with one of the authors of the experiment, defending the findings.&lt;br /&gt;
  1309. &lt;br /&gt;
  1310. Now, Robert Coen and colleagues have published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/14/1102593108.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;letter&lt;/a&gt; in the same journal as the original article, &lt;i&gt;PNAS&lt;/i&gt;, arguing strongly that the Erickson memory results are flawed.  As they say:&lt;br /&gt;
  1311. &lt;br /&gt;
  1312. &lt;blockquote style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1313. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Contrary to both the title and abstract, there is virtually no evidence in this article that exercise improved memory.  After 1 y there were no differences between the exercise and control groups.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  1314. &lt;br /&gt;
  1315. They go on to argue that “both the title and abstract are misleading and a major overstatement of the findings.”&lt;br /&gt;
  1316. &lt;br /&gt;
  1317. For those not used to the usually fairly genteel nature of published academic debate (as opposed, perhaps, to the occasionally more robust discussions during conferences), the wording used by Coen and colleagues in their letter is very strong and represents quite a rebuke.&lt;br /&gt;
  1318. &lt;br /&gt;
  1319. Erickson and colleagues have written a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/15/1103059108.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;reply&lt;/a&gt; to Coen’s letter in which, to all intents and purposes, they acknowledge the charges brought.  As they say: “We agree that the title and abstract could have been clearer on the lack of a difference between the groups in terms of spatial memory performance.”&lt;br /&gt;
  1320. &lt;br /&gt;
  1321. They go on to suggest the possibility that brain regions other than the one they focused on in the original article, the hippocampus, might have contributed to the effects reported.&lt;br /&gt;
  1322. &lt;br /&gt;
  1323. Erickson et al. also make the extraordinary point that “our study was not conducted in a vacuum, and our results are consistent with other research on the effects of exercise on memory.”&lt;br /&gt;
  1324. &lt;br /&gt;
  1325. In other words, they appear to be saying that it’s ok to overstate your results if the effects you erroneously claim to have found are consistent with previous research.&lt;br /&gt;
  1326. &lt;br /&gt;
  1327. This is simply not good enough.  Scientists often moan about how their cautiously-phrased, carefully-caveated journal article has been over-simplified and their findings misrepresented and sensationalized by journalists and the media.  In this instance though, as I wrote in my previous &lt;a href=&quot;http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/02/exercise-may-be-good-for-you-but-it.html&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;, the obscuring of the true nature of the findings seems to have been attributable to the way the scientists concerned chose to write them up in their paper.&lt;br /&gt;
  1328. &lt;br /&gt;
  1329. As Coen and colleagues conclude in their letter, &quot;it behooves us all to ensure rigor in our scientific reporting.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;
  1330. &lt;br /&gt;
  1331. I couldn’t agree more.&lt;br /&gt;
  1332. &lt;br /&gt;
  1333. (thanks to @markgbaxter for bringing the &lt;i&gt;PNAS&lt;/i&gt; letters to my attention)</description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/04/update-on-exercise-and-memory-story.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><thr:total>4</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-5703176652027682312</guid><pubDate>Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:38:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:16:45.644+01:00</atom:updated><title>State-dependent memory: Remembering Heather Graham&#39;s phone number</title><description>&lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1334. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  1335. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b9/Hangoverposter09.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b9/Hangoverposter09.jpg&quot; width=&quot;134&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1336. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;A few days ago I gave a talk at the Cambridge &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology-films.webnode.com/programme/&quot;&gt;Memory Film Festival&lt;/a&gt;, introducing some of the scientific themes raised in the Hollywood comedy, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1119646/&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;The Hangover&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, starring Bradley Cooper and Heather Graham.&amp;nbsp; Here&#39;s a brief summary.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1337. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1338. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1339. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1340. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;“Why is there a tiger in the bathroom?”&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1341. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1342. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;The basic idea of the film is that Doug and a group of his best friends are in Las Vegas drunkenly celebrating the fact that he is soon to be married.&amp;nbsp; The next morning, Doug’s friends wake up in their hotel suite with no memory of the previous night, and soon realise that Doug is missing.&amp;nbsp; Furthermore, there is a baby in the wardrobe, a tiger in the bathroom, and a chicken is wandering around the suite.&amp;nbsp; Hilarious consequences ensue.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1343. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1344. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1345. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1346. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;The memory-impairing effects of alcohol are a staple topic for light-hearted treatment in popular culture, probably because most people can relate to the notion of waking up after a night on the tiles, not entirely sure about their recollection of everything that transpired.&amp;nbsp; In psychology, this phenomenon is termed &lt;i&gt;state-dependent memory&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1347. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1348. &lt;br /&gt;
  1349. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;One aspect of state-dependent memory, and the idea that the plot of &lt;i&gt;The Hangover&lt;/i&gt; is based on, is that if you experience an event in one physiological state (e.g., drunk), your memory for the event is likely to be impaired if you later try to remember it in another physiological state (e.g., sober).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1350. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1351. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1352. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1353. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;A further aspect of the phenomenon can be illustrated by imagining another scenario.&amp;nbsp; Imagine that last night you were out drinking with your friends, and you happened to strike up a conversation with the Hollywood actress, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Graham&quot;&gt;Heather Graham&lt;/a&gt; (or, if you prefer, the Hollywood actor, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Cooper&quot;&gt;Bradley Cooper&lt;/a&gt;). (This sort of scenario occurs quite often in Cambridge, incidentally.&amp;nbsp; Feel free to apply to work with us &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.psychol.cam.ac.uk/%7Ememlab/study.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1354. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1355. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1356. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1357. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;You vaguely remember Heather (or Brad) leaning over to you at one point in the evening and whispering her (or his) phone number in your ear.&amp;nbsp; The next morning, you wake up feeling terrible, but remember the conversation and decide that you must immediately call her (or him).&amp;nbsp; However, of course, you cannot now for the life of you remember the number.&amp;nbsp; The key question is this: Will you be more likely to remember the number, and save your chances of a date with Heather (or Brad), if you drink a whole lot more alcohol?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1358. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1359. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1360. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1361. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;The evidence&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1362. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1363. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Believe it or not, despite the fairly limited likelihood of the average psychologist ever getting Heather Graham’s phone number, let alone &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;needing to know how best to remember it, &lt;/span&gt;there are hundreds of studies out there that have investigated the issue.&amp;nbsp; One of the first was by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5774177&quot;&gt;Donald Goodwin and colleagues&lt;/a&gt;, published in &lt;i&gt;Science&lt;/i&gt; in 1969, who asked male volunteers to perform memory tasks that involved learning and remembering words while either sober or under the effects of alcohol.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1364. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1365. &lt;/div&gt;
