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Methods of Cognitive Neuroscience. Lesions, Brain Stimulation

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Introduction to Neuroeconomics: How the Brain Makes Decisions

National Research University Higher School of Economics

4.7 (1,062 calificaciones) | 74K estudiantes inscritos

Economics, psychology, and neuroscience are converging today into a unified discipline of Neuroeconomics with the ultimate aim of creating a single, general theory of human decision-making. Neuroeconomics provides biologists, economists, psychologists and social scientists with a deeper understanding of how they make their own decisions and how others decide. Neuroscience, when allied with psychology and economics, creates powerful new models to explain why we make decisions. Neurobiological mechanisms of decision-making, decisions under risk, trust and cooperation will be central issues in this course. You will be provided with the most recent evidence from brain-imaging techniques (fMRI, TMS, etc.) and introduced to the explanatory models behind them. The course does not require any prior study of economics and neuroscience; however, it might require you to study novel interdisciplinary materials. The course provides an introduction to the methodology, assumptions, and main findings of Neuroeconomics. Our students have different backgrounds; therefore, I have adapted and simplified the course to allow all students to understand the interdisciplinary content. This course will help you to start your progress in the field of Neuroeconomics and to further develop your skills during other more advanced courses and trainings in the future. For some topics, the course will also provide supplementary videos to reveal the opinions of leading experts in the field. Each module provides optional reading material. The course structure is as follows: During each video, you will have to answer some relevant questions. Your answers will not affect your final grade. At the end of each module, you must complete a quiz consisting of 15 questions. To pass the course, you must reach a satisfactory standard in all the course modules by completing all graded quizzes and the final exam. In addition to watching video lectures and taking quizzes, you will receive an invitation to join our forum. We plan to join the discussions in the forum on a weekly basis. Welcome to Neuroeconomics World! Do you have technical problems? Write to us: coursera@hse.ru

Destrezas que aprenderás

Neuroeconomics, Biology, Education, Neurobiology, Brain

Revisiones

4.7 (1,062 calificaciones)

5 stars
787 ratings
4 stars
219 ratings
3 stars
36 ratings
2 stars
11 ratings
1 star
9 ratings

R

Jan 01, 2016

I really enjoyed this course. Therected were repetitions but I think that goes hand in hand with learning. The statistics were questionable but so is everything in Neuroscience :D

AS

Dec 27, 2015

This is the great course!\n\nThese knowledges are very helpful and interesting. I really admire Neuroeconomic!Who knows,maybe I'll become a scientist in this area.)\n\nThank you!

De la lección

Neuroanatomy, Neurophysiology, and Neuroimaging: Tools of Neuroeconomics

We will start with a short introduction to cognitive neuroscience, brain anatomy, and brain functions and continue with a discussion of various methods of measuring brain activity, including brain imaging methods (EEG, MEG, fMRI), transcranial brain stimulation (TMS), cell recording, and data visualization, and interpretation of the results. The main goal of this lecture is to help you read and understand results of Neuroeconomics papers. I will introduce terminology and experimental methods that we will use throughout the whole course.

A Brief Intro to Neuroanatomy and Neurophysiology10:15

Methods of Cognitive Neuroscience. Lesions, Brain Stimulation15:49

Impartido por:

Vasily Klucharev
Professor and Head of the Department of Psychology

Transcripción

[SOUND]

[MUSIC]

So today we will discuss six major

approaches to investigate the activity of the brain.

So why do we need so many methods

to investigate the neural methods of decision making?

Simply because there is no one ideal method.

So all methods can be characterized by the temporal and spatial resolution.

Temporal resolution means how well in time we

can differentiate different stages of decision making process.

Spatial resolution means how well in space we can

differentiate different neuronal populations involved

into the decision making process.

Unfortunately there is no one ideal neuroscientific method

that would have perfect temporal and spatial resolution.

We have to combine different methods to understand the dynamic of the neural

mechanisms of decision making and the

localization of those mechanisms inside the brain.

So let's first discuss the facts of lesions on our decisions.

So, lesions can trigger some changes in our behavior

and also in, in the way we make our decisions.

So, neuropsychology investigates the effects of lesions on our behavior.

