Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

The kids arent alright: We must ensure that our students are emotionally nourished – The Hill

Every day nearly 3 million teachers report to work to teach the future of America. For many, this work is a calling and a privilege, but the conditions of their workplace are worsening and becoming more challenging. Why? Politics are hampering teachers abilities to help children succeed.

The wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous psychological impact on our children. The National Center for Education Statistics reports more than half of all schools reported increased data on fighting and threats between students. More than half of schools reported increased disruptions because of student misconduct. Verbal abuse and disrespect in classrooms from students is up. Nearly 80 percent of public schools need more support for mental health.

Students are experiencing previously unseen levels of anxiety, depression and behavioral health challenges, as well as gaps in their grasp of important concepts, facts and knowledge critical for future success. Teachers and school districts can help with this, if we can stop playing politics.

Young children need social-emotional competencies such as getting along with one another, working collaboratively to solve problems, and how to effectively deal with interpersonal conflict and failure. As a former teacher in public schools and former superintendent in Connecticut, I know these skills dont come naturallythey are learned. And they form the basis of social-emotional learning (SEL), critical and powerful skills that are essential to young peoples ability to succeed not just in school, but also in the workplace, at home and in their communities.

Students who lack these competencies cannot learn to their potential. While the focus on academic remediation from lost learning rightfully has been front and center, we know that this loss cannot be recovered while students are under emotional duress or in a mental health crisis. Just as in the 1960s when public schools began feeding breakfast to hungry students so they could learn more effectively, today we must ensure that our students are emotionally nourished to promote success.

Unfortunately, social emotional learning has become a tool that is being unnecessarily wielded by politicians. A 2017 study found that SEL helped pre-kindergarten students improve executive function, better regulate their emotions and hone social skills. Other studies have shown that learning these skills can help historically underserved populations.

The reason social-emotional competencies are questioned is because some individuals do not understand, or do not want to understand, what SEL means and how it is taught. Parents have every right to be concerned about what their children are learning. Likewise, teachers seeking to build student competencies understand that they cannot reach kids who are an emotional mess.

We cannot assume that children know how to recognize what their emotions are, let alone how to work with them safely and skillfully. Without direct SEL instruction, children may move through adolescence and into adulthood avoiding their emotions. This can result in maladaptive behaviors such as addiction, overworking, overeating, anger and isolation.

Lacking these healthy tools, children grow up unable to solve problems or interact effectively with peers. They may struggle to succeed at school, in the workplace and in their personal and professional relationships. Exploring these critical lessons in humanity and personal growth is especially important in this era where standardized testing, pandemic-driven isolation and pervasive achievement gaps have allowed schools and communities to lose sight of the whole child, sacrificing emotional and social growth for manufactured metrics.

It is incredibly naive and disingenuous to blame SEL for the disintegration of societal norms and behaviors. Its quite the opposite, actuallySEL is democracy in practice. Its not dogmatic and gives our children space and resources for learning about themselves and the world around them. This includes setting and achieving positive goals, feeling and showing empathy for others and establishing and maintaining positive relationships.

SEL is our North Star, the foundation upon which relationships and the ability to survive and flourish in society is based. It helps teach us how to relate to one another and to prosper as individuals, a society and a nation. Strong leadership comes from equally strong and emotionally healthy individuals well versed in human behavior, compassion and open minds. We must reject the overt politicization of SEL and do whats best for our kids. Our country is counting on it.

David Title, Ed.D., is Associate Clinical Professor, chair of Department of Educational and Literacy Leadership, and director of the Ed.D. program focused on Social, Emotional and Academic Learning in the Isabelle Farrington College of Education & Human Development at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.

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The kids arent alright: We must ensure that our students are emotionally nourished - The Hill

Human Behavior

Tracking Trust In Human-Robot Work Interactions – Texas A&M Today – Texas A&M University Today

Researchers in Ranjana Mehtas lab capture functional brain activity as operators work with robots on a manufacturing task to track the operators trust or distrust levels.

Texas A&M Engineering

The future of work is here.

As industries begin to see humans working closely with robots, theres a need to ensure that the relationship is effective, smooth and beneficial to humans. Robot trustworthiness and humans willingness to trust robot behavior are vital to this working relationship. However, capturing human trust levels can be difficult due to subjectivity, a challenge researchers in the Wm Michael Barnes 64 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University aim to solve.

Ranjana Mehta, associate professor and director of the NeuroErgonomics Lab, said her labs human-autonomy trust research stemmed from a series of projects on human-robot interactions in safety-critical work domains funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

While our focus so far was to understand how operator states of fatigue and stress impact how humans interact with robots, trust became an important construct to study, Mehta said. We found that as humans get tired, they let their guards down and become more trusting of automation than they should. However, why that is the case becomes an important question to address.

Mehtaslatest NSF-funded work, recently published inHuman Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, focuses on understanding the brain-behavior relationships of why and how an operators trusting behaviors are influenced by both human and robot factors.

Mehta also has another publication in the journalApplied Ergonomicsthat investigates these human and robot factors.

Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, Mehtas lab captured functional brain activity as operators collaborated with robots on a manufacturing task. They found faulty robot actions decreased the operators trust in the robots. That distrust was associated with increased activation of regions in the frontal, motor and visual cortices, indicating increasing workload and heightened situational awareness. Interestingly, the same distrusting behavior was associated with the decoupling of these brain regions working together, which otherwise were well connected when the robot behaved reliably. Mehta said this decoupling was greater at higher robot autonomy levels, indicating that neural signatures of trust are influenced by the dynamics of human-autonomy teaming.

What we found most interesting was that the neural signatures differed when we compared brain activation data across reliability conditions (manipulated using normal and faulty robot behavior) versus operators trust levels (collected via surveys) in the robot, Mehta said. This emphasized the importance of understanding and measuring brain-behavior relationships of trust in human-robot collaborations since perceptions of trust alone is not indicative of how operators trusting behaviors shape up.

Sarah Hopko 19, lead author on both papers and recent industrial engineering doctoral student, said neural responses and perceptions of trust are both symptoms of trusting and distrusting behaviors and relay distinct information on how trust builds, breaches and repairs with different robot behaviors. She emphasized the strengths of multimodal trust metrics neural activity, eye tracking, behavioral analysis, etc. can reveal new perspectives that subjective responses alone cannot offer.

The next step is to expand the research into a different work context, such as emergency response, and understand how trust in multi-human robot teams impact teamwork and taskwork in safety-critical environments. Mehta said the long-term goal is not to replace humans with autonomous robots but to support them by developing trust-aware autonomy agents.

This work is critical, and we are motivated to ensure that humans-in-the-loop robotics design, evaluation and integration into the workplace are supportive and empowering of human capabilities, Mehta said.