  1366. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1367. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; font-family: inherit; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  1368. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhce12XWNBy1Z1azDcbD_FrvOb97f9wZiiXRaMdXhjBdnUHQiJFR-FrOaS4mqfVb4GtyYwR7rNIJRxbdYWs2hyphenhyphenLuzMNUf17_wSttJ2tANOSD92C48B6pvpVofSa0n2pyEt9jPY9mWWTicI/s1600/Goodwin_data.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;140&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhce12XWNBy1Z1azDcbD_FrvOb97f9wZiiXRaMdXhjBdnUHQiJFR-FrOaS4mqfVb4GtyYwR7rNIJRxbdYWs2hyphenhyphenLuzMNUf17_wSttJ2tANOSD92C48B6pvpVofSa0n2pyEt9jPY9mWWTicI/s200/Goodwin_data.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1369. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Data from Goodwin et al. (1969)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1370. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  1371. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1372. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;As displayed in the figure, Goodwin et al. found, as would be expected, good retention of the words if the volunteers had been sober at learning and sober at recall.&amp;nbsp; Perhaps unsurprisingly, if volunteers were sober at learning but drunk at recall, their memory was relatively impaired.&amp;nbsp; And, as illustrated in &lt;i&gt;The Hangover&lt;/i&gt;, volunteers who were drunk at learning and sober at recall were also amnesic.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1373. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1374. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1375. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1376. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;The really interesting finding was that the group of volunteers who were intoxicated at learning (and we’re talking a mean of 111 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of breath, or roughly 3 times the UK drink driving limit), and were similarly inebriated during the retention test, nevertheless recalled a comparable amount to those who had been sober on both occasions.&amp;nbsp; As Goodwin et al. concluded, the results indicated “that learning which the subject acquires while he is intoxicated may be more available to him while he is intoxicated than when he is sober.”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1377. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1378. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1379. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1380. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;This striking result encouraged a whole assortment of follow-up studies, seeking to determine whether the effect of alcohol on memory could be generalised to other physiological states.&amp;nbsp; Just to take a few examples, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12635857&quot;&gt;Kelemen and Creeley&lt;/a&gt; showed that drinking coffee at learning and recall led to just as good memory as drinking a placebo drink on each occasion, both of which were significantly better than if there was a change of drink between phases.&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9225625&quot;&gt;Kenealy&lt;/a&gt; demonstrated similar results by playing music to volunteers to induce a happy or sad mood at learning and recall.&amp;nbsp; In a famous study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=godden+and+baddeley+1975&quot;&gt;Godden and&amp;nbsp; Baddeley&lt;/a&gt; showed that the same effect could be elicited in deep sea divers who learned and subsequently tried to recall information either on land or 20 ft under water.&amp;nbsp; Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291099-0720%281998120%2912:6%3C617::AID-ACP542%3E3.0.CO;2-5/abstract&quot;&gt;Grant et al.&lt;/a&gt; found that noise while studying might not subsequently impair memory if testing occurred in a noisy environment, but that if, for example, an exam was to take place in a quiet exam hall, revising with music or other noise in the background might not be the most sensible policy.&amp;nbsp; You can find other tips from psychology research for effective exam studying in my previous post &lt;a href=&quot;http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-we-know-from-science-about-how-to.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1381. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1382. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1383. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1384. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;What’s going on?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1385. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1386. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;To explain these phenomena, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rotman-baycrest.on.ca/index.php?section=219&quot;&gt;Endel Tulving&lt;/a&gt; proposed the &lt;i&gt;Encoding Specificity Principle&lt;/i&gt;, according to which memory performance depends on the similarity between the information comprising a memory trace and the information available at recall.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1387. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1388. &lt;/div&gt;
  1389. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1390. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; font-family: inherit; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  1391. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq5fyLQL9bIW7dLEBo49G_yT-ISBjfIuLqIhOnJZBv32rmHuf10LhtIL2o_AJuf70V9TEYzK2JN-9sVw-rFOUka4l75A5EhxVjMLXFhFYSYhoQGJ05zHXZb1mZOpvBYZDYeLv4gnRG5uI/s1600/Encoding_specificity.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;183&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq5fyLQL9bIW7dLEBo49G_yT-ISBjfIuLqIhOnJZBv32rmHuf10LhtIL2o_AJuf70V9TEYzK2JN-9sVw-rFOUka4l75A5EhxVjMLXFhFYSYhoQGJ05zHXZb1mZOpvBYZDYeLv4gnRG5uI/s200/Encoding_specificity.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1392. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;The encoding specificity principle&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1393. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  1394. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1395. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;When we are encoding an event into memory, the memory trace is made up of details about the event (who was there, what they said, etc), but also of the context in which the event occurred.&amp;nbsp; Context in this sense is a broad term, encompassing elements such as where and when the event happened, who else was there, and also thoughts and feelings we had while experiencing the event.&amp;nbsp; These internally-generated thoughts and feelings are likely to be influenced by many factors.&amp;nbsp; For example, was it dark or light, warm or cold, noisy or quiet, were we happy or sad, drunk or sober, etc.&amp;nbsp; All these elements are bound together to form the memory trace relating to that event.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1396. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1397. &lt;/div&gt;
  1398. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1399. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1400. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;What Tulving realised was that this isn’t the whole story, however.&amp;nbsp; According to the encoding specificity principle, the context we are in when we try to retrieve a memory can also have a substantial impact on our likelihood of successfully accessing the correct memory trace.&amp;nbsp; Specifically, the chances of retrieval success are directly determined by the overlap between the encoding and retrieval contexts.&amp;nbsp; Thus, bizarre as it may seem, if we are drunk at encoding, our subsequent memory will be more successful if we are also drunk at retrieval.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1401. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1402. &lt;/div&gt;
  1403. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1404. &lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right; font-family: inherit; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  1405. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe4bEBXsOumGnP1f5AgsMY7e8qFsv1JNtUn6yHACOM9u64PXJvnWZm4oegM-E8c8SH6ivzrr1fKK9n2EGFXWgIXa0HZI_vjc2-W18kwPvwCcooVRrN_29eA5gTN3SN6cqw5exi3d0hfSM/s1600/Park_Rugg.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;136&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe4bEBXsOumGnP1f5AgsMY7e8qFsv1JNtUn6yHACOM9u64PXJvnWZm4oegM-E8c8SH6ivzrr1fKK9n2EGFXWgIXa0HZI_vjc2-W18kwPvwCcooVRrN_29eA5gTN3SN6cqw5exi3d0hfSM/s200/Park_Rugg.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1406. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Data from Park &amp;amp; Rugg (2008)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  1407. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  1408. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1409. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Brain imaging evidence from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17652467&quot;&gt;Park and Rugg&lt;/a&gt; supports the notion that memory performance depends, at least in part, on the overlap between processing operations at encoding and retrieval.&amp;nbsp; They had participants learn everyday objects (e.g., apple) that were presented either as words or as pictures of the objects.&amp;nbsp; At test, participants were asked to distinguish between studied and non-studied items.&amp;nbsp; Each studied item was presented in a form that was either congruent (e.g., word at study and test) or incongruent (e.g., word at study, picture at test).&amp;nbsp; Park and Rugg found that the highest memory success occurred in the congruent conditions, and was associated with overlap between the brain areas activated during learning and retrieval.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1410. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1411. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1412. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1413. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;Memory as a reconstructive process&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1414. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1415. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;What this all means is that it’s not just what’s happening during the encoding of a memory that determines what we remember of an event.&amp;nbsp; Our memories can be influenced greatly by factors at the time of retrieval.&amp;nbsp; In this way, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/&quot;&gt;William James&lt;/a&gt; noted over a century ago, memory “retrieval” is something of a misnomer.&amp;nbsp; Remembering an event is not like picking a DVD off the shelf and re-playing it, but involves a reconstructive process.&amp;nbsp; We store assorted sensory elements of an event, but to experience the subjective “re-living” of that event, we must construct a narrative structure at the time of retrieval that incorporates all the stored elements in a plausible, satisfying way.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1416. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1417. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1418. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1419. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;The fact that this narrative construction occurs at retrieval, and is thus subject to influence from our biases and expectations at the time of retrieval, is supported by a great deal of experimental evidence.&amp;nbsp; Among the most famous is a series of studies by &lt;a href=&quot;http://socialecology.uci.edu/faculty/eloftus/&quot;&gt;Elizabeth Loftus&lt;/a&gt;, who investigated the effect of leading questions on eyewitness testimony.&amp;nbsp; She had participants watch films of various crime scenes, such as a car accident, and then asked them to recall details of the event.&amp;nbsp; She found that the form of the question could have a considerable influence on the way the event was remembered.&amp;nbsp; For example, if participants were asked “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”, they recalled the speed as significantly faster than if the word “contacted” was used instead of “smashed”.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1420. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1421. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1422. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1423. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;For more on the nature of reconstructive memory, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/07/reconstructive_memoryconfabula.php&quot;&gt;this excellent blog post&lt;/a&gt; by Mo Costandi.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1424. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1425. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1426. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1427. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;The implication of this, though, is that if you and some friends do decide to try to remember what happened last night by getting drunk again the next morning, there is a good chance you will all remember it differently.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1428. </description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/04/state-dependent-memory-remembering.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhce12XWNBy1Z1azDcbD_FrvOb97f9wZiiXRaMdXhjBdnUHQiJFR-FrOaS4mqfVb4GtyYwR7rNIJRxbdYWs2hyphenhyphenLuzMNUf17_wSttJ2tANOSD92C48B6pvpVofSa0n2pyEt9jPY9mWWTicI/s72-c/Goodwin_data.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>4</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-9186557594897635689</guid><pubDate>Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:50:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:16:54.521+01:00</atom:updated><title>Update on neuroscience funding</title><description>&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1429. &lt;/div&gt;