There are really famous cases, illustrating how the trauma in the

specific brain area can lead to specific changes in our decision making.

So, for example, we happen to know the famous case of Phineas Gage.

So, he lost a portion of his prefrontal cortex.

So during an accident, a huge iron rod penetrated

his brain, and removed the part of his frontal cortex.

So nowadays, we can reconstruct the place that

was destroyed in the brain by this iron rod.

So using the modern reconstruction technique, we

can actually reconstruct that, this accident and here

we clearly see that the portion of the

medial frontal cortex was removed by this accident.

Surprisingly, he survived.

But his behavior, his decision-making process changed substantially.

He became a very emotionally unstable person.

He got a lot of problems in social interactions.

He lost his job.

So, the way he made social decisions, the way he behaved, changed dramatically.

So, for example, Antonio Damasio was so interested in this case,

that he collected patients with similar traumas, with similar lesions.

So, this picture indicates the main focus of these traumas.

So, in most of the cases, the orbitofrontal cortex

or the medial portion, medial ventro prefrontal cortex was damaged.

And as we will see during the course, the damage of

this region leads to very important changes in decision making process.

So, we know now that this portion

of the orbitofrontal cortex is really critical for

emotional learning, for optimal decision making, for

evaluation of options for the comparison of options.

So, how do we normally study patients with specific traumas?

So we asked these patients to perform a task

and we compared behavioral results with a control group.

So we simply collect behavioral information

and compare the results of two groups.

Results of patients and results of the normal subjects.

So in this graph, you see below an example that will be discussed in this course.

So you see that normal people, during the

test, quite quickly differentiate optimal and su, suboptimal decisions.

But patients with the lesions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, they

do not differentiate optimal and

suboptimal decisions in this particular task.

They make a lot of mistakes.

We will discuss the results and very influential results during the course.

So, lesions in specific brain regions can

lead to very specific changes in our decision-making.

Overall, lesion studies bring very

interesting, important insights for neuro-economics.

But, as were not so many cases when

we can find patients with exactly the same lesions.

Normally these lesions are not very focal, so

quite often large portions of the brain are damaged.

Sometimes it's difficult to interpret the outcome of the lesion.

Imagine that your iPod for example lost the battery.

So iPod will stop to produce sounds, but it doesn't

mean that battery is directly involved into the sound production.

In the same way, the lesion in the brain

region can lead to sudden problem in decision-making process.

But it doesn't automatically mean that this brain

region is directly involved into the decision-making process.

But anyway, these studies, they show causal relationship

between the activity of certain regions and decision-making process.

And these studies give us very interesting insights.

So another way to investigate the activity of certain

brain regions, is the stimulation of this brain region.

So there is a long history of studies that

investigated the facts of the stimulation of the brain.

So for a long time, we know that it

would stimulate certain brain regions, especially in the hypothalamus.

We can trigger aggressive behavior.

So, animal behaves aggressively if you stimulate

the very specific region of the hypothalamus.

On the other hand, we know that we, you can

induce fear by the electrical stimulation of certain brain areas.

So for a long time, we know that we can actually evoke

different behavioral patterns by the stimulation

of the very specific brain regions.

So if you would be really interested in the history, a very rich history of

this stimulation studies, you can read books

of Jose Delgado, who conducted various impressive studies.

For example, in one study, he used remote

control to stimulate the brain of the bull.

So, as you see here, this bull attacks, but the remote control allowed the

scientist to stop this bull using the

electrical stimulation of the specific brain area.

So already many years ago, we could modulate behavior of

animals, and we can actually affect some decisions of animals.

So during this course, we will get

these examples, how electrical stimulation modulates decisions.

So, we will discuss, for example, where is

the simple decision making task, so called perceptual decisions.

So in this case, animal and monkey has to switch gaze left or right.

A monkey has to switch the gaze in the same

direction as the majority of dots on the screen moves.

So if all, or most of the dots are moving right, monkey has to switch gaze right.

If majority of dots are moving left, monkey has to switch gaze left.

So we can change the proportion of dots moving

right and left and change the difficulty of the task.

I will not go into details of this task now.

We will discuss it in the next lecture.