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Human Behavior

Mindreader: The New Science of Deciphering What People Really Think, What They Really Want, and Who They Really Are – Next Big Idea Club Magazine

David Lieberman is a specialist in the field of human behavior and interpersonal relationships. He is a renowned psychotherapist and author of eleven books. He has trained personnel in the U.S. military, the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA, and his instructional video is mandatory for psychological operations graduates. He teaches government negotiators, mental health professionals, and Fortune 100 executives.

Below, David shares 5 key insights from his new book, Mindreader: The New Science of Deciphering What People Really Think, What They Really Want, and Who They Really Are. Listen to the audio versionread by David himselfin the Next Big Idea App.

Paying close attention to both what people say and how they say itlanguage pattern and sentence structurereveals whats actually going on inside their heads. There are seven or eight different markers to consider.

One such marker is pronoun usage. From a psycholinguistic standpoint, pronouns can reveal whether someone is trying to separate themself from their words. In much the same way that an unsophisticated liar might look away because they are feeling guilt and eye contact increases intimacy, a person making an untrue statement often subconsciously distances from their own words. The personal pronouns (e.g., I, me, mine, and my) indicate that a person is committed to and confident about their statement. Omitting personal pronouns may signal someones reluctance to accept ownership of their words.

Lets take the example of giving a compliment. A woman who believes what shes saying is more likely to use a personal pronoun. For instance, I really liked your presentation. However, a person offering insincere flattery might say, Nice presentation, or Looks like you did a lot of research. In the second case, she has removed herself from the equation. Those in law enforcement are well acquainted with this principle and recognize when people are filing a false report about their car being stolen because they typically refer to it as the car or that car and not my car or our car. Of course, you cant gauge honesty by a single sentence, and pronoun usage is only one of a dozen of different markers available to us.

Those in law enforcement know that victims of violent crimes, such as abduction or assault, rarely use the word we. Instead, theyll relate the events in a way that separates them from the aggressor, referring to the attacker as he or she and themselves as I. Rather than saying, We got into the car, they are inclined to phrase it as, He put me in the car. Recounting a story that is peppered with we, us, and our may indicate psychological closeness and implies an association, a relationship, and perhaps even cooperation.

We can observe benign applications of this in everyday life. At the end of a date, Jack and Jill walk out of a restaurant, and Jill inquires, Where did we park the car? An innocent question, but using we, instead of you, indicates that she has begun to identify with Jack and sees them as a couple. Asking Where is your car parked? hardly implies disinterest, but turning your into our does expose a subtext of interest.

Whenever I speak to couples, Im always on the lookout when the word we is conspicuously absent from conversation. Research finds that married couples who use cooperative language (e.g., we, our, and us), more often than individualized language (e.g., I, me, and you) have lower divorce rates and report greater marital satisfaction. Studies also demonstrate a powerful correlation between such pronoun use and how couples respond to disagreements and crises, predicting whether they will team up and cooperate or become polarized and divided. The use of you-words (e.g., you, your, and yourself) may suggest unexpressed frustration or outright aggression. A person who says, You need to figure this out, conveys enmity and a me-versus-you mindset. However, We need to figure this out, indicates us-versus-the-problem, a presumption of shared responsibility and cooperation.

Again, a single, casual reference does not mean anything (and any of these statements might signal anger or frustration in the moment, not about the marriage itself), but a consistent pattern of syntax reveals everything.

The implications of syntax extend to the corporate arena. Research finds that firms where workers typically refer to their workplace as the company or that company, rather than my company or our company, and to coworkers mostly as they rather than my coworkers, are likely to have low morale and a high rate of turnover. Similarly, in sports a fair-weather fan can be spotted through language: When the fans team wins, they characteristically declare, We won. But when the team loses, it becomes, They lost. The pronoun we is typically reserved for positive associations.

Sun Tzu, in The Art of War, neatly distills the bluff: If able, appear unable; if active, appear inactive; if near, appear far; if far, appear near.

When a person is bluffing, they are managing others impressions to convey the right effect and serve a personal agenda. Conversely, the authentic person is not interested in how they come across because they are unconcerned with their image. A deceptive counterpart focuses solely on others impressions and puts a great deal of effort into presenting a certain image. The latter person almost always goes too far.

A bluff occurs when someone is really against something but pretends to be for itor vice versa. The person is trying to create a false impression to disguise their true intentions. Therein lies the key: People who bluff habitually overcompensate, so you can uncover a bluff instantly by noticing how someone tries to appear. Lets take an example from the world of poker.

A card player bets heavily and raises the pot. Does he have the cards or simply guts? When a person is bluffing in a poker hand, he wants to show he is not timid. He might put his money in quickly. But if he does have a good hand, he may deliberate a bit, showing that he is not really sure about his hand. Poker professionals know that a bluffing person will give the impression of having a strong hand, while a person with a strong hand will imply that their hand is weak.

When people feign confidence they manipulate how self-assured they appear because we equate confidence with calm. For instance, law enforcement professionals know that a suspect may yawn as if to show he is relaxed or even bored. If the person is sitting, they may slouch or stretch, covering more territory as if to demonstrate a feeling of ease. Or the suspect may busily pick lint off his slacks, trying to show he is preoccupied with something trivial and is clearly not worried about the charges. The only problem (for the guilty person) is that a wrongly accused person will be indignant and wont try promoting the right image. Remember, people who bluff habitually overcompensate.

Imagine that a man woke up one morning insisting he was a zombie. His wife tried shaking him into reality, to no avail. She reached out to his mother, who also tried to snap him out of this delusion. Not knowing what else to do, they finally took him to a psychiatrist but the guy insisted to the doctor, as he had to both his wife and mother, that he does not have a problem. The psychiatrist said, But I hear that you think that youre a zombie. The man said, Doc I know Im a zombie. The psychiatrist asked if zombies bleed and the man said they dont. So, the psychiatrist pricked the mans finger and it bled. The man stared in amazement at his finger, blood trickling down, and looked up to say, Well what do you know, zombies do bleed.

The moral of the story is that people see themselves, others, and their world the way that they need to, in order to reconcile with their personal narrativeto make sense of themselves, their choices, and their lives.

The greater our ego, the more vulnerable we feel, and the greater our drive to predict and control our world. We then interpret the world to fit our narrative, rather than adjusting our worldview to fit reality. Essentially, we color the world so that we are untainted.

Take notice of how people see themselves and their worldwhat attracts their attention and what they avoid; what they condemn and what they defendto know their story of I. Or put differently, the what (they focus on and see) tells you the why (they focus on it), and the why tells you the who (they really are).

Building a psychological assessment begins with asking, Why do they need to see that which they are looking for in the first place?

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. This is a piercing insight into human nature. A person looks at the world as a reflection of themselves. If they see the world as corrupt, they feel on some level that they are corrupt. If they see honest working people, that is frequently how they see themselves. Thats why con artists are the first to accuse others of cheating.