  1430. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1431. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;I wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-there-cognitive-neuroscience-funding.html&quot;&gt;last week&lt;/a&gt; about a series of recent funding body announcements that have left UK scientists (especially those in the neurosciences, but many others too) feeling very worried about the future.&amp;nbsp; For example, in addition to the recent closure of a number of pharmaceutical company neuroscience research facilities, a previously major funder of basic cognitive neuroscience research, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;BBSRC&lt;/a&gt;, announced it was re-prioritising its funding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/10/cuts-disastrous-brain-science-research&quot;&gt;away from neuroscience&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Even more concerning for the future of the field, several &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/13753/important-notice-for-applicants.aspx&quot;&gt;funding&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Biomedical-science/Funding-schemes/Research-support/WTD004411.htm&quot;&gt;schemes&lt;/a&gt; aimed particularly at early-career researchers have recently been overhauled in a manner that, &lt;a href=&quot;http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-there-cognitive-neuroscience-funding.html&quot;&gt;I argued&lt;/a&gt;, seemed to significantly reduce the ability of a new researcher to establish a neuroscience research group.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1432. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1433. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1434. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1435. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Even if some of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/10/cuts-disastrous-brain-science-research&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; turn out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/funding/news/2011/110211-bbsrc-neuroscience-funding.aspx&quot;&gt;not to reflect accurately&lt;/a&gt; the changes that have been made&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;, these recent developments have caused &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bna.org.uk/news/view.php?permalink=OEN8H73QPS&quot;&gt;a great deal of concern&lt;/a&gt; amongst researchers.&amp;nbsp; As a result, it has been particularly welcome to see announcements and comments in the last few days from another major research council whose remit includes neuroscience, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;MRC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1436. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1437. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1438. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1439. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1440. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;In a statement on 11 February entitled, “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Newspublications/News/MRC007698&quot;&gt;Setting the record straight on neuroscience funding&lt;/a&gt;,” &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.uk/About/Structure/Headoffice/index.htm#P54_2981&quot;&gt;Declan Mulkeen&lt;/a&gt;, director of research programmes, said that “neuroscience is a key feature in both the MRC’s strategy and delivery plan.”&amp;nbsp; Some large-sounding sums of money apparently available for funding neuroscience research were quoted:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1441. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1442. &lt;blockquote style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1443. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  1444. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Neuroscience research received more than £123 million in 2009/10 from the MRC – and recently we have also committed a further £24m of investment for initiatives to boost neurodegeneration and mental health research.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1445. &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  1446. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1447. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1448. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1449. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1450. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;One concern some neuroscience researchers have had about the MRC in recent years has been the move towards what has sometimes seemed to be an exclusive focus on so-called “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Ourresearch/Boardpanelsgroups/TRG/TranslationResearch/index.htm&quot;&gt;translational neuroscience&lt;/a&gt;”, research that has direct and obvious applications to patient care. &amp;nbsp;This shift has meant that it has not been clear whether the MRC has still been interested in funding basic, “blue-skies” neuroscience research.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1451. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1452. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1453. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1454. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Thus, comments in an interview with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=415173&quot;&gt;Times Higher Education&lt;/a&gt; reporter &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/biography.asp?contact=74&quot;&gt;Paul Jump&lt;/a&gt; last week from the MRC chief executive, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.uk/About/Structure/CEO/index.htm&quot;&gt;Sir John Savill&lt;/a&gt;, are very welcome.&amp;nbsp; Tackling the concern about basic science head-on, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=415173&quot;&gt;Savill said&lt;/a&gt; that “blue-skies research is an important part of our activity because it is where the best ideas come from.”&amp;nbsp; The move towards translational neuroscience was not, he argued, “a shift of emphasis: it is about having resources to do both (basic and applied research).”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1455. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1456. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1457. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1458. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Even more encouraging to see were comments indicating that Savill is aware of the need for greater support for early-career scientists who, &lt;a href=&quot;http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-there-cognitive-neuroscience-funding.html&quot;&gt;as I discussed in my last post&lt;/a&gt;, are the most vulnerable and yet have been hit particularly hard by recent funding developments.&amp;nbsp; The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=415173&quot;&gt;THE article&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Utilities/Documentrecord/index.htm?d=MRC007642&quot;&gt;MRC’s delivery plan&lt;/a&gt; published last month identified as a priority the need to boost the success rates of early-career researchers applying for grants:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1459. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
  1460. &lt;blockquote style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1461. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  1462. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;To this end, Sir John thinks that rather than rejecting their applications outright, the MRC might &quot;pump-prime&quot; their ideas with a small short-term grant; combined with feedback, this would &quot;allow them to come back in a stronger position to apply for a full grant&quot;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1463. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;
  1464. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1465. &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  1466. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
  1467. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1468. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1469. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1470. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;It will be interesting to see whether these warm words are reflected in new funding schemes aimed at early-career researchers, or official policies put in place to provide small grants that might allow such researchers to collect the kinds of preliminary data that would strengthen future applications.&amp;nbsp; In the meantime, it is at least reassuring to hear that neuroscientists at the start of their careers haven’t been entirely abandoned by the research funding community.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1471. </description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/02/update-on-neuroscience-funding.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-4465626705090187469</guid><pubDate>Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:16:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:17:05.309+01:00</atom:updated><title>Is there a cognitive neuroscience funding crisis?</title><description>&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1472. &lt;/div&gt;
