Social and Behavioral Sciences for National Security Proceedings of a Summit (2017) / Chapter Skim
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4 First Research Session: Brain and Neuroscience
4 First Research Session: Brain and Neuroscience
Pages 15-24
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From page 15... ...
Panelists included Paul Glimcher, professor of neural science, economics, and psychology at New York University; Read Montague, professor of physics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; and Elizabeth Phelps, professor of psychology and neural science at New York University. The panelists presented overviews of their research programs and highlighted key findings, methodologies, data considerations, and relevance to the work of analysts in the intelligence community (IC)
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From page 16... ...
In addition, data are often gathered on people for short periods of time, and as such, the science community lacks sufficient longitudinal information to draw accurate inferences. Glimcher pointed out that well-studied populations tend not to be representative of the nation.
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From page 17... ...
The project will measure a number of items: traditional medical data, ranging from genome to blood chemistry to real-time electronic medical records; detailed real-time financial data about wealth, labor allocation, and taxes; swipe-level data about consumer purchase behaviors; social network data, such as SMS, MMS, telephone, email, browsing, geotracks, and Bluetooth/MAC addresses of local emitters; education; family interactions; environmental data; and criminal justice experiences. He noted that the ability to track data for adults as well as for children and low-functioning elders has been developed.
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From page 18... ...
In terms of investigating neural functioning, the old approach relied on modeling starting from outside behaviors. The new approach starts with measurement of brain activity in an agnostic way of stimulating and predicting outward responses.
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From page 19... ...
Montague suggested that this experiment illustrates situations where what people value is not just a function of themselves, and not even just a function of other people, but also a function of blind mechanisms in the brain and the rules of the marketplace. EMOTION AND DECISION MAKING Elizabeth Phelps started her presentation with the recognition that the idea that emotional choices are generally considered irrational and poor, while cognitive choices are considered rational and goal-directed, is a misconception and does not apply to the scientific characterization of decisionmaking.
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From page 20... ...
More recent experiments measuring brain activity continue to confirm this finding, said Phelps. A series of studies in her laboratory found more activity in the prefrontal cortex when subjects look for situational information to make a situational attribution.
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From page 21... ...
Humans have the same type of continuation decisions, such as in web searches, dating decisions, and jobs. Phelps defined the optimal switching decision as one where the instantaneous reward rate of staying falls below the average reward rate enough that the cost of time to switch becomes manageable.
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From page 22... ...
Montague said he had used generative models to create data for simple social exchange paradigms of two or three people to look at disease categories or psychopathologies. Polski also inquired how occurrences in the physical environment and social context are considered in studies investi ating brain function and behavior.
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From page 23... ...
On the second question, Phelps explained that it would be very hard to identify indicators of violent extremism without a lot of data from larger populations, looking at individual variability across life span and social and emotional environments. Glimcher pointed out that a tremendous amount of data can be collected on a known bad actor; however, understanding how that bad actor differs from all the other actors is what is important.
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From page 24... ...
24 SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES FOR NATIONAL SECURITY very little data would be needed and the dataset could be modeled, but this is not the case. He emphasized that creating large representative datasets will help identify the covariances.
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