The old saying, What Susie says about Sally says more of Susie than of Sally, has a strong psychological basis. Research finds that when you ask someone to rate the personality of another persona close colleague, an acquaintance, or a friendtheir response provides direct insight into their personality traits and emotional health. Indeed, findings show a huge suite of negative personality traits are associated with viewing others negatively. Specifically, the level of negativity the rater uses in describing the other person and the simple tendency to see people negatively indicates a greater likelihood of depression and various personality disorders, including narcissism and antisocial behavior. Similarly, seeing others in a positive light correlates with how happy, kindhearted, and emotionally stable a person is.

The less emotionally healthy a person is, the more they denigrate the world to accommodate their own insecurities. Hence, how someone treats you is a reflection of their own emotional health and says everything about them and nothing about you. We give love. We give respect. If someone doesnt love themselves, what do you expect them to give back? The emotionally healthy person is true to themselves, nonjudgmental, and accepting of others.

Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is a tool. How it is wielded makes all of the difference. Real power is the responsible application of knowledge. Knowing what people really think and feel saves time, money, energy, and heartache. But it also positions you to better understand, help, and heal those who are in pain. The techniques in my book are to be used responsibly, to enlighten, empower, and inspire. They are designed to educate so that you can become more effective in your life and interactions and more optimistic about your abilities and possibilities.

To listen to the audio version read by author David Lieberman, download the Next Big Idea App today:

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Mindreader: The New Science of Deciphering What People Really Think, What They Really Want, and Who They Really Are - Next Big Idea Club Magazine

Human Behavior

News | About the College | College of Arts and Sciences – The Seattle U Newsroom – News, stories and more

Written by Karen L. Bystrom

Ken Allan, PhD, Associate Professor, Art History, and Charles M. Tung, PhD, Professor, English, co-organized a seminar, Survival is Insufficient: Infrastructures of Preservation and Transmission, at the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Conference at UCLA, Sept 15-18, 2022. Allans paper, Radio/Aether: Wallace Bermans Verifax Collages and LIFE Magazine as a Medium for the Sixties, considered the artist's use of the magazine as an archive and the emergence of information theory during the postmodern turn in the arts. Tungs paper, Critical University Studies in Deep Time, focused on contemporary representations of educational institutions and scenes of learning against a backdrop of seed banks, survivalist libraries, and bunkers. Allan serves on the ASAP board as Secretary.

P. Sven Arvidson, PhD, Professor and Director of Interdisciplinary Liberal Studies, published "Reverent Awe and the Field of Consciousness" in the peer-reviewed philosophy journal Human Studies.

Dominic CodyKramers, MFA, Associate Teaching Professor, Performing Arts and Arts Leadership, is designing sound for Seattle Shakespeare Company's production of Shakespeare's Macbeth, featuring the acting and music talents of Dean Powers' son, Hersh. The play opens October 28 and runs thru November 20.

Serena Cosgrove, PhD, Associate Professor, International Studies, and her co-editors, Wendi Bellanger, PhD, and Irina Carlota Silber, PhD, are happy to share the news that their book,Higher Education, State Repression, and Neoliberal Reform in Nicaragua: Reflections from a University under Fire, has just been published by Routledge. This innovative volume makes a key contribution to debates around the role of the university as a space of resistance by highlighting the liberatory practices undertaken to oppose dual pressures of state repression and neoliberal reform at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Nicaragua. With a range of contributors from Nicaragua and Central Americanist scholars in the U.S., including the editors, one of the chapters was authored by Andrew Gorvetzian, who graduated in 2015 from Seattle University with a double major in International Studies and Spanish.

Elizabeth Dale, PhD, Associate Professor, Nonprofit Leadership, co-authored an article with Nicole Plastino, MNPL 20. Dale, E. J., & Plastino, N. J. (2022). Giving With Pride: Considering Participatory Grantmaking in an Anti-Racist, LGBTQ+ Community Foundation. The Foundation Review, 14(1).

Amelia Seraphia Derr, MSW, PhD, Associate Professor, Social Work, will present a paper at The Council on Social Work Education Annual Conference in Anaheim on November 12, Educating for Self and Community Care: Sustaining Students in their Social (Justice) Work.

Fade Eadah, PhD, Assistant Professor, Psychology, had an article, Teaching Agents to Understand Teamwork: Evaluating and Predicting Collective Intelligence as a Latent Variable via Hidden Markov Models, accepted for Computers in Human Behavior, a top multidisciplinary journal in Psychology. The article shows a new method for predicting future behavior in teamwork based on past behavior, which will allow for AI to (eventually) appropriately time interventions.

Gabriella Gutirrez y Muhs, PhD, Professor, Modern Languages and Women Gender, and Sexuality Studies, delivered the Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month Keynote Address for the EKU Chautauqua Lecture Series at Eastern Kentucky University.

Janet Hayatshahi, MFA, Assistant Professor, Performing Arts and Arts Leadership, was interviewed by American Theatre for Zharia ONeal Is Sound Theatres First William S. Yellow Robe Playwright.

Jacqueline Helfgott, PhD, Professor, Criminal Justice and Director, Crime & Justice Research Center, was interviewed for Las Vegas Murders on Mass Shootings Anniversary is Coincidence, Experts Say.

Audrey Hudgins, EdD, Clinical Associate Professor, Matteo Ricci Institute, with Seattle University student, Cullin Egge, and a colleague and student from Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, Guillermo Yrizar and Metztli Chavez, presented Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL): A Tool for Global Citizenship at the 2022 American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Conference on Global Learning. She has been invited to write a chapter called "Global experiential learning: (De)Constructing Housing Justice in Tijuana, Mexico" to be included in the book, Critical Innovations in Global Development Studies Pedagogy.

Kira Mauseth, PhD, Senior Instructor, Psychology, appeared in Hundreds of thousands of kids with mental health needs aren't receiving necessary help, an interview that appeared nationally and on KOMO 4. Also, asco-lead of the Behavioral Health Strike Team for the Washington State Department of Health, talks about her work in with the Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center in Training and Supporting Healthcare Leadership during the COVID Pandemic, published in the latest issue of Elevate, a publication of the Public Health Learning Network.

James Miles, MFA, Assistant Professor, Performing Arts and Arts Leadership, presented Its Bigger Than Hip Hop with Dr Jason Rawls from Ohio University, emcee/teacher Vinson Wordsworth Johnson, and emcee/teaching artist John Lil Sci Robinson at the Teach Better Conference in Akron, OH, October 14 and 15.

Quinton Morris, DMA, Associate Professor, Violin, will be honored as a recipient of the distinguished Pathfinder Award by the Puget Sound Association of Phi Beta Kappa. This award reflects the imagery on the distinguished Phi Beta Kappa key, a hand pointing to the stars and is given to those individuals who "encourage others to seek new worlds to discover, pathways to explore, and untouched destinations to reach. The people, businesses, and institutions honored do something to broaden peoples' interests in active intellectual accomplishments; they reach beyond ordinary routine, beyond the regular requirement of their lives and jobs, in order to break new intellectual ground and/or inspire others to do so. Morris is being honored for his scholarship and community work as an educator and youth advocate through his work with his nonprofit organization, Key to Change. Morris will receive the distinguished award on November 17.