  1473. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1474. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;When I started my lectureship (a position equivalent to assistant professor in the US system) way back in the good old days of 2007, one of the first things I had to think about was how to begin building a research group.&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/memlab/&quot;&gt;My research interests&lt;/a&gt; are in understanding human memory using cognitive neuroscience techniques such as neuropsychology (studying the way memory is disrupted following brain damage or dementia) and neuroimaging (studying the brain areas that are particularly active while remembering).&amp;nbsp; We are seeking a greater understanding of the way in which different memory processes are organised in the brain, as a means to determine how these processes might be preserved or impaired in neurological and psychiatric disorders.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1475. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1476. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1477. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1478. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Cognitive neuroscience often generates great excitement in the media and the public in general.&amp;nbsp; This is apparent most obviously in the genuine fascination people have with seeing where in the brain “lights up” during a particular kind of behaviour.&amp;nbsp; Perhaps somewhat less evident in the media, but still captivating to many who hear about it, are the many strange and wonderful examples of altered behaviour following brain injury or stroke.&amp;nbsp; Indeed, it was through hearing vivid descriptions of neuropsychological behaviours from an inspirational undergraduate lecturer that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2011/110127/full/nj7331-571a.html&quot;&gt;I became hooked on the area as a student&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Another reason perhaps for the great interest in cognitive neuroscience in this country is that the UK is very good at it.&amp;nbsp; Considering the disparities in funding and resources compared with the US, for example, the UK is right up there among the world leaders in the field no matter which measure you choose.&amp;nbsp; Just as one example, two of the top five (and three of the top ten) most highly cited scientists in the field &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/08/apr27-08_4/&quot;&gt;work in the UK&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1479. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1480. &lt;/div&gt;
  1481. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1482. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1483. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Cognitive neuroscience is still a relatively young field, but has – it seems to me at least – largely now moved on from the days in which studies demonstrating “the neural correlates of x” would always generate great excitement.&amp;nbsp; Such straightforward studies can still be published, and can sometimes be interesting.&amp;nbsp; However, researchers are often now more interested in using cognitive neuroscience techniques to inform the development of cognitive theories and to better understand cognitive disorders.&amp;nbsp; Thus competency with the technically demanding methods of functional MRI, for example, needs to be coupled with the ability to design and implement cognitive paradigms that address closely the function of interest, allow theoretically motivated variables to be manipulated while others are controlled, and permit inferences that can be used to differentiate between competing cognitive hypotheses about how that function operates.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1484. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1485. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1486. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1487. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Building a group in which such multidisciplinary skills are represented is not straightforward, and gaining access to the methods (whether functional MRI scans of brain activity in healthy volunteers, or structural MRI scans of lesion locations and volumes in patients) does not come cheap.&amp;nbsp; Thus, in 2007, I was very aware that I needed to apply for research funding.&amp;nbsp; Back then, there were three main categories of funding body that I felt might be interested in funding cognitive neuroscience research:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1488. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1489. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1490. &lt;ul&gt;
  1491. &lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Research Councils – the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;MRC&lt;/a&gt; (medical research), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;BBSRC&lt;/a&gt; (biotechnology and biological sciences research), and to a lesser extent, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esrc.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;ESRC&lt;/a&gt; (economic and social research)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1492. &lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Charities – primarily the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;Wellcome Trust&lt;/a&gt;, although also bodies such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/&quot;&gt;Alzheimer’s Research Trust&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1493. &lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Industry – mainly pharmaceutical companies interested in funding cognitive neuroscience research that might advance drug development&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1494. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1495. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1496. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1497. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1498. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;As such, in addition to writing new lecture courses and trying to do some cheap experiments (often thanks to the help and generosity of colleagues and former advisors), I spent the first couple of years as a lecturer writing grants.&amp;nbsp; In submitting applications and seeking opportunities in each of the three funding categories above, I was helped a great deal by the advice and support of senior colleagues in my department and elsewhere.&amp;nbsp; In addition, many of the funding bodies interested in cognitive neuroscience had schemes particularly suited to early career researchers, such as small grant schemes and young investigator awards.&amp;nbsp; It never seemed easy, and I was prepared for the fact that a very small proportion of my applications might be successful, but I did at least feel that there were a number of places I could go to seek funding.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1499. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1500. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1501. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1502. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Now, however, the funding landscape for cognitive neuroscience research seems to have changed considerably.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1503. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1504. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1505. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1506. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;In the last couple of years, a number of major pharmaceutical companies have closed their neuroscience research and development facilities.&amp;nbsp; In addition, perhaps anticipating a cut in the government funding of science research that never materialised (in no small part thanks to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceisvital.org.uk/&quot;&gt;“Science is Vital” campaign&lt;/a&gt;), many of the charities and research councils revamped their funding schemes.&amp;nbsp; These overhauls were announced as measures “to better reflect strategic priorities”, but the result seems to me to be a significant reduction in the funding opportunities available to early career investigators in cognitive neuroscience.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1507. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1508. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1509. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1510. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;To give a few examples:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1511. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1512. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1513. &lt;ul style=&quot;font-family: inherit; margin-top: 0cm;&quot; type=&quot;disc&quot;&gt;
  1514. &lt;li class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;The ESRC &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/13753/important-notice-for-applicants.aspx&quot;&gt;recently announced&lt;/a&gt; the closure of its “small grants” scheme, which provided limited sums particularly      suited to allowing early career researchers to develop paradigms and      collect preliminary data that could be used to strengthen applications for      larger grants in the future.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1515. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1516. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1517. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1518. &lt;ul style=&quot;font-family: inherit; margin-top: 0cm;&quot; type=&quot;disc&quot;&gt;
  1519. &lt;li class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;The Wellcome Trust has ended its      &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Biomedical-science/Funding-schemes/Research-support/WTD004411.htm&quot;&gt;project grant and programme grant schemes&lt;/a&gt;,      the former of which provided the kind of support (one member of staff and      research costs for three years) that was ideal as a first substantial grant      for someone building their group.&amp;nbsp;      Instead, the Trust has replaced these schemes with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Biomedical-science/Funding-schemes/Investigator-Awards/WTX059284.htm&quot;&gt;investigator     awards&lt;/a&gt;,      aimed at “exceptional individuals” who “have been lead investigator on at      least one significant research grant from a major funding body”.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1520. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1521. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1522. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1523. &lt;ul style=&quot;font-family: inherit; margin-top: 0cm;&quot; type=&quot;disc&quot;&gt;
