Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

7 Ways Psychology Can Help Save the Planet – Everyday Health

Climate scientists have long agreed that the climate is warming and becoming more volatile, and human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels, are the main drivers behind these planetary changes. (NASA has a lot more details on this consensus.) Yet human behavior has been slow to change.

Psychologists study and attempt to understand what motivates people and how we think, feel, and act as groups and individuals. This knowledge can be put to use to change the behaviors that are ultimately problematic for our planet.

Yet, according to areport published in February 2022 by the American Psychological Association (APA), only a small number of psychologists include addressing climate change in their work.

The organization hopes to change that with its action plan for psychologists to address the climate crisis, the report notes.

A panel held in August at the APA 2022, the organizations annual meeting, brought together researchers, experts, and thought leaders to discuss how psychology can change human behavior around climate change.

Distress is a normal part of moving to action, saidChristie Manning, PhD, an assistant professor of environmental studies and psychology at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the discussion. Individuals have the power to take these steps. We need to encourage them and help them.

Dr. Manning said that to fight climate change, it will take systemic change, infrastructure change, and policy change. These things can happen if people join the activist community, hold politicians accountable when they promise movement on climate change, and contact elected officials to ask for new policies.

Here are seven ways Manning and the other panelists said psychology can be part of the solution, as well as what you can do.

Cognitive biases are ways of thinking and reasoning that dont necessarily conform to logic, according to the Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience. They happen when our brains try to process information to make sense of something, and they influence our judgment, decision-making, and behavior. For example, you search for information that confirms what you already believe about something and accept that over other research or expert opinion on the topic.

According toGale M. Sinatra, PhD, the Stephen H. Crocker Professor of Education and an associate dean of research at the Rossier School of Education at University of Southern California in Los Angeles, this can apply to climate science, too. We have some cognitive biases in how we reason, she said during the panel.

Cognitive bias theory, for example, explains why people have trouble connecting human behaviors to the impact it has on the environment,research, such as a study in the May 2018 Frontiers in Psychology, has found.

If you feel like new climate policies will cause changes to your way of living, you might have a strong emotional reaction opposing the policies. The emotional reaction can cause you to ignore the facts and data presented.

Psychology can help us unpack thinking patterns and challenge these biases.

How to be part of the solution We all have cognitive biases, whether we realize them or not. Take a step back to stop and check if and when yours are showing up. Use critical thinking to challenge reactions that might be emotionally based, Sinatra recommended during an interview after the meeting. This especially applies when sharing information online.

Values clarification is a technique often used in therapy to help a person get a better understanding of their own values. Once someone is clear about their values, they can then examine how their choices and behavior match them (and when a person's actions and behaviors align with whats important to them, that ultimately leads to emotional well-being).

Derrick Sebree Jr., PsyD, the MA program director and a core faculty member at Michigan School of Psychology in Farmington Hills, says he believes values clarification exercises can be used in connection with climate change. If people value protecting nature and the environment, values clarification exercises can help them make sure their actions and behaviors are contributing to that, he says.

How to be part of the solution Think about your personal values. How do they relate to the way you feel about the environment and whats happening with climate change? Once you get clear on whats important to you, you can look for ways to help, Dr. Sebree says.

Taking action actually reduces your anxiety regarding climate change, Sinatra says. It can be both helpful to the cause and helpful to yourself.

The way you present different choices can affect peoples likelihood of choosing a particular option, saysSusan Clayton, PhD, a professor of psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio. Psychologists refer to the concept as choice architecture.

A meta-analysis published in December 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) concluded that choice architecture is an effective tool for behavior changes, both personally and socially.

This can be applied when the goal is to get people to choose a more eco-friendly option.

One example is menu design. Its well known that meals with meat on average come with a higher carbon footprint than plant-based diet options, Dr. Clayton says. If you put the vegetarian option higher on the list, people are more likely to choose it, she explains.

How to be part of the solution You can also try using choice architecture to encourage friends or family to select environmentally friendly options, such as buying produce from a local farmers market instead of the grocery store. If your work requires travel, ask your manager about presenting green hotel options first when employees are booking accommodations.

At the APA panel,Katharine Hayhoe, PhD, the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy and a professor of political science at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, discussed the role of psychological distance and psychological proximity in prompting behavior change.

If something has psychological distance (meaning people feel mentally removed from whats happening) it might seem worrisome, but not urgent, she said. Psychological proximity, on the other hand, means an issue feels urgent in the here and now, she explained.

Data suggest that many Americans feel psychological distance from climate change; while 70 percent of Americans are worried about climate change and 80 percent of young people are worried, half feel hopeless and dont know where to start, and only 8 percent are activated (meaning they are taking a meaningful action to address the issue), according to data collected by the Yale School of the Environment and a 2020 poll by the United States Conference of Mayors.

We dont understand the risks of inaction to us and the rewards of action to us, she said. So, theres room for psychological proximity to boost the sense of urgency around the problem, and ultimately increase the likelihood of making behavior changes that are good for the planet, she explained.

How to be part of the solution Do you live in a place where youve observed environmental changes? Have you traveled somewhere where you can see the impacts of climate change? Talk with people around you and share it on social media. Hearing about the firsthand experiences of people we know can help make an issue feel closer to us. Also, take those steps yourself to educate yourself.

Psychologists know that people are more receptive to some kinds of messages than others, so tailoring climate change messaging to different audiences has the potential to move behavior.

