last week kicked off our first weekly lunch with dr. joe and the joeLAB grad students (i.e., one up from the bottom of the lab totem pole), which included myself and samantha. these lunches take place at the schulich bbq every thursday (a nice setting for bbq & beer on campus during the summer!) and aside from catching up on life & other goings on, we each bring a research article to share with the rest of the group.
last week i shared a recent paper by mark eldaief and colleagues published in social cognitive and affective neuroscience that discusses the role the default network in processing emotional and cognitive information during inductive reasoning. (free link to pdf)
the default network is thought to mediate a lot of "internal" or "introspective" processes during wakefulness, like thinking, pondering, daydreaming, and also internalizing or thinking about other people's emotional states, which involve a certain level of empathy and internalization of one's own emotions. it's an area of neuroscience that is garnering a lot of attention, including concepts like 'consciousness' (link to Michael Graziano - Princeton), 'theory of mind' (link to Raymond Mar - York U), and social and affective influences to neurological processes (link to CoSAN program - La Sapienza, Rome) - topics which i have always thought about (likely activating my own default network *insert Sheldon Cooper laugh here*), but are now finally getting the empirical research backing they need to take them from 'pseudo-science' to the real deal. what happens in our brains when we daydream? how and why do we try to imagine what other people are feeling or thinking? there are both important processes that allow us to formulate creative ideas and actively adjust our behaviour based on the people around us, but how and where in the brain do these processes occur?
studies on the default network seek to answer this latter question, and eldaief et al. have gotten a step closer by showing that subregions within the overall default network are preferentially activated by emotional and cognitive (specifically, the degree of certainty) information when presented with three statements- two arguments followed by a third statement that participants were required to answer whether they deemed it 'probably true' or 'probably false' via button press while in an fMRI.
last week i shared a recent paper by mark eldaief and colleagues published in social cognitive and affective neuroscience that discusses the role the default network in processing emotional and cognitive information during inductive reasoning. (free link to pdf)
 |
| maybe sheldon's inability to perceive sarcasm and empathize with his friends is due to a damaged default network - he should get his dorsal & medial prefrontal cortices checked - no bazinga. |
studies on the default network seek to answer this latter question, and eldaief et al. have gotten a step closer by showing that subregions within the overall default network are preferentially activated by emotional and cognitive (specifically, the degree of certainty) information when presented with three statements- two arguments followed by a third statement that participants were required to answer whether they deemed it 'probably true' or 'probably false' via button press while in an fMRI.
 |
| Modified from Eldaief et al. (2012, SCAN) |
here we can see that the processing of emotional (and specifically, negative emotions) info during inductive reasoning preferentially activates the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (red + yellow), and if the arguments presented in the syllogism led to a more certain conclusion about the final statement, then the anterior and ventral portions of the medial PFC were activated (blue + green).
so what does this really mean??
it means that portions of our prefrontal cortex - the area of our brain that takes the longest to develop and mature, and informs the most complex behavioural and social processes in our daily lives - are specialized to processing certain types of information when we are drawing conclusions and actively and internally reasoning. whether the information we get is emotional (sample syllogism: A mother and father died at the same time. Their son was with them at that moment. Their son probably died with them) is shown to activate dorsal and medial portions of the PFC. whether the information we get is certain (sample syllogism: An athlete broke a world record. The record was broken in a certain sport. The athlete is probably good at that sport.) is shown to activate anterior and ventral portions of medial PFC.
together, eldaief and his colleagues were able to further pinpoint which areas within the overall default network process specific types of information that we use daily to inform our opinions and beliefs through inductive reasoning. it also helped me understand some of the specific jobs the diffuse default network performs in our day to day interactions with the world around us.
now that i have a little bit more insight into what happens in my brain while i daydream, i think i'll get back to it.....................
p.