  1524. &lt;li class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Finally, as seen in all the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/10/cuts-disastrous-brain-science-research&quot;&gt;papers&lt;/a&gt;      and discussed on BBC Radio 4’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9394000/9394163.stm&quot;&gt;Today programme&lt;/a&gt;      in the last few days, the BBSRC announced that it was “reprioritising” its      funding away from neuroscience.&amp;nbsp;      This was reported as a complete axing of the council’s neuroscience      budget, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/10/cuts-disastrous-brain-science-research&quot;&gt;possible closure of up to 30 research groups&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; However, after &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/#%21/BBSRC/status/36057346929074176&quot;&gt;admitting an error&lt;/a&gt; in one      of its media briefings,      the BBSRC &lt;a href=&quot;http://ow.ly/3UFeQ&quot;&gt;clarified&lt;/a&gt; that the changes would “only” mean a reduction of      perhaps 20% in the funding directed at neuroscience research.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1525. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1526. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1527. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1528. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1529. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;These developments mean that it is much more difficult to see how a new lecturer can build a cognitive neuroscience research group now.&amp;nbsp; Many of the schemes directly aimed at those early in their career have either been axed or shifted to support individuals who have already led a research grant.&amp;nbsp; But how are you supposed to develop the track record of having led a research grant if nobody will fund you before you have that track record?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1530. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1531. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1532. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1533. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Also, despite cognitive neuroscience being one of this country’s major science success stories in recent years, internationally competitive when compared against even the finest and best funded groups in the US and elsewhere, there is a concern that many of the UK funding bodies seem to be intent on moving away from funding cognitive neuroscience research.&amp;nbsp; The recent move by the BBSRC, coupled with a shift by the MRC over the last few years to prioritise &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Ourresearch/Boardpanelsgroups/TRG/TranslationResearch/index.htm&quot;&gt;translational neuroscience&lt;/a&gt; research that has direct and clear applications to patient care, means that it is not clear which of the research councils now sees basic cognitive neuroscience research as within its funding remit.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1534. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1535. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1536. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1537. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;Is there a cognitive neuroscience funding crisis?&amp;nbsp; There is undoubtedly still a lot of money on offer: the MRC alone funds over £100 million of research in the general area of neuroscience.&amp;nbsp; However, the perception among cognitive neuroscientists is that a very difficult situation has recently become much harder (David Colquhoun &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/#%21/david_colquhoun/status/36353630713937920&quot;&gt;has mentioned&lt;/a&gt; that only around 7% of neuroscience and mental health grant applications were funded by the MRC in the most recent round).&amp;nbsp; This is not helped when funding bodies announce changes, which may turn out to be relatively minor reprioritisations, in a way that lead to sensational media headlines about the “disastrous impact” of “draconian funding cuts”.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1538. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1539. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1540. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1541. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;As a result, this is a worrying time to be a cognitive neuroscience researcher, but it is particularly concerning that the crucial first few rungs on the funding ladder for new researchers seem to be those most under threat.&amp;nbsp; It is obvious that new researchers are the most vulnerable and in need of support in developing their research careers.&amp;nbsp; If such individuals feel that the UK funding bodies are making it simply impossible for them to do that, they will either go abroad or leave science completely.&amp;nbsp; And if that happens, a cutting edge field in which the UK has been one of the world leaders within only the last few years, will face a future of rapid and inescapable decline.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1542. </description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-there-cognitive-neuroscience-funding.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><thr:total>30</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-6819442294443628954</guid><pubDate>Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:52:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:17:15.060+01:00</atom:updated><title>Exercise may be good for you, but it doesn’t boost your memory</title><description>&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1543. &lt;/div&gt;
  1544. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1545. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;“Moderate exercise such as walking boosts memory power” claims the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12325285&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1546. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1547. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1548. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1549. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;“Exercise in middle age can improve your memory” says the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1352376/Dementia-Exercise-middle-age-improve-memory.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1550. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1551. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1552. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1553. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;“Older adults improve memory through exercise” reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/31/study-older-adults-improve-memory-through-exercise/&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1554. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1555. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1556. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1557. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;“Want to improve your memory? Take a walk” invites &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/31/want-to-improve-your-memory-take-a-walk/&quot;&gt;Time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1558. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1559. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1560. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1561. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;These are just some of the many headlines today resulting from the publication of a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) entitled “Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory”, by Kirk Erickson from the University of Pittsburgh and colleagues from the University of Illinois. You can access the abstract of the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/01/25/1015950108.abstract?sid=c03a4c15-6cfe-4f50-bb8b-56daeac82cd0&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, although you may need to pay to read the whole paper.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1562. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1563. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1564. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1565. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1566. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;The authors of the article have provided helpfully excited quotes in many of the news stories.&amp;nbsp; For example, senior author Art Kramer, from the University of Illinois, was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8293218/A-walk-a-day-can-keep-dementia-at-bay-research-shows.html&quot;&gt;quoted as saying&lt;/a&gt; “even modest amounts of exercise ... can lead to substantial improvements in memory.”&amp;nbsp; Exciting findings indeed!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1567. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1568. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1569. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1570. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;In the study, 120 older adult volunteers were randomly assigned to an aerobic exercise group or a stretching control group. Participants in the exercise group undertook supervised sessions of moderate intensity walking for 40 min each day, three days per week for one year.&amp;nbsp; Those in the stretching control group were trained in various stretching and muscle toning exercises over a similar period.&amp;nbsp; At the start, middle and end of the intervention, structural MRI scans were obtained, and participants undertook a computerized spatial memory task.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1571. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1572. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1573. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1574. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;The MRI scans revealed that volume of the hippocampus, a brain area known to be important for spatial memory, increased by around 2% in the exercise group participants over the one-year period.&amp;nbsp; Hippocampal volumes of participants in the stretching control group diminished by around 1.4% over the same period, as would be expected through age-related decline.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1575. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1576. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1577. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1578. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;However, as illustrated by the headlines above, minor increases in volume of a brain structure with exercise appear to be less newsworthy than the suggestion that such exercise might “boost memory power”.&amp;nbsp; A common worry among older adults is that forgetfulness, which may seem to be increasingly pervasive as years go by, will eventually result in the loss of their precious store of memories.&amp;nbsp; If exercise really could “boost memory”, and potentially alleviate age-related memory decline, this would indeed be big news.&amp;nbsp; Thus, it is this claim that is worth looking at more closely.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1579. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1580. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1581. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1582. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Unfortunately, to find the data on this issue, one has to study the paper very closely indeed, because the authors have not made it particularly easy to locate.&amp;nbsp; However, buried in the text of the results section and in one row of a complex data table, one can read that the exercise group did indeed show increases in memory performance over the year period, going from an average score of 85.9% at the start of the intervention to 88.2% after 12 months, a 2.3% mean difference.