Patrick Schoettmer, PhD, Associate Teaching Professor, Political Science, was interviewed for Senate candidates spar over coffee, crime in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, on KOMO 4.

Kirsten Moana Thompson, PhD, Professor and Director, Film Studies, and Theiline Pigott-McCone Endowed Chair (2022-24), delivered a keynote address The Doors of Perception: Scintillating Light and Stuttering, Starburst Animation at the Conference on Color, Bern Lichtspiel Kinemathek, Switzerland, September 25-28, 2022. She published" Introduction to Animation and Advertising", Malcolm Cook and Kirsten Moana Thompson, Handbook Animation Studies, (In German) eds. Franziska Bruckner, Julia Eckel, Maike Reinerth, and Erwin Feyersinger. Springer, (forthcoming) 2022. She also presented the conference paper, Indigeneity, Corporate and alt right Appropriations: Fantasies of the Pacific, from Moana to Aquaman, New Zealand Studies Association (NZSA), Marseille, France, July 5-8, 2022.

Charles M. Tung, PhD, Professor and Chair, English, published a chapter, Clocks: Modernist Heterochrony and the Contemporary Big Clock, in The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism and Technology, edited by Alex Goody and Ian Whittington. In this piece, Tung argues: When powered by modernist clockwork, the big clock of human civilization and the time of the planet the clock that seems to preside over scenes of an ultimate fate, an absolute break and temporal reset, and even over omega-point fantasies of the death of time itself ticks in a most peculiar way. The enlarged order of modernisms clocks reveals not only that time is elapsing differently in different reference frames, but also that the present and the experience afforded by it are shot through unevenly with a variety of temporal rates and scales.

Mariela Lpez Velarde, Assistant Professor, PhD, Spanish, Modern Languages and Cultures, was an invited speaker at the series of conferences entitled The future of internationalization in Jesuit Universities. It was a forum organized by AUSJAL (Asociacin de Universidades confiadas a la Compaa de Jess de Amrica Latina/ Association of Universities Entrusted to the Society of Jesus in Latin America) dedicated to the discussion and dialogue about the integration of the international dimension of the work done in Jesuit universities around the world.

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News | About the College | College of Arts and Sciences - The Seattle U Newsroom - News, stories and more

Human Behavior

OutThinks cybersecurity training uses NLP and data to mitigate employee-related risks – VentureBeat

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Traditionally, cybersecurity has been all about technology but really, it is a people problem.

Research indicates that human behavior accounts for the majority of cybersecurity issues: 95% according to the World Economic Forum; 82% per Verizons 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report; nearly 91% according to the U.K.s Information Commissioners Office.

This is not for lack of training, said Flavius Plesu, CEO of new software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform OutThink.

Workers have not been ignored; training has always been a key part of the security landscape, he said.

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However, he pointed out, these have primarily been delivered through computer-based Security Awareness Training (SAT).

The focus of SAT has until now been to instruct, rather than to understand users, he said.

To address this, OutThink claims it has invented a new category of software: The cybersecurity human risk management platform. To aid in its development, the company today announced that it has raised $10 million in a seed-stage funding round, led by Albion VC, with participation from Triple Point Ventures, Forward Partners, Gapminder and Innovate U.K.

The entire platform is about making the human side of security practical, said Plesu.

Cyberattacks continue to increase in complexity, scope and cost. The average cost of a data breach globally is $4.35 million; in the U.S. its more than double that, at $9.44 million.

In fact, the World Economic Forums 2021 Global Risks Report ranks cyberattacks as one of the top three biggest threats of the decade, alongside weapons of mass destruction and climate change.

To the point of human behavior, the focus of this years Cybersecurity Awareness Month (October) is See Yourself in Cyber. Gartner identifies beyond awareness programs as one of the top trends in cybersecurity in 2022.

Progressive organizations are moving beyond outdated compliance-based awareness campaigns and investing in holistic behavior and culture change programs designed to provoke more secure ways of working, writes Peter Firstbrook, Gartner VP analyst.

Companies offering platforms to this end include KnowBe4, SoSafe, CybSafe, Cyber Risk Aware and CyberReady, among others.

OutThinks tool uses monitored machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP) and applied psychology to reveal what users truly believe and gauge their risk, explained Plesu.

Intelligence is combined with data from integrated security systems like Microsoft Defender or Microsoft Sentinel to present live dashboards showing the overall human risk picture at a department, group or organization level, as well as the root causes of that risk, he said.

Based on this information, the platform then recommends or automates the delivery of tailored improvement actions.

All three points of the people-processes-technology triangle are better aligned and joined up, said Plesu, and people are no longer the problem: They become the solution.

The platform is already used by a number of large global organizations including Whirlpool, Danske Bank, Rothschild and FTSE 100 brands, he said.

OutThink came from Plesus personal experience as a CISO. Early in his career, he explained, he led complex cybersecurity transformation programs within large global organizations.

It became clear to me that, despite considerable investment in technical security measures and awareness training, we were still exposed, he said.

He began to rethink cybersecurity and address the human risk challenge with CISO peers and members of the academic community.

Plesu noted that, whenever people use computer systems to process or handle information, there is an inherent risk that someone will make a mistake, or turn against the company and cause deliberate damage. Cybersecurity human risk management aims to answer three key questions for CISOs:

The idea for OutThink was born out of frustration with the first-generation solutions in the market, but it also came from a passionate belief: If we engage people beyond security awareness training, we can make them an organizations strongest defense mechanism, said Plesu.

One FTSE 100 organization benchmarked OutThink using independent phishing simulation platforms (Proofpoint and Cyber Risk Aware). After just one individualized security awareness OutThink session, its employees were 47.74% less likely to click on a phishing link and 46% more likely to correctly identify and report a phishing email, said Plesu.

By contrast, he said, first-generation tools on the market provide e-learning modules or videos and phishing simulations that are typically identical to all users.

While these have moderate levels of efficacy, they suffer from the same problem as any training solution: The vast majority of information (75%) is forgotten within a week, he pointed out.

Newer platforms use ML to understand behaviors and target training, namely through surveys. But NLP and data science are typically not applied to understand how people feel and think about security; they are dependent on honest responses.

A huge number of cognitive biases mean this is a risky approach, said Plesu. People tend to overestimate their own ability and knowledge, especially for those with the weakest competencies.

Also, people tend to think of themselves as exceptions, and they will provide the responses requiring the least effort.

There are also custom-designed e-learning assets for organizations or specific departments within them, he said.

We do not consider this to be a viable alternative because there are major differences in the security attitudes including personality, risk perception and intentions and behaviors of each employee within an organization; even within the same department, said Plesu.