But, I will just show you that the

full plot, the proportional specific choices made by monkey.

We can change choices by the electrical stimulation of

this neurons that are involved into the decision-making process.

So as you see here, as the red curve indicates that after

the stimulation of the specific neurons, we change choices of the monkey.

So we shift this plot left.

We will discuss this impressive studies next week.

But it shows us that we can stimulate specific

neurons in the brain and we can change decisions.

Of course it's very interesting methods, but it unfortunately, it is invasive so

in order to put an electrode inside of the brain, you have to damage some tissues.

This is a good method to study rapid

changes in decision making induced by the electrical stimulation.

Unfortunately, the stimulation not very focal.

Because when you electrically stimulate brain tissue, you

normally stimulate a large portion of the brain.

But I think these stimulation studies, they

also bring us very interesting, very impressive results.

There is a way to stimulate the human brain and without any damage to the brain.

This method is called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.

You see on this screen the coil.

This coil consist of metallic wires, and if you apply a

very strong current, this coil produces a very focused magnetic field.

So by rapidly changing magnetic field, we can induce inside of the brain some

rapidly changing electrical currents, that will disturb activity of neurons.

So by single magnetic pulse, we can temporarily, quickly disturb

activity of certain neuronal population while there're repeated magnetic pulses.

We can shut down or inhibit activity of this region for 10, 20 minutes.

So we will discuss the results of TMS studies.

We will see that by transcranial magnetic stimulation, we can change our decisions.

So, as you see on this graph, this, TMS coil induces magnetic field.

Magnetic field penetrates our brain and induce some local currents

in the brain that disturb, activity of neural population.

So, on this scheme, this process is illustrated and explained in details.

So you see that strong current in there will induce this magnetic field.

Magnetic field penetrates the skull and induces current flow inside

those brains that temporally inhibits the activity of the neuron in yours.

So, in this video you can see an example of the TMS study.

This experiment was conducted in Helsinki.

And this person has to name objects presented on the screen.

And by trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, we

can suppress the performance of this task.

So this person will not be able to name these objects.

This effect is called speech arrest.

So as you see, this person names this objects, but when magnetic field is

applied to the specific speech related area, this person cannot speak.

He cannot tell anything.

So his speech is blocked by magnetic field.

So in your economics, we use the same approach.

So we temporarily block some aspects of the decision making.

So this graph represents the key

aspects of transcranial magnetic stimulation method.

So, you put the coil, TMS coil, near the head, near the

brain and using special algorithms, or special algorithms

helps you to navigate magnetic field inside of the brain.

So we can select the [UNKNOWN] in the brain and apply

magnetic field to this brain area and temporarily inhibit this brain area.

And, as a result, you can investigate how

does this magnetic stimulation change decision making process?

So, in this example, you see, the results of the very famous study

showing the acceptance rates of unfair financial offers.

So, as we see here, the

transcranial magnetic stimulation of the right dorsolateral

prefrontal cortex, leads to the higher

acceptance rate of the unfair financial offers.

Relative to the control, relative to the stimulation of the

left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and relative to the sham stimulation.

So, to the condition when there

is no trans-cranial magnetic stimulation is applied.

So, by stimulation of the certain brain region, of the right dorsolateral

prefrontal cortex, we can change our reaction to the unfair financial offers.

We start to agree with unfair financial offers.

So by trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, we can change our decisions.

We will discuss in details this kind of studies during the course.

TMS is really interesting.

New methods that is used in, in neural economics.

So it can induce very transient effects so

we can quickly change decisions by single pulses.

We can induce more long lasting

changes by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.

We can inhibit activity of certain region for 20, 30 minutes.

So, this method show us also the

causal relationship between the activity of the brain

region and the aspect of the decision making

that is changed by the transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Unfortunately it is quite difficult to stimulate deep brain structures.

You need too strong of a magnetic field to do it.

But, most of the TMS studies focus on the cortex.

On the surface of our cortex.

So, there are some disadvantages of this method.

Of course, this method produces some noise, acoustic noise,

and also can involve some twitches of the muscles.

But I think this is one of

the most promising methods of the modern neuroeconomics.

[SOUND]

[MUSIC]

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