&amp;nbsp; However, the suggestion that the exercise regime was responsible for this “memory boost” is rather undermined by the observation that the stretching control group showed a 3.7% mean increase in their memory performance over the same period.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1583. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1584. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1585. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1586. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;In other words, the exercise group did not show any increase in memory performance relative to the control group.&amp;nbsp; Both groups showed similar small increases in spatial memory scores over the three testing sessions, which may be attributable to the well-known beneficial effects of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content%7Edb=all%7Econtent=a714014453%7Efrm=abslink&quot;&gt;practice&lt;/a&gt; when performing the same task repeatedly.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1587. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1588. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1589. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1590. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;The fact that memory performance in the exercise group was no different to that achieved by the control group is a critical flaw in this study, and severely undermines the claims made throughout the paper, from the title onwards, that exercise training boosts memory.&amp;nbsp; For example, in the abstract the authors state that “exercise training ... is accompanied by improved memory function.”&amp;nbsp; Notably, in the abstract, discussion and main figures, no mention is made of the statistically identical memory boost in the control group.&amp;nbsp; Indeed the main figure only displays memory data from the exercise group, “because it was the only group that showed an increase in volume across the intervention”, according to the figure legend.&amp;nbsp; Why not show the data from both groups?&amp;nbsp; Presumably because the control group’s data would reveal a negative correlation between hippocampal volume and memory scores, weakening the authors’ claims considerably.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1591. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1592. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1593. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1594. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Thus, this appears not to be a story about misrepresentation of research by journalists, although there is much &lt;a href=&quot;http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2010/06/orwellian-prize-for-journalistic.html&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; that such errors do occur.&amp;nbsp; Rather, it seems to be an example of the scientists involved in the research “talking up” their findings for the press and even, perhaps, obscuring the true nature of the results in the journal article.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1595. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1596. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1597. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1598. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1599. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1600. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;One can also question the quality of the peer review and editorial control process in a journal that published such obviously flawed research.&amp;nbsp; It is worth noting that the article states that it “had a prearranged editor”, in this case Fred Gage from the Salk Institute.&amp;nbsp; There have been a number of previous discussions about the quality of the research published in PNAS (see e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/08/28/pnas_read_it_or_not.php&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), mostly relating to a former article submission method, in which members of the National Academy of Science (NAS) could “arrange” publication of papers from non-members each year.&amp;nbsp; Although this submission track no longer exists, the journal maintains the option for authors to “prearrange” for an NAS member to edit their article.&amp;nbsp; It may well be the case that the editorial process in this instance was conducted with total care and probity.&amp;nbsp; As a general point, though, it is difficult to believe that the “prearranged editor” option can be as impartial and rigorous as one might wish to be the case.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1601. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1602. &lt;br /&gt;
  1603. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;To sum up, the findings presented in this article do not support the notion that exercise will boost your memory, or will stop age-related memory decline.&amp;nbsp; Whereas, of course, it won&#39;t hurt anyone to do more exercise, it is unfortunate that potentially vulnerable older people may be misled by this article and its attendant news coverage into thinking that the exercise will cure their memory problems.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1604. </description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/02/exercise-may-be-good-for-you-but-it.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><thr:total>9</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-6099691015236365114</guid><pubDate>Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:25:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:17:25.506+01:00</atom:updated><title>What we know from science about how to pass your exams</title><description>&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1605. &lt;/div&gt;
  1606. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1607. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Whether you’re cramming your specialist subject for an appearance on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mk1s&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Mastermind&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, or trying frantically to learn lecture material for an impending exam, there is abundant evidence from cognitive psychology of some strategies that might help.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1608. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1609. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1610. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1611. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;For many years, researchers considered that the traditional method of simply repeating information over and over to yourself, while improving long-term memory for the information to some degree, was far less effective than so-called “elaborative” processing, which involves relating the to-be-remembered information to other associated facts and previous knowledge. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/01/19/science.1199327&quot;&gt;new research&lt;/a&gt; published this week in &lt;i&gt;Science&lt;/i&gt; by Jeffrey Karpicke and colleagues indicates that an even more successful strategy can be to repeatedly test yourself on the information.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1612. &lt;br /&gt;
  1613. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Although the merits of so-called “retrieval practice” have been known for some time (see below), the students in Karpicke’s experiment who used the method showed a 50 percent improvement in retention after a week’s delay compared to those who used an elaborative learning strategy – a startling result.&amp;nbsp; It remains to be seen whether the advantage for Karpicke’s retrieval practice method holds over the longer time-frames that may be relevant for an academic exam schedule, where knowledge might be tested several months after it was initially learned.&amp;nbsp; However, this finding adds valuable impetus to the notion that active approaches to learning when revising for an upcoming exam can reap dividends for the students who adopt them.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1614. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1615. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1616. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1617. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Here is a brief run-down of some of the cognitive psychology evidence suggesting learning strategies that may be effective.&amp;nbsp; At the end, I&#39;ll summarise some top tips to maximise your exam performance.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1618. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1619. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1620. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1621. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Rehearsal&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1622. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1623. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;It is well established that “rehearsing” information (repeating it to yourself, either out loud or sub-vocally) retains it in short-term memory, and increases the likelihood of that information being transferred into long-term memory.&amp;nbsp; Just ask any actor!&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Pirolli &amp;amp; Anderson (1985) asked participants to rehearse sentences and examined the effects of this rehearsal on time taken to recognise the sentences as having been previously encountered.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;They found that long-term memory retrieval improved as a direct function of the amount of rehearsal that was undertaken.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1624. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1625. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1626. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1627. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Level of Processing&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1628. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1629. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Craik &amp;amp; Lockhart (1972) demonstrated that the level of processing a stimulus receives during encoding has a considerable effect on its memorability.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;They asked participants to learn lists of words either using simple repetition or by thinking about the words’ meaning and relating them to associated words and previous knowledge.&amp;nbsp; The meaning-based encoding processes resulted in much greater recall than did repetition.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Craik &amp;amp; Tulving (1975) went on to confirm that the type, or “depth”, of the processing is important.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;They asked participants to learn words (e.g., table) using one of the following tasks: Perceptual – i&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;s the word written in capital letters?&amp;nbsp; Phonological – does the word rhyme with “able”?&amp;nbsp; Semantic – is the word an item of furniture?