Ultimately, the continual growth of cybercrime shows that conventional approaches arent working, he said. There is an urgent need for effective new approaches to cybersecurity human risk management.

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Human Behavior

NINJIO Expands Services With Strategic Acquisition Of Innovative Behavior-based Cybersecurity Company DCOYA – CIO Dive

LOS ANGELES

NINJIO, a cybersecurity awareness company thatleadsthe industry in customer satisfaction, has acquiredDCOYA an advanced behavior-centric cybersecurity solutions provider. The combination of NINJIOs engaging cybersecurity content with DCOYAs powerful machine-learning-driven cybersecurity awareness platform will give CISOs and other company leaders the most effective cybersecurity awareness training toolkit on the market.

Like NINJIO, DCOYA focuses on behavior modification an approach thats only becoming more crucial as cybercriminals continue to rely on social engineering to infiltrate companies and steal sensitive information. DCOYAs technology works backward from the psychological tactics of the most successful human-related hacks. The new solution will allow NINJIO to determine a persons area of greatest vulnerability (greed, fear, obedience, and others) and provide reinforcing education that specifically addresses that vulnerability. Additionally, the acquisition of DCOYA will allow NINJIO to track and report how individuals, subgroups, and whole companies improve over time, allowing CISOs and CIOs to see the results of their behavior change tactics, beyond simulated phishing failure and reporting. These resources empower NINJIO to provide a comprehensive cybersecurity awareness solution to its customers that is unlike anything currently available.

DCOYA is a perfect fit for NINJIO because the team is aligned with our core philosophy, says NINJIO CEO Shaun McAlmont. We already offer the best behavior-based learning content on the market, as well as an integrated LMS, simulated phishing tests, and reporting. We are thrilled to add a set of digital tools that will make our platform even more proactive, automated, and data-driven. DCOYAs machine-learning-powered technology enables us to meet a security professionals specific needs and streamline their approach to cybersecurity.

DCOYAs emphasis on behavioral neuroscience stems from the basic human motivations hackers use to exploit individuals. Verizons 2022 Data Breach InvestigationsReportfound that 82 percent of breaches involved a human element, which highlights the importance of having a strong security awareness program. A vital component of any cybersecurity awareness program is the ability to determine whether its actually leading to sustainable behavior change among employees. NINJIO will leverage DCOYAs sophisticated technology to give security leaders a clearer picture of what employees are learning, where reinforcement is necessary, and how companies can continue to establish a culture of cybersecurity awareness. Customers will also have access to benchmarking so they can see how theyre performing relative to their peers.

It was clear to us that connecting to NINJIO meets our vision to lead cybersecurity awareness into a safer place for all users. In fact, it was one of the easiest decisions we have made, said Asaf Kostel, CEO of DCOYA. He continued: The combined capabilities and solutions of both companies will revolutionize the cybersecurity awareness landscape. As we see it, changing behavior based on science and AI is an important and significant step toward a safer world in terms of cyber awareness and reflects a complete fit for the shared vision.

By giving customers results-based, customizable, and prescriptive training, in-depth analytics on employee behavior and progress, and the ability to automate their platforms, DCOYAs machine learning technology will drastically expand NINJIOs suite of cybersecurity solutions. This will allow CISOs and other company leaders to increase stakeholder support and create sustainable cultural change at their organizations.

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NINJIOis a cybersecurity awareness company that empowers individuals and organizations to become defenders against cyberthreats. The company creates 3 to 4-minute Hollywood-style micro-learning videos that teach organizations, employees, and families how not to get hacked.

DCOYAis a leading and trusted provider of behavior-centric cybersecurity solutions for organizations of all sizes. We understand how to encourage and train employees so they can reduce both the risk and cost of social engineering attacks. Our unique platform actively and automatically engages employees in security awareness training, educates them on adopting the proper security habits, and decreases the risk of a successful attack.

Gauge Capital is a leading middle-market private equity firm based in Southlake, Texas. Gauge invests in five key sectors: business services, consumer, government & industrial services, healthcare and technology. The firm manages more than $2.0 billion in capital and in 2020 and 2021, Inc. Magazine named Gauge one of the top private equity firms for founders. In 2021 and 2022, Gauge was also named to the Top 50 PE Firms in the Middle Market by Grady Campbell. In 2022, Gauge ranked in the top 5 out of 517 private equity firms in the HEC Paris-Dow Jones Small-Cap Buyout Performance Ranking. For more information, please contact Andrew Peix, Managing Director of Business Development at [emailprotected]

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NINJIO Expands Services With Strategic Acquisition Of Innovative Behavior-based Cybersecurity Company DCOYA - CIO Dive

Human Behavior

The Dire Connection Between Diet and Obesity, Depression, and Anxiety – The Epoch Times

The link between obesity and mental health disorders is more significant than most people realize, and one physician researcher has been working to better understand the reasons.

Obesity has become epidemic, with the average American man now weighing 198 poundsup from 166 in the 1960sand the average American woman weighing 170 poundsup from 140 in the 1960s. Concurrently, mental disorders like depression, anxiety, ADHD, and post-traumatic stress disorder are also becoming epidemic, and Dr. William Wilson, author of Brain Drain, believes the phenomena are correlated.

While many researchers have linked several of these conditions to factors related to modern lifeeverything from sitting too much, to social isolation, to environmental contaminants including endocrine disruptersWilson believes the overarching cause is our food. Or more accurately, his findings focus on how the food we commonly eat triggers a neurological/psycho-emotional disorder he calls carbohydrate associated reversible brain syndrome or the CARB syndrome.

Wilson is the rare family physician who is also active in the research community, a combination that led to his work in the field.

According to Wilson, the long-term consumption of highly processed foods made by Big Food, or the Food Industrial Complex as he calls it, has had a profound impact on brain function. These foods are packed with high glycemic carbohydrates and sugars that drain the body of crucial neurotransmitters like dopamine, epinephrine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. This loss nudges people toward mental disorders even as it compels the body to store extra fatregardless of how much the person eats.

I noticed a strange correlation [in my patients] between certain brain dysfunction symptoms and changes in body composition, and the symptom changes always preceded the body composition changes, Wilson told The Epoch Times.

In other words, psychological factors seemed to have a causative role in weight gain.

To me, this suggested that when it comes to fat storage, the brain calls the shots, he said.

Wilson made this observation after taking the somewhat unusual step 16 years ago to begin measuring body composition using a Futrex machine. It measures body composition far more accurately than the typical method of using body mass index (BMI), which is a formula based on dividing weight by height. Unfortunately, BMI doesnt take muscle mass into account.

Even people with anorexia can still have excess body fat, Wilson says.

Over the years, Wilson has amassed a database of more than 18,000 cases, and he noticed another pattern: When body composition improved so did several psychological conditions.

A 2003 paper by Harvard researchers theorized that 14 common brain disorders may be part of an overall disease called affective spectrum disorder. The paper got Wilson thinking.