It does matter who your audience is, Clayton says. If people dont see climate change as a problem, the message needs to try to address that; if an audience already sees climate change as a problem, a sense of hope is helpful because if people feel like actions can make a difference, theyre more likely to do something, he explains.

Sebree says he uses personal stories to help people connect with the seriousness of climate change. I talk about what my family has experienced in terms of going through some of the impacts of climate change, such as flooding in Michigan. The anecdote allows people to extend that to themselves.

How to be part of the solution If youre talking to someone in your life about climate change, Clayton recommends speaking to the values and concerns of the person youre talking to. For example, if the person youre talking to goes fishing as a hobby, you might talk about how the climate crisis will impact their favorite fishing locations. If they have a child who is an important part of their life, you might connect climate change to what the child could experience in the future.

Peoples behavior can be influenced by what they think others around them, or others in a larger group, are doing or not doing (or whether others approve or disapprove), research shows. This applies to behavior that affects climate change and climate action, too, Clayton says.

Psychologists can help by advising advocacy groups and policy leaders on how to get the message out that people are taking part in climate action. The more people see others helping with these efforts, the more likely they are to join.

How to be part of the solution You can help in your community by being a good example and telling others about steps you are taking, Clayton says. If you signed a petition for climate change legislation or called your local congressperson to ask them to vote yes or no on a bill for climate action, talk about having done so with friends and family.

Nature-based therapy, or eco-therapy, is a technique that some psychologists use to help boost mental health, according to theAPA. They might recommend someone spend more time outdoors to do things like hiking or forest bathing, Sebree says.

Aside from helping to improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, being in nature can also cause people to feel more connected with their environment something Sebree said builds personal relevance to the climate crisis. (It helps boost that psychological proximity Dr. Hayhoe was talking about.)

The more someone feels connected to the environment, the more likely they are to make choices to protect the environment, Sebree says.

How to be part of the solution Try it yourself. Eco-therapy, or simply spending time in nature, can serve as a reminder that humans are also part of nature, and we need to protect our habitat. If youre already an avid nature adventurer, try to encourage someone in your life to come with you.

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7 Ways Psychology Can Help Save the Planet - Everyday Health

Human Behavior

Study Shows Human Activity Impacts Bobcat Behavior | Northern Today – Northern Today

A Northern Michigan University-led research project focusing on bobcats found evidence that human activity can exert a greater impact than environmental factors on carnivore predator-prey interactions, daily activity patterns and movement. The findings were recently published in Biodiversity and Conservation. Understanding that some animals perceive humans as super predators is critical for establishing successful wildlife management practices to promote functioning communities.

The paper was based on thesis research conducted by NMU 2021 alumna Tru Hubbard, lead author of the publication. Her NMU faculty adviser, assistant professor Diana Lafferty, and scientists from seven other institutions were collaborators.

I'm fascinated by feline behavior, and the dual role bobcats can play within an ecosystem, Hubbard said. In some cases, they act as subordinates under dominant carnivores like gray wolves and pumas, and those interactions are influenced primarily by human-related factors. In other environments, they are the apex predators at the top of the food chain, a role that is more influenced by environmental factors.

Researchers compared bobcats' use of space and time to eight other carnivore species. They analyzed the distribution of activity throughout their daily cycles, the occupancy level of various species in particular areas, and movement patterns based on whether one species is attracted to or avoiding another that visited a site beforehand. Results suggest that bobcats have the greatest flexibility among the carnivores sampled. They can modify their behavior to survive across diverse ecosystems relative to other carnivore species present in the system.

Bobcats were heavily harvested for a long time, Hubbard said. With greater regulation, their populations are rebounding. They are adapting to human population growth, even moving into urban areas. A lot of species aren't capable of that. So it's important, for management purposes, to understand their interactions with people and educate the public about this species. Reducing the potential for human-wildlife conflict is my goal.

The team's research relied heavily on camera trap data collected through the Snapshot USA project from September through October 2019. Unlike birds, which have multiple large-scale monitoring programs, there was no standard way to monitor mammal populations on a national scale until the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute collaborated with more than 150 researchers to establish Snapshot USA.

Our goal was to provide a space for researchers from all 50 states to contribute a subset of their data to a broader initiative to maximize our coverage of the country and better understand drivers of mammal distributions to best inform conservation as rapidly as possible, said Michael Cove, the North Carolina museum's curator of mammology. This project showed that, in some cases, bobcats may prioritize avoiding humans more than avoiding larger predators like pumas or coyotes. So humans recreating may influence such species interactions beyond our direct effects in the environment. Theseresults correspond with much of the localized work understandingbobcat behavior, but certainly warrant further examination with other techniques like high-resolution tracking of carnivores and overlapping humans in space and time.

Field cameras stationed at more than 1,500 sites spanning all 50 states capture images and data that are uploaded for public access and review and archived by the Smithsonian. Lafferty, who directs NMU's Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Science Lab, led the NMU team of contributors to Snapshot USA. The team included then-graduate students Hubbard and Amelia Berquist, along with 15 undergraduate assistants (read a related June 2021 story here).

We are sincerely grateful to Snapshot USA for making the bobcat research possible, Lafferty said. Few previous studies encompassed an area as large and diverse in both ecosystem structure and carnivore populations as this project. Collaboration with scientists at other institutions was really important for this effort. Each member of the team brought diverse expertise to the table, from those with a statistical coding and math background to those with rich conceptual knowledge of carnivore ecology. Each member had something very valuable to contribute.

Hubbard worked with all of the bobcat study collaborators, individually and through group online discussions and analyses. The experience was valuable career preparation. She said her hope is to secure a job doing additional research within the same realm.

A lot of my thesis focused on examining how human recreation can affect carnivore ecology, said Hubbard, who received NMU's Technology Innovation Student Award for her Yooper Wildlife Watch project. We alter the landscape and have a big impact, as evidenced by the bobcats we studied. My goal is to find ways for people to be able to get outdoors doing what they need or want without having a negative effect on carnivore populations.

Besides, Hubbard, Lafferty and Cove, other coauthors of the Biodiversity and Conservation article, titled Human presence drives bobcat interactions among the U.S. carnivore guild, were: Austin Green, University of Utah; Fabiola Iannarilli, Yale University; Maximilian Allen, University of Illinois; Summer LaRose, University of Missouri; Chris Nagy, Mianus River Gorge; and Justin Compton, Springfield College.

For more about NMU biology programs, visit nmu.edu/biology.

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Study Shows Human Activity Impacts Bobcat Behavior | Northern Today - Northern Today

Human Behavior

Recognition of drivers’ hard and soft braking intentions based on hybrid brain-computer interfaces – EurekAlert

image:Scientists from Beijing Institute of Technology proposed the hBCIs that incorporate EEG and EMG signals. view more

Credit: Jiawei Ju, Aberham Genetu Feleke, Longxi Luo and Xinan Fan, Beijing Institute of Technology

A technical paper by scientists at the Beijing Institute of Technology introduced simultaneous and sequential hybrid brain-computer interfaces (hBCIs) that incorporate EEG and EMG signals for classifying drivers hard braking, soft braking, and normal driving intentions to better assist driving.

The work is valuable for developing human-centric intelligent assistant driving systems to improve driving safety and driving comfort, and promote the application of BCIs, explained study authors Longxi Luo, an assistant professor, and Jiawei Ju, a research assistant, of the institute of human machine systems (IHMS) directed by Luzheng Bi, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology.

Road traffic accidents (RTA) has become one of the most important factors causing casualties and economic losses. Traffic accidents cause nearly 1.35 million deaths and 20-50 million injuries every year. Nearly 3% of GDP is consumed as a result of traffic accidents every year for medical expenses and loss of personnel productivity. In addition, with fast the pace of science, technology, and economic development, vehicles on the road are increasing year by year, and RTA is predicted to be the fifth factor leading to death in 2030.

An intelligent driver assistance system (IDAS) can indirectly influence vehicle control by notifying drivers of possible emergencies or directly controlling vehicles after detecting emergencies, effectively improving drivers driving safety.

Some IDASs need to detect drivers drowsy state and distraction state Other IDASs depend on driving behavior detection and prediction of driving intentions. If an IDAS can detect drivers hard braking intention in advance, it can directly control vehicles to take hard braking.

In this study, braking is a specific behavior that slows or stops the vehicle. The braking can be classified into hard braking and soft braking. Hard braking refers to the behavior in which the driver presses the pedal hard to quickly decrease the vehicle speed in face of an emergency during driving. In contrast, soft braking refers to the behavior in which drivers press the pedal softly to slowly decrease the vehicle speed.

The input information of IDASs mainly consists of vehicle and surrounding-related, behavior-related, and biological signal-related information. The vehicle and surrounding environment information mainly come from vehicle parameters and traffic information. Driver behavior-related information can be obtained mainly by monitoring the activities of drivers feet, limbs, and heads. Biological information includes electroencephalography (EEG) signals and electromyography (EMG) signals. Although BCIs based on EEM signals have made great progress in braking intention detection, the detection performance is not stable because of the properties of EEG signals.

A hybrid brain-computer interface (hBCI) is an effective scheme that can address the shortcomings of EEG-based BCIs, such as low stability, poor performance, and insufficient reliability.

According to how the signals are combined, the hBCIs fall into two modes: one that combines two or more kinds of EEG signals, such as ERD, ERS and P300, another combines EEG and other signals, such as EMG signals and ECG signals.

However, existing methods of braking intention detection based on hBCIs are developed to recognize the hard braking intention from normal driving or soft braking intentions. To make these detection methods of hard braking intention more applicable in realistic driving situations, an EEG-based detection method to distinguish hard braking, soft braking, and normal driving intentions was already proposed in our previous study. Experimental results suggested the feasibility of this detection method. However, the performance of this detection method was not good. The offline testing average accuracy of the three classes of driving intentions based on spectral features was 70.93%.

To address this problem, in this paper, we aim to develop simultaneous and sequential hBCIs based on EEG and EMG signals to recognize hard braking, soft braking, and normal driving intentions. The contribution of this paper is that it is the first work to use the fusion of EEG and EMG signals to recognize hard braking, soft braking, and normal driving intentions.

The accuracy of our new system in recognizing hard barking, soft braking, and normal driving intentions reached 96.37% said study authors.

Authors of the paper include Jiawei Ju, Aberham Genetu Feleke, Longxi Luo and Xinan Fan.

This work was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 51975052 and in part by the Beijing Natural Science Foundation under Grant 3222021.