&amp;nbsp; Highest levels of recall were observed following the “deeper” semantic task.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1630. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1631. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1632. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1633. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Elaboration&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1634. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1635. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Anderson &amp;amp; Bower (1972) suggested that level of semantic processing may be less important than the extent to which the to-be-remembered information can be related to associated information and previous knowledge.&amp;nbsp; They asked participants to remember sentences in two conditions: study alone (“The doctor hated the lawyer”) or elaborate (generating a continuation to the sentence, e.g. “The doctor hated the lawyer because of the malpractice suit”).&amp;nbsp; The elaboration condition improved memory for the sentence, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;suggesting that participants were more likely to recall the elaboration because they had generated it themselves, which helped them to recall the associated word “lawyer”.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1636. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1637. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1638. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1639. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Stein &amp;amp; Bransford (1979) examined whether it is critical for elaborations to be participant-generated.&amp;nbsp; They compared trials in which participants generated elaborations themselves with trials in which elaborations were provided by the experimenter.&amp;nbsp; Ex&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;perimenter elaborations produced better recall than participant-generated elaborations, but only if they were precisely relevant to the sentence content, suggesting that the critical factor is whether elaborations constrain the to-be-recalled information.&amp;nbsp; Bransford et al. (1979) tested this idea further by asking participants to remember sentences with minimal elaborations (e.g., “&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;A mosquito is like a doctor because they both draw blood”) or multiple elaborations (e.g., “A mosquito is like a raccoon because they both have heads, legs, and jaws”).&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Recall was much better for the minimally-elaborated sentences, although most studies show that the more elaboration the better.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Bransford et al. suggested that the nature and degree of precision of elaborations in constraining the to-be-remembered information is key&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1640. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1641. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1642. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1643. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Frase (1975) examined how constrained elaboration can be applied to the real-life situation of studying material for exams.&amp;nbsp; One group of participants were given topics in the form of questions to think about before reading a text, whereas the other group were just asked to study the text.&amp;nbsp; Frase found that &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;reviewing the text with questions in mind facilitated retention and subsequent recall of the material.&amp;nbsp; This was particularly the case if &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;the questions were relevant to the material (i.e., helped constrain and guide reading, anchoring new concepts to previous knowledge on the basis of meaning).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1644. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1645. &lt;/div&gt;
  1646. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1647. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1648. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1649. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Organisation&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1650. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1651. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Bower et al. (1969) investigated another influence on memory: the degree to which to-be-remembered information is organised.&amp;nbsp; One group had words to be learned presented to them in an organisational hierarchy, whereas the second group were presented with a similar tree structure, but with the words positioned randomly.&amp;nbsp; It was found that the organised group had an advantage in retention of the words.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Analysis of the order in which the words were recalled indicated that participants had organised the material according to the tree hierarchy, and thus had a systematic way to go through and cue their memories for the words.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1652. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1653. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1654. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1655. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Spacing&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1656. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1657. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Another factor shown to influence retention is the time over which encoding of information occurs.&amp;nbsp; Massed practice is when many repeated trials with the same information are undertaken without interruption, whereas spaced practice is when increasing intervals of time are used between repetitions of the same information.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Bahrick (1979) taught participants English-Spanish word-pairs using repeated training sessions that were massed, or separated by 1 or 30 days.&amp;nbsp; It was f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;ound that for long-term retention, spaced study was better than massed, although over the short-term (immediate retention), massed study was optimal.&amp;nbsp; As mentioned above, this has implications for the results of Karpicke’s study.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1658. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1659. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1660. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1661. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Active Retrieval&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1662. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1663. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;This is the strategy that Karpicke’s study focused on.&amp;nbsp; It was Tulving (1967) who was among the first to examine whether manipulating the method of studying material (e.g., elaborative encoding) is the only way to influence retention or whether the act of retrieval itself might affect subsequent memory.&amp;nbsp; In a number of experiments by Tulving and his colleagues, participants learned lists of words with three conditions: standard (study, test, study, test), repeated study (study, study, study, test), or repeated test (study, test, test, test).&amp;nbsp; Because the repeated study group had three times as many study exposures to the material as the repeated test group, they should have had better memory if learning occurs only during study trials. But Tulving found equivalent learning across conditions, suggesting that test trials are as effective as further study trials in boosting learning. An extension of this work by Karpicke &amp;amp; Roediger (2006) showed that if retention is measured after a one-week delay, repeated retrieval testing can lead to better recall than repeated studying.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1664. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1665. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1666. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1667. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;As discussed above, the new research from Karpicke and colleagues published this week takes this forward by indicating that repeated testing of retrieval may be by far the most effective of the strategies discussed here for a student to use when revising in order to improve their performance in an upcoming exam.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1668. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1669. &lt;br /&gt;
  1670. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Summary&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1671. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1672. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;To maximise your performance, here are some top tips:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1673. &lt;br /&gt;
  1674. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Always revise actively!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1675. &lt;ul style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1676. &lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Process information deeply; don’t just rote memorise&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1677. &lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Process information elaborately; think about connections between material&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1678. &lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Organise information into logical structures(e.g., answers to essay questions)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1679. &lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Space study sessions as much as possible&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1680. &lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;Trying to retrieve information can be even more important than studying; test yourself repeatedly while learning&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  1681. &lt;/ul&gt;
  1682. &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;        &lt;br /&gt;
  1683. &lt;div class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit;&quot;&gt;
  1684. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 11pt;&quot;&gt;If you know of any more effective study strategies, let me know in the comments section.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  1685. </description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-we-know-from-science-about-how-to.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><thr:total>2</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7067958908136086797.post-2602764751992126671</guid><pubDate>Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:19:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2018-05-31T16:17:46.789+01:00</atom:updated><title>What are we scientists trying to achieve in our interactions with the media?</title><description>I&#39;ve never written a blog before, and despite writing being one of the things I do for a living in my job as a scientist, I&#39;m somewhat daunted by the prospect.&amp;nbsp; Part of the reason I&#39;m daunted is that blogging is a different form of expression than I&#39;m used to, but I imagine that most new bloggers share the same fear.&amp;nbsp; Another reason, though, is that I&#39;m starting by writing about some of my fellow scientists, whom I generally admire greatly, but who I fear exhibited some of their less desirable qualities earlier this week.&amp;nbsp; What happened upset me so much that I feel I need to write something down.&lt;br /&gt;