I realized they were the same symptoms associated with changes in body composition and I eventually identified 22 symptoms that fit this pattern, he said.

The symptoms that Wilson says characterize CARB syndrome are:

At the heart of CARB syndrome is a pattern of disordered eating that is linked to shifts in brain chemistry and mental health.

The symptoms of CARB syndrome can overlap with many traditional brain disorders, Wilson said, which creates confusion in the medical and scientific communities.

For example, bipolar disorder has been with us since the dawn of human civilization, characterized by mania and psychosisa complete separation from reality, he said.

Over the past 50 years, we have been seeing a lot of people with hypomania but no psychosis. The medical profession decided to call this bipolar disorder II, which, in my opinion, is wrong. These patients have CARB syndrome, which is unrelated to bipolar disorder I. If you treat them with antipsychotics, over time they get worse and gain a lot of weight.

People with CARB syndrome dont eat like normal people, Wilson explained.

In normal, healthy people without CARB syndrome, mild cravings for sugar and highly refined carbohydrates can occur, especially after consuming processed food, but these cravings tend to be mild and transitory, he said.

In those with CARB syndrome, these cravings become very intense and persist regardless of food consumed, he said. They push people to consume more of the very food that is frying their brains, triggering a vicious circle of disease and declining quality of life. There are likely multiple reasons for these pathological cravings, including fluctuating glucose levels.

Studies in scientific literature have supported Wilsons tenets. In a study published in the journal Current Nutrition Reports in 2019, researchers wrote: Dopamine receptor agonists show attenuation of obesity and improvement of mental health in rodents and humans. Modulating brain insulin and dopamine signaling in obese patients can potentially improve therapeutic outcomes.

In other words, fixing dopamine issues decreased obesity and improved mental health in the subjects.

Research published in 2017 in the journal Birth Defects Research notes that recent studies have highlighted how palatable high fat and high sugar junk foods affect brain function, resulting in cognitive impairments and altered reward processing.

Diet can lead to alterations in dopamine-mediated reward signaling, and inhibitory neurotransmission controlled by gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), two major neurotransmitter systems that are under construction across adolescence, the study authors wrote.

Poor dietary choices may derail the normal adolescent maturation process and influence neurodevelopmental trajectories, which can predispose individuals to dysregulated eating and impulsive behaviors.

In short, eating poorly can affect brain development and trigger disordered eating, even as it undermines impulse control.

This year, research published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research also studied links between diet and brain function in adolescent rats. The researchers looked at the role of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), an ingredient found in almost all junk food.

While HFCS consumption has been linked to an increased likelihood of obesity and other physical health impairments, the link between HFCS and persistent behavioral changes is not yet fully established, the researchers wrote.

The present study aimed to assess whether adolescent HFCS consumption could lead to alterations in adult behaviors and protein expression, following cessation, and the researchers found it did.

Taken together, these data suggest that adolescent HFCS consumption leads to protracted dysfunction in affective behaviors and alterations in accumbal proteins which persist following cessation of HFCS consumption, they concluded.

Wilson cowrote a 2021 article with Dr. Richard Johnson, a top fructose researcher, in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, which The Epoch Times cited earlier this year. Titled Fructose and Uric Acid as Drivers of a Hyperactive Foraging Response: A Clue to Behavioral Disorders Associated With Impulsivity or Mania? the article also buttresses the CARB syndrome concept.

Obesity has been linked, in the scientific literature, to a greater chance of contracting COVID-19 as well as a greater chance of developing complications from the disease, which Wilson also notes.

I believe that in many cases, there is a two-way connection between COVID-19 and CARB syndrome, he said. Because the brain plays a critical role in maintaining a healthy immune system, I believe that people with CARB syndrome are more prone to developing COVID-19. Once people have the illness, they dont fully recover due to their malfunctioning immune system, and they end up with what is termed long COVID-19.

If you peruse the typical symptoms of long COVID-19, they closely overlap with typical CARB syndrome symptoms.

If someone develops COVID-19 and doesnt already have CARB syndrome, they are more likely to develop it down the line, Wilson said.

Thats because COVID-19 alters brain function, making individuals more prone to developing other brain disorders like CARB syndrome. Thus, COVID-19 and CARB syndrome seem to be connected in a deadly dance into sickness and diminished quality of life, he said.

Because neurons dump neurotransmitters when exposed to high glucose levels, and the body then excretes them, Wilson said he gives patients precursors of neurotransmitters such as the amino acids L-tyrosine, DL-phenylalanine, and 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-htp) and sees their condition improve.

I also add L-glutamine, an amino acid that helps to suppress those pesky cravings for sweet and starchy food, he said.

Not surprisingly, more healthful and conscientious eating makes a difference in those suffering from negative diet/brain connection, said Wilson, who offers some recipes on his website CarbSyndrome.com.

As a final word, Wilson said, CARB syndrome is preventable, reversible, and treatable, and no one should be discouraged.

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Martha Rosenberg is a nationally recognized reporter and author whose work has been cited by the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Public Library of Science Biology, and National Geographic. Rosenbergs FDA expose, 'Born with a Junk Food Deficiency,' established her as a prominent investigative journalist. She has lectured widely at universities throughout the United States and resides in Chicago.

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The Dire Connection Between Diet and Obesity, Depression, and Anxiety - The Epoch Times

Human Behavior

What can furbearers past and present teach us about future conservation efforts? – EurekAlert

NORMAN, OKLA. Over the years, humans have had a profound effect on biodiversity. Whether through population, land use, exploitation or lifestyle, everywhere people go, they have an impact on the environment and ecosystem services that we all rely on.

This pattern is exemplified by the beaver and its extirpation (local extinction) in the northeastern part of the country, a result of the fur trade industry between roughly 1600-1900. European demand for mammal pelts, such as the beaver, altered life for Indigenous North Americans and shifted thousands of years of traditional harvest practices.

While existing research has given us some insight, scientists hope the eager beaver and its furry cohorts will improve our understanding of the past, and better manage current and future conservation efforts for these furbearers.

Courtney Hofman, Presidents Associates Presidential Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, is leading a project studying how human management schemes and Indigenous relationships influenced furbearers, specifically beaver, mink and muskrat.

Hofmans work is the focus of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The four-year study uses ancient DNA samples derived from archaeological specimens housed at the Smithsonian Institutes Natural History Museum and among other museums, as well as samples from modern beaver, mink and muskrat provided by wildlife managers and fur-trappers, to better understand the relationship between people and these animals. The study incorporates a diverse group of collaborators, including the Smithsonian, Middlebury College, the University of Maine and tribal partners.

Interestingly, despite those species being really important commercially, like fur farms, there really hasnt been much genetic study at all of their native ranges in North America, Hofman said. Especially with something like the beaver that almost went extinct due to overharvest and is now recovering, there is a lot of potential to estimate how many beavers were on the landscape in the past before euro-colonial harvest and explore questions of how ecosystems have changed due to human action and human behavior over the last several thousand years.