The paper, " Recognition of Drivers Hard and Soft Braking Intentions Based on Hybrid Brain-Computer Interfaces," was published in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems on July 20th, 2022, at DOI: https://doi.org/10.34133/2022/9847652

Reference

Authors: Jiawei Ju1, Aberham Genetu Feleke1, Longxi Luo*1 and Xinan Fan*2

Title of original paper: Recognition of Drivers Hard and Soft Braking Intentions Based on Hybrid Brain-Computer Interfaces

Journal: Cyborg and Bionic Systems

DOI: 10.34133/2022/9847652

Affiliations:

1 School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

2 Beijing Machine and Equipment Institute

A brief introduction about yourself.

About Dr. Longxi Luo:

Longxi Luo received the Ph. D. degree in engineering from SEAS Graduate School of Engineering of Columbia University, New York, USA, in 2018.

From 2018 to 2020, he was a post-doctoral research associate with the Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is currently an Assistant Professor of the Institute of Mechatronic Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology. His research interests include human behavior modeling, intelligent human-machine system, intelligent driving assistance, and human-machine interaction and control.

Prof. Luo has published more than twenty papers in the academic community.

Personal Homepage: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2661-4177

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Recognition of drivers' hard and soft braking intentions based on hybrid brain-computer interfaces - EurekAlert

Human Behavior

Leveraging Behavior To Win Your Next Negotiation – Forbes

Additionally, even when we do recognize the importance of communication, most people tend to focus ... [+] on verbal/explicit communication. While language is certainly important, so is behavior.

A world-leading Body Language Expert, Joe Navarro spent 25 years working FBI counterintelligence in addition to spending time in a small behavioral analysis unit. Following his retirement, Navarro founded the Body Language Academy, where he continues to coach individuals and teams hoping to master the power of nonverbal communication.

He joined Negotiate Anything to share his best advice for using body language to find success in negotiations.

The Little Things Matter

If youre human, youre negotiating all of the time.

When we hear the word negotiation, the first things that come to mind are lawyers, boardrooms (or other business settings) and conflict. Its easy to forget that people are negotiating all day every day.

Not a day goes by that we arent parsing something in some way to work something out or gain an advantage, Navarro shared. So much of that has to do with communication.

Additionally, even when we do recognize the importance of communication, most people tend to focus on verbal/explicit communication. While language is certainly important, so is behavior.

The biggest mistake is thinking that little things dont matter, Navarro explained.

According to him, in the field of counterintelligence, this can mean strategically planning every single movement from the very beginning of the interaction. From which agent walks in first, to who speaks, to the way hand gestures are used everything has its purpose.

Our everyday conversations may not be as intense, but we can certainly find opportunities to use body language strategically.

First, as with any negotiation, its critical to take time to understand your counterpart's personality, motivators and goals. This will provide insight into how to best approach that person, as well as which messages to communicate (subtle and explicit).

Second, where possible, aim to demonstrate confidence, power, and control (unless appearing timid or anxious is a tactic).

We are an animal species, and we respond to the alphas and display of hierarchy, Navarro said. We are sensitive to the gestures that come with higher status.

How to Appear Bigger Than We Are

So, what about those that are small in stature? Navarro has advice for body language that communicates power regardless of physical size.

First, he encouraged listeners to always maintain eye contact.

Compensate by walking in with a presence that nobody is off limits for you to look at, he elaborated.

From there, be mindful of your vocal tone and cadence. Oftentimes when we are nervous, our voices tend to go higher. Because of this, Navarro advises that to communicate strength and confidence (or seriousness), speak with a lower voice.

Finally, he encourages negotiators to increase their vocabulary where possible.

As a species, we respond to whoever has the better vocabulary, he said. The command of words will immediately elevate you.

The Importance of Benign Curiosity

The use of nonverbal communication can be complex and difficult to master, especially in real-time. Practice and preparation will be key, but for those looking to get a strong start, Navarro recommends an easy (and familiar) concept: curiosity. He refers to it as benign curiosity.

This is especially useful when dealing with somebody is who is excessively difficult or frustrated.

Ask questions that dont appear too imposing or hold too much weight. Also, try to think of things you may genuinely want to know. Some examples:

Tell me what youre thinking?

Where is your family from?

I saw this interesting building on my way here, do you know what it was? (If you are in a new city or foreign environment)

While this may not seem like nonverbal communication, the goal is to talk less and listen more. By getting the other person to explain things, you are subtly encouraging collaboration (and cooperation).

The worst thing I could have done was challenge a suspect, Navarro shared, but by being benignly curious I got him to talk more.

Follow Joe Navarro on LinkedIn. To listen to the full episode, click here.

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Leveraging Behavior To Win Your Next Negotiation - Forbes

Human Behavior

Getting Ready: We can do better in taking care of our home – Seacoastonline.com

Rev. Anne Bancroft| York Ready for Climate Action

I hear about climate change all the time. We all do, right? We hear about how our human behavior is affecting the planet, and how our oceans are warming, and different parts of the world are experiencing extreme weather patterns that will continue and likely worsen, depending on our actions.

Living in Maine, we often read about the Gulf of Maine, so essential to all of us in some way. Apparently, it is warming faster than most large bodies of water. "In about the 40 years or so that we've had satellite data, (temperatures in the Gulf of Maine)are the warmest that we've seen, and that follows the second-warmest summer on record, and so it's part of a longer-term pattern of increasing warmth in this region, said Dave Reidmiller, director of the Climate Center at the Gulf of Maine Research Institutein Portland. This was said in an interview held while looking out over Casco Bay. "What we're seeing here in the Gulf of Maine is a microcosm of what's going on globally."

Its unsettling to read about, and disturbing; and, honestly, I cant say I really understand it all. Im not a scientist. Too much detail goes over my head, or maybe I just dont have the patience to try to make sense of it. After all, how different are a few degrees one way or the other? Actually, there is an answer to that.

Getting Ready: New opportunities to save money whilereducing carbon emissions

Recently, my sister-in-law mentioned that she thinks of global warming in terms of our own bodies, where a few degrees of temperature change actually make a big difference, one that we can feel almost immediately. If we think of Earth as struggling with higher temperatures in the same way we struggle with the high body temperatures that often accompany flu or infection, then the whole issue feels more personal and tangible. Suddenly the idea of deforestation that robs the earth of its cooling trees simply to feed our human avarice, or the overabundance of human-caused greenhouse gases that overwhelm Earths capacity to sustain its healthy systems reminds me of how my body feels at the onslaught of unwanted viruses or bacteria.

Climate change: What the Inflation Reduction Act will mean for you

They say the hardest part of changing something like old patterns or bad habits - is recognizing the need to change. If I understand little else but that the Earth, and so many of her creatures, is suffering from humanitys disregard in the same way my body suffers when it is not cared for adequately, then I must learn what I can do to be a healer. For me, understanding every element of the science is secondary to the need for compassion, for the Earth itself, for all the living things it sustains, and for the humans who, I hope, will be here long after I am gone.

Can you remember what having a fever feels like? Can you remember the chills, the aches, and the fatigue that go along with body temperatures one, or two, or three degrees above normal? We wouldnt wish that on anybody else. We certainly wouldnt wish it on the planet as a whole. We can do better.

Join us at York Ready for Climate Action.

Rev. Bancroft volunteers with York Ready for Climate Action. YRCA is a grassroots citizens organization dedicated to increasing awareness of the causes and effects of climate change and advancing environmentally friendly and inclusive policies and behaviors. Please see yorkreadyforclimateaction.org or info@yorkreadyforclimateaction.org. Information about EcoHOMES is on the same site.

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Getting Ready: We can do better in taking care of our home - Seacoastonline.com

Human Behavior

Why heat makes you feel tired and sleepy, according to science – Medical News Today

External temperatures can affect our energy, emotions, and sleep quality. Scientists are still exploring how climate changes bear on human behavior.

Neurobiologists at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, may have uncovered genetic underpinnings influencing the bodys adaptations to climate.

Their recently published study in the journal Current Biology found a distinct thermometer circuit in the fruit fly brain triggered by hot temperatures. It follows a 2020 paper that identified a cold thermometer circuit.

Lead author Marco Gallio, Ph.D., an associate professor of neurobiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, told Medical News Today:

People may choose to take an afternoon nap on a hot day, and in some parts of the world this is a cultural norm, but what do you choose and what is programmed into you? Of course, its not culture in flies, so there actually might be a very strong underlying biological mechanism that is overlooked in humans.

Medical News Today discussed this research with Dr. Gallio and asked why he chose to examine the fruit fly (Drosophila).

The professor mentioned that sleep is universal throughout the animal kingdom. He also shared that 60% of the insects genes are the same as those in humans.

The common fly appears all around the world due to having a close association with people. Its favorite temperature 77 degrees Fahrenheit is also close to that of many humans.

Dr. Gallio said that fruit flies are gaining momentum in research because they show an array of complex behaviors like people. Yet, they do all that in a brain that is only made up of 100,000 brain cells.

On the other hand, the human brain holds about 86 billion brain cells.

In his article, Ode to the fruit fly: tiny lab subject crucial to basic research, Dr. Gallio wrote that our related anatomy and physiology make the flies ideal for designing experiments of significance to animals and humans alike.

The Northwestern University study draws on a 10-year project that produced the connectome, the first full map of neural pathways in an animal.

The connectome allowed the researchers to analyze all the possible neural connections for every fruit fly brain cell. The present study helped them observe how information in the brain travels from one point to another.

The flys antenna has three organs called sensilla, each containing one hot- and one cold-activated neuron.

The flys head also contains anterior cell (AC) neurons that respond to heat and cold. This research is the first to identify these absolute heat receptors.

During this study, Dr. Gallio and his colleagues noticed that the AC neurons sensitive to heat are part of a wider network that controls sleep.

When the hot circuit was activated by temperatures above 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the cells triggering midday sleep stay on longer. This leads to longer midday sleep, helping the flies avoid movement during the warmest part of the day.

Matthew Walker, Ph.D., who was not involved in this study, is an author and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Walkers research focuses on sleep and human health.

In a 2019 podcast, Dr. Walker said that temperature is as powerful a trigger of sleep organization and sleep depth as light is. For you to fall asleep and stay asleep, your body needs to drop its core temperature by about one degree Celsius or about two degrees Fahrenheit. Thats the reason that you will always find it easier to fall asleep in a room thats too cold than too hot, because the room thats too cold is at least taking you in the right thermal direction for good sleep []

The sleep expert also discussed hunter-gatherer tribe studies that indicate the influence of temperature changes on sleep behavior. The way of life in such pre-industrial societies has remained constant over thousands of years.

Dr. Walker said that these people dont typically retire for the night immediately after the sun sets. Rather, the tribes go to bed several hours later when the ambient temperature falls.

Dr. Walker commented: That seems to be a thermal trigger for them getting sleepy and falling asleep. And [] they typically wake up 15 to 20 minutes before dawn. So, its not light that seems to be necessarily the trigger instigating the awakening. Its actually the rise of temperature, and thats on the circadian rhythm. So, what is entraining us to our natural sleep rhythms is both temperature and light.

Jade Wu, Ph.D., a sleep psychologist, researcher, and speaker who was not involved in the study, told MNT that she was curious whether the studys findings could extend to humans.

We know that when its too hot, humans actually have a harder time with sleep, which appears to be opposite to what happened with the flies in this study, Dr. Wu said.

Dr. Gallio agreed that humans tend to sleep better when its cold.

Dr. Gallio stressed that his work aimed to discover the basic principles driving why we sleep and how temperature affects behavior.

We dont know much about these principles, but we should be spending [more] money on [learning about] those very principles before we try to [focus on] the applied side [of research], he said.

Michael Alpert, first author and post-doctoral researcher with Dr. Gallio, added: We identified one neuron that could be a site of integration for the effects of hot and cold temperatures on sleep and activity in Drosophila. This would be the start of interesting follow-up studies.

Dr. Gallio also told MNT that he hopes his work could inspire others to take the research further, eventually to human investigations.

For instance, this research opens the door to determining specific sensory circuits for brain regions for sleep in humans.

The professor said that his team also wants to consider the effects of climate change on behavior and physiology.

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Why heat makes you feel tired and sleepy, according to science - Medical News Today

Human Behavior

AI that can learn the patterns of human language – MIT News

Human languages are notoriously complex, and linguists have long thought it would be impossible to teach a machine how to analyze speech sounds and word structures in the way human investigators do.

But researchers at MIT, Cornell University, and McGill University have taken a step in this direction. They have demonstrated an artificial intelligence system that can learn the rules and patterns of human languages on its own.

When given words and examples of how those words change to express different grammatical functions (like tense, case, or gender) in one language, this machine-learning model comes up with rules that explain why the forms of those words change. For instance, it might learn that the letter a must be added to end of a word to make the masculine form feminine in Serbo-Croatian.

This model can also automatically learn higher-level language patterns that can apply to many languages, enabling it to achieve better results.

The researchers trained and tested the model using problems from linguistics textbooks that featured 58 different languages. Each problem had a set of words and corresponding word-form changes. The model was able to come up with a correct set of rules to describe those word-form changes for 60 percent of the problems.

This system could be used to study language hypotheses and investigate subtle similarities in the way diverse languages transform words. It is especially unique because the system discovers models that can be readily understood by humans, and it acquires these models from small amounts of data, such as a few dozen words. And instead of using one massive dataset for a single task, the system utilizes many small datasets, which is closer to how scientists propose hypotheses they look at multiple related datasets and come up with models to explain phenomena across those datasets.

One of the motivations of this work was our desire to study systems that learn models of datasets that is represented in a way that humans can understand. Instead of learning weights, can the model learn expressions or rules? And we wanted to see if we could build this system so it would learn on a whole battery of interrelated datasets, to make the system learn a little bit about how to better model each one, says Kevin Ellis 14, PhD 20, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University and lead author of the paper.

Joining Ellis on the paper are MIT faculty members Adam Albright, a professor of linguistics; Armando Solar-Lezama, a professor and associate director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and Joshua B. Tenenbaum, the Paul E. Newton Career Development Professor of Cognitive Science and Computation in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of CSAIL; as well as senior author

Timothy J. ODonnell, assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at McGill University, and Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Mila -Quebec Artificial IntelligenceInstitute.

The research is published today in Nature Communications.

Looking at language

In their quest to develop an AI system that could automatically learn a model from multiple related datasets, the researchers chose to explore the interaction of phonology (the study of sound patterns) and morphology (the study of word structure).

Data from linguistics textbooks offered an ideal testbed because many languages share core features, and textbook problems showcase specific linguistic phenomena. Textbook problems can also be solved by college students in a fairly straightforward way, but those students typically have prior knowledge about phonology from past lessons they use to reason about new problems.

Ellis, who earned his PhD at MIT and was jointly advised by Tenenbaum and Solar-Lezama, first learned about morphology and phonology in an MIT class co-taught by ODonnell, who was a postdoc at the time, and Albright.

Linguists have thought that in order to really understand the rules of a human language, to empathize with what it is that makes the system tick, you have to be human. We wanted to see if we can emulate the kinds of knowledge and reasoning that humans (linguists) bring to the task, says Albright.

To build a model that could learn a set of rules for assembling words, which is called a grammar, the researchers used a machine-learning technique known as Bayesian Program Learning. With this technique, the model solves a problem by writing a computer program.

In this case, the program is the grammar the model thinks is the most likely explanation of the words and meanings in a linguistics problem. They built the model using Sketch, a popular program synthesizer which was developed at MIT by Solar-Lezama.

But Sketch can take a lot of time to reason about the most likely program. To get around this, the researchers had the model work one piece at a time, writing a small program to explain some data, then writing a larger program that modifies that small program to cover more data, and so on.

They also designed the model so it learns what good programs tend to look like. For instance, it might learn some general rules on simple Russian problems that it would apply to a more complex problem in Polish because the languages are similar. This makes it easier for the model to solve the Polish problem.

Tackling textbook problems

When they tested the model using 70 textbook problems, it was able to find a grammar that matched the entire set of words in the problem in 60 percent of cases, and correctly matched most of the word-form changes in 79 percent of problems.

The researchers also tried pre-programming the model with some knowledge it should have learned if it was taking a linguistics course, and showed that it could solve all problems better.

One challenge of this work was figuring out whether what the model was doing was reasonable. This isnt a situation where there is one number that is the single right answer. There is a range of possible solutions which you might accept as right, close to right, etc., Albright says.

The model often came up with unexpected solutions. In one instance, it discovered the expected answer to a Polish language problem, but also another correct answer that exploited a mistake in the textbook. This shows that the model could debug linguistics analyses, Ellis says.

The researchers also conducted tests that showed the model was able to learn some general templates of phonological rules that could be applied across all problems.

One of the things that was most surprising is that we could learn across languages, but it didnt seem to make a huge difference, says Ellis. That suggests two things. Maybe we need better methods for learning across problems. And maybe, if we cant come up with those methods, this work can help us probe different ideas we have about what knowledge to share across problems.

In the future, the researchers want to use their model to find unexpected solutions to problems in other domains. They could also apply the technique to more situations where higher-level knowledge can be applied across interrelated datasets. For instance, perhaps they could develop a system to infer differential equations from datasets on the motion of different objects, says Ellis.

This work shows that we have some methods which can, to some extent, learn inductive biases. But I dont think weve quite figured out, even for these textbook problems, the inductive bias that lets a linguist accept the plausible grammars and reject the ridiculous ones, he adds.

This work opens up many exciting venues for future research. I am particularly intrigued by the possibility that the approach explored by Ellis and colleagues (Bayesian Program Learning, BPL) might speak to how infants acquire language, says T. Florian Jaeger, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and computer science at the University of Rochester, who was not an author of this paper. Future work might ask, for example, under what additional induction biases (assumptions about universal grammar) the BPL approach can successfully achieve human-like learning behavior on the type of data infants observe during language acquisition. I think it would be fascinating to see whether inductive biases that are even more abstract than those considered by Ellis and his team such as biases originating in the limits of human information processing (e.g., memory constraints on dependency length or capacity limits in the amount of information that can be processed per time) would be sufficient to induce some of the patterns observed in human languages.

This work was funded, in part, by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Fonds de Recherche du Qubec Socit et Culture, the Canada CIFAR AI Chairs Program, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and an NSF graduate fellowship.

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AI that can learn the patterns of human language - MIT News

Human Behavior

Monkeys Look for Patterns that Aren’t ThereJust Like Humans Do – The Scientist

Faced with an impossible puzzle, lab monkeys in a recent experiment showed unflappable resolve: They continued to guess what they thought must be the correct responses, even when rewards were doled out at random or in ways meant to disincentivize the animals from sticking to their guns. In short, the monkeys spuriously learned convictionstheir seeming insistence that there must be a structure and solution to an unsolvable puzzleoutweighed their desire to maximize rewards during the experiment.

The study, published August 23 in PNAS, suggests that the monkeys create internal representations and assumptions about how to solve a puzzle or address a task that supersede the usual drivers of lab behavior, such as rewards. And even when the puzzle at hand was impossible by design, that internally conjured structure kept the animals guessing long after the Columbia University researchers behind the experiment thought theyd give up. The study suggests that the monkeys did not distinguish between learnable and unlearnable tasks, treating the latter as they had the formera tendency that the studys authors say resembles how humans approach random or impossible challenges.

The original goal of the study was to learn more about the motivations behind learning and exploration, explains coauthor Jacqueline Gottlieb, a Columbia University neuroscientist. The main reward for exploration is finding some sort of pattern or regularity in the world. The problem is that we live in a very complicated world with a lot of patterns [that] might be validand a lot of them are nonsense.

In the study, two rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were first trained to solve puzzles in which they had to learn through trial and error the correct order of five images that appeared on a touch screen by selecting which of two presented images was ordered first. In the training period, there was a fixed, learnable order to the images, and correct answers were rewarded with a sip of water for the water-deprived monkeys.

Though the images changed for each set, the experience seemed to teach the monkeys that there was indeed a structure to the taskan assumption that they held onto as solvable sets were swapped out for those that were impossible by design.

In later tasks, water rewards were given out not for correct answers (there were none), but first randomly, and then in a way meant to encourage the monkeys to change their answers from what they had guessed before. Weve denied them a logical structure that is internally consistent and coherent, coauthor Greg Jensen, a primate cognition researcher at Columbia, tells The Scientist. In these experiments, the monkeys still proceeded as though they could solve the puzzle, selecting consistent answers even when doing so meant receiving fewer rewards. At this point, the researchers added a third monkey, which had spent less time on the solvable training patterns, to see if their results had somehow been skewed, but it exhibited similar behavior, offering the second-most consistent choices of the three.

We as animals want there to be patterns to the world; we want to be able to learn our environment, learning and memory researcher Natalie Odynocki, who didnt work on the study, tells The Scientist over email. In this case, The monkeys are taking what they have previously learned will give them reward and applying this learning to a new context.

Gottlieb says she expected that the animals would monitor their own learning rates, determining how well they were performing based on how often they received a reward. Instead, they seemed to develop an intrinsic reward that kept them focused on attempting to solve the puzzle instead of gaming the task. Its very motivating when you believe there is a pattern and you believe you are getting it, she says.

A similar phenomenon has been observed in humans. In a study Gottlieb and her colleagues published in Nature Communications last year, for example, people tried to complete a similar unlearnable puzzle (disguised among three solvable ones). Many of the research participants were drawn to the challenge of the impossible task, she says, and some said they were confident they could have solved it if theyd only had more time. In the new paper, the study authors also compare the monkeys behavior to gamblers who believe theyre due for a win, and of sports fans predicting the winner of games despite not having any relevant data.

The problem is that we live in a very complicated world with a lot of patterns [that] might be validand a lot of them are nonsense.

Jacqueline Gottlieb, Columbia University

What we learned is that learning is a complex thing, and if you start with a belief that there is a structure to a task, you can convince yourself that youre learning the structure, Gottlieb says. You can just take internal cues, or whatever it is the monkeys are using, ignore the reward cues, and call that learning.

We were really surprised to see that we put in random inputs and we got very stable outputs, coauthor Vincent Ferrera of Columbia says.

Less surprised was Yael Niv, a Princeton University neuroscientist who didnt work on the study, who says the brain has a tendency to look for patterns and structure even when there are none. One idea [for why this occurs] is that in order to figure out true relationships out there in the world, we have to assume they exist, she tells The Scientist over email. That means we have a prior belief that there is a relationship to uncover, even if we have not yet seen evidence of it in the data.

Jensen tells The Scientist that the experimental tasks likely exploited a mechanism that helps animals quickly determine order or rankings such as social hierarchies, which he adds is shared across multiple clades of life (even wasps can correctly order five items, he adds). That could lead to issues for learning and memory researchers who fail to account for bias in both animal and human research subjects, he says, underscoring the value of carefully thought-out control groups. What a control condition actually means can be very, very tricky once you get into tasks that are somewhat more complicated, Jensen says.

Odynocki suggests that its also possible the monkeys persisted because the experimental task was too similar to the training one. If stimuli were more distinct, perhaps new behavioral approaches would have been employed and less generalization would have occurred, she says. Animals like predictability, and unlearning a behavior thats worked for them in the past can take time.

Odynocki also suggests that the findings may have been different if the monkeys were rewarded with a treat rather than water, as they may have behaved differently if they were seeking out a bonus prize rather than something essential for survival.

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Monkeys Look for Patterns that Aren't ThereJust Like Humans Do - The Scientist

Human Behavior

22% of Tenure-Track Professors Have a Parent With a Ph.D. – Inside Higher Ed

Current tenure-track faculty members are up to 25 more times likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. than the general population, according to a new study in Nature: Human Behavior. This rate nearly doubles at highly selective institutions and has remained stable for 50 years. The study involved combining national-level data on education, income and university rankings with a 20172020 survey of 7,204 U.S.-based tenure-track faculty members across eight disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, business and the humanities.

Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction, lead author Allison C. Morgan, a recent computer science Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder and current Twitter data scientist, wrote with her colleagues. According to the study, 22percent of tenure-track professors in the eight fields studied report that at least one of their parents holds a Ph.D., and 4percent report both parents have Ph.D.s. Some 52percent report having at least one parent with a masters degree or Ph.D. In the U.S., on average, fewer than 1percent of similarly aged adults hold a Ph.D., and just 7percent hold a graduate degree of any kind.

Other studies have found similar results. Research published earlier this year suggests that economics Ph.D.s, in particular, are increasingly likely to have at least one parent with a graduate degree. (Morgans study previously received attention as a preprint.)

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22% of Tenure-Track Professors Have a Parent With a Ph.D. - Inside Higher Ed

Human Behavior

FAs Weigh In: What Are You Reading? – Financial Advisor IQ

FA-IQ reached out to advisors to ask: Is there a book that has shaped how you work with clients or think about finance?

Mark Mathers is partner and managing director of Beacon Pointe Advisors. Mathers, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, has been in the industry 27 years. His teams client assets total $570 million.

An amazing book that has had a great impact on my life and how I interact with clients is called Tattoos on the Heart by Greg Boyle. The book is a series of short stories about Father Gregs interaction with gang members in LA. Greg speaks about seeing each person at the level of the heart. Its a story about kinship and compassion. At Beacon Pointe we are laser focused on our clients needs regarding their life & legacy planning and their investments. A critical component of our client relationship involves taking the time to see each of our clients at the level of the heart. What are the challenges they are facing in life? What are they struggling with? How can we help them engage their capital in doing good while also doing well financially?

The ability for our team to engage with our clients this way is totally dependent upon how each of our team sees themselves and how we also connect with one another as colleagues. We practice servant leadership at Beacon Pointe. Which means showing up each day with enough humility to realize that we are here to serve other human beings our clients, our colleagues and our community and all of these matter. The fact that one of our specialties is Values Based Investing fits perfectly with our firm culture of servant leadership that clearly involves seeing the other person at the level of the heart, he added.

Karen McClintock is principal and managing director at Robertson Stephens Wealth Management. McClintock, based in Pasadena, California, has been in the industry more than 30 years and has about $174 million in client assets.

She selected Whats It All About, Alpha?: & Other Investment Essays from an Incredible Decade Paperback, by Jason DeSena Trennert.

While an older book, Trennerts comments are timeless. As wealth managers, we engage in research, statistics, trends, economics, analysis, forecasting, and massive amounts of data. Trennert regularly reminds us we are managing other peoples money and it is a sacred trust. We must never neglect history, the social sciences, and human behavior. We must remain ever diligent in suppressing the noise and searching for the big picture, the truth. We must safeguard and develop the finest personal code of ethics possible, McClintock said.

While Trennert is at the helm of an award winning macro-economic research company, he brings a tone of sensibility to our industry, for which we are grateful. This book gives you insights into the foundations of that work, she added.

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FAs Weigh In: What Are You Reading? - Financial Advisor IQ