  1686. &lt;br /&gt;
  1687. A summary: on 16th August, the Channel 4 News anchor Samira Ahmed used her Twitter account (&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/SamiraAhmedC4&quot;&gt;@SamiraAhmedC4&lt;/a&gt;) to &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/SamiraAhmedC4/status/21325361033&quot;&gt;ask for advice&lt;/a&gt; on how to read out a complicated formula: &lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;status-content&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;p(h,r)=u(h,r)-pr=g(h, Zr)+f1[h, m(o,r)]+f2[h, m(o,r)]+E-pr, &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/SamiraAhmedC4/status/21325442372&quot;&gt;adding&lt;/a&gt; that it&#39;s &quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;status-content&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;the formula to explain how Blackpool (like Bath before it) is becoming classier.&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1688. &lt;br /&gt;
  1689. &lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;status-content&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;Within a few minutes, Ben Goldacre (&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/bengoldacre&quot;&gt;@bengoldacre&lt;/a&gt;) had become involved.&amp;nbsp; Most people interested in science and the media will be aware of Ben, perhaps through his regular Guardian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/badscience&quot;&gt;columns&lt;/a&gt; or his blog, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/&quot;&gt;badscience.net&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; He somehow manages to combine a full-time job as a doctor with what must be an almost full-time hobby of &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;challenging &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/about-dr-ben-goldacre/&quot;&gt;what he calls&lt;/a&gt; &quot;dodgy scientific claims made by scaremongering journalists, dodgy government reports, evil pharmaceutical corporations, PR companies and quacks.&quot;&amp;nbsp; The aspect of Ben&#39;s hobby that I most admire him for, because it relates most to my work as a scientist, is regularly reminding science journalists (and university PR people, and scientists) to be careful, and skeptical, and evidence-based, in the way they communicate science to the public.&amp;nbsp; This is something that none of those groups of people can honestly say they do well enough often enough, and I think that Ben, and bloggers like him, should be applauded for continuing to stress its importance.&lt;br /&gt;
  1690. &lt;br /&gt;
  1691. &lt;a name=&#39;more&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;However, on 16th August, I felt that Ben, and some of his more than 50,000 followers on Twitter let down the cause of science and good science reporting by the way in which they treated Samira Ahmed.&amp;nbsp; After reading Samira&#39;s tweet asking for advice about the formula, Ben &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/21326174681&quot;&gt;replied&lt;/a&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;status-content&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;&quot;no, you just have to say &#39;by reading this out, i have lost all respect for myself as a journalist&#39;.&quot;&amp;nbsp; He then &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/21326524077&quot;&gt;tweeted&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;his followers to &quot;pre-mock C4 News, looks like theyre covering this bullshit&quot; [referring to the Blackpool formula story].&amp;nbsp; There followed a torrent of &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/7db/statuses/21327192333&quot;&gt;sarcastic&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/jothelibrarian/statuses/21331266570&quot;&gt;pitying&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/dacy_ebd/statuses/21327014466&quot;&gt;and&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/twistedeuclid/statuses/21332124156&quot;&gt;abusive&lt;/a&gt; (and these are just a few examples of many) tweets from a number of different individuals to @SamiraAhmedC4.&amp;nbsp; Being the subject of such a backlash must have been an extremely unpleasant experience, which Samira &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/SamiraAhmedC4/status/21327602777&quot;&gt;likened&lt;/a&gt; at the time to being &quot;savaged ... by hounds&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
  1692. &lt;br /&gt;
  1693. Some minutes later, a peer-reviewed academic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ip/tec/2010/00000016/00000001/art00004&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; came to light, from which the Blackpool equation had been derived.&amp;nbsp; Ben Goldacre immediately &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/21329043687&quot;&gt;apologised&lt;/a&gt; to Samira, &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/21332525527&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; times, and wrote a quick &lt;a href=&quot;http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/ive-been-hoping-to-say-this-for-a-while-i-was&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; about the incident, saying that he had been &quot;wrong&quot; in his assumption that Samira&#39;s original tweet had been about &quot;another bullshit equation story&quot;, and that &quot;the formula was actually a serious piece of work from a real academic paper.&quot;&amp;nbsp; Following this acknowledgement by Ben of his mistake, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/SamiraAhmedC4/status/21329519022&quot;&gt;request &lt;/a&gt;from Samira, several others tweeted apologies to her.&lt;br /&gt;
  1694. &lt;br /&gt;
  1695. So, this episode could simply be characterised as a bit of an online spat, which ended quickly with apologies all round, no harm done.&amp;nbsp; Both main protagonists are seasoned, thick-skinned media operators, with years of experience in the way the world works.&amp;nbsp; Science, and particularly, &quot;skeptical science&quot;, is tough and critical and adversarial, and if you can&#39;t stand the heat, you should stay away from Twitter.&lt;br /&gt;
  1696. &lt;br /&gt;
  1697. However, that view would miss the important and, it seems to me, highly undesirable consequence of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_%28Internet%29&quot;&gt;flaming&lt;/a&gt;&quot; incidents such as this for the relationship between scientists and journalists.&amp;nbsp; And this comes back to the question I posed in the title of this blog-post: what are we scientists trying to achieve in our interactions with the media?&amp;nbsp; Are we seeking to use Twitter, and other online networks, as new and potentially valuable means of communicating with those journalists brave enough to go online, hopefully answering their questions and providing information and advice about the scientific evidence, and in doing so, helping them to write better stories?&amp;nbsp; Or are we allowing our desire to impart &quot;skepticism&quot; to the media to cloud our judgement, leading us to a tendency to jump to false conclusions, assume journalists are all lazy, press-release copying dimwits, and to respond without thinking or checking the facts, sending sarcastic or abusive messages, chastising them for wasting their time on such rubbish, and so on and so forth.&amp;nbsp; Because it would only be human nature if a journalist who asked scientists for advice and received a torrent of abuse in return, would be less likely next time to want to repeat the experience.&lt;br /&gt;
  1698. &lt;br /&gt;
  1699. This morning, Samira Ahmed wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/samira-ahmed-targeted-by-the-ruthless-twittermob-2056110.html&quot;&gt;piece&lt;/a&gt; in the Independent, in which she made the point that she has in the past used Twitter to follow &quot;a range of scientists ... to engage directly with people who might know more about the details of a complex issue.&quot;&amp;nbsp; But, she says, &quot;I just hope instances like this don&#39;t limit the potential of these  social networks.&amp;nbsp; It would be a pity to return to the old way of doing  things: journalists only ringing up people they know well to sound out  stories ... the same old faces.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;
  1700. &lt;br /&gt;
  1701. This is an opinion that has since been repeated by several other journalists on Twitter this morning.&amp;nbsp; For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/edpmary&quot;&gt;@edpmary&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/edpmary/status/21562894079&quot;&gt;tweeted&lt;/a&gt; &quot;&lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;As a journo, if I can expect to have my publication mocked for asking basic q of scientists, I&#39;ll stop asking.&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1702. &lt;br /&gt;
  1703. &lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;As a scientist, I think it would be a tragedy if the behaviour of some inadvertently led to journalists withdrawing from interacting with us, because the only result would be poorer science reporting and the public being even less informed about science than they already are.&amp;nbsp; There is still such a high level of scientific ignorance amongst the public and, while this is not helped by some of the pseudo-scientific &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;rubbish &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;that does appear every day in the media, some journalists are trying to use new technology, such as Twitter, to engage with scientists and by so doing, to improve the quality of their science journalism.&amp;nbsp; This gives us, as scientists, an invaluable opportunity to help to influence and guide science reporting towards greater consideration of evidence, questioning of unlikely claims, etc., and perhaps gradually to address the level of scientific illiteracy that remains so prevalent.&amp;nbsp; We scientists should keep in mind that we are privileged to have the knowledge and expertise that we have worked hard to achieve, and that if we are interested in using them to improve the quality of science reporting and, thus, the public understanding of science, a constructive rather than antagonistic approach may be more fruitful.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1704. &lt;span class=&quot;status-body&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  1705. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description><link>http://j0ns1m0ns.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-are-we-scientists-trying-to.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Jon Simons)</author><thr:total>9</thr:total></item></channel></rss>

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