Hofman said shifting baselines the idea that as resources decline, each new generation accepts that what the previous generation experienced was normal often make it hard to determine what should be considered normal in the area of ecological restoration. By extracting DNA from archaeological and historic specimens, scientists can get closer to the truth.

We can use the archaeological record as a time machine to go back and see how much genetic diversity has been lost due to the fur trade and then think about how that impacts the management of these species today, she said.

Hofman hopes working with wildlife managers will help guide future conservation efforts. Beaver managers with whom she works in Maine are interested in what the beaver landscape used to be and what it could support. By partnering with fur trappers, she and other researchers hope to collect tissue samples that will help paint an accurate picture and guide current fur trappers.

Theres a difference between the environmental carrying capacity, or how many beavers can be maintained in the environment, and the cultural carrying capacity, or how many beavers people think or want to be there because they can mess up their fields or do things that are destructive to their landscapes or farms, Hofman said. Having an estimate of what was there can guide them a little bit as they manage fur trapping, which is still an important activity today. It provides information on what was, so we can think about what could be.

As part of this research, Hofman is also studying what the extinct sea mink can tell her about the fur trade and the modern mink.

Sea mink, now extinct, lived on the coast of Maine. It was larger and probably smellier than the American mink. It went extinct in the late 1800s, probably due to overharvesting, she said. The larger sea mink was more attractive because for the same amount of effort you could get a bigger skin to sell.

Hofman said most of what we know about sea mink is from the archaeological record. Theres not much other information available except in museums.

We have been sequencing the DNA of extinct sea mink to figure out what this extinct species was and how it relates to the modern mink that live in North America today, she said. But theres a shifting baselines question here because the sea mink went extinct and on the coastal islands where it used to live theres a great interest in protecting sea birds and nesting sea birds. Closely related American mink from the mainland have been swimming out to these islands and predating on the sea birds living on the islands. Right now, managers are removing mink when they find them on these islands to protect the birds. But there used to be sea mink that lived on these islands that went extinct before our recent memory. Perhaps the sea birds on these islands, instead of being in decline, are fluctuating to population levels when the sea mink existed on the landscape.

Sara Williams, a University of Oklahoma dual major in human health and biology as well as microbiology, and Elizabeth Austin, an environmental science and earth and climate science major at Middlebury College in Vermont, spent time interning at the Smithsonians Natural History Museum, where they helped identify specimens for use in Hofmans project, including the sea mink.They blogged about the experiencebefore presenting their internship findings at the Furbearers Conference at Shoals Marine Lab in Maine, organized by Hofman and project co-investigator Alexis Mychajliw. This workshop brought together wildlife managers, fur trappers, archaeologists and Indigenous community members to help direct future research.

Not only does the study detail the effect of the classic Euro-American fur trade on beaver, mink and muskrat, it also delves into the historical exploitation of Indigenous peoples.

This past June, Hofman and Mychajliw attended an archaeological field school led by Bonnie Newsom, a Penobscot Nation citizen, assistant professor at the University of Maine and senior personnel on the project. Newsom has done extensive work on Indigenous archaeological methods, utilizing language experts in her workshops to connect objects to the language.

Were using archaeological material from Wabanaki ancestors, so we want to make sure this project is inclusive of the people who lived on these landscapes and continue to live on these landscapes and seascapes, Hofman said. Were looking at the human influence on the furbearers as part of this project, so making sure that those communities are represented is incredibly important.

The project, DISES: Cultural Resilience and Shifting Baselines of the North American Fur Trade, is funded by the National Science Foundation Division of Research, Innovation, Synergies and Education, Award no. 2109168. The project began on Sept. 21, 2021, and is expected to be complete by Aug. 31, 2025. Principal investigator is Courtney Hofman. Co-principal investigators are Torben Rick (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History) and Alexis Mychajliw (Middlebury College).

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What can furbearers past and present teach us about future conservation efforts? - EurekAlert

Human Behavior

Research to identify biological hotspots in the oceans will help reduce human impacts – University of California, Santa Cruz

Roxanne Beltran, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, has received a grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program to detect hotspots of biological activity in the ocean using data from her labs ongoing research on northern elephant seals.

The project will provide valuable training for undergraduates and graduate students in Beltrans lab, and the grant also includes funding for an assessment of ethical considerations in conducting field research with wild animals.

Our group has always emphasized the importance of mentoring and ethical practices, but we now have financial resources to put behind them, which is really exciting, Beltran said.

The $750,000 grant includes over $100,000 budgeted for a paid field researcher program for undergraduate students. Each year, nine students will be brought into the elephant seal field research program through the Work-Study Research Initiative (WSRI), a program Beltran helped spearhead (with the science divisions Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee) to streamline the process for undergraduate students to be active members of a research lab and conduct relevant research while being supported financially.

We want to train students from low-income and marginalized backgrounds, and we dont want them to have to get paid jobs in retail or food service, so the funding for this paid field assistant program will help diversify our team, she said.

The focus of the project is to obtain detailed information about the locations of areas in the ocean where intense biological activity leads to concentrations of marine organisms, including large marine vertebrates such as whales and seals drawn to aggregations of prey. Identifying these biological hotspots will enable the U.S. Navy to reduce negative interactions with wildlife during naval exercises.

UCSC researchers have been studying elephant seals for decades using sophisticated tagging technology to track their migrations and study their behavior at sea. The biologging instruments carried by the seals can also gather valuable information about the ocean environment, including sound recordings that can reveal the presence of elusive species such as beaked whales, which are known to be sensitive to Navy sonar.

If we know where sensitive species are doing important things like feeding, then we can avoid activities that might affect the environment there, said Dan Palance, a graduate student involved in the project who is leading a review of current knowledge about marine hotspots.

Elephant seals are an ideal platform for gathering information about biological hotspots, ranging far across the North Pacific Ocean and diving repeatedly into the depths in search of prey. They also return reliably to the breeding colony at Ao Nuevo Reserve, where researchers can recover the instruments.

These instruments have allowed us to make huge advances in what we know, not only about the animals themselves, but about the marine environment, said Allison Payne, a graduate student in Beltrans lab. Elephant seals are an amazing mobile sensor platform for identifying biologically important areas, including places with large aggregations of prey.

In their work with the elephant seals at Ao Nuevo, UCSC researchers have always sought to minimize the impact on the animals of the instruments and the procedures involved in attaching and recovering them. But a comprehensive review of the ethics of biologging studies and guidelines for conducting and reporting such research has been lacking.

A lot of thought goes into the size and shape of the biologgers to ensure the seals are not impacted by data collectionprimarily because we care about these amazing animals, but also because our studies depend on recording their natural behavior, Beltran said. Allisons dissertation will include developing a set of guidelines for how to plan ethical projects and how we should be reporting our practices.

Another area of emphasis for Beltran has been ensuring safe environments for diverse young scientists participating in field research. Surveys have revealed a disturbing amount of harassment and bias in field settings, particularly for women and members of marginalized communities. Beltran worked with colleagues at UCSC, including Professor Erika Zavaleta and graduate student Melissa Cronin, to develop a program called Building a Better Fieldwork Future (BBFF) to offer sexual harassment trainings for scientific teams that do fieldwork.

The BBFF program will be administered as part of the field safety training for all members of the Beltran lab. In addition, Payne, who is now the program coordinator for BBFF, will lead an effort to expand the program to address a broader range of challenges in field settings. The goal is to ensure that field settings are safer, more equitable, and more welcoming for the next generation of field scientists.

Beltran said the proposal for this grant was a group effort by her lab, bringing together different approaches to address key questions about the locations and dynamics of biological hotspots in the ocean. In addition to high-resolution biologging techniques, the project will include analyzing stable isotopes in elephant seal whiskers for information on the diets of individual seals, which will help identify feeding hotspots. The researchers will also test drone technologies using forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras through the CITRIS Initiative for Drone Education and Research as a potential tool for counting animals and detecting hotspots.

The grant pulls all of those efforts together, leveraging our existing data collection efforts to train a new generation of scientists in ethical, inclusive research, Beltran said.

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Research to identify biological hotspots in the oceans will help reduce human impacts - University of California, Santa Cruz

Human Behavior

Unlocking the mysteries of how neurons learn | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT News

When he matriculated in 2019 as a graduate student, Ral Mojica Soto-Albors was no stranger to MIT. Hed spent time here on multiple occasions as an undergraduate at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagez, including eight months in 2018 as a displaced student after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Those experiences including participating in the MIT Summer Research Bio Program (MSRP-Bio), which offers a funded summer research experience to underrepresented minorities and other underserved students not only changed his course of study; they also empowered him to pursue a PhD.

The summer program eased a lot of my worries about what science would be like, because I had never been immersed in an environment like MITs, he says. I thought it would be too intense and I wouldnt be able to make it. But, in reality, it is just a bunch of people following their passions. And so, as long as you are following your passion, you are going to be pretty happy and productive.

Mojica is now following his passion as a doctoral student in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, using a complex electrophysiology method termed patch clamp to investigate neuronal activity in vivo. It has all the stuff which we historically have not paid much attention to, he explains. Neuroscientists have been very focused on the spiking of the neuron. But I am concentrating instead on patterns in the subthreshold activity of neurons.

Opening a door to neuroscience

Mojicas affinity for science blossomed in childhood. Even though his parents encouraged him, he says, It was a bit difficult as I did not have someone in science in my family. There was no one [like that] who I could go to for guidance. In college, he became interested in the parameters of human behavior and decided to major in psychology. At the same time, he was curious about biology. As I was learning about psychology, he says. I kept wondering how we, as human beings, emerge from such a mess of interacting neurons.

His journey at MIT began in January 2017, when he was invited to attend the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines Quantitative Biology Methods Program, an intensive, weeklong program offered to underrepresented students of color to prepare them for scientific careers. Even though he had taken a Python class at the University of Puerto Rico and completed some online courses, he says, This was the first instance where I had to develop my own tools and learn how to use a programming language to my advantage.

The program also dramatically changed the course of his undergraduate career, thanks to conversations with Mandana Sassanfar, a biology lecturer and the programs coordinator, about his future goals. She advised me to change to majors to biology, as the psychology component is a little bit easier to read up on than missing the foundational biology classes, he says. She also recommended that he apply to MSRP.

Mojica promptly took her advice, and he returned to MIT in the summer of 2017 as an MSRP student working in the lab of Associate Professor Mark Harnett in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the McGovern Institute. There, he focused on performing calcium imaging on the retro splenial cortex to understand the role of neurons in navigating a complex spatial environment. The experience was eye-opening; there are very few specialized programs at UPRM, notes Mojica, which limited his exposure to interdisciplinary subjects. That was my door into neuroscience, which I otherwise would have never been able to get into.

Weathering the storm

Mojica returned home to begin his senior year, but shortly thereafter, in September 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and devastated the community. The island was dealing with blackouts almost a year after the hurricane, and they are still dealing with them today. It makes it really difficult, for example, for people who rely on electricity for oxygen or to refrigerate their diabetes medicine, he says. [My family] was lucky to have electricity reliably four months after the hurricane. But I had a lot of people around me who spent eight, nine, 10 months without electricity, he says.

The hurricanes destruction disrupted every aspect of life, including education. MIT offered its educational resources by hosting several 2017 MSRP students from Puerto Rico for the spring semester, including Mojica. He moved back to campus in February 2018, finished up his fall term university exams, and took classes and did research throughout the spring and summer of that year.

That was when I first got some culture shock and felt homesick, he notes. Thankfully, he was not alone. He befriended another student from Puerto Rico who helped him through that tough time. They understood and supported each other, as both of their families were navigating the challenges of a post-hurricane island. Mojica says, We had just come out of this mess of the hurricane, and we came [to MIT] and everything was perfect. It was jarring.

Despite the immense upheaval in his life, Mojica was determined to pursue a PhD. I didnt want to just consume knowledge for the rest of my life, he says. I wanted to produce knowledge. I wanted to be on the cutting-edge of something.

Paying it forward

Now a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Harnett Lab, hes doing just that, utilizing a classical method termed patch clamp electrophysiology in novel ways to investigate neuronal learning. The patch clamp technique allows him to observe activity below the threshold of neuronal firing in mice, something that no other method can do.

I am studying how single neurons learn and adapt, or plasticize, Mojica explains. If I present something new and unexpected to the animal, how does a cell respond? And if I stimulate the cell, can I make it learn something that it didnt respond to before? This research could have implications for patient recovery after severe brain injuries. Plasticity is a crucial aspect of brain function. If we could figure out how neurons learn, or even how to plasticize them, we could speed up recovery from life-threatening loss of brain tissue, for example," he says.

In addition to research, Mojicas passion for mentorship shines through. His voice lifts as he describes one of his undergraduate mentees, Gabriella, who is now a full-time graduate student in the Harnett lab. He currently mentors MSRP students and advises prospective PhD students on their applications. When I was navigating the PhD process, I did not have people like me serving as my own mentors, he notes.

Mojica knows firsthand the impact of mentoring. Even though he never had anyone who could provide guidance about science, his childhood music teacher played an extremely influential role in his early career and always encouraged him to pursue his passions. He had a lot of knowledge in how to navigate the complicated mess of being 17 or 18 and figuring out what you want to devote the rest of your life to, he recalls fondly.

Although hes not sure about his future professional plans, one thing is clear for Mojica: A big part of it will be mentoring the people who come from similar backgrounds to mine who have less access to opportunities. I want to keep that front and center.

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Unlocking the mysteries of how neurons learn | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT News