The team discovered this by recording electrical activity in the brains of two male rhesus monkeys as they tried to determine which targets on a screen would result in a tasty drink of juice. "When you're trying to solve a problem, you need to search; when you discover the solution, you need to stop searching," says study co-author Emmanuel Procyk, coordinator of the Institute's Department of Integrative Neurobiology. "We need brain areas to do that."
He says that researchers observed increased neuronal activity in the animals' ACCs when they began searching. When the monkeys hit the jackpot, there was still heightened activity in the ACC (though only a selective population of nerve cells remained hopped up), indicating that the region is responsible for more than simply alerting the rest of the brain when errors are made. Once the monkeys got the hang of it—and routinely pressed the correct target—ACC activity slowed.
"What we think based on this experiment and other experiments," Procyk says, "is that this structure is very important in valuing things." It essentially scores each of the monkey's behaviors as successful or not successful. "It is an area," he adds, "that will help to decide when to shift from the functioning that goes on when [the brain is] learning to when the learning [is] done."
Procyk says that if this system is compromised, it could have implications for issues such as drug dependency. If the ACC is functioning abnormally, he says, it could overvalue drugs, leading to addiction. (Other studies have shown that an impaired cingulate cortex can result in maladaptive social behavior and disrupted cognitive abilities.)
Alas, the ultimate "Aha!" moment for researchers probing problem solving is likely is far off, but at least the latest research may help them avoid an impasse.
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14 Comments
Add CommentYou are struggling with the cogntive issue because you are missing how OUR mind breaks apart new sensory input into some unknown set of variables that get grouped before classification. Where is the formal description of that Group? Binary models have not offered a glimpse. Use a trinary data model and most of your questions become obvious. Eureka
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIntense fear seems to facilitate rapid problem solving. General anxiety seems to interfere with it. Hypervigilance, without thought is more commonly noticed with fear, and conversely with thought, sometimes rational, sometimes not, with anxiety. I suspect that intense fear has to facilitate problem solving, while anxiety, (a malaise of civilized life?) does not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the article, it is about the experiments on the monkeys.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think there are many differences when we are trying to solving the problem.
Our thinking are more abstract and complicated.
It is still a long journey to discover the mysterious truth beneath the meditation.
One way is to find out the parts of the brain involved and to measure brain waves and other markers. Another is to read the countless sages and mystics. Not-knowing and having an empty mind have always considered states from where knowledge arises. I wrote about that in my article Welcome writers Block . But the condition of an empty receptive mind is ever more difficult to obtain it given the fast pace and the information overload.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's a quote in the article that says: "This insight [the "aha!" moment] is at the core of human intelligence … this is a key cognitive function that the human can boast to have."
I'm curious if we are unique in our problem-solving mechanisms. It would be interesting to see a similar experiment performed on animals to see how they solve problems. Or maybe someone can offer some insight on what we already know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfeeling just a good way of detecting the secret of the potential cognitive awareness
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe goal of the experiment is interesting, but I feel that an EEG is to crud to pick up sufficient detail in brain activity. To get a better picture of what is happening, the experiment will need to marry three tools. An fMRI, PET scan and EEG. Blood flows may also provide some useful information, but that study is invasive and therefore more dangerous to do on healthy individuals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting. Marijuana increases open mindedness, and also alpha waves. Does marijuana MAKE you SMARTER?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMarijuana might not make you smarter, but Id say itll definitely help you to get rid of that mental fixation. An idea maybe for all those physicists stuck in their quantum mechanics? But please dont let them use it while working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was thinking that it was prolonged smoke inhalation that causes short term memory loss and not the THC. I'm up for a cup of tea!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I understand the neural networking model correctly, THC physically compels us to think differently by clogging up active synapses with its resistant self. The charge must find another way to go.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey really should give their subjects a big fat bowl, see how well those alpha waves flow.
In the article about brain's problem solving studies, there is no stated distinction mentioned between the meaning of the frequently used word "mind" and the word "brain". Scientists seem to consider mind and brain as one and the same. Anyone observing their own brain activities should be able to recognize that the mind is non-physical while the brain is the grey matter mass that travels around inside the skull but which does not appear to think for itself, without the non-physical guidance of the mind. Scientists rarely acknowledge the presence of energy that they cannot measure and monitor on a sensor. Ironically, the brain does have the capacity to detect the presence of its mind. Just ask yourself!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt least one reader has posted his/her objections to current research trying to get rid of the idea of 'mind'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[b]A couple of suggestions to the 'brain-researchers':[/b]
1) As scientists, they should not try to rid the world of the concept of [i][b]'mind'[/b][/i] till they have properly proven their case that there is actually no such thing. That would be the truly scientific way to go. As a concept, '[i][b]mind[/b][/i]' has been very useful thus far, and it would be foolish to throw it out of our armory of ideas and tools till we know it is useless.
Possibly the brain-researchers are correct; however, at this point of time, they do [b]NOT[/b] have all the evidence they need to dump the '[i][b]mind[/b][/i]' into history's garbage pile of discarded concepts. So we should be thinking instead in terms of [i][b]'brain-mind' complex[/b][/i] till such time as the concept of [i][b]'mind'[/b][/i] is actually proven to be superfluous.
2) Observing increased neuronal activity in the [i][b]anterior cingulate cortex[/b][/i] of rhesus monkeys is probably an interesting experiment for some kinds of science - but it does little (if anything) to aid our understanding of what constitutes [i][b]'thinking'[/b][/i] in even those 'lowly' rhesus monkeys (and definitely it does nothing to aid understanding of human thinking!)
[i][b]Much[/b][/i] more progress would be made by creating experiments that show what actually happens when thinking takes place in human minds. The tools being used by the 'brain-researchers' are clumsy probes indeed to explore something as sophsticated as '[i][b]thinking[/b][/i]'. The kind of probes they are currently using would generally destroy the instrument that does the thinking (the [i][b]'brain-mind complex'[/b][/i]) - and they thus are legally prohibted from exploring the [i][b]human 'brain-mind complex'[/b][/i], which is where they want to go! Well, there are some practical 'mind-exploration tools' available these days that can help in such explorations of the [i][b]human 'brain-mind complex'.[/b][/i]
Those interested may write to me at gs (underscore) chandy (at) yahoo (dot) com and I shall be happy to send them information about these tools (by way of a PowerPoint presentation and a couple of Word documents). If, on looking at that information, they want to explore further I could also enable them to download some useful software that will help them do the modeling that's involved in such [i][b]'living explorations of the brain-mind complex'[/b][/i] as I recommend (i.e. without destroying the brain-mind complex) rather than the sort [i][b]'dessicated research'[/b][/i] described in these utterly inhumane experiments. (The software is available for free).
I would like very much to have posted the above-suggested documentation right here - but the facilities at this SciAm forum do not, alas, permit me to post PowerPoint files! (A most [i][b]'unSciAm'[/b][/i] flaw?)
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You could do marijuana to get more creative or you could get into an accident, which I did, and hopefully get more creative. My brain sheared and I feel so creative. When I'm in a group of individuals that are reaching for the same goal I am, I seem to be even more creative. Right now I am thinking about ways a hovercraft might be able to hover without disrupting the air. Which, in turn, makes me think of producing energy